Lesson 4: Forest Management and Indigenous People

Canada's Indigenous people have an age-old cultural and spiritual relationship with the forest.  Given this long history and the fact that 80% of Indigenous people live in or near the forests, it makes sense that there has been a long involvement in the forest industry.
Forest management planning and decisions must incorporate the views of all Canadians and respect Aboriginal and treaty rights.

• Today, over 80% of First Nations communities are located within Canada's productive forest. Overall, however, less than 1% of Aboriginal communities in Canada depend upon forestry for a significant part of their total economy.

• Due to lack of finances, First Nations have experienced considerable difficulty securing long term rights to harvest trees. This is because such cutting rights, also known as forest tenures, are generally only awarded to companies who can also afford to build a mill.

• More recently, however, First Nations are becoming forest tenure holders of forests that are located off reserve. In order to achieve this, First Nations are partnering with forest companies who already operate nearby mills. So, in other words, the First Nations are obtaining the right to harvest forest land provided that they supply the wood to existing mills.

Both parties benefit from these partnerships:

• Aboriginal peoples are provided with opportunities to increase their involvement in the forestry sector.

• Forest policy makers and planners benefit from traditional Aboriginal knowledge, which emphasizes respect for the land and the interconnectedness of all living things.