Climate Conversations: Youth Leaders from Coast to Coast

Jordan 00:01

In the news and on social media, we very often hear about the environmental and social impacts of climate change in the so-called provinces of British Columbia and Ontario and the activism that is happening there around these impacts and issues. But what about other provinces and territories? What kind of work is happening in those places that isn’t always receiving media attention. There are so many youth doing amazing things across the whole country and in this episode, we want to highlight some of the ways these provinces and territories that are least talked about by mainstream media are being impacted by climate change, what’s being done to adapt to these changes, and how youth are getting involved.

Jordan 00:52

Hi, everyone, Salut à tous et toutes. My name is Jordan Kilgour and I use she/her/elle pronouns. I’ve had the privilege of living working and playing on the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinabek and Algonquin-Anishinabeg nation in so called Ottawa, Ontario, and Haudenosaunee, Anishnabek, Attiwonderonk and the Mississaugas of the Credit in so called Guelph Ontario, but currently reside on the traditional unceded territories of the Mi’kmaq and what is currently known as Moncton, New Brunswick. I am a project coordinator and member of the SUTE research team. I come to you today with the following positionality. I’m a white neurodivergent cisgendered heterosexual woman of European and French Canadian descent. The intersections of these identities and experiences have impacted who I am and given me many privileges, including the privilege of obtaining a post secondary education. And it’s also protected me from many of the systemic inequalities and discrimination that Black, Indigenous, other communities of colour, LGBTQIA+ and other communities experience every day across what is currently Canada. My intention in this episode is not to speak on behalf of any of these communities, but to provide space for youth with these identities and lived experiences to tell their stories and truths, learning and learning beside you all as we hear from our amazing guests today.

Jordan 02:09

Today we will be speaking with Annie Martel, Ella Kim Marriott and Lily Barraclough to learn more about the climate movement in Manitoba, Alberta, and Nova Scotia respectively.

Jordan 02:24

Hi, Annie, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. 

Annie 02:28

Thank you so much for having me. 

Jordan 02:29

Do you want to start off by just telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

Annie 02:34

Yeah so my name is Annie Martel, I am a Red River Métis woman from a small community called St. Pierre, which is just about 40 minutes southeast of Winnipeg. It’s located on treaty one territory here in Manitoba. I’m currently a master’s student at the University of Winnipeg, in the master of environmental and social change program. And I just moved back home last year, I had been on the East Coast for my undergrad at Mount Allison University. So yeah, I’m really happy to be back home and doing research in my community. So that’s me.

Jordan 03:10

That’s awesome. And how have you been involved in the climate movement in Manitoba since you’ve moved back?

Annie 03:19

So since moving back to Manitoba, getting involved in climate action here has been a big priority of mine. It’s something that I felt like I was kind of missing out on being on the East Coast. And just felt like a lot of the research and work I was doing for my undergrad related to Manitoba and environmental issues here. So I’ve only been back for a little bit over a year now, but I’ve been involved with the Youth Advisory Council. I’m the chair for that this year, which has been a really great opportunity to connect with other youth who have similar goals and vision for how we want our province to look like in the future in regards to the climate crisis. I’ve been involved in various student groups at my university as well at University of Winnipeg, more specifically within my program. But I’m still kind of looking for other ways to kind of insert myself into the climate justice and climate movement stuff happening in Manitoba. And so I’m really looking forward to where it’s going to take me. So far. So good. I like the path that I’m on. And I’ve been enjoying the work that I’ve been doing with other folks, other youth. So I’m really excited to connect with more along the way, as my time here goes on. 

Jordan 04:33

That’s awesome that you’ve gotten to get so plugged in so quickly with a few different things since you’ve come back in the last year, that’s awesome. What role have you played specifically in the climate movement in Manitoba? 

Annie 04:52

I think youth are an integral part of the climate movement in Manitoba. This is not to discredit any other generations and other folks working on the climate movement. But I definitely noticed that youth are really pushing, putting pressure on climate action and really demanding things to change. There’re various organisations and groups that youth are kind of leading in Manitoba, which are really focused on moving things forward. So I think generally, the youth are kind of spearheading climate action in the province, which is really wonderful to see. I think, in the past, youth have been kind of discredited and not seen as having enough knowledge or experience dealing with the climate crisis. But we grew up, our generation grew up with climate change on our minds since we were little kids hearing about it. And so we have experienced changes, we do have knowledge, just because we’re young doesn’t discredit the fact that we can still be experts in this field. 

