Fort Folly First Nation: An IPCA Summer

Authors

With support from the Re-Vision Centre for Art and Social Justice and the Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership

Creative Commons License
Fort Folly First Nation: An IPCA Summer story is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Publication Date: February 2023

Overview

 

This short documentary tells the story of Amlamgog (Fort Folly) First Nation’s Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA). Amlamgog is a Mi’gmaq First Nation community in the Sikniktewaq district of Mi’gma’gi within the Wabanaki Confederacy, on the border of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.The story features the voices and perspectives of youth from the community who were hired for IPCA-related monitoring over the summer of 2022. Five youth reflect on how their work to support the IPCA initiative is intrinsically connected to the health and wellbeing of the next seven generations of trees, plants, animals, and people. All five youth featured in the story plus one more, returned to work during the summer of 2023 under the supervision of the Amlamgog’s healthy country plan coordinator, Michelle Knockwood.

It is hoped that this story can inspire and strengthen Indigenous conservation leadership efforts across this land we now call Canada. This is a story about connecting our Indigenous culture with scientific monitoring: looking at the land from our two eyes. Creating this story gave the youth an opportunity to share their impactful thoughts months after their time on the land. Years from now this story and the experiences recorded will continue to nurture and shape the community’s growing IPCA project, Amlamgog’s healthy country plan and eventual guardianship programs. A big teaching point of this story is that there is more heart in the land than we give her credit for. It is up to all of us to take care and guard the earth, because she is our mother.

Watch the short film below:

Acknolwedgements/ Wela’lioq:

Ancestor Song Courtesy of: Elder George Paul and Keith Sark

We’d also like to acknowledge the following contributors:

Amlamgog (Fort Folly) First Nation

Nicole Porter, Knowledge Keeper

Mi’kmaq Child & Family Services

Lorise Simon & Michael Nye

Fort Folly Habitat Recovery

Mi’gmaqwe’l Tplu’taqnn Inc.

Nature Conservancy of Canada 

Canadian Wildlife Service

Wabanaki IPCA Family

Dr. Roger William