Knowledge sharing underway at Indigenous Lands Symposium in Sudbury

A 4-day Indigenous Lands Symposium in Sudbury aims to advance land stewardship and governance through panels & traditional tent spaces. Angela Gemmill explains.

There are about a half dozen tents set up outside Science North in Sudbury, new additions to an event focused on land.

Organizers of the Indigenous Lands Symposium said the tents, known as the Canvas Community, bring the outdoors and tradition to the fourth annual event.

The five-day symposium is meant to advance Indigenous-led land stewardship, governance and relationships.

“I hope they go home inspired,” said David Flood, executive director of Wahkohtowin Development.

“I hope they go home as a catalyst within their communities and say, you know, what I learned, who I met and who we should go see. And it’s just building that network of awareness.”

The event is organized by Wahkohtowin, a First Nations-led social enterprise owned by three northern Ontario First Nations.

Event has grown

Flood said the event has grown in the past several years, moving from Timmins to Sault Ste Marie. They decided to hold it at Sudbury’s Science North this year, while the 2027 symposium will be in Ottawa.

Programming includes topics such as jurisdiction, critical minerals, food sovereignty and conservation.

“What people will walk away (with), ultimately, is greater knowledge sharing, so there’s more individuals coming to share more knowledge,” said project manager Shah Mohamed.

“We bring in a lot of diverse voices into these panel discussions, which allows people to think about where they see themselves, where they fit in, what are their experiences and hopefully some new, innovative ideas,” Flood said.

Lee Fox is hosting a panel on stewardship economy. His background is in Indigenous-led conservation, carbon and biodiversity.

“One of the things we hope -- and we’ve seen in past events -- that people leave with ideas for their own home,” Fox said.

“By bringing together the 44 nations that are here, people can get an idea of what other nations are doing, how they’re financing it, how they’re connecting to youth, how they’re connecting to ceremony and be able to take that back home.”

“In Canada, we are a nation that has exploited resources and extracted for many generations and that’s not sustainable; the way that we manage forest is not sustainable,” Fox said.

“First Nations, Indigenous communities often talk about seven generations. It’s hard to think out that far for a lot of people, but that’s the time-series and that’s the time scale we need to be working on.”

‘Hundreds of years’

“Land restoration and land management doesn’t happen in four-year cycles or 15-year cycles. These are hundreds of years we need to be thinking about,” he added

Along with guest speakers, there are also vendors and the outdoor Canvas Community. The tent area is new for the symposium and includes a sacred fire, areas for workshops and social spaces.

“Science North is a very large venue, but we didn’t have unique spaces that were more traditional in nature,” Mohamed said.

“So we wanted to have additional spaces that both captured the traditional but also were an extension outside of, say, a regular type of meeting room.”

Organizers said about 330 participants from 44 different Indigenous nations are taking in the five-day symposium, which continues until Friday.