Jordan 05:55

That’s so true. Yeah, for sure, just huge and like fighting for features, and it is our future right? So like, we have a huge stake in it for sure. So you mentioned that you’re doing your masters and research, university, Winnipeg, do you want to tell us a little bit about the research that you’re doing?

Annie 06:20

Yeah, for sure. So I’m quite excited about my research. I absolutely love what I’m doing. So I’m currently looking at how Métis knowledge in my community and surrounding Métis communities can inform climate change adaptation. And hopefully act as a model for other Métis communities. And it’s also about reclaiming knowledge that has been lost or suppressed. So it’s kind of working at reclaiming this knowledge, being proud of it. And also looking at how can this knowledge inform how we adapt to the climate change impacts that we face, and specifically, so my communities in the southeast of Manitoba. And so some of the impacts that we’ve been seeing here that I’m also looking at are more extreme droughts and more extreme flooding. Those are kind of the two main topics that usually come up when people discuss climate change here. So I’ll also be looking at those and looking at how collectively, these three Métis communities can adapt to these impacts by utilising our traditional knowledge. 

Jordan 07:29

That’s awesome. That’s really cool. Are there any other climate change impacts that the communities that you’re working with are facing or that the province as a whole is kind of dealing with adapting to right now? 

Annie 07:48 

Yeah, the list unfortunately, could be endless. There are so many impacts. And, you know, I feel like a lot of times when we think of climate change, a lot of focus is on rising sea levels, and maybe coastal areas. But in the prairies, we are facing a lot of extreme impacts. Like I said, droughts and flooding are extremely major. So we’re seeing more precipitation in the spring, but then drier summers. So we have years where we’ll experience both severe flooding and severe droughts. And this has a whole myriad of impacts as well. For example, a few two summers ago, there was quite an extreme drought, and even it impacted things like a women’s centre in Winnipeg, they were having issue accessing traditional harvesting of sage, the sage supplies were unfortunately quite low because of the drought. And so it has all these impacts that we don’t always necessarily consider. But for example, this age is a sacred medicine that’s used in a lot of healing and spirituality. And so the drought has impacted that in a way as well.

Annie 09:01

But also like Manitoba, is quite diverse in terms of our terrestrial ecosystems. So in the north, we have the tundra. And so thawing permafrost is a major issue. Warmer winters means the winter roads are extremely unreliable. And we have a lot of remote northern communities that rely on these winter roads, for transporting of goods, to access services. And so it’s becoming increasingly dangerous to travel on these roads and unreliable. Also, in terms of fishing, a lot of people fish here on lakes and rivers, I do as well. And with the warmer winter temperatures, also the lake ice is becoming really unpredictable. It’s freezing up later than usual. So it’s really impacting harvesting for many folks as well. Those are some of the major issues I would say there’s a lot more, but usually those are the ones that are commonly talked about and also recently forest fires as well. We know they’re kind of ravaging Canada. And Manitoba is not immune to this either and we’ve seen a lot of communities unfortunately, having to evacuate, and a lot of them are Indigenous communities that have to evacuate due to forest fires. So we are also unfortunately not immune to that as well here. 

Jordan 10:20

Yeah, wow. That’s a lot of wide ranging, and like, really complex impacts that like really trickle down and affect all areas of life and well being.

Annie 10:37

Yeah, like everything is interconnected, right? Like, people don’t always realise how one small change even though it may seem like a small change in temperature, can really severely impact things like with roads. So I think that’s often like in climate policies and things there is the lack of consideration of like, the interconnectedness of all these issues, which can be a little bit frustrating at times. But yeah, it’s really like, you can’t just isolate one issue. They’re really all connected.

Jordan 11:13

To build off this. I didn’t send you this question before. But we’re talking kind of about intersectionality. I’m wondering if there’s a lot of intersectional work happening around the kind of climate change impacts that are being seen and how it’s affecting Indigenous communities and maybe other kind of marginalised communities in Manitoba at all? 

