Indigenous Food Sovereignty: Wild Meat, Wild Stories

26994375_2009511349326194_1462803725111184949_n

Photo by Ceinwen, a volunteer with Acimowin

This week we’re bringing you a radio documentary produced by Roisin Graham. It was produced as a part of a CSL project for the course AREC 173 at the University of Alberta. This short documentary explores the challenges to Indigenous food sovereignty. Roisin interviewed indigenous activist, Nigel Henri-Robinson, and treaty 8 consultant, Jessica Cardinal. They address their experience with traditional indigenous food systems and how they are impacted by Canadian food systems and policies.

download episode 

If you’re interested in hearing more about sparking change in indigenous communities catch Acimowin streaming online, or if you’re in Edmonton tune into our mother station – CJSR 88.5 – on Fridays from 9am – 11am!

Show your support for Indigenous activists across turtle island and come out to the Defender Dance Party in Amiskwaciwåskahikan raising funds for Wet’suwet’en on Friday February 22 at 7:30 until late. All funds raised at the event will be donated to the Unist’ot’en Legal Fund

Advertisements

Dad’s World Was My Refuge

 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Photo by Sofia Osborne

This week on Terra Informa, Sofia Osborne (a Terra Informer herself) reads us a piece she recently wrote for The Tyee, an independent, Canadian, online magazine. The story recounts Sofia’s experience being isolated on Saturna Island this past December during the worst wind storm in BC Hydro history. We’ll chat about the piece, the future of dealing with these massive storms, and journalism!

Download episode now.

Supreme Court rules on Redwater

On January 31, Canada’s Supreme Court overturned a 2015 lower court decision regarding the Redwater Case, ruling that the Redwater Energy Corporation cannot walk away from the clean-up costs of abandoned wells after claiming bankruptcy.

Back in 2015, Redwater Energy Corporation went bankrupt and it’s trustee argued the energy company should be able to pay back their creditors before they finance the cleaning up of old oil and gas wells. The lower courts agreed with the trustee, meaning that energy companies were able to walk away from old wells. The Orphan Well Association and the Alberta Energy Regulator appealed the lower court’s decision, and the case ended up in the Supreme Court, where the 2015 ruling was overturned. This means that now, bankruptcy cannot be used as a license to ignore environmental clean-up.

Alberta has a LOT of abandoned, or ‘orphaned’ wells. Recent numbers released by the Orphan Well Association show that there are 1,553 abandoned wells in the province  that still need to be reclaimed. Sharon Riley, who you might remember from Sofia’s interview about environmental investigative journalism that we aired earlier this year, published a great walkthrough of the Redwater case for The Narwhal. 

Mysterious Guillemot deaths

The bodies of hundreds of dead guillemot birds have washed up in the Netherlands over the past month. It is estimated that 20,000 of the seafaring birds have died, with the cause of death currently unknown. Hundreds of sick birds have been taken to sanctuaries for treatment, and dissections have been performed on the bodies of deceased birds to try and determine the cause of death. Biologist Mardik Leopold stated that the otherwise clean birds were “skinny, with gut problems, which is indicative of starvation”. One suggested cause of this mass casualty  is the loss of 291 shipping containers during a storm in early January. The contents of the lost containers is currently unknown. 

Recompose corpse composting

Do you often think about how you can minimize your environmental footprint?

What about…. after death?

A Washington State bill has passed the state Senate, and is now headed to the House. If it passes the House, it would make be legal to compost human remains in the state of Washington. A company called Recompose, founded by Katrina Spade, hopes to offer people the choice to be composed into soil after they die, instead of being buried or cremated. Recompose has been working with the University of Washington to assess the safety of this composting process in terms of environmental and human health. The process is reported to use approximately one eighth of the energy required for cremation. The Recompose founder states that burial and cremation must remain for those who prefer it, but that the composting of human remains will provide another option for those who are interested in a greener final footprint.

Download program log here.

Asking the questions and LICHEN the answers with Amanda Schutz
person touching stone

Photo by Elle Hughes on Pexels.com

This week on Terra Informa, we have an interview from illustrator and designer, Amanda Schutz. You may have seen her nature inspired artwork and whimsical designs all over Edmonton, particularly at the newly opened Royal Alberta Museum. Terra Informers Charlotte Thomasson and Kesia Dias got the chance to sit down with her and find out about all things lichen.

Download episode.

Headlines

Canada Food Guide Changes 

A new Canada Food Guide has launched this week with updates to both what Canadians should be eating, and how to treat food and meals more socially. Major changes to the guide include three food groups instead of four, a focus on eating plant-based foods, using nutrition labels, and being aware of food marketing tactics. [click here]

Protest in Support of the Wet’suwet’en People 

On Tuesday January 22nd, Climate Justice Edmonton and Indigenous organizers planned and executed a blockade of Jasper Ave and 104th street. The blockade was organized as a round dance and lasted approximately 45 minutes. This round dance protest was in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en people of Unist’ot’en territory. Their land was forcibly entered in early January by the RCMP in order to continue the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

What’s Happening

Keepers of the Athabasca Fundraiser

If you’re in Edmonton this week and care about water, justice, and good music, come to 9910 February 7th for a fundraiser show in support of the Keepers of the Athabasca organization. The show features performances from local favourites Jessica Jalbert, Caity Fisher, Jom Comyn and Feed Dogs. Tickets range from $12-25 and are available on Eventbrite. This is an 18+ event, so sorry folks, but no minors.

Find tickets and info here!

