There was a celebration and ceremony at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Center in Whitehorse on Wednesday as the First Nations Climate Action Fellows celebrated their graduation.
Thirteen young people from across the Yukon and Northern BC completed the grant program after nearly two years of coming together and working on a climate action plan with the help of a steering committee.
“We have been commissioned by the leadership of the Yukon First Nations to create a climate action plan that truly reflects our worldview and our relationship with the land,” said Jewel Davies (Yekhunashîn Khatuku), a member of Carcross/Tagish First Nation.
“We often see climate plans that are very focused on CO2 emissions and consumption-based solutions such as electric vehicles or solar panels. And they just don’t go deep enough.”
The grantees were joined at Wednesday’s event by family and friends, members of their communities, as well as Council of Yukon First Nations Grand Chief Peter Johnston and Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Kluane Adamek.
They were presented with insignia following their climate action presentation and recognized as leaders in their communities.
The youth leaders presented a “reconnection vision” before their graduation ceremony. This vision involves reconnecting with the land and moving away from an anthropocentric—or people-centric—view of the world.
That means asking questions like, “How can we help the salmon thrive?” rather than “how much salmon can we have?” as Shauna Yeomans-Lindstrom (Geehaadastee) explained during the presentation.
These issues will also play a major role in an upcoming climate protection plan that will be drawn up by the scholarship holders. It is expected to be released and delivered to governments across the Yukon in the coming weeks.
The action plan addresses a number of different issues such as governance, education, food sovereignty and resource depletion.
Skaydu.û (whose name in English is Autumn Jules), one of the youth grantees and a member of the Teslin Tlingit Council, said the group took a different approach to both the grant program and the plan.
“It wasn’t actually a typical community,” she said. “It’s based on traditional knowledge, binocular vision, seeing the world both with our traditional way of knowing and being and with this western way and actually using both.”
She said the grantees reached out to communities across the Yukon for input on what they wanted to see in a plan. This meant organizing meetings with elders and youth.
“We cannot speak for many people in our communities without actually working with them and consulting them and getting that voice from our ancestors for future generations.”