Annie 11:39

Yeah, I think in terms of intersectionality, I would say like, it’s more commonly talked about now that climate change is impacting more vulnerable communities, and notably in Manitoba, a lot of BIPOC communities. And in terms of intersectionality, as well, I think, and this has happened in my research as well, like, you can’t look at climate justice without being intersectional. Like I’m looking at gender considerations as well. And a lot of past research on climate change, especially with Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous people. A lot of researchers would kind of search for men to talk about the land and their harvesting techniques without the consideration that women also have really valuable knowledge, two-spirit folk really have really valuable knowledge about the environment as well. And so I think change is happening. It’s a little, in my opinion, late. This should have been done a long time ago. But I’m still hopeful that these changes are happening and more diverse voices are being heard. And it’s not just a westernised white academic voice that’s being heard in climate change policies, but also that like community members, local knowledge is extremely valuable. Women’s knowledge is extremely valuable. And so things are changing, and you kind of see it playing out in the province as well.

Jordan 13:09

This kind of leads nicely into my next question, which was about how has the province started working towards climate adaptation? Are there any plans and goals in place that they’ve put out there that are starting to see some fruit? Are they mobilizing knowledge from these communities that we’re talking about at all? What are you seeing kind of in Manitoba that’s being done to address the changes that are coming with our climate?

Annie 13:44

In a way, I think it’s better if adaptation is also community-led with support from governments because you can’t kind of take an all-encompassing look at adaptation without considering communities’ needs, communities’ languages, their traditions, their cultures, their values are all different. And so we can’t take kind of a homogenous approach to climate change adaptation by the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Looking at the sampled Manitoban municipalities and looking to see if climate change adaptation was included in their development emergency or watershed plans. And they found that they concluded that a majority did not really consider climate change adaptation. And this was in 2019, right? So four years ago. So some things have changed. And I know even from my own community, my town here, the village of St. Pierre, they’re also looking at climate change adaptation and really starting to consider these things.

Annie 14:44

And so I think some progress is being made, but it’s lagging. And I think a lot of the focus has been on mitigation, which is absolutely important. But some communities, like Indigenous communities, who contribute very little to the climate crisis but are being burdened the most, those are the communities that really need the support for climate change adaptation. It’s really unfortunate. It’s not their fault that the climate crisis is occurring, but they’re really suffering from the brunt of it. So yeah.

Jordan 15:18

Absolutely. Yeah.That’s really tough. And it’s good to hear that there’s some change happening, but definitely difficult to hear that there’s some lagging. I guess from your knowledge and from the research that you’ve been doing, what solutions are out there to address the impacts that we’re seeing? What is going to help these communities to respond? Or what things are you already seeing these communities doing to adapt to the changes that they’re experiencing?

Annie 16:03

Yeah. This is a hard one. I think one of the key barriers is probably financial support. A lot of communities want this work to happen, but maybe don’t have the financial means to support this action. And again, each community is different. And so finding community-specific adaptation plans, for example, is really crucial for assessing the specific needs of various communities in Manitoba. But I think also, especially with climate change, things are often looking at, okay, what can we create that’s new? What new programs can we create? But a lot of times, the solutions are already there. We just need to uplift them.

Annie 16:48

I think it’s quite well known that Indigenous people across the world, their stewardship is extremely important and they protect a lot of the world’s biodiversity, but comprised of a very small population. And so we need to look at uplifting their methods and their ways of stewarding and taking care of the land. And so supporting some already on-the-ground efforts, especially Indigenous efforts, I think is really key. Instead of spending money to create all these new programs, let’s look at what’s happening and support and fund these initiatives even more. And I think as well, supporting Indigenous efforts, Indigenous people’s view of biodiversity and conservation is often very long-term and holistic, whereas more Western ways of conservation has been very short-term and kind of more narrow-minded. And the more long-term holistic is really crucial for adaptation planning. And so we really need to look at Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous examples of stewarding the land and taking care of the land.

Jordan 17:54

Yeah, absolutely. I agree, we tend to be so reactive to things and to these big disasters that come up. Like you can read to me the forest fires, like it’s all very reactive and highlights a lot of areas where there are problems and things that need to change and are really broken and really not supporting people and their families and communities as they should. So yeah, you’re totally right.

Annie 18:37

I agree, the reactive part obviously is important, but the planning aspect is crucial. And even I’ll go against the forest fires this year, it’s record-breaking, it seems unusual. And I don’t want to say it’s a new normal because I don’t want to normalize this awful impact of climate change, but looking forward, these are going to be expected. There’s going to be more record-breaking fires, unfortunately. So how can we plan for this? We can’t just be like, well, it’s this year, it’s just been kind of unusual.Like no, this is going to become more common. We really need to look at how we can plan for this. And that includes both looking at continuing to try to mitigate emissions while also looking at adapting for the changes that have already occurred and that will continue to occur even if we drastically cut emissions today.

