Bridging Relations Podcast
Hello and Welcome to the Bridging Relations Podcast. We're bringing you stories from the first and only Indigenous-led Living Lab in Canada.
This Living Lab is a collaboration of producers, scientists, and Indigenous land managers, working together to develop and test innovative solutions in real-world conditions to improve the environmental impact of current farming practices.
Here we're exploring diverse perspectives, stories, and experiences, to better understand one another and to enhance agricultural practices for healthy land, water, and sky that support all of our relations now and in the future.
Additionally, we delve into Indigenous-led regenerative agriculture and land management, sharing insights from Indigenous and non-Indigenous producers, consumers, scientists, land managers, community members, and youth on the prairies.
Thank you for joining us, we're so glad you're here!
The Bridge to Land Water Sky living lab is part of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s nationwide network of living labs, under the Agricultural Climate Solutions – Living Labs program. Each living lab brings together farmers, scientists and other partners to develop and improve on-farm solutions that will help store carbon, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address other environmental issues – such as soil health, water quality and biodiversity.
Bridging Relations Podcast
Bridging Cultural and Scientific Insights | S1 Ep. 2
Join us as we chat with Dr. Melissa Arcand, a passionate advocate for sustainable land management and a leading researcher for the Bridge to Land Water Sky Living Lab. Dr. Arcand, a member of Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, shares her journey from a farming family to her role as a soil scientist at the University of Saskatchewan. We explore her work with Bridge to Land Water Sky, where she connects diverse stakeholders and translates complex research into culturally relevant dialogues. Dr. Arcand discusses the unique climate challenges of Treaty 6 and the empowering potential of sustainable farming practices. This episode illustrates the powerful convergence of Indigenous knowledge, Western science, and modern agricultural practices, focusing on sustainability, relationship-building, and innovative solutions. Tune in to discover how Indigenous communities are reclaiming control over their lands and leading the way towards a more inclusive and resilient future through transformative agricultural research.
The Bridge to Land Water Sky living lab is part of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s nationwide network of living labs, under the Agricultural Climate Solutions – Living Labs program. Each living lab brings together farmers, scientists and other partners to develop and improve on-farm solutions that will help store carbon, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address other environmental issues – such as soil health, water quality and biodiversity.
Hosted by: Michelle Brass
Produced by: Maddie Gould
Hello and welcome to the Bridging Relations podcast. I'm your host, michelle Brass. Here we dive into diverse perspectives on agriculture and land management, blending Western science and farmer expertise with Indigenous knowledge and wisdom. Together we can address challenges and opportunities that enhance agricultural practices to support healthy land, water and sky for future generations. Thank you for joining us on this journey. I'm very excited about today's episode.
Speaker 1:We're going to hear from Dr Melissa Arcand from the Pskig Lake Cree Nation. She's an associate professor in the Department of Soil Science at the University of Saskatchewan. She also teaches in the Kanawe Te Tan Aski Certificate Program, which translates to let's Take Care of the Land in Plains Cree. Most of Dr Arcand's research work is centered around agricultural sustainability and land management and understanding how soil responds to various agricultural practices. Dr Arcand also does a lot of partnership work with First Nations and Indigenous organizations in areas regarding land management, agricultural initiatives and buffalo initiatives, and she brings an Indigenous worldview and lived experiences into her work. Dr Arcand is one of the research co-leads for Bridge to Land Water Sky and she's here to tell us more about her work with this project. Hi Dr Arcand, hi Michelle.
Speaker 2:Thanks for doing this with me.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm really excited for today's episode and to hear about the work that you're doing and what you bring to this research project. So tell me a bit about yourself and how you got into your work, where are you from and what brought you here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think my work really was born out of first an interest in the environment, actually. So I grew up on Muskeg Lake and my parents were farmers and my grandparents were gardeners were farmers and my grandparents were gardeners, and so, growing up, just the day-to-day life was helping my grandparents in the garden my mom, you know, being sort of a gopher for my dad helping shuttle things back and forth while he was farming. And then, at the same time, when I was a pretty young person in Muskeg, we got to participate in a lot of cultural camps and also had opportunity not just like within the community, but even within my elementary school. There was a lot of cultural teachings that were shared, and so I really got interested in our relationship to the land, even when I was really quite little. And then throughout my high school time period, I was really interested in science, and so when it came time to think about you know what I might do, and I knew that I wanted to go to university thinking about where I might actually land I started thinking about environment and environmental science, and so I ended up starting out at the University of Saskatchewan in the College of Arts and Science, and then ended up moving to Guelph, ontario, to go to the university there because they had a pretty comprehensive environmental science program, and so that's how I kind of got on my academic path and my interest in soils.
