Yes. Thank you.
You're right. I come from a strong conservation background. I just want to maybe reorient your perspective around conservation, because while I come from a strong conservation background, it's from the perspective of indigenous communities. Our communities, when they assert conservation, don't do it from a perspective of the big “C” conservation that is likely how many people in this room understand conservation, which includes the expulsion of people from the land. If you look at the Canadian tools—territorial and federal—oftentimes they're based on that premise that for conservation that occurs to protect the land, we boot the people out. From the perspective of our communities, that's actually very much in conflict with the way we see land and the way we assert protection and stewardship responsibilities over our lands.
In our communities and in our nations, when we talk about protection, it really is about the strengthening of our relationship to our land. To strengthen our relationship to our land, we use our land, so we don't kick ourselves off the land. It's quite an interesting discussion point, because it links back to this whole notion of authorities and the assertion of rights and indigenous rights and who has the authority to make decisions over what.
In Canada, there's been a growing movement around guardians. There's been a growing movement around things like indigenous protected and conserved areas. When our communities assert our governance or our rights to protect our lands, it's not actually to kick our people off. We're not threatened by others practising harvesting-like rights. What we're trying to do is assert our decision-making authority and strengthen our relationship to the land. We do that on the basis of culture and language and way of life.
That is the perspective of conservation within our communities, and legislation and the importance of legislating a way forward to recognize the role that ICPAs could play within the Canadian landscape to fit things like 30 by 30, I think, is a really important factor and consideration to explore.