Developing a Land Use Plan for Haida Gwaii

Haida Gwaii is a region of the Queen Charlotte Islands off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. The First Nations as people have created a Land Use Vision which they wish to see implemented and taken to account with the provincial land use plan in the Haida Gwaii ecosystem. The Province of British Columbia along with representatives of the communities have come together to create a land use plan that is intended to protect, conserve, and allocate the usage of natural resources in a sustainable way. It seems as though the province and the Council of the Haida Nation have different values when it comes to the decision making and therefore must work together using co-management, integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and western European science into the Land Use Plan. There are three ways in which we can compare Traditional Ecological Knowledge and western science; these categories are morality, ontology, epistemology, politics, and exchange. In this paper I will examine, compare, and contrast the ontology, morality, and epistemology between the Council of the Haida Nation and the Province of British Columbia.

The Two parties have come together and written the Haida Gwaii Land Use Agreement. The Haida Nation had written a Land use Plan using Traditional Ecological Knowledge, also known as TEK, This is knowledge of the environment based on observation and passed down through generations. The information is wisdom that is taught by the elders to each new generation. The knowledge of the First Nations people has begun to be incorporated in resource management and environmental planning so that TEK is co-managed with “Western” knowledge and science. It has become a policy in Canada that TEK be incorporated (Usher,...

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...n hired to do so after receiving schooling in a relevant subject.

Conclusion

The Council of the Haida nation created a land use plan that would protect the land, culture and tradition in Haida Gwaii. The plan included the importance of each species and their role in the ecosystem, it focused on their role in the cycle of the area. In the Haida culture wealth is not a thing of money. To be wealthy is to have healthy land , opportunity, and knowledge to support their families using the resources from the forest together as individuals and as a community. The Aboriginal Land Use plan is not anti-logging, but they wish that the commercial activities that are occurring on Haida Gwaii will be managed with greater respect and responsibility. The concept of Yah’guudang is important in First Nations culture and should be implemented into the co-managed land use plan.