INDIGENOUS WATER CHALLENGES AND CANADIAN POLICY: CONNECTIONS ACROSS A WATERSHED MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Approaches for managing water across landscapes that include Indigenous reserve land in Canada involve federal and provincial government competition, and authority hierarchies, leading to cross-jurisdictional conflict and a lack of accountability or action. For decades, the shared monitoring and collaboration in watershed management in regions that includes Indigenous lands have been lower than in other Canadian regions. The lower quality and minimal responsivity to water issues impacts community health, cultural sustainability, and financial stability in reserve communities, putting them at risk of experiencing difficulties retaining cultural practices and traditional lifestyles. Despite previous financial investments made by the Canadian government, many Indigenous communities continue to experience water challenges, including floods and drought, and surface water quality challenges such as algae blooms. As this, and other studies are demonstrating, the unbalanced power dynamics in the Canadian watershed management system have been influenced by the significant lack of interaction among individuals with different perspectives, categorizable through the ‘ways of life’ in Cultural Theory. The ‘ways of life’ (or perspective groups) in Cultural Theory provide a framework for how individuals of various views interact and how those interactions influence the quality of political, social, and environmental collaboration. This research project takes an interdisciplinary approach to investigate the environmental, social, and political components of watershed management problems in Prairie-based Treaty Areas 4, 5 and 6. I sought to identify barriers to effective watershed management using mixed methodologies and engaged scholarship framed by Cultural Theory, and provide recommendations for improving watershed management for Indigenous communities. This thesis consists of three studies in the context of watershed management: monitoring of freshwater nutrient concentrations, cataloguing of toxic cyanobacterial development, and reviewing of policies affecting Indigenous watershed management alongside interviews of the perceptions of the policies. It is important to note that while I studied these three watershed management problems, the overall thesis focused on human behaviour in watershed management as the unit of analysis. Multiple qualitative and quantitative methods for data collection and analysis were conducted. Results show that despite previous efforts by the Federal Government, there remain weaknesses in how watershed management in undertaken in regions with Indigenous reserve communities. Some common weaknesses include a lack of community involvement and knowledge-sharing, lack of or little capacity-building experienced by Indigenous communities and watershed agencies, and barriers faced from the rigid framework of the management systems. I found that select water policies suffer from weak enforcement and accountability, poorer or underdeveloped quality standards, and few inclusions of Indigenous knowledge systems. Policies did not account for the cultural, geographic, economic, and societal differences that can impact water management and desired management in Indigenous reserve communities. Policies designed by Indigenous authorities were found to be the most effective in maintaining watershed quality by providing detailed information about water values, protection, management, and enforcement protocols while respecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as their knowledge, and cultural practices. The data I collected for more biological-based studies (Chapters 2 & 3) found weak correlations between established theories and western measurement approaches: precipitation patterns, nutrient concentrations, and cyanobacterial growth. These results emphasize that previous water quality monitoring methods may no longer be viable, and continuous place-based monitoring of nutrients and cyanobacteria within and outside reserve boundaries in watersheds is necessary as a preventative method to reduce potential health threats. With some suggested improvements, community science methods can be used to alleviate capacity issues and provide an opportunity for collaboration and knowledge-sharing among participating groups in a watershed. For watershed management to improve in watersheds with Indigenous communities, there should be more effort on recognizing when all Cultural Theory Ways of Organizing are represented in collaboration across watershed stakeholders and rights-holders. Canadian watershed management needs to shift from a rigid hierarchical structure to an inclusive adaptive one embracing multiple ways of organizing to better manage changing environmental and social conditions