Indigenous Seed Collection Program begins cross-country journey in Fredericton

Natural Resources Canada’s Indigenous Seed Collection Program has pulled out from Fredericton to begin their third cross-country tour.

National Tree Centre coordinator Donnie McPhee has packed up an RV while his teammates pull a truck and trailer filled with tools and resources to a variety of Indigenous communities from New Brunswick to British Columbia. The goal of the trip is to work with Indigenous communities to develop seed collection strategies to preserve tree and shrub species for generations to come.

“It was kind of developed in Canada with the announcement of Canada's two billion tree program back in 2021,” says McPhee during a small send off in the Hugh John Flemming Forestry Centre parking lot early Thursday afternoon. “We recognize right off there was a seed supply issue in the country.”

McPhee says there are around 600 different Indigenous communities across Canada, and this program is an important way to ensure seeds are kept safe in the case of extinction.

He has done this trip twice before, once in an RV with his wife and another via plane by himself. This year he will not be alone with a team travelling with him throughout the journey to learn about the process.

One of those team members is Martina Albert, who will be on the journey for the first month before flying back to Fredericton to do some office work. She will rejoin the team for the final three weeks of the excursion while they are in British Columbia.

As an Indigenous women herself, there is a great deal of pride in getting to join the programs efforts.

“Working for my communities, my people, it's a huge honour,” beams Albert. “Doing this type of work with seeds feels like it's reclaiming a long lost skill that kind of hasn’t been present for many years due to many things but mainly the effects of colonialism. It’s kind of giving people those skills and tools back to be able do what we are meant to do.”

Both say the importance of this work can’t be understated, especially given the climate change situation out west as it pertains to forest fires. McPhee says on top of species being lost to various blazes, some vegetation isn’t growing in the same places it use to because of warmer average temperatures.

He says researchers are interested in getting the genetic information of various seeds as some found in one region may have the ability to thrive in another.

“That’s all about assisted migration,” says McPhee. “One of our other roles here at the Canadian Forest Service with the National Tree Seed Center is we provide seed for research. So there's researchers all over the country looking for seed from all these species for their research purposes with assisted migration.”

An average day will vary depending on the desires of the community. Some people will be taught how to be certified seed collectors through training courses, how to safely preserve and store seeds, while others will simply welcome the team, let them gather there seeds and be off.

“When you look at a pinecone in a tree a lot of people think there is only one seed,” Albert points out. “Typically there's thousands and so there's different methods of extracting that seed, and then storing it in the proper way so that you can keep it essentially forever.”

She says as original caretakers of “Turtle Island” it’s important for communities to get back to their roots and do the work that they are meant to.

The trip will be a little more special for the team, as it will be the final excursion for McPhee before his retirement. Those looking to track the progress of the cross-country trip on social media through the hashtag #IndigenousSeedCollection.

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