How the beaver is teaching Indigenous communities about ecological balance and reciprocity

From as far as he can remember, Alvin First Rider says there’s been frequent droughts on Blackfoot territory in Alberta, which makes water a precious resource.

“Our tributaries don’t get the water that they historically would have had,” said First Rider who is an environmental scientist and environmental manager for Blood Tribe Land Management. Tributaries are small rivers or streams that flow into larger bodies of water.

First Rider is looking to the beaver to help retain water on the land by building beaver dam analogs — a man-made dam built using natural materials like mud, stones and willow branches — to better manage the community’s water supply, especially when facing periods of drought. 

“It’s basically mimicking what a beaver would do,” he told Unreserved host Rosanna Deerchild.

The structures slow down water, which helps to restore the natural ecosystem and decrease the risk of environmental issues like flooding or wildfires. 

Beavers are found across North America and are spiritually significant to many Indigenous cultures. They are tenacious builders, an important keystone species for the environment and carry teachings of reciprocity and family connection. 

Indigenous land management techniques bring together Indigenous knowledge with modern science to help solve issues facing the environment, says First River.  

“We try to think from a holistic perspective and how we treat the landscape and how we interact with it,” he said.

Over the last two years, First Rider has helped build four beaver dam analogs on the Blood Reserve, which he says has already seen a positive impact from their presence. This year, one area that was previously bone dry was holding water for a few months. The water is important for livestock and farming. 

“It also enhances our traditional plants, such as willows and sweet grass,” said First Rider. “And we’ve been able to see those types of direct impacts that help our Blackfoot way of life.”  

Beaver connection to wild rice

Beavers also play a significant role in Anishinaabe culture because of their relationship to manoomin, the Anishinaabemowin name for wild rice. 

Mickki Garrity is studying that connection for her PhD at the Fairfax Beaver Lab at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minn.

“The prevailing belief is that beavers change the water level in wild rice beds and that can be detrimental to the rice,” she said. Her research is trying to determine if beavers are damaging wild rice habitats or if they can help create the right habitat.

She says even though the relationship between the Anishinaabe and manoomin has changed since colonization, it still remains essential to understandings about themselves and their relationships to homelands. 

“It makes sense that our ancestors obviously understood some of the work that beavers were doing, and saw that beavers create wetlands where then manoomin would grow,” said Garrity.

Displacement and relocation from colonization as well as major changes to the natural landscape from development has affected where manoomin is harvested. 

Garrity sees the pre-colonial relationships as reciprocal. 

“The beavers, the rice and the people were here existing in these changeable, dynamic ecological and cultural systems and relationships for a very long time.”

Restoring beaver relationships 

Breanne Lavallée-Heckert says it’s important to remember parts of history where the relationship with beavers has not always been one of reciprocity.

Lavallée-Heckert is a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation and the executive director of the Festival du Voyageur, the largest Francophone winter festival in Western Canada, which celebrates Francophone and Indigenous histories in Manitoba.

From the 1600s and into the 1800s, thousands of beavers were trapped for their pelts, which fuelled the fur trade. This is also when the Métis Nation was born. 

“There was that demand without any kind of regard for the life of the beavers that were taken to make those materials,” said Lavallée-Heckert.

She says she aims to educate people about the fur trade as a way to honour the lives many beavers lost when the Metis Nation emerged and their relationship with beavers evolved from one as a relative to a commodity. 

“We have to be truthful about how we’ve treated animals on our territories,” she said. “Whether you’re First Nations, Métis, a settler, I think most of us live every day dependent on animals in some sort of way.” 

Lavallée-Heckert acknowledges that she wouldn’t have Métis nationhood were it not for the beavers and the fur trade, but says a relationship rooted in reciprocity is important for both sides moving forward. 

“We need to make sure we’re doing what we can to ensure their survival because beavers have an important role to play,” she said. 

This story is part of a series from Unreserved called Sacred Seven. The series explores the seven sacred teachings and introduces us to Indigenous Elders, knowledge keepers and community members who are putting those teachings into action.