The Dehcho First Nation (DFN) has signed an historic agreement protecting the Edezhie as the first Indigenous-led wildlife area in Canada.
“It very significant to the region. “It's used extensively for harvesting purposes. A lot of times people have referred to it as the breadbasket of the Dehcho,” said Dahti Tsetso, resource management coordinator for the DFN.
Newly elected Chief Gladys Norwegian signed the agreement on Oct. 11 at the Nahechokeh Centre in Fort Providence along with Minister of Environment and Climate Change (MOECC) Catherine McKenna.
The agreement comes after several legal battles over subsurface rights on the Edehzhie plateau, which covers 25,000 square kilometres of land.
The signing designates 14,249 square kilometres of Edehzhie under Dehcho and Canadian laws as a wildlife area, said Tsetso.
The headwaters and muskeg on the Plateau feed the Rabbitskin, Willowlake and Horn Rivers and Mills Lake, all of which are important fish and wildlife habitat and sources of clean water.
Edehzhie (pronounced eh-day-shae) is the host of cultural sites, trails and harvesting areas. Mills Lake is a key wetland on the Central and Mississippi continental flyways for migratory birds.
All traditional harvesting activities will continue, preserving all Section 35 rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, she said.
Over the next five years the Edezhie Management Board, representatives from each community and representatives from the MOECC will create a management plan.
There is a possibility of interim measures, said Tsetso.
The land will be managed by the Edezhie management board, the Dehcho Guardians and the Canadian Wildlife Service.
The Dehcho Guardians are an Indigenous-led land and water management program. They independently monitor the land and socio-cultural impacts of land use and oversee industry.
Since 1998, work has been ongoing on a regional and community level to establish Edezhie as a formal protected area.
“A lot of elders drove home the importance of protecting it. Past and current leaders really took up that cause,” said Tsetso.
Establishing Edezhie as a protected area has been a lengthy process, marked by legal battles over the withdrawal of subsurface rights protections.
Edezhie is ecologically and culturally significant for the communities of Fort Providence, Fort Simpson, Behchoko, Jean Marie River, Whati and Wrigley.
During times of scarcity, people have travelled to the Horn Plateau to harvest there, said Tsetso.
The land is under an interim order that grants land withdrawal of surface and subsurface rights until June 5, 2019.
The agreement follows a lengthy series of legal battles over a 2010 failure by the federal government to renew subsurface rights protections.
The DFN took the federal government to court and won.
A federal court judge ruled that the government terminated protections without consultation in a “clearly questionable” move.
The federal government restored surface and subsurface protections to 57 per cent of the region and argued the reinstatement made the DFN's case redundant.
In 2012, a federal judge rejected the government's attempt to dismiss the Dehcho's legal challenge.
The Dehcho is still working with the territorial government on permanent subsurface withdrawal, said Tsetso.
The DFN is also working on the Dehcho process on “parallel track” for land claim entry discussions, she said.