Indigenous Partnerships & Engagement

Ermineskin Cree Nation began its engagement at the beginning of 2023 with NAIT’s Indigenous-led Environmental Monitoring Program to address the need for environmental monitoring samples taken by the Nation itself, in the areas and sites which the Nation deemed important, both ecologically and culturally.

To meet that challenge, Ermineksin Cree Nation and NAIT entered into a collaborative partnership with the objective of assisting the community in the development of skills and knowledge that will benefit their land and water monitoring and management practices. 

Over the course of an ongoing multi-year project, Ermineskin Cree Nation citizens are being trained in water chemistry and soil analyses, lab safety, and data interpretation using snow, freshwater, and soil samples over the course of up to two years. The objective of this work is to familiarize the Environmental Monitors with procedures and practices required to conduct basic field sampling and laboratory analysis to generate data relevant to the water and soil quality on the Ermineskin Cree Nation such that the Environmental Monitors will be able to process their future samples in NAIT’s laboratory with minimal oversight. 

Our training approach uses a unique combination of classical instruction and hands-on practice carried out by executing an applied research set of experiments designed to answer questions put forward by the community. Central to enabling this training approach are community engagements during which our team meets with community members and perspective learners to gather information about the training needs and the environmental challenges at hand.

Based on the input derived from these engagement sessions, we create customized training plans that are informed by in-person knowledge surveys to assess learners’ current skills and knowledge. These knowledge surveys are carried out in the communities through in-person meetings and written assignments where necessary. This approach is designed to be able to fully support student learners throughout the training process and may include a portion of online learning as well as extensive hands-on training both in the field and in the laboratory.  

The community impact of this ongoing partnership is two-fold: first, the Nation is able to develop a data set of environmental data throughout the Nation’s land that is directly selected by the Nation to provide it with the environmental data that it deems critical. Second, with the built-in capacity building and training component, two Environmental Monitors have been and are being trained over the course of two years to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to continue environmental monitoring studies within the Nation independently, to manage and secure the data independently, and to make decisions to best benefit the Nation and its citizens based on that data.

“With NAIT, the partnership with Ermineskin has been for a really long time . . . This one has been for the last couple of years. I’m really glad we’re part of it. I’m glad my young people are getting skilled and receiving capacity. I’m excited that we’re going to get a database because it’s not only going to help us with my overlays. Our Lands Department will be able to use it. Our Housing Department will be able to use it so that we can create and pull data that we need that I’m always being asked.”