Forestry careers balance environment and economics

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The National Aboriginal Forestry Association wants more Aboriginal people working in high-skilled forestry careers.

With only 32 Aboriginal professional foresters in Canada, compared to 12,000 non-Aboriginals, Natives face formidable barriers to full participation in forestry's economic spin-offs, insiders say. If they expect to make resource development decisions and get their fair share of the profits from forestry operations, they'd better get the education and training that will put them on a level playing field with the ones who are benefiting now.

That's why the association is calling for an additional 500 Aboriginal professional foresters over the next 10 years.

Their Web site lists about 30 highly specialized jobs awaiting graduates.

For the fortunate few already working beyond the technician level, a forestry career can be what you make it.

Peggy Smith, a Metis of Cree heritage from northwestern Ontario, decided in her late 30s that she'd had enough of being a secretary after 17 years.

"I decided I wasn't using my potential to its fullest." The pay wasn't great either.

Forestry was a natural choice she said, because her father was a logger and she grew up in the bush. She had also studied Canadian and Aboriginal history and had an interest in environmental issues.

"Forestry just seemed to be a place where all those things came together. It was a way for me to come home, because I had been away from here for a long time."

Smith only had a high school education and had taken no sciences beyond general Grade 9.

On the plus side, she had been a good student with an ability to memorize.

So she took high school calculus and chemistry at summer school and night school to qualify for the four-year forestry program at Lakehead University. She breezed through chemistry, which involves a lot of memorization, but struggled with calculus.

The first year of university in 1987 was "a shock." The heavy workload with the emphasis on math and science made Smith "literally sick to my stomach" through her first year, and she nearly quit. She credits getting a lot of help with math and statistics from much younger fellow students, as well as strong family support, for seeing her through.

She paid for her education with money she had saved from her pension fund, plus she worked part-time jobs. Smith graduated in 1991.

She said previously she was a person who would take on too much, "flit from one thing to another" and didn't finish things.

University "turned it around" for her. She said the struggle helped her overcome a lot of bad habits.

"I stuck with it. I applied myself. I finished."

Now at age 50, Smith has been on the faculty of forestry and the forest environment at Lakehead University since August 2000, and is finishing her PhD with the University of Toronto. Her job is "to develop an Aboriginal program within the faculty of forestry."

She's starting with a single course, called "Aboriginal peoples in a forest environment," being offered the first time now, which she hopes will expand to a full program.

Forest issues "are becoming so important that we feel that both Aboriginal students and non-Aboriginal need to have an understanding about what these issues mean," said Smith.

These issues include Aboriginal and treaty rights, Aboriginal involvement in forest management planning, consultation, protection of traditional land-use practices such as hunting, trapping, fishing and gathering, and the inclusion of Aboriginal values, such the protection of sacred and cultural sites, in forest management planning.

Smith will take her course to the Canadian Forestry Accreditation Board, which accredits all forestry schools offering professional forestry degrees in Canada, and ask the board to adopt a core curriculum on Aboriginal peoples and forest issues that will become mandatory for all forestry students.

Ken Van Every, from the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario, has a bachelor of science in forsstry and is working on his master's degree at Lakehead University part-time. He has worked with a consulting firm since graduating in 1998 and is back at school to enhance his career options. He said he's noticed that non-Native people who work in his field mostly have their master's and "their analytical skills are a bit better honed than mine are right now."

Van Every's goal when he gets his advanced degree is either to start his own consulting company, or work for industry for a while first to get a better understanding of the non-Native approach.

He said one of the unique challenges for an Aboriginal person working in forestry is that "non-Native people you deal with sort of expect you to solve some of the First Nation problems."

On the other hand, "your community, they expect you to help develop economic opportunities and things like that, so it is not as simple as some of the other jobs. There's added pressure there."

Van Every said with some irony that one of the best things about his job is supposed to be working out in the bush, but "actually, as a registered professional forester you don't get out in the bush. You sit in front of your computer."

But what he likes about consulting is the "ever-changing" aspect of the work.

"I'm not just stuck writing plans or watching machinery harvest wood. I can do all that, but I've also worked with some First Nations, trying to help them get going. And that's where I sort of see my role, as facilitating that or providing services to First Nations to help get them get started."

Another role for Aboriginal foresters is to take knowledge back to their communities about forestry practices, Van Every said. Sometimes they "just see the impact of forestry. They may not appreciate or understand the long-term goals or that there is long-term strategies for sustainability-that the forest resource is sustainable, if managed properly."

Van Every conceded sustainability is "a tough sell to a lot of trappers, especially if the have traditional trapping areas. I think forest management to date hasn't really addressed it all that well."

Corporate interests don't always appreciate how large an economic component trapping is to some Aboriginal communities, he explained. "So I think as an Aboriginal forester, you could bring some perspective as to the importance of (traditional activities)," Van Every said, and help "ease attitude adjustments on both sides."

An excellent article on what prospective forestry students should know about this science career is on the Web at www.fsccanada.org. Go to References and Documents and then to the Capacity Building section.