Kahnawà:ke, Quebec

Year(s) Funded: 2017-2018
Topic Area: Vulnerability Assessment
Title: Climate Change Strategy - Kahnawake Mohawk Territory

Project Summary:
The purpose of this project is to better attach our people to their environment, encourage mindful stewardship of our environment, encourage active engagement in the practice of how our food is grown, caught, preserved, and prepared; to preserve seeds and logs from trees that are likely to become extinct in the next decade; to increase individual and community capacity to tangibly care for themselves, and to create a comprehensive plan for how our community will navigate our new environmental reality.
 
While Kahnawake has an Emergency Preparedness Plan, there are no specific provisions on how the community would like to identify, and address changes in our environment due to climate change. This project seeks to engage community stakeholders to identify and prioritize areas of focus as they relate to our changing climate. In previous years, we have identified that we are no longer able to feed our people in a practical sense. We no longer cultivate, hunt, or fish enough to feed our people.

Action:
  1. We will conduct a community consultation to help guide our short- and long-term priorities and goals as they relate to the effects of climate change and our adaptation to it.
  2. We will create a Seed Vault in the community to preserve seeds of trees and plants we’ve identified as vulnerable so that they can be grown again once the threat has passed. For example, emerald ash borer is decimating our last ash trees, which means we will likely be without ash trees within the next ten years.
  3.  We will create an Ash Basket Vault, to preserve existing ash logs, boards, and splints, to be released to the community over time. The hope is that people will still be able to perform as much of the basket-making tasks as possible, even after all the trees are dead. We would also conduct research and experiments into the best ways to preserve whole logs, as many trees are being cut.
  4. We will cultivate 400 local, heirloom edible trees and bushes, to be planted along public non-motorized paths and in public parks.
  5. We will conduct 10 workshops over the year focusing on climate change and its effect on health, food cultivation, foraging, composting, preserving, and preparing. We will also create a children’s drop-in type workshop series for children to ‘tag along’ with a subsistence farmer, fisherman, or hunter, to become familiar with the process, the food, and hopefully to be more active. We hope to emphasize the connection between our own physical health (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual,) our community’s health, and that of the environment around us.