Maplewood Flats

Wild Bird Trust of BC

Overview


Repairing Relations: Land-Based Learning, Place-Based Healing — To repair and strengthen relations with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation (səlilwətaɬ) by collaborating on a land-based education program for Tsleil-Waututh youth at Maplewood Flats, as well as to support a community of practice for settler-led organizations learning how to work in right relations with Indigenous Peoples.

Project Website

Details


Year

2023

Grant Amount

$225,000

Priority

  • Land Use

Gallery



The 256-acre Maplewood Flats has been celebrated as the only wildlife sanctuary in Vancouver’s harbour for the past 30 years. That narrative obfuscates the reality settler land use practices industrialized these lands only 70 years ago. Before that, for thousands of years, this was stewarded by Coast Salish Peoples. The Wild Bird Trust of BC has now transferred governance back to Tsleil-Waututh Nation community members and together we can implement Indigenous Knowledge in our planning and restoration practices. Support for land-based education is crucial to mobilize the public to go beyond reconciliation and start acting on this kind of place-based redress.

Karen Thomas, President, Wild Bird Trust of BC