GVAT Spreads the Word About a New Reconciliation Initiative: Land Sharing Networks

GVAT stepped into Reconcili-Action on March 26th by jointly hosting a webinar with Programs in Earth Literacies to create more BC awareness of a relatively new concept–Land Sharing Networks.

A Treaty Land Sharing Network (TLSN) was launched in Saskatchewan a few years ago.  https://treatylandsharingnetwork.ca/   Our Climate Justice Team’s Food and Agriculture Subcommittee did research and saw the fit with GVAT’s commitment to reconciliation, the justice that our Climate Justice team works towards and one of Food/Ag’s specific goals–to support access by Indigenous people to lands and waters supplying food, including traditional foods.  

In a land sharing network, non-Indigenous landholders share land with Indigenous land users for traditional purposes, such as hunting, fishing, plant gathering and ceremony.  In BC, additional activities might include tending camas meadows, harvesting cedar bark strips and accessing shellfish harvesting sites.

Registrants for What is a Land Sharing Network primarily came from the CRD but the webinar generated interest as far away as Quebec, the U.S. and Australia.  Individuals and organization representatives attended, some merely curious but others quite serious about getting involved in land sharing.  The land holders in Saskatchewan’s TLSN are mostly farmers and ranchers but also include the United Church (a children’s camp property) and other entities, including nature conservation agencies and one town.  Within GVAT, we have landholders, both member organizations and individuals, who could do this.

Our speakers, Bob Montgomery (Métis) and Emily Eaton (settler), members of the Coordinating Committee of the TLSN, inspired us with their thoughtful, insightful, value-based presentations and impressed us with the sheer hard work they have put in to turn a new concept into reality.  Erich Kelch, program manager with the Parks Canada Sea Garden Restoration Project, explained the need for land sharing in BC to access shellfish harvesting sites.

Check out the webinar recording here:  https://www.earthliteracies.org/bob-montgomery-emily-eaton-what-is-a-land-sharing-network 

Learn more of the background and get further inspired here:  https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/sharing-treaty-land