A multiple evidence-based approach to Métis community-based monitoring: a case study from the South Athabasca Oil Sands Area, Alberta, Canada

Abstract

This original research article provides a case study that describes how Métis indigenous knowledge was incorporated into the design of a community-based monitoring (CBM) program in the South Athabasca Oil Sands Area of Alberta, Canada. Athabasca Landing Métis Community (ALMC) members have traditional knowledge of local wildlife and climatic conditions in a region that has seen intense oil and gas-related industrial activity over the last 50 years. Informed by a multiple evidence-based approach to CBM, ALMC’s program design combined traditional hunting, fishing, trapping, and plant gathering activities with photomapping methods. By taking geo-referenced photos of their environmental observations, which they shared with other project participants during regular monitoring meetings, Métis knowledge holders connected changes in local conditions such as resource scarcity or species abundance to broader ecological processes including climate change. Further, the monitoring program had an innovative cultural camp component that brought elders, heads of family, and youth together to deliberately interact and pass on Indigenous and local knowledge. The information drawn from photomapping, cultural camps, and traditional knowledge shared during meetings was gathered into a database. The database serves as a repository of traditional knowledge and land use data that will support ALMC’s ongoing efforts to identify territory to promote self-governance and assert rights to lands and resources. We discuss how the ALMC’s adoption of a multiple evidence-based approach to monitoring asserts control over data collection methods, storage, and dissemination, supports local capacity for self-determination, and amplifies the voices of Métis harvesters in the resource management sector.