Speaker 2:But my interest in agriculture actually didn't happen until I was about a year into being at Guelph and I was able to get a summer job with a soil science professor there at the university and through that summer job I actually got introduced to soils and also reconnected me to agriculture, because all of the research work that I was helping with was in an agricultural context but in southwestern Ontario.
Speaker 2:But it made me think about home. Actually, you know, seeing what a landscape looks like, seeing what a landscape looks like, seeing what a field looks like and what the soil looks like in southwestern Ontario only made me compare with what I had experienced back home and actually made me more interested to understand what home was like. And yeah, that kind of that was like the initial introduction to to soil science, to agriculture in like an academic sense and and really thinking about what we do in terms of decision-making um influence how the soil responds. But then also, in turn, how do sort of the inherent characteristics of a soil and within a landscape and a particular climate, really guide what is good activity and good practice. So, yeah, that was that's really how I just started out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Wow, I love that. I love all the components that that led you down this path. So how long have you been doing this work?
Speaker 2:My official title or the job that I have. I've been doing for nine years now, but I mean, as a prof, it takes a long time to get here. So I mean, really it started, you know, undergrad, master's degree, PhD so it's been over 20 years, I'd say, since I had that first summer job. Yeah, actually that was I'm dating myself now. That was probably like 23, 23 years ago or so. So, yeah, it's been a long journey, but I enjoy that. Now, in the position that I have, I have a lot of freedom to explore a lot of things that are of interest to me, and so it's a really privileged position to be able to be a professor and be able to interact with students and pursue really interesting research questions.
Speaker 1:Well, and speaking of what brought you to Bridge, to Land, water, sky, what brought you to the work that you're doing here?
Speaker 2:today. It was the team of people and the friendships and the relationships that brought not just me together but I for Mr Wasis Nehewak at the time, and then some of the relationships that he had with other organizations, as well as other researchers and kind of individuals in the environment and agriculture spaces, and so it really was, I think, a collection of people that gravitated, you know, and I think Anthony was really the initial literal and figurative bridge builder that brought us together to actually start working on the bridge project.
Speaker 1:And tell me about your role with the bridge project and what you're doing with it today.
Speaker 2:I feel like I have a few roles. So one of the I guess the primary role is being one of the researchers. So there's both faculty researchers through the University of Saskatchewan, but then also research scientists through Agriculture, agri-food, canada, and so I'm one of many that are really working towards looking at what are some of the biophysical aspects that we're trying to measure and see some kind of response to a change in agricultural management practices. But then there's also other folks as part of the team that are looking at the social and cultural dimensions of these agricultural systems within both Mistawasis and Muskeg Lake and, even more broadly, across other First Nations, but also agricultural producers in the region, and so, yeah, so part of my role is being one of those researchers and getting out onto the land with a team of people.
Speaker 2:Because I'm a soil scientist, my research work is focused on looking at soils and especially soil, carbon and some of the microbial or biological aspects of soils as well as well. And so, yes, I wear my research hat, but I think I also wear a hat that is a bit more multifaceted, in the sense of number one. I'm a Muskeg Lake community member, and so oftentimes I think I end up being a translator between the researchers, because I know that language, and then also with the folks that are non-academics. So whether that's, you know, with the lands department people within both nations, or whether that's talking to our other non-academic NGO partners, you know especially, yes, I have the research language, but I also understand some of the more complicated cultural nuances or First Nations land policy nuances that you know. Sort of many of our research colleagues and non-profit NGO colleagues don't sort of know that that language. So I'm often, I think, a translator between academics and NGOs with with the nations and then and vice versa. So that's my unofficial hat, I think.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like you're also a bridge yourself within the bridge right with, with bridging those different areas that you just mentioned. So how important is that to be able to do that in this project, to be able to move between so many different people and organizations that are collaborating on this how important is it to be able to be that bridge or that translator?
Speaker 2:I think it's critical and I'm not the only one, you know there's, there's many of us on the team that do serve that, that really important role of translating across, whether it's disciplines or whether it's sectors or or even across community. I think it's really critical and I think that's probably one of the, I'd say, biggest unique benefits that this particular living lab might have over other living labs, because we're bridging not just communication between researchers and farmers, but we're also bridging between researchers, farmers, first Nations and all of those permutations of those communication channels. And I think that's where we have the greatest opportunity to provide impact, because we're able to be that channel for information, for perspective, for stories to be shared to listeners and ears that otherwise would never have heard those stories. And that goes in all directions. You know, many researchers have no idea about the day-to-day situation within First Nations broadly, but also really specifically as it pertains to land management policies that are involved at the nation level, at the decision-making level, let alone even what might be at the community level. So you know not the staff, not the chief and council, but community members and what their interests are, what their priorities are.
Speaker 2:So being able to share those perspectives is one thing. Another, I think, important perspective is that for a lot of individuals in the general public, but also in First Nations, we don't have a really good understanding of agriculture and the day-to-day of decision-making that farmers are undertaking, and so the other way that we're trying to facilitate communication and information and sharing of perspective is you know what are the decisions that farmers are making and why, so that people can have a better understanding of just what some of those issues are, some of those constraints might be, and where there might actually be a common ground among people. So I think it's been a really critical piece and I think that's where a lot of our work has really centered in is that communication among all of the different individuals, organizations, rights holders, individuals, organizations, rights holders, stakeholders across the board.
Speaker 1:Well, and I'm just thinking how wonderful it must be to be able to do this work for your own community, like to come from Muskeg Lake, be a member and do the work that you do as a soil scientist, as somebody who can be a translator and bridge all these different areas, but is it meaningful for you to be able to do this work on behalf of your home community? We might be working in our industries, or you know our area of expertise, but not be able to do it specifically for our own community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really. It's really nice actually, and it's nice to be able to, as part of the work, we've been able to tour the lands and, you know, being able to see parts of my own community that I had never seen otherwise and visit with some of my relatives and other community members and talk about the land and talk about the history of the land and and even about what we're wanting for the future of the land. So that's been yeah, it's been really rewarding. It makes it definitely more complicated, I think. In some respects too, and especially you as a researcher we're usually working a little bit more removed from day to day, and so that's something that I have to navigate and manage and just try to remain objective. But the work is inherently value driven, and so I can't detach my humanness or my personhood to the work. You know what I mean, of course.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, and I was just thinking as I asked that question too, I thought, well, how wonderful, but also how challenging too, because there are challenges too when working with your own community as Indigenous peoples in various capacities, right. So there's many layers and nuances to to the work, sometimes into the relationships and interconnectedness that we, that we deal with on a day-to-day basis. So so tell me a bit about the research specifically that you are doing with bridge to land, water, sky. What are some of the challenges that you're looking at? What? What are some of the areas of research that you're doing right now?
Speaker 2:so the program itself is geared towards greenhouse gas mitigation, so that's the central focus on our activities and certainly any kind of research metrics that we might be looking at. So there's a couple of things that are steering our research. Number one this project is meant to be a co-developed project, so any kind of implementation of a new practice that we want to trial is really geared towards being co-developed with the producer, but then also with the added layer of suggesting potential practices that the community wants, and so it's layered in that sense, and so we're really kind of meant to follow along with whatever ends up being implemented. Then we as researchers have to find a way to be able to measure the potential effect of the implementation of whatever that land practice might be or agricultural practice might be, or even collection of practices might be. So, as an example, a few of the land practices or ag practices that have been trialed out is around looking at enhanced efficiency nitrogen fertilizers and looking at variable rate nitrogen fertilizer application, because there's a lot of research out there that indicates that that is a good strategy to reduce nitrous oxide emissions, and nitrous oxide is a really potent greenhouse gas and an important target for greenhouse gas mitigation, and so we had to work with the farmer first. To, number one, talk to them and say, well, do you have the technology in your farm equipment to even implement variable rate? And okay, yeah, you do, great, okay, we're one step closer. But then, number two do you know how to use that technology? Okay, you know some learning that had to happen there. Great, implemented.
