As an early Christmas gift, the paper from Emily Wells’ MES thesis, in collaboration with the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq (CMM), has just come out in Ecology and Society. The open access paper, Mi’kmaw lessons for realigning land relations in Bay of Fundy dykelands and tidal wetlands, is co-authored with Kara Pictou, who was our key collaborator at the CMM), and Melanie Zurba, Emily’s committee member here in SRES. It draws on Mi’kmaw Traditional Knowledge and interviews with key informants to explore the significance of tidal wetlands, dykes and dykelands to Mi’kmaq and how they approach coastal adaptation decisions as a result. I’ll quote from the paper to explain the outcomes, also shown in the paper’s Figure 2 reproduced below: “Overall, these considerations informed a general preference for wetland restoration. Indeed, a few participants considered restoration an opportunity for reconciliation. Mi’kmaw TK holder Ducie Howe explains:”
I know that probably [settlers] are not going to give [the land] back. But they can, as a way of reconciling, reconcile with the land. And do right by the land…that means our medicines that grow in that marsh, and our food, our relatives that need that land to be restored and viable for them to continue… That would be a form of reconciliation.
Figure 2 in Wells et al. (2025), showing the balance tipped in favour of tidal wetland restoration.
