The lives, traditions, and cultures of Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island (a name used by many Indigenous communities to refer to North America) are inherently tied to the land they live on. Indigenous communities sustain strong connections to their lands and rely on natural resources for their livelihoods: using tree bark for medicinal purposes, hunting and fishing for food and clothing sources, and constructing trade and transportation routes. Indigenous peoples’ stewardship of their land is largely responsible for many environments remaining ecologically sound today.

While everyone will be impacted by changes in weather patterns and rising temperatures brought by climate change, the reliance of Indigenous peoples on their environment and climate means that they will be affected in ways that most non-Indigenous North Americans will not. For Indigenous communities in isolated Northern areas, many of whom depend on winter roads for transportation of goods, climate change will impede the construction of transportation routes and stop them from accessing the resources they need to thrive. Other methods of transportation such as flying are much more costly and less accessible.

Rising sea levels may create demand for fishing and port expansion in coastal areas, leading to disputes between the fishing industry and Indigenous communities about commercial fishing, along with the habitat issues stemming from coastal erosion that would arise for reserves located near water. Another major issue for Indigenous communities is water quality and quantity, especially considering that water is a necessary resource for a wide variety of activities. Flow current and weather patterns, both of which are affected by climate change, can disrupt a water source’s ability to flush out contaminants and wastewater, and the Canadian government’s lack of attention to reserves prevents many Indigenous communities from accessing clean or filtered water.

The Canadian government has a long history of failing to protect the ancestral lands of First Nations peoples. Besides the ways that the climate crisis would target Indigenous communities, there are also incidents of the government ignoring land claims and building infrastructure on Indigenous lands that would severely hurt both the people living there and the environment as a whole.

In 2013, Kinder-Morgan submitted a request to the Canadian government’s National Energy Board to expand their Trans-Mountain pipeline, which has been in operation since 1953, with another path that ran parallel to the original pipe. The pipeline transfers oil from Alberta to BC, and Kinder-Morgan suggested that an expansion would create massive economic benefits for both Alberta and British Columbia. However, the pipeline ships asphalt through the Strait of Juan De Fuca, a region that is extremely environmentally sensitive. The route it goes through puts the pipeline at high risk of leaking oil into the surrounding waters, and the expansion amplified this issue.

The second pipe also runs through the ancestral lands of several Indigenous groups, and over 133 total Indigenous communities have an interest in or are affected by the pipeline expansion, including the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations and the Coldwater Indian Band. Through 2013 to 2019, Indigenous groups across Alberta and BC held peaceful protests to defend their lands and the environment against the pipeline’s construction, but were ultimately unsuccessful. The pipeline expansion began in mid-2019. However, the resilience of the protesters demonstrates Indigenous peoples’ continued advocacy for environmental issues and land rights despite the government’s attempts to silence them and erase their historical and cultural connections to the land that is now known as Canada.

For years, the Wet’suwet’en people in British Columbia have been protesting the construction of TC Energy’s Coastal GasLink pipeline, which runs through Indigenous lands in the Northern part of the province. Despite resistance from the traditional leaders of the Wet’suwet’en Nation about water and land contamination, TC Energy and the National Energy Board have continued with the infrastructure project. The devastating effect that the GasLink pipeline will have on Indigenous communities in BC illustrates the Canadian government’s unwillingness to pursue real reconciliation efforts with the people they have hurt in the past through the government’s violent colonisation.

Indigenous people are vital in finding lasting solutions to the climate crisis and protecting our planet moving forward. From natural resource management to opposing the development of infrastructure that poses risk to the environment and their ancestral lands, Indigenous communities’ knowledge of climate change’s long-term impacts and resource conservation is critical in protecting the planet. The expertise of Indigenous communities across the world includes reef conservation in Australia, medicinal plant usage, and prescribed burning practices to manage wildfires. Witnessing the transformation of their surroundings—widespread deforestation and temperature shifts being only two examples—through hundreds of years of colonialism has given them the knowledge and experience to navigate extreme levels of climate change.

If the Canadian government hopes to make the country livable for generations to come, they must listen to the Indigenous people who are advocating for nature-based solutions to the current climate emergency and bringing attention to the harm that infrastructure projects cause to the land and the people who live on it. Speaking to the World Economic Forum on the issue of ecosystem protection, Jim Antoine, an Indigenous hunter in Northern Canada, said: “The countries doing the polluting aren’t going to stop. We aren’t the ones causing climate change but we are the ones living with it.”

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