Preface

THIS HANDBOOK is designed as a compendium of environmental initiatives undertaken by Walpole Island First Nation (WIFN). It is hoped that the Handbook will be useful to other First Nations as a source of ideas, a guide to the kind of institutional resources required to mount such initiatives, and (since unsuccessful projects are also discussed) a way of avoiding mistakes.

But this Handbook is more than a catalogue of projects. We have tried to show how our environmental initiatives are closely related to our struggle for an adequate land base and full self government. WIFN believes that only through a satisfactory resolution of these issues will it be able to truly manage its environment in a manner that respects traditional values. Of course, the First Nation needs to resolve some problems of its own, but success can only be partial at best until these fundamental questions of land and governance are settled.

Part 1 provides a contextual overview of Walpole Island First Nation - its geographic setting, its approach to environmental management, its institutional structure for orchestrating a community environment program, and its impact on the management of the St Clair River. Part 2 presents a number of community-based initiatives designed to promote greater understanding and protection of the present community's natural environment and eco-systems. Part 3 contains case-studies of WIFN's responses to external forces - both external threats to the First Nation's environment and opportunities to cooperate with others in improving environmental quality to the benefit of all. Part 4 provides a set of summary conclusions.

The entire handbook is underpinned by the following themes which are basic to WIFN's approach to environmental management:

• a combination of territorial environmental improvement efforts and a vigorous attempt to counter threats from the outside;
  
  
• an understanding, supported by an active research program, of the First Nation's relationship to the land going back thousands of years;
  
  
• a balance of traditional knowledge and values and the application of modern science and technology to the solution of environmental problems;
  
  
• the struggle to formally define the boundaries of the First Nation's land base in order to provide an adequate territorial base for proper environmental management;
  
  
• a recognition that WIFN will only be able to truly manage its environment if it has the necessary powers to do so.