Mountains plunge sharply into turquoise glacial waters. From the shoreline, the rainforest climbs steeply into the clouds, snowcaps peaking through occasional gaps. My attention is drawn to the shore, as a grizzly bear cub appears, its pale-grey face a stark contrast to the almost black of its sibling.
Despite being born in the same litter just a few months ago, they almost certainly have different fathers. To the right, their mother flips boulders effortlessly in search of the quarry beneath – mussels, crabs, clams – left by the receding tide.
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After a good 15 minutes watching from a respectful distance aboard our skiff, the bears are lured back into the forest by the salmonberries whose sweet abundance provides an alternative to the crustaceans and shellfish on the shore. The berries have only just emerged, encouraged by the clement weather, and are nectar to bears building their strength after hibernation.
The bears now hidden from view, I turn my attention to a tree where a juvenile bald eagle looks out from its nest. My guide, Karissa, explains that this tree is at the edge of her ancestral village. While our excursion here is ostensibly a wildlife watching tour, Karissa isn’t just showing us the local wildlife, she’s allowing us to join her on a journey of discovery through her territory as one of Canada’s Indigenous people.
The Great Bear Rainforest
This is my first morning on the delightfully named Great Bear Sea, along the coast of British Columbia, adjacent to the Great Bear Rainforest.
Back in 2000, a number of First Nations came together as Coastal First Nations (CFN), an NGO and partnership that, in 2005, negotiated what’s known as a Project Finance for Permanency, or PFP. In essence, this is a financial model that brings together Indigenous, federal, provincial, forestry and philanthropic stakeholders, and that helped establish a protected area within the Great Bear Rainforest.
In June 2024, in partnership with the government of Canada and the province of British Columbia, CFN announced the Great Bear Sea PFP, a network of marine protection zones in the waters between Vancouver and Alaska. Then-prime minister Justin Trudeau declared, “Indigenous peoples have been the stewards and caretakers of Canada’s vast lands and waters since time immemorial.”
Visitors flock here to see orcas, grizzly bears and whales, but I’m here to learn about how Indigenous-owned and operated wildlife tourism businesses are protecting the region’s wildlife and natural resources.
Indigenous-owned tourism
My first call is with Christine Smith-Martin, executive director of CFN. “We’ve been stewarding our territories for more than 14,000 years,” she says. “It’s part of our tradition.” With activities such as commercial logging and fishing exploiting the natural resources to dangerous levels, it was vital to the health of the forest and sea that a conservation-based economy was developed. It’s pretty heavyweight stuff, both politically and economically. But the difference it’s making is miraculous.
“We protected more than 6 million hectares of temperate rainforest, which is very important to us,” says Christine. Without this original Great Bear Rainforest PFP agreement, she tells me, 85 per cent of that area would have been logged by now. They’ve also created more than 1,200 jobs and 130 new businesses within First Nations communities.
Christine believes the Great Bear Sea PFP will have a similar impact. “Over the next 20 years, we’re hoping for $734 million of economic impact, with 3,000 new jobs and at least 200 new businesses – and more importantly the implementation of the marine protected area.”
But as impressive as these initiatives undoubtedly are, this remains far from a utopia. I’ve come to Port McNeill, a small town on Vancouver Island’s north-east coast, to meet Mike Willie, a hereditary chief of the Musgamakw Dzawada’enuxw. These are Kwak’wala-speaking people, made up of 18 tribes who weren’t involved in the Coastal First Nations’ enterprise.
“The Great Bear Forest South, which is where my tribes come from, didn’t get a seat at the table,” he says. “So all of that logging quota had to go somewhere.” This logging that could no longer continue in the now-protected neighbouring regions moved into Mike’s territory. “We became the industrial zone of the Great Bear Rainforest.”
Despite this, Mike remains a supporter of CFN’s achievements. “It’s a good idea to protect huge areas so that wildlife has a home, as well as the First Nations that live in remote communities, like my people. We need our valleys protected from industry and logging.”
Wildlife tourism is a key tool in leveraging this protection, and Mike’s Sea Wolf Adventures is an example of an Indigenous-owned and operated business. I spend a day on the water with guides Karissa and Alan. It happens to be one of the most spectacular day’s wildlife spotting I’ve ever enjoyed.
From the boat, we spot three grizzly bear families and sit for hours watching humpbacks dive. A pod of around 40 Pacific white-sided dolphins follows our boat, surfing in our wake. We see countless bald eagles and Dall’s porpoises, sea otters, seals and maybe 50 sealions – including a pair of bulls squaring up to each other in a dramatic show of aggression. But the excursion is a lot more than ticking species off a list.
