Traditional Land Use Studies
WSA has partnered with First Nation Communities to undertake Traditional Land Use Studies prior to resource exploration in traditional territories.
Learn MoreLand use and occupancy (LU&O) information is highly contextualized. In its broadest form, LU&O can represent personal, group or community activities, behaviours or experiences that can extend over a considerable spatial area and/or through multiple generations. The study may be constrained by respondent’s availability and their ability to recall, time available to conduct interviews, language and/or cultural barriers, and funding constraints. The maps, audio recordings and transcriptions that result from the data collection therefore might represent only a portion of the available LU&O. It is not the claim of WSA that our methods are designed to collect the vast body of LU&O information for a community, nor that we can interpret the cultural significance of all the collected data. The data collection methods described in this section are used with First Nation clients to provide a structured manner for land and resource users to recall, record, and reproduce LU&O information for the benefit of their community.
White Spruce Archaeology Inc. (WSA) recognizes that LU&O studies are an important tool for land and resource management by First Nations communities. Further, that the community may consider the information confidential, culturally sensitive or personal. For these reasons, the LU&O information is the property of the First Nation Community and will not be shared or disseminated without the permission of their Chief and Council and/or their legal counsel.