Speaker 2:But it's sort of this multi-layered step of getting to the point where we're implementing something. So that is really different from a lot of the typical research work that I would do, which is under much more controlled conditions, where I'm determining what the treatments are that we're going to test and we make sure that we've got those research plots all replicated. You know we're able to have a really robust statistical approach to, you know, deciphering whether or not the effect of our treatment can truly be attributed to that treatment or if it's just environmental noise that's contributing to our results. So the living lab approach is a lot different because we don't have that same opportunity to have, you know, huge replication of our experiments, and so we really rely on looking at what was the environment like before we implemented this practice and then going back after it's been implemented and measuring those things again and saying, okay, we've seen a response. So that's been, in large part, the approach that we've had to take.
Speaker 2:And then, for me, I've been working with my colleagues from Ag Canada. We're really focused on looking at soil carbon. We're looking at microbial communities because they're really important in driving some of these processes that either help to store carbon or that help to reduce N2O emissions, and my colleagues at Ag Canada have been collecting greenhouse gas data over the course of the whole growing season to look at the effects of these different practices and to see if they reduce N2O emissions. So, yeah, that's, I guess, a long, long story to say that it's a lot different than most research approaches, because we're working in a real life working farm with real life farmers and not just one farm and not just one farmer, but multiple farmers on multiple different fields, and so everything that we do is much more tailored to that specific farmer, to that specific field. We're kind of treating fields like individuals, and so we're really tailoring what we think would have the potential greatest impact. So it is a lot different than a lot of the other research that I've done.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds fascinating. I love this real-world approach, or this living lab approach, and learning more about it. What are you learning from doing this research in this different environment?
Speaker 2:My learning has less to do about the soil science and the biophysical and more learning about value systems that people have and that different groups have and then trying to sort of come to where.
Speaker 2:Where do we have those shared values? What do we need to do together to work towards a common goal? So I think that has been the most interesting part of this work is trying to understand what are those decision-making processes for any person who ultimately is going to decide what happens on the land. So, whether that's a farmer, whether that's a lands department, whether that's chief and council, whether that's what the community members are saying to chief and council, that's where I find know what the community members are saying to chief and council, that's where I find we're learning the most and, I think, where we hopefully can be able to share that that learning outward, so that it's not just going to be beneficial to the two communities that we're working with but hopefully to other First Nations and other parts of the agricultural sector as well. So, yeah, I think what I'm finding most fascinating is more of the social and cultural side of the agricultural sector as well. So, yeah, I think what I'm finding most fascinating is more of the social and cultural side of things.
Speaker 1:Of course. Well, and I'm so fascinated by this entire project, with all of the different organizations and groups working together because of everything that you've just outlined right Just the different world views, the different work experiences and values, the different lived experiences, the different historical advantages and disadvantages, and access to lands or not having access, like there's so many things. So I think it's wonderful You've outlined some of the research challenges of it being different, being in a real world space. Have there been challenges related to the different worldviews and into how to approach or what to test or what to look at, how to interpret some of the findings?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean honestly.
Speaker 2:I think probably one of the biggest challenges when I put my researcher hat on is that the pace at which things happen, whether it's the university or whether it's in government, is very fast, very productivity, outcome oriented.
Speaker 2:But our project is about relationships, and relationships take time to build trust, to develop that friendship, to develop that respect, even if the goal isn't to be friends, but the goal is to be respectful of each other. So I think, even seeing some of my colleagues who are new to this process start to learn and understand we're not going to move at the same pace that we would in other projects because in order for anything to get done we have to have that relationship piece in place and without that, it doesn't matter how many things we want to measure, they're not going to let us measure it. So you need that relationship and trust before we can even try anything. So I think, just understand that you know the challenge is letting go of what we're used to in terms of pace and sort of immediate gratification. You know this is like. Over time we have to build this so that the long term goal can be achieved.
Speaker 1:So tell me a little bit, too, about just bringing different perspectives to this work and we'll talk about the soil science and I definitely want to delve into that but just touching on the relationship building and the time it takes also bringing in those different perspectives and worldviews when it comes to Indigenous knowledge and science and different ways of quantifying or of putting value to land and output, can you just tell me a little bit about how that looks for you, or how are you often maybe bridging Indigenous knowledge with Western worldviews on science and how we move forward with a project like this?
