Fire & Flood, Facing Two Extremes: B.C. First Nations fight for a seat at the planning table BCFLOOD BCWILDFIRES BCSTORM CLIMATECHANGE Stolo_Services City_Chilliwack City_Abbotsford FraserValleyRD SumasFN BCPOLI
, B.C. First Nations raise the alarm about their lands which are often located near water or forests with minimal protection.Article contentFire & Flood, Facing Two Extremes: B.C. First Nations fight for a seat at the planning tableOn provincial maps, B.C.’s flood defences appear solid and uniform. Bold red lines delineate the dikes that neatly separate the Fraser River from its floodplain and keep the river flowing in its channel during high water.
The chief’s home is on the reserve’s highest point. During the 1948 Fraser River flood, it would have been under two metres of water. B.C. AFN regional Chief Terry Teegee. “First Nations jurisdiction must be recognized in all areas, including emergency management,” he said in the wake of November’s floods.In the past, First Nations were excluded or forgotten in discussions around risk, in part due to complicated jurisdictional issues and institutional racism, said Lilia Yumagulova, a resilience scholar who wrote her University of B.C. PhD thesis on flood management in Metro Vancouver.
George said First Nations communities need support to be “just as prepared as any other municipality.”In the past two decades, slightly more than 50 B.C. First Nations, a quarter of those in the province, have completed work such as forest thinning to reduce wildfire risk on 49 square kilometres, an area 12 times the size of Stanley Park, according to statistics compiled by Postmedia from the province, the Crown agency Forest Enhancement Society of B.C. and independent reports.
It was a bad start for a process that should have included First Nations rights and interests from the beginning, he said. “We realized then that we may have to develop our own process to ensure our rights are represented.” Last summer, a major fire swept over the mountain ridges and down to the lake edges in places, including through the First Nation’s land. More than 110 buildings were destroyed, including homes.
Speaking to Postmedia in his community in mid-March, Okanagan Chief Byron Louis said there needs to be a shift in how forests are viewed, not just as a timber resource, but as natural capital, where the health of a watershed and the forest’s resilience to wildfire are paramount.
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