Protect the Tract - Gihę'gowahneh Climate Action Strategy

In April of 2021, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council announced a moratorium on development along the Haldimand Tract, a portion of our territory set aside for us through the Haldimand Proclamation of 1784. Protect the Tract was established following the announcement and has focused on educating Haudenosaunee and settlers about the unique history of the Haudenosaunee and our connection to the Grand River watershed. The Haudenosaunee intend to exercise our jurisdiction over our lands and waters in a way that maintains the delicate balance between Creation and humans. In order to do this, we must focus on sustainability and responsiveness to climate change to protect waterways and ecologically sensitive areas. 

The Grand River extends for over 310 kilometers through what is currently known as Southern Ontario. Though it was set aside for the Haudenosaunee, generations of unwanted settlement, development, and displacement have left the Haudenosaunee on a small parcel of land* and the river is contaminated beyond recognition. The province of Ontario intends to continue to develop this land without consent, and through provincial legislation has continued to incentivize development without Haudenosaunee consent. This has led to notable land defense actions in Brantford and Caledonia. The most recent flashpoint of this conflict occurred at 1492 Land Back Lane, where Haudenosaunee land defenders have peacefully occupied a proposed housing development for over 1000 days. 

With the moratorium on development as a catalyst, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council intends to re-set the relationship with municipalities/Ontario/Canada and the people who have settled along the Grand River. Currently, there is no long-term climate change response strategy for the region that includes Haudenosaunee perspectives. Protect the Tract as an initiative governed by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council is undertaking the challenge of education, engagement, policy development and research to drive this conversation forward. 

*the current Haudenosaunee community along the Grand River is Six Nations. It is the most populous First Nations community in Canada with over 27,000 band members, approximately half live on-reserve. 

Our solution is to develop a climate action strategy that engages and empowers Haudenosaunee to enact their distinct cultural practices to revitalize the caretaking of the Grand River watershed. 

We want to explore ways to ensure our reserve is made sustainable. As an example, we have partnered with Sacred Earth Solar to begin to transition our ceremonial longhouses to use solar power. 

Our community is dynamic and politically complex. Empowering our inherent governance structures requires we act outside typical state-sanctioned policy development mechanisms in order to ensure our survival. Our survival through climate change will require unique solutions and partnerships in order to center the Indigenous knowledge that Haudenosaunee people at Grand River possess. 

We need to ensure that the climate conversation is accessible to all our community members, considers the different systemic and legal realities of on and off reserve river spaces, and has an accurate historical context to address and remediate the climate and environmental impacts that the Grand River has endured. For example, in the past, an agent orange factory dumped toxic chemicals into the river during WWII, vs the contemporary policy gaps that have allowed developers to exploit loopholes in contaminated soil remediation to allow for toxic soil to be dumped alongside homes last summer. Our community has no contemporary strategy or resources to remediate this contamination. Our goal would be to develop short, medium and long-term, measurable, achievable goals such as soil remediation to installing renewable energy generation with broad community consent. 

Our primary target population would be Haudenosaunee people living on reserve at Six Nations of the Grand River, as this is where the densest population of Indigenous people live along the river. We would also prioritize the rest of the Grand River watershed, which would include urban Haudenosaunee people as well as other urban Indigenous people, as well as settler populations who live within the watershed areas. We also plan to have an impact on the lives of the Indigenous plants and animals that live within the watershed to ensure they are also to maintain their health in their homelands. 

There is no current plan that is based in Haudenosaunee knowledge to preserve and enhance the health of the water through climate change. Protect the Tract plans to facilitate the community engagement planning process, as well as fundraise to enact a plan, that will ensure Haudenosaunee are able to continue to steward their lands effectively through climate change. 

Protect the Tract works directly in the Haudenosaunee community of the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. The Haudenosaunee are a Confederacy of Six Nations - the Oneida, Seneca, Onondaga, Cayuga, Mohawk, and Tuscarora. Our entire organization works to advance our own knowledge systems as Haudenosaunee people, using Haudenosaunee law as established by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council at Grand River. We work to empower our own people to take up their land stewardship responsibilities. We have hosted community gatherings and workshops, including working with our Chiefs and Clan Mothers to display traditional wampum belts and educate community on their purpose, use, and stories they contain. Our organization also works under the authority of the Confederacy, reporting monthly to the Chiefs and Clan Mothers, maintaining a Terms of Reference with the Council, and developing an annual work plan. We will engage the community utilizing our inherent governance structure, which include a clan family model, as well as public events for community members whose connections to their clan family has been impacted by climate change. We will also engage our community through social media, information booths at community gatherings, mail-outs, and visiting over meals to have conversations in a more traditional setting.

Our entire team live and work within the Indigenous territories this strategy aims to address. We are the only sanctioned entity working under the authority of our traditional leaders to develop policy and research on climate solutions. We have two co-directors of our organization: Courtney Skye, who focuses on the organizational administration and Todd Williams, an engineer who, in addition to their work with Protect the Tract, oversees environmental and archaeological monitoring for our inherent government. Our organization came out of community consultation work undertaken to pass a moratorium on development into Haudenosaunee law; we continue to work directly in our community, both at Grand River and the settler communities along the river, to deliver programming and do public education activities.  

Protect the Tract is interested in support on technical aspects of how to develop climate solutions, as well as any potential legal barriers that may exist for an Indigenous self-government initiative that is outside of current state-sanctioned initiatives. We definitely need financial capacity to enact any plan we put into place, but we also need people who are knowledgeable about climate solutions who are willing to work with our community knowing that they are empowering a historically disempowered part of our community.

I am Mohawk, Turtle Clan, from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. I have spent the last three years building Protect the Tract and as a part of the 1492 Land Back Lane movement, utilizing my work experience as a policy analyst/policy director in provincial, national, and regional Indigenous and government organizations to advance the rights and jurisdiction of my own people, but also Indigenous peoples in Canada. 

My family has lived at Grand River since the Haudenosaunee came to this particular community. My maternal ancestor was only 8 years old in the late 1700's when she walked here from the Mohawk Valley; my Mohawk ancestry can be traced through my matrilineal line back to the early 1600's in the Mohawk Valley. All of my grandparents (now deceased) were Haudenosaunee and were born at Grand River. Both of my parents lived and grew up here as well, and continue to live and work at Grand River. My siblings all reside in the community, as do their children. I have many familial ties to this community through an extended network of cousins, aunts, uncles, and great-aunts and uncles.