Speaker 2:Probably one of the ways that we do that as a project, or what's been really consistent within our project, isn't necessarily like content in terms of knowledge or worldview, but it's more so in terms of process. So it's more so, you know, we start our meetings with a prayer. The whole project was initiated officially through a pipe ceremony, so it's some of these more protocol and cultural processes that are in play and that we've learned to really trust in guiding the work, and so I think a lot of our colleagues who weren't used to that have become used to that. That's just part of the process now, and so I think that has probably been some of the the biggest ways that the difference in worldview and difference in perspective has manifested in our day-to-day ways of working with each other and and working, you know, not just as a team but when we're interacting with other folks outside of our team. That's been really central. So just the process that we even conduct meetings is very different than a lot of others. So everyone has a chance to speak and everyone has a time that they are offered the floor. So I think that's been really different.
Speaker 2:We're still in the learning process because I think one of the things, at least for me personally I can't speak for other Indigenous people is that the huge disconnect between what would have been, you know, traditional practices or even ways in which we would have monitored our own lands, just naturally.
Speaker 2:I don't have that knowledge, you know, because we were so disconnected from it historically. And so I think, where there's opportunity to just be on the land together, I think some of that happens naturally. But I've often had non-Indigenous people ask me well, what's the practice, what's the thing that we can do that's indigenous, that we can just implement and it's going to be, you know, the thing that will save us. And it's like well, no, it's not about like the one practice or the one thing that we can then just adopt into western ways of doing, it's the whole. Like I said again, process is the whole approach to it, it's the values. It's not like necessarily the physical, tangible thing. I mean, I think that's part of it, but it's not necessarily what drives change or what drives the worldview.
Speaker 2:So, for me personally, I'm just, I'm learning a lot. I'm learning a lot from other Indigenous people who have those cultural teachings, who have those understandings of even what our traditional food would have been, because, again, you know, it's been multiple generations where we haven't been able to harvest foods in the way that we used to harvest them on the prairies.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, Well, and I kind of smiled a bit when you said, right, like you know, having colleagues or other co-workers say, like what would be the practice and how do we just plug this in?
Speaker 1:And you know, I've noticed, in the work that I've done over the years too, that, yeah, there is this interest in learning more and integrating it, but integrating it kind of into the dominant worldview as opposed to really understanding. And there's a growing understanding and awareness, I'm finding, which I'm grateful for, of that it's a different way completely and a different approach and a different pace and tempo. And it takes time and, like you said, being disconnected from a lot of those practices because of the various impacts of colonization, being separated from our communities and our families and having that knowledge taken and it takes time. It takes time and protocols and you know, and we have a lot happening in our communities and families to look after and so it's not always easy to just go in and pick it all up and it's being done, People are doing that work, but it takes a lot of intention, time and, like you said, that prayer, that pipe ceremony, the protocols, that it is a different pace.
Speaker 1:So yeah, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:It is kind of funny, though, because I have had lots of times people ask me I'm like we're not just hoarding these practices right Like no. I mean, if it was as easy as plug and play, we would have already done that.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, yeah.
Speaker 1:If it was as easy as plug and play, we would have already done that, right, exactly, yeah. But I just love that there is an entire project that is working on and there's others too, right, but we're talking about this one in particular that is doing that real work, to integrate it, to do real science and research in an Indigenous-led living lab, to also integrate these different worldviews and pace in the relationship building. So I just I think the work that's being done there is just fascinating. So tell me a bit about your role, the hat you wear as a soil scientist, because I'm thinking specifically about the Sixth Territory, thinking about this particular region. You know farming is different in various areas across North America and I'm sure there's lots of solutions being suggested regarding how to reduce. You know emissions when it comes to farming practices and you know best management practices, what's what's specific to this region, and then the role that soil plays, which practices or what solutions you might look at exploring more.
Speaker 2:I think there's a few things. Well, I think one of the cool things about this region is that we're a semi-arid climate. We got cold winters, we have a really short growing season, so that offers a lot of challenges. Short growing season, so that offers a lot of challenges. It means that some of the practices that maybe are pretty well adapted in other regions where they've got more moisture, they've got longer growing seasons, they're able to implement. You know, one of the big examples that is often provided as an important regenerative egg practice is the use of cover crops. As an important regenerative egg practice is the use of cover crops and I think it's a really good potential practice that could help. You know it extends basically the length of time that there is a living plant that is in the soil that's interacting with the soil through its root systems, through, you know, any of the above ground residue that gets to contribute to organic matter. That's all great in theory but there's challenges in practice. In our climate, our growing seasons aren't that long and you know for farmers to finish harvesting their cash crop in September and sometimes you know harvest can go to October and then for them to turn around and seed another crop and then for that crop to be able to actually germinate and establish well enough to build enough biomass before it freezes. That's a really tight window of time, and so I think that's a challenge. Where I'm sort of interested in that might be even just low-hanging fruit is looking at some of our marginal lands. So sadly the reality is in all the First Nations there's a higher proportion of land that is marginal for crop production. So I don't even necessarily like that term marginal, but we use it, but marginal to annual crop production. And so this might be areas where the soil is just lighter in texture, so it's just sandier, which means it's a little bit more prone to erosion. Or there might be parts of the field that is maybe subject to salinity issues, and you know, there's these sort of natural attributes of the land and the soil that just makes it not great for growing crops. Well, can we maybe not grow crops there? How about instead we grow some sort of perennial vegetation, maybe even at the most ideal side of things, we grow a diverse native prairie?
Speaker 2:Christy Morrissey, who's one of our research co-leads within the BRIDGE project, has another project that's a sister or partner project to the BRIDGE, looking specifically at identifying marginal lands and then looking at strategies to improve those lands by putting some kind of perennial cover, and that increases not only potential for there to be greater carbon inputs, because there's better plant community establishment, but that also injects greater biodiversity into those landscapes. So you know, and parts of the field aren't making the farmer any money anyway Can they be used to garner these other, you know, environmental benefits. So that, I feel, is a little bit more low hanging fruit. But it's still very difficult to identify where those marginal areas are.
Speaker 2:I mean, a lot of farmers they know their land really well and they can say, oh yeah, we know over here it doesn't produce really well. But it still takes some decision-making to some understanding about what does that mean if we're going to stop farming that land and do something else. So it's still an input cost, it's still a decision to be made, it's still a time cost to make that change. But I think it's a good way that we can maybe start. So I mean so, whether that's shelter belts, whether that's riparian areas around wetlands, looking at, can we have a bigger buffer between our wetland and where the farmer is actually growing a crop? And then can we look at, you know, if we are to improve riparian areas, what is the impact of that on soil? Carbon or N2O emissions?
Speaker 1:So how long does it take to?
Speaker 2:find results. That's the trickiest thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's definitely the biggest challenge, because a lot of what we want to show, or what we would hope our intervention might improve, actually takes a long time. So soil carbon, for example, if there's a really big change, it might take eight to 10 years to actually show a measurable change of any given practice, and so we don't have a lot of time within a five-year project and where we're working with farmers, so you know, we're not implementing any kind of change immediately. It's taking two or three years to even figure out what the farmer might be game to try, and so instead, what we have to do to a certain extent is look at other metrics that might be indicators to where change might be eventually. So, for example, if we're looking at soil carbon and we want to increase overall carbon stocks because that's truly what soil carbon sequestration would be is can we look at some of the processes that are a bit more responsive, that lead to improved carbon storage, that lead to persistence of carbon in soil, so that the carbon's not lost through microbial respiration? So there's sort of ways that we can look at these other indicators that might help us to predict where that carbon might be in 8 to 10 years, 20 years down the line.
Speaker 2:And then we're also working with other researchers who actually model greenhouse gas emissions so they can input known parameters that we can get by working with our producers to input into the model and then predict what those changes in practices or the inputs that are used on the farm scale to predict what greenhouse gas emissions would look like. So there's a little bit of modeling that's going to be involved in this project as well. But yeah, it is a challenge, I mean, and honestly what I would hope is that this work extends beyond the length of this particular project. There's been indication that this program might prolong for another five years. We'll see what happens after the next election, but you know, I'm hoping that this would lead to opportunities to extend the work so that we can actually go back and measure carbon 10 years from now and see if there's been a change.
