A Different Way, A New Way
I recently met with Stolo Tribal Council President and Tribal Chief, Tyrone McNeil to discuss the Coast Salish approach to emergency management. He has embarked on a path that combines First Nations traditional knowledge with the United Nations Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction along with some other international standards and tools. Here are the highlights of what he had to say.
Climate Resilience

To develop and advance a regional approach to climate resilience with an initial focus on flood we started work on the development of a Coast Salish Regional Strategy called Hilekw Sq’eq’o (get ready together). It will focus on climate resilience maximizing nature-based solutions and regional approaches for the 31 First Nation communities.
Tools
We gathered a variety of tools to build our strategy, including:
Traditional Knowledge - Our identity as Coast Salish people considers that time and space between seven generations looking backwards, and seven generations looking forward. So here, when it comes to emergency management, what can we learn lessons from the past about where we're going in the future. One of our teachings is what you look after in life looks after you.
Sendai - a global blueprint to prevent new and reduce existing disaster risk.
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples including our right to protect our land and environment.
Predictive Models - Global insurers’ models are effective because they only look back seven years, the most significant years for climate change.
The ISO standard 31000 on risk management.
Case Law such as SCC Tsilhqot’in from 2014 where the Canada Supreme Court recognized we have title over our traditional lands.
So that initiated a conversation with our 31 communities, asking, do you want to be involved in a different and better way around emergency management? Doing our own emergency planning, evacuation plans, as opposed to somebody else doing it?
Sharing
In February of 2024 we’ll be ready to share our strategy, bringing like-minded folks along in a way that everybody sees themselves in it. But still focusing and prioritizing regional approaches, regional initiatives. We’re only 31 of 204 First Nations across the province, so we’re nimble and able to put together a practical strategy for sharing with everyone.
BC is a huge ship that's hard to outfit and hard to steer and change direction but I was happy to hear the following in a meeting in June 2023, from Minister Ma, Emergency Management and Climate Readiness:
“A resilient BC is when we are in a place where we're not afraid of what Mother Nature is throwing at us because we're working with her, not against her. We build our communities in a way that we understand nature instead of fighting it. We build to accept and work with nature. “
If we can get the ministry in BC thinking and doing that way, it's going to be an amazing process.
If you’d like to explore these ideas further or comment on this article, contact me at ellen.
This article was published in the
January 2024
edition of The TMC Advisor
- ISSN 2369-663X Volume:11 Issue:1
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