Indigenous Community-Led Environmental Monitoring Program

Problem statement

This is important for communities to be rightfully recognized as true partners and authorities of their own data

Indigenous communities live on the front lines of environmental stressors brought about by climate change and industrial development. To mitigate these stressors, communities strive to develop strategies that achieve true, equitable data sovereignty, an important step for communities to be rightfully recognized as true partners and authorities of their own data. This sovereignty is considered the cornerstone to autonomously developing landscape level management plans. Crucial to achieving this goal is the ability of community members to autonomously monitor their land, generate and interpret data and enact management programs.​

---

Our Solution

Through meaningful engagements and conversations with our partners’ community members and knowledge keepers, our team seeks to thoroughly understand the needs of your community and your environmental stewardship goals.

This program is designed to support the development, quality, and long-term viability of Indigenous community-based monitoring programs. Training and applied research are combined and brought to Indigenous communities and executed with community members as part of the team. The program combines NAIT’s expertise in environmental science, hands-on training, and applied research with traditional knowledge from community Elders and knowledge-keepers. 

• Provides capacity-building services to support the establishment of Indigenous-led, community-based environmental monitoring programs

  • Our partners take the lead in collecting data and monitoring the health and condition of their local environment

• Provides communities with information about the effects of different environmental and industrial stressors on the chemical and physical status of aquatic and land ecosystems of which they are stewards

• Regardless of experience or formal education in environmental monitoring research and sample analysis, learners within the program will develop their technical skills to become NAIT-certified environmental monitors.

---

Outcomes and impacts

Our model purposely meets learners at their personal level by including them as research team members, and supporting practical skill development by solving problems relevant to their land. Learners will have community support to present at conferences and will be empowered to speak with authority about the environmental stressors affecting their land, supporting their findings with data-based evidence and testimonials. 

NAIT will benefit from the different perspectives each community brings to the project by learning new skills, techniques and insight into traditional knowledge that don’t form part of regular curriculum.

• All data generated is 100% owned by your Nation

• Development of data-based environmental stewardship strategies

• Community members will become trained environmental monitors, capable of taking environmental samples from the field and characterizing them using state-of-the-art analytical equipment.
  • They will then analyze/interpret the data and present the story to their communities.

---

Our Partner Organizations

• Peavine Métis Settlement
• Métis Settlement General Council

• Sturgeon Lake First Nation

• Ermineskin Cree Nation

• Kikino Métis Settlement 

---

Our Stories