Speaker 1:Well, I imagine, with all of the work that you and others are putting into it and the relationships that are being built, that there is a desire to keep doing this work and exploring and researching and finding out and looking for solutions to a lot of the challenges that we're facing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:What are you hopeful about? What guides you the most, about the work you're doing with this?
Speaker 2:That just the story gets out, that people get interested, that people learn something.
Speaker 2:I'm especially excited about being able to work with other First Nations and sharing what we learn from this project to other communities so that they can, you know, maybe even adapt some of what we're doing to their own situation.
Speaker 2:One of the things that we've been talking a lot about that we're hoping we can make some headway on is that a lot of the First Nations land is actually leased out to farmers that are not First Nations.
Speaker 2:They don't live within the community. They might be neighboring farmers, but they're not community members, and so one of the things that we're really interested in learning more about is whether there's opportunity to use these leases as a tool to either demand or encourage you know, whether it's adoption of practices or whether it's reporting and sharing of information between the farmer and the nation but trying to understand what those instruments can truly do and adjust this relationship between the land holder, which is the nation, and the farmer who is doing the day-to-day operations on the land, can, can we learn about what that looks like and then share that outwards to other communities to adapt? Okay, here you know like here's an example or a template of a lease that has these various provisions within them, um, and and then we've learned that this really works well in this situation can other nations maybe tweak, tweak that for themselves, adapt some of that knowledge. So that's a really kind of specific example of what we're working on.
Speaker 1:Wonderful, I'm just. I'm so thrilled and excited to hear about all these different intersections and potential for opportunity, right To build on those relationships and do things differently. Is there anything that you would love to share about the project, about your work, your thoughts about the work that I haven't asked you yet?
Speaker 2:I think for me, what I'm most excited about is just expanding, you know, just like getting the word out, having other communities learn about what we're doing, and just that idea of like, oh, you mean we can change things, cause I think so much has been just status quo. It's just been this is what has been happening on our lands for decades, and we didn't even know that we could think about doing something differently. And I think there's been a lot of instances where I've heard that, where I've heard people say, oh, I didn't even think about that. And then people's wheels really get turning and then you know they think, well, yeah, but then how about this? We've been so used to things being a certain way, like, especially within our communities, you know, like wow, you mean we can make that decision. Or wow, like, why not, you know, and so I think it's that like oh yeah, that that lightbulb moment of like wow, we can do this and we should do this. And actually this is something that we've always wanted, but we didn't really know what the pathway was, and so I think it's just like the chance to sort of share and almost like conspire together, you know, to see if we can make some headway in different areas, and so I think it's really exciting.
Speaker 2:I think it it's kind of it's fun to collaborate with all of these folks that are from different communities and we all are dealing with similar challenges, and so it's it feels more optimistic and hopeful because it feels that people are kind of empowered in it and you know, it's not just like, oh, this is what has happened to us, it's more so, well, this is what we can do and this is how we can take control over the situation.
Speaker 2:So I think that's the most exciting thing is just there's lots of hope. That's involved. And I guess one of our core team members, roger Daniels he says he's an optimist and he really is, and when you hear him talk about it, it it kind of gets everybody else really excited and some of us can be kind of doom and gloom sometimes, but then you know, because we're such a big team, you have those other people that help sort of pull you out of that doom and gloom and back into the hope and optimism, and that's been really good. So, um, yeah, shared goals and and just I don't know we all get along. I mean not always, but for the, you know it's like family right yeah oh, that's so wonderful.
Speaker 1:well, everyone that I've spoken to that is involved in this project does have an enthusiasm for it, um, and really cares, and so that hope and optimism is coming through, I think in an area where it's needed the most because it easy. It is easy to go into the doom and gloom when we're looking at big picture you know around the world what's happening, but to see real work being done, the relationships being built and doing it for a much bigger purpose, it gives me a lot of hope as well to hear all of you talk about this project. So thank you so much for your time, dr Arkand. I really appreciate your knowledge and your generosity and sharing your experience and what you hope to see with the project.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thanks so much, Michelle.
Speaker 1:This is the Bridging Relations Podcast. Thank you for listening. Looking forward to connecting with you next time podcast. Thank you for listening. Looking forward to connecting with you next time. Funding for this project has been provided by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada through the Agricultural Climate Solutions Living Labs program.