Traditional Mi’kmaw practices maintain Nova Scotia’s forests

Nova Scotia’s forests will soon be maintained through traditional and ancestral Mi’kmaq knowledge.

It is a new initiative called Mi’kmaq Forestry Initiative that comes from a partnership between the provincial and federal government, Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq (CMM), Unama’ki Institute of Natural Resources (UINR), and Kwilmu’kw Maw-klusuaqn (KMK).

“We’re not just looking at the forest as a provider for timber, but looking at it as a provider of food, medicines, and eco-tourism,” said Angie Gillis, the executive director of CMM.

The project will work to sustain the wild green places throughout the province through traditional forestry practices.

Gillis said the traditional practices will sustain Nova Scotia’s forests and ecosystem.

“Fight for the protection of those species and for those ways of living that we have, actually be part of it and share in the responsibility.”

“I think for too long we had been removed from that conversation,” she added.

Conversations about starting this initiative started in 2018. A year later, they introduced a pilot project.

The government granted 30,000 hectares of Crown land to the group.

With the pilot project approaching its completion, negotiation is underway for a long-term forestry agreement.

In a statement to CTV News, the Department of Agriculture said, “We want to make this permanent through a long-term agreement. Negotiations are going well and we hope to have an agreement in place this year.”

So far, the initiative has looked over forests spread through parts of Hants, Annapolis, Halifax, Antigonish, Guysborough, Cape Breton, Richmond, and Inverness counties.

Gilis said the goal for a successful Mi’kmaq Forest Initiative is to create similar partnerships in other aspects of the province’s natural resources.