“Land acknowledgement on your website doesn’t mean anything unless there is action.”

An interview with Sandy Ward, a member of the Lil’wat Nation, mentor, snowboarder, and mountain biker from British Columbia

“They acknowledge they are on the land. We never let them [on it], they just came in and did it. Now they’re acknowledging it, which is the first step, but it’s a baby step. At Whistler Blackcomb, I run the backcountry programme and a mountain bike programme in the summer for Indigenous youth and they do support us with passes, so there are little steps that are happening. But having that land acknowledgement on your website doesn’t mean anything unless there is action behind it.”

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed more and more North American ski resorts acknowledging the native land on which they’re located. So, for example Winter Park in Colorado admits it operates on the ancestral homeland of the Nookhose'iinenno (Arapaho), Tsis tsis'tas (Cheyenne), and Nuuchu (Ute) tribes, while Whistler says it’s located on the “unceded territories” of the Lil’wat Nation and Squamish Nation.

I wondered what was prompting this, so I got in touch with Sandy Ward, a member of the Lil’wat Nation and founder of Indigenous Women Outdoors, who as a teen was one of the first members of the First Nations Snowboard Team, which she now coaches. There are a lot of gaps in my knowledge when it comes to the treatment of Indigenous people in Canada, so I was really grateful for Sandy’s insight and of course the climate crisis came up a lot too. I hope you enjoy this chat.

Hey Sandy, how’s it going?

Good. I’ve been away for a few days guiding at Whitecap Lodge in the N’Quatqua territory. You can only reach it by helicopter, and we were heli and ski touring every day.

How’s the snow at the moment?

Surprisingly good [we spoke mid-March] considering it’s been 20 degrees. After a late start to winter, we had some good snow recently, but then freezing levels shot up to 3,000m.

It was sunny and really warm, so it was melting the snow on all the solar aspects, but overall, it was still pretty good.

Was it good conditions for touring?

No because the avalanche danger was so high, so we had to stick to low-angle terrain. We also had to heli-bomb for the first time ever in Whitecap’s history.

It feels like the pace of change is speeding up. How long have you been noticing the effects of the climate crisis?

Oh, I’ve been seeing it slowly decline my entire life. I remