Though the devastating forest fires of summer 2017 left the Tl’etinqox First Nation community of Anaham with much of its territory burned, the experience affirmed its abiding resilience and generosity, as well as the value of Indigenous knowledge in the restoration and maintenance of wilderness forests, the National Observer reports.
Chief Joe Alphonse called the 2017 wildfires “the most devastating” of his lifetime. But after witnessing the devastating emotional impact that 2009 and 2010 evacuation orders had on community Elders—the circumstances at evacuation centres in Williams Lake triggering harrowing memories of residential schools—Chief Alphonse swore he would never obey an evacuation order again. And he kept his promise.
- The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
- You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
- The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
“We were the first First Nations community in Canada to say no to an evacuation order,” Chief Alphonse told Observer reporter Tracy Sherlock and Tsilhqot’in filmmaker Trevor Mack. With a careful and well-managed firefighting plan in place two months before the fire broke out—a plan that included heavy equipment, nurses, and first responders—the Tl’etinqox “stuck with it, even after the RCMP threatened to order the Ministry for Children and Families to remove the children,” they write, earning the community a new label: “wildfire warriors”.
“Since 2010, we have probably trained 400 firefighters. They all have equivalent training to any other firefighter you’re going to find anywhere in British Columbia,” Alphonse said. “We’ve all grown up fighting fires. It’s second nature to us.”
Communities like the Tl’etinqox First Nation are also increasingly seen as authorities on sustainable forestry. Generations of mismanagement by government and industry, like the elimination of “leafy trees like the white aspen, which are not a commercial crop, but which serve as a natural fire guard,” helped generate the conditions for the apocalyptic fires of 2017, Alphonse said.
“In a natural setting, there is a purpose” for the aspen, he told the Observer. “They’re the best firefighting agent we have out there.”
University of British Columbia forest ecologist Lori Daniels, who believes it will cost B.C. about C$3.5 billion in the years ahead to protect areas at highest risk of fire, agreed that Canada has much to learn from peoples like the Tl’etinqox First Nation. Researchers and communities have been “building evidence—that is consistent with oral history from our First Nations—that they traditionally and culturally used fires,” she said. “They were burning these landscapes for millennia to generate crops, to create safe places for their villages, to cultivate food, to create forage for game.
Alphonse affirmed that history. “We’ve lived among fires—it’s part of who we are as Chilcotin,” he told Mack and Sherlock. “Every fall and early spring, we used to always manage the forest, and we managed it in such a way that when a non-Aboriginal person first arrived, they said it was untouched.” For the future, he added, “we have to get involved. We live here. We aren’t going anywhere.”
B.C. recently announced that a $900,000 provincial review of B.C.’s devastating 2017 fire and flood season will be co-chaired by a former Liberal cabinet minister and Skawahlook First Nation hereditary chief Maureen Chapman.