Jordan 19:29

So yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You talked a little bit about supporting Indigenous-led conservation and governance and initiatives because they have so much knowledge and you also have to have traditional ecological knowledge and how that’s playing a role in some of your research. So I wonder if you can speak to that a little bit. And if there are any kind of ongoing partnerships between municipalities or even at the provincial level to see Indigenous voices be included in kind of the agitation that’s happening or conservation or any things like that.

Annie 20:18

The only thing that really comes to mind are IPCA’s, Indigenous Protected Areas.

And a few of them are popping up in Manitoba, which is fantastic news.

And I’m definitely pro-IPCA’s. I think they’re a wonderful idea and kind of really exemplifies the land back movement, which is so crucial to addressing climate justice as well. Yeah, that’s kind of the only thing that comes to mind at this moment.

Yeah, I wish I would know more, but I feel like everything is just so new that things are really starting to pop up, but like it’s still kind of like gaining momentum.

Jordan 21:01

Do you think that there’s a lot of learning from the other provinces that are maybe doing a little bit more? Like are there things that are being picked up from other places and like

Jordan 28:44

Hi, Ella, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast today. 

Ella 28:48

Thank you for having me.

Jordan  28:50

Do you want to start off by just telling everyone a little bit about yourself?

Ella 28:54

For sure. Yeah, so my full name is Ella Kim Marriott. I’m 24 years old. My pronouns are she/her. I’m a second generation mixed Korean and European settler born and raised on the traditional and unceded territory of the Musqueam Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Peoples. And I currently reside on treaty six territory and so called Edmonton. I did my honours BA in Sociology at the University of British Columbia, with a minor in environment and society. And I completed my master of science and environmental sociology at the University of Alberta. 

Jordan 29:21

That’s awesome. And how have you been involved in the climate movement in Alberta? 

Ella 29:27

Yeah. So when I lived in Vancouver, I was involved in a number of environmental organisations over the years. So I think a difference that’s been kind of cool since I moved to Alberta is that I feel like a lot of my environmental work here has been very intersectional. So some examples of groups. I’ve been involved with our Iron and Earth, and Migrante Alberta. And I don’t know if you’ve heard of either of these organisations, but Iron and Earth take a kind of a worker centred people centred approach to the energy transition, and climate action. So I started out volunteering for them. I also did a research paper just for a class on them in my first year of my masters, and that’s how I got in contact with a few of the people that work there. And then for the past few months, I’ve been working with them

Ella 30:14

As a community engagement officer, one of the main things I’ve been helping them on is organising and facilitating community engagement sessions here in Edmonton. And these sessions are designed to find out from local everyday people, what they want the energy transition to look like, and also what they want climate action to look like in their city. And then with immigrants in Alberta, I’ve just recently gotten connected to them through my partner. And they focus on helping migrant workers who are mostly of Filipino descent, but also, lots of other kinds of migrant workers sort of adjust to life in Canada and get them the resources that they need. And they also help a lot of undocumented and temporary foreign workers. And so they also do good work acknowledging how industry transitions and climate change might disproportionately impact migrant workers, which I think is really cool. And they also sometimes partner with organisations like Climate Justice Edmonton, so they definitely try to bring that lens into it a bit. And yeah, from what I’ve seen, in my time here, so far, I just think that the climate movement is very intersectional. And a lot of the time very, like workers focused. 

Jordan 31:26

That’s awesome. Definitely not something that I would have known. But it’s so intersectional, that kind of work. And it’s super important work to be doing, especially with regards to migrant workers and any kind of energy transition to have an intersectional lens. That’s really cool. Really interesting. Would you be able to speak a bit to what climate change impacts are kind of being experienced, for communities and for people in Alberta?

