First Nations in the Great Bear Rainforest and Haida Gwaii are leading the transition to a conservation-oriented economy.
A report from Coast Funds, an Indigenous-led conservation finance organization, says over a thousand jobs, one hundred businesses, and 14 regional monitoring and Guardian Watchmen programs have been created in the last ten years.
One of the more well known businesses is Spirit Bear Lodge in Kitasoo/Xai’xais territory, which features wildlife tours.
“There’s a lot of transferable skills in ecotourism. It’s not just about viewing bears. You learn communication skills, you learn how to work with wildlife, there’s the science work that we do,” says Chief Councillor Douglas Neasloss of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais Nation in a news release. “We went from a community largely dependent on resource extractive jobs to a community whose economy was largely based on conservation and non-extractive activities.”
Fisheries technicians from Lax Kw’alaams Fisheries Stewardship program conduct Dungeness biosampling data as part of surveys occurring year-round in Stumaun Bay and Big Bay. Photo courtesy Lax Kw’alaams Fisheries Stewardship program.
From ecotourism to forestry operations like Taan Forest on Haida Gwaii and seafood producers such as Coastal Shellfish in Prince Rupert, Coast Funds assisted with 353 projects between 2008 and 2018 which it says has resulted in more than $286 million in new investment.
Brodie Guy, executive director of Coast Funds, says Nations are building on a long tradition of territorial stewardship.
“These are businesses, whether it’s a logging company or an ecotourism company, that are really reclaiming Nations’ identity, language, re-establishing culture, and building nationhood on the coast. And that’s what’s really exciting, is it can be in any different sector of the economy, but really taking local control over it and building a different kind fabric to the economy on the coast and one in which First Nations are working towards securing their rightful Title to their unceded territories.”
Coast Funds was created in 2006 along with the Great Bear Rainforest Agreements and is a partnership of private foundations and government.
The report can be viewed here.