Stewardship over ownership
Over lunch Alan talks proudly about his traditions and how his people have lived in harmony with these lands for thousands of years. One thing that connects with me is his account of how Indigenous people harvest a tree without killing it – they shave the bark to make clothing, rope or tools, or cut away planks, but leave the tree to heal around the scar. For Alan, every action is done with the consideration of the next seven generations.
“That’s a First Nations way,” says Mike. “It was always about the future generations.” I confess to Mike that before I came here, I’d had the idea that First Nations were using wildlife tourism as a way to reclaim ownership of their ancestral lands – that by establishing a footprint for his business that covers the extent of his tribe’s territory, he was able to stake a legal claim to the land.
“See, that [idea] comes out of ownership,” he says. Some First Nations, I learn, believe that they own the land; others don’t. Perhaps stewardship is a better term than ownership. Either way, the more I learn about Indigenous culture, the more I understand how fundamentally they are connected to their lands. And I’m not alone.
“A cool thing that happens is people from Canada and around the world come as guests and leave as allies,” says Mike. “They recognise that this is our territory. The government can do whatever they want but people recognise that this is First Nations land.”
There’s a lot of politics involved in working with the provincial and federal government but, talking to Mike, it becomes clear that protecting his territory is as basic to him as protecting his family. “I’m a hereditary chief, my family placed me here. I’ll exercise that over anything else.”
On the water
Bidding farewell to Mike, I head south through Vancouver Island. The landscape is breathtaking, and I feel dwarfed by the magnificence of the forests, lakes and mountains. My next journey involves a flight through the mountains in a 1956 de Havilland seaplane – and for a moment I feel like I’m in a Tintin adventure. We land in the remote Glendale Cove, where I’m to spend the next couple of days in a floating lodge – another Indigenous-owned wildlife tourism business.
After a refreshing swim, I head out in a kayak. I watch a playful harbour seal and pick out black-tailed deer in the long grass. As I move up the estuary into the shallows, I’m enchanted by a family of mergansers, the ducklings lined up like cartoon characters. The eerie call of a loon pierces the silence.
Back at the lodge, while hummingbirds and swallows flit around the deck, I chat with Merv Child, CEO of the Nanwakolas, a partnership of First Nations that operates a number of businesses in the region, including Knight Inlet Lodge.
Having bought the lodge from non-Indigenous owners before Covid, the new proprietors immediately looked to improve the facility and make it more of an Indigenous experience. There’s wonderful artwork all around – painted masks hang in the communal dining area and a glorious totem pole stands proudly out front.
“We’ve actively tried to hire more Indigenous guides,” he says. “Right now we have three – they’re from the local community and they’re wonderful.” These come from what’s called a guardian watchman programme, where First Nations citizens monitor forestry, fishing and pleasure craft activity within their territories, making sure that tours stick to agreed grizzly bear viewing regulations, for example, and educating outsiders on dos and don’ts. Merv is proud to be rolling out a youth programme, which will bring local, young Indigenous people into the field.
In the morning, one of the Indigenous guides, Harold, leads a final outing. We moor up at the site of a village that was destroyed by a tsunami around 500 years ago, and follow ancient trails shared by villagers and bears, all of whom have been here for thousands of years.
Fresh paw prints and piles of scat tell us that bears are close by. We hike through the rainforest, Harold encouraging me to sample the various berries and leaves that his people have enjoyed for generations, and explaining how they used the trees and plants. Waters gushing from the peaks form rapids. The thought of humans using these paths for thousands of years is as thrilling as the idea of seeing a bear. And then it happens.
“There,” Harold whispers, and I spot a black bear some 50m away, ambling through the forest. It either hasn’t caught wind of us yet or doesn’t care, and I stand, jaw to the floor, watching the animal go about its business. And then it’s back on to the seaplane and away from this paradise.
On the way, I mull over how long these lands were managed for the benefit of all living things and how, in such a relatively short period, so much damage was done. I reflect on something Merv said: “The Nations have taken it upon themselves to use various tools to assert their authority back over their territories, and they do it on a government-to-government basis, by negotiating arrangements.”
This idea of asserting their authority on their territory helps me finally get to grips with the ideas of ownership and stewardship that I’ve grappled with since first arriving in BC. I find myself humming the Woody Guthrie song This Land is Your Land.
In my conversations with Merv, Mike, Christine and other First Nations, they all expressed visions of how this nature-based economy will grow. The idea of an integrated tourism operation that involves many Nations working together is a common thread. As Merv says, “We’re trying to align everything, and ultimately that will lead to great stewardship of the natural world that we have here.”
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Top image: black bear in the Great Bear Rainforest.