Ella 31:49

Yeah, so I think the most obvious one right now, is the wildfires that Alberta has been experiencing a lot this summer already. And on top of that, this smoke that worsens the air quality, and that’s from fires that happen in Alberta, as well as smoke that travels from BC or the US. And I think something to note here is that I’ve encountered in my interviews, that we will talk about alittle later, oil and gas workers who either do not think that the fires are getting worse, necessarily, or sea fires as sort of a natural occurrence. So in my opinion, this might be one area where we can make a stronger connection between climate change and what’s happening in the province at the moment. And then I think another climate impact that I’ve at least noticed, and that I think will just get increasingly noticeable is how climate change impacts agriculture, because there’s a huge portion of the population in Alberta who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. And so it obviously impacts farmers a lot. But it also disrupts food systems. And that’s something that will be felt by everyone. And this might just be anecdotal. But I feel like in the past couple of years, at least in my lifetime, I’ve noticed that there has been more shortages of different products and different kinds of produce than I’ve ever experienced before. And so I just imagined that that impact is going to kind of get worse and worse. And that’s obviously not just specific to Alberta to you, that’s like a national and global phenomenon, but it’s definitely something I’ve noted. 

Jordan 33:18

Yeah, that is, yeah, really interesting. And I think it comes down to a lot of things like education as well. And especially when your first point where you were talking about how some workers think that, you know, the fires are getting worse and their natural occurrence and like they are to a certain extent, but a lot of still a lot of misconceptions around kind of the impacts of climate change, and like, what is causing climate change, and that, like humans are causing climate change, and, and what that kind of looks like. And so it’s kind of interesting to hear kind of like what the case has been, what kind of people think about this, and, and, of course, the impacts, so intersectional, as well as kind of food security and food systems. And definitely would have a big impact on farmers. And yeah, so that’s really interesting as well. What role would you say Youth have had in the climate movement in Alberta? And what role are they playing kind of now in advocating for these issues that you’ve talked about? 

Ella 34:08

Yeah, I’ll speak on this generally first, because I want to start out on a hopeful note. So I’ve been involved with climate activism since I was in elementary school. But what’s been really cool to see as I guess, a member of Generation Z, I don’t know. That’s what I would be but yeah, even when I was in school, climate activism was really not that popular I remember being the only person in my grade in environmental club with five to six members up until I got some of my friends to join me in grade 11 and yeah I was always kinda that part of my interest was always seen as uncool. But it seems to me that it’s become a lot more widespread with youth and that obviously we saw that with the climate strikes in 2019 and the climate strikes that have happened before and continue after that. And I love seeing that youth are at the forefront of climate action nowadays and even though I know that is really frustrating because they feel like they have to do it in order to secure a good future for themselves and I don’t think it should necessarily be left to them and I know a lot of youth are tired of the inaction on the part of people in positions of in power. But from what I have seen, youth definitely have a major part of climate action in Alberta as well but what is interesting to me in comparison to Vancouver. I think that youth in Alberta who want to get involved in climate action. I think it’s pretty difficult for them because a lot of their parents have a major stake in the fossil fuel industry or in the agricultural industry or in the processing industries and they may not have the support of their peers, let alone their teachers or their parents. So I can see how it would be more difficult for them to show up to these big movements but I do still see them showing up at the protests. 

Ella 35:58

And I think something that is interesting from my interviews that I have noticed from my research is that generally the younger participants will be more concerned about climate change and it often falls on them to educate their parents about it and to kind of encourage them to rethink things with not just environmental issues but also other social justice issues as well. And I think that is especially the case for people who have immigrant or migrant parents because a lot of the times when adults come here they already have a set way of thinking or they may have a different educational background. And when they arrive in Canada their main learning materials might just be what they hear from their friends or their colleagues or whatever the Canadian government supplies them in terms of their immigration packages. But those are often kind of skewed, maybe a little bit biased towards a certain lens of our history here. So it really doesn’t teach them anything and i’ve noticed that the Asian youth i’ve talked to play a key role in educating their parents on not just environmental issues but also issues related to Indigenous communities and what youth are experiencing in Canada.

Jordan 32:39

Thank you again to Annie Martel, Ella Kim Marriott and Lily Barraclough for coming onto the podcast to share your experiences and knowledge around the climate crisis in your provinces. To learn more about SUTE and stay up to date on Establish, you can follow @shakeuptheestab on Instagram and Twitter and find us at shakeuptheestab.org. Establish is supported through funds by the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada, the music you hear in the podcast today was created by Greg Markov (@GregMarkov on insta). This episode was produced by me, Jordan Kilgour, and Atreyu Lewis. Thank you for listening.