What Does It Mean to Decolonize Conservation?

Amid Inside Passage waterways along the Pacific coast and towering old-growth forests, salmon navigate the streams and grizzlies and white Kermode spirit bears haunt the woods. Welcome to Bella Bella, British Columbia, where William Housty helps oversee natural resources within the Heiltsuk Nation’s territory.

As director of the nation’s stewardship arm, Housty is championing the traditional ecological knowledge of Indigenous wisdom and believes that, in concert with Western science, it’s the best way forward to help the environment and mitigate the effects of climate change.

Housty is an outspoken advocate for his coastal community’s land, water, and culture. Here, he explains how we can all embrace a decolonized approach to conservation — including through government- and nonprofit-led efforts — and what we stand to gain from doing so.

Experience Life | From your perspective, what does it mean to decolonize conservation?

William Housty | The first step in decolonizing conservation is to eliminate top-down decision-making processes and return to the place-based, values-led management systems that were in place for thousands of years prior to colonization. Those management systems worked for a long, long time; we didn’t have issues with climate change, depleting populations, and all the things we’re seeing these days.

I’ll use an example about herring here in my own territory: Decisions are being made by people in Ottawa who have absolutely no knowledge of what’s happening on the ground here and no traditional knowledge about herring. When the governments of Canada and British Columbia were formed, with it came the separation of the land and water — we have separate jurisdictions for land and aquatic management.

But what happens on the land impacts the water, and what happens in the water impacts the land. You can’t treat them as though they’re different, because they’re all one system. The way things are managed in conservation right now looks at it through multiple lenses, when really it should be viewed from one lens.

EL | Why are Indigenous peoples uniquely suited to steward global biodiversity?

WH | Because we have thousands of years of experience in doing it. We have a different values system from any government that’s currently stewarding land or aquatic resources. We come from a place of deep values, like love, respect, reciprocity, and generosity, that go a long way.

Taking what you need and not overharvesting — these simple values that we have as people are what led to solid, consistent biodiversity over time. As we moved away from that, we started to see changes not only on a smaller scale but also on a global scale. I think it’s in our DNA to carry out the direction that our ancestors once walked in. They developed a system that worked for a long, long time.

Traditional knowledge has been carried forward for thousands of years, and that knowledge is based on lived experiences from the land and water. Because this traditional knowledge is also place-based, it is critical that it be applied to issues such as climate change. An example of this is how, in the present day, climate-change projects in our territory are rooted in Heiltsuk knowledge and values, because the past experiences of our people can directly inform how to address these issues.

EL | How can traditional ecological knowledge help us mitigate the challenges facing the environment?

WH | Our people have been here before; we’ve seen the extreme on both ends. Speaking just about my own people, our oral history talks about our existence prior to the Ice Age, watching the world freeze, then surviving the Ice Age. Other oral history talks about the world burning and finding places of refuge. In that, you start to see the big swing in climate going from extreme cold to extreme heat.

The world runs on these cycles that our ancestors have been a part of over time, and we’re a part of that cycle. Lucky for us, we’re here at a time when it’s manageable — not at either end of the extreme. Indigenous peoples have a unique perspective on how to manage the environments, watersheds, and species in our territories so that they can evolve with us and adapt to these changing conditions. The traditional ecological knowledge we have can inform mitigation practices from a unique perspective.

I have confidence that we’re going to move in a better direction and find more balance — that’s the key here. Things are out of balance, and when we realize our role in restoring that balance, that’ll bring more stability to the planet.

Sometimes you have to experience the extreme to realize where you’re at and what you need to do. I do have hope that we’ll be able to turn things around; it’s going to be the values and the management systems of the First Peoples that are going to drive that balance.

EL | Why is it vital that we balance Western science with Indigenous wisdom?

WH | In lots of ways, Western science is catching up to Indigenous history, and we’re actually able to use Western science to verify Indigenous knowledge and vice versa.

One example is our recent research on grizzly bear stewardship. Rather than going out into the field, collecting a bunch of data, and sitting in a lab to analyze it or creating a computer model that would tell us something that may or may not be true, we actually started the project going in the opposite direction. We used knowledge from within the community to drive that project and inform science on the best places for collecting data. The final output is a better management tool that science alone never would have been able to achieve without information from our perspective. It’s a win for everybody when we’re able to bridge Indigenous knowledge and Western science.

Rather than going out into the field, collecting a bunch of data, and sitting in a lab to analyze it or creating a computer model that would tell us something that may or may not be true, we actually started the project going in the opposite direction. We used knowledge from within the community to drive that project and inform science on the best places for collecting data.

In the past, we’ve encountered older academics who were set in their ways and weren’t willing to change their perspectives. We can’t change that, but we’re also not willing to change our ways, either. It’s the way we’ve implemented our values into our everyday lives for thousands of years.

In our department, we’ve taken a hard line that if people aren’t willing to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into their work, we respectfully ask them to take their work elsewhere. For the most part, we’re finding the younger generations are willing to take into account our perspective and interested in dovetailing Indigenous knowledge and Western science.

EL | Looking to the future, what does a more inclusive, community-based approach to conservation look like? And how can the average person support that?

WH | I think that approach really needs to start in our communities, with our people. The days of people dropping in with ideas are over. We really need to be at the forefront to ensure all work is done according to our values and perspectives. We need to shift from the current management model back to what worked. But we, as nations and tribes, also need to have the capacity to do that, to make that push together with academia. A lot of nations, including our own here, make it mandatory for anybody who is researching that territory to go through an approval process. That’s the key — to not just continue with the status quo.

I recommend people take time to educate themselves on where we’re coming from. Obviously, every tribe is unique in certain ways, but we have similar values. If you educate yourself on those values, you’ll be able to understand why we’re so adamant about this approach, since it worked for thousands of years. This isn’t just Indigenous people pushing themselves on non-Indigenous people. This is about all of us stepping forward and saying, “What’s happening isn’t working. We need to change something here.”