 

Download this episode’s program log here

 

Albertan Youth Taking on Climate Change
pembina climate summit

Hannah Cunningham and Carter Gorzitza at the Pembina Institute’s Youth Climate Summit 2018

More and more often we’re seeing young people in environmental headlines, speaking out about climate change action, and willing to call out politicians and corporations to do what is right and necessary to prevent catastrophic global warming. Greta Thunberg is a great example of a tenacious youth getting the message across to older generations that big change is needed if young people are to inherit a livable future. This week we’re speaking with youth involved in creating change!

Download episode now. 

Pembina Institute Youth Climate Summit 2018

In September 2018, Terra Informers Hannah Cunningham and Carter Gorzitza took a trip down to Calgary to attend the Pembina Institute’s Alberta Climate Summit. One of the presentations featured local young people who talked about a variety of innovative projects they had come up with to assist in the transition to a sustainable energy future.
The Projects included hands-on renewable energy labs on school rooftops, sustainable municipal wastewater treatment infrastructure, and the creation of an indigenous student energy summit. Hannah and Carter caught up with the group after their presentation to get the low-down on what they’ve been working on.

The Green Medium

In October, 2017 Sofia Osborne spoke with Elizabeth Geirl, an engineering student and one of the founders of The Green Medium, an award-winning, youth environmental awareness blog. Elizabeth was at the Youth Climate Summit in 2018 as well. 

Headlines & What’s Happening

Germany Lignite phase out plan: Setting an Example

International Week at the University of Alberta

Download program log here. 

Investigating in Alberta
34911696875_04b93804ca_z

Continental no. 9 oil well at Woodbend, Alberta. Photo Credit: Provincial Archive of Alberta.

This week we present a single interview between Terra Informer Sofia Osborne and Sharon Riley. Riley is an investigative journalist covering energy and the environment in Alberta for The Narwhal, an independent online magazine that reports on the basis that climate change is a real and happening issue.

Read Riley’s story on delinquent oil and gas wells in Alberta here.

Download episode now.

Download program log here.

De-Extinction: Should We Resurrect Extinct Animal Species?

aaa
Giant Tortoise in Floreana Island’s breeding program (photo courtesy of galapagos.org).

What if we could bring extinct animal species back from the dead? This week, Terra Informer Sofia Osborne brings us a story about de-extinction: the use of selective breeding, cloning, and genetic engineering to “resurrect” extinct species. This technology poses a lot of moral and ethical questions—would these “de-extincted” animal species be authentic? Could they ever be wild? Do we owe it to the species we’ve driven to extinction to bring them back? And who should decide whether we use this technology? Listen now to dive into these questions and more.

Download Episode

Reading List: Looking for more information on de-extinction? Check out these reads:

aa
Zoological illustration of Passenger Pigeons from 1907 (Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download program log here.

Myrtle and Charlie Ed, Revisited

 

antiques-prehistoric-art-figure-elephants-stone-45065.jpg

Photo Credit: torange

This week on Terra Informa, we return to “The Ballad of Myrtle and Charlie Ed”, a documentary from our archives, presented by Anthony Goertz. This is a story about discovering a story – one filled with charm, heart, and a great elephant escape!

Headlines cover Canada’s reception at COP24, Chinese internment of Uyghurs and Muslims in East Turkistan, and new research on cooperative bat behaviour. 

Download episode now.

Canada at COP24

Last month, in Katowice, Canada was being called out at COP 24called out at COP 24 in Poland to step up and fill a leadership void in climate talks at the conference.  Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, assures that the Paris targets will be met, but has not yet announced a plan that would come close to doubling emissions cuts, as required to keep warming to one and a half degrees Celsius, as outlined necessary by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report.

Chinese interment of Uyghurs over mineral resources

In East Asia, China continues its crackdown on Uyghurs  and Muslims in East Turkistan, forcing over a million people into internment camps and prisons. Detention of East Turkish citizens secures this mineral-rich region for the Chinese state. Competition for mineral resources is increasing, with resource extraction used to justify the degradation of the environment and genocide of people in poorer nations by those with wealth.

At Terra Informa, environmental issues are social justice issues.  Raw wealth feeds wealthy countries and fuels their greenhouse gas emissions. Poor countries end up the least able to adapt to climate impacts like floods and droughts, both because they don’t have the money, and because their degraded ecosystems are less resistant to change.

News on bats!

In news on bats: a new study shows how, in the face of food unpredictability, a number of species of bats will forage cooperatively in social groups. When food sources are predictable bats forage and eat alone as other bats may pose a threat to the individual bat’s access to food. But in cases of social foraging, bats actively help each other find food sources.

Edward Hurme, a UMD biological sciences graduate student in Maryland Biology Professor Gerald Wilkinson’s laboratory says that the next steps for this research are to look into what strategies are utilized by the bats, whether bats prefer to follow other bats of their own species, and if they can differentiate between individuals or not.

Download program log here.

Sponge Reefs of the Pacific Canadian Deep

glasssponge

Photo credit: Canadian Geographic

This week, Terra Informer Jeremie Mahaux speaks with Nathan Grant, a graduate student at the University of Alberta. In their interview, we’ll hear about the Hecate Strait Marine Protected Area off the coast of northern British Columbia, as well as Nathan’s research on a fascinating and uniquely Canadian animal: glass sponges. Wanna hear about what a marine field scientist gets up to on the daily? What kind of food do they get to eat on coast guard ships? We’ll find out! 

Download Episode.

Headlines

Alberta NDP shelving oil sands emissions cap

Download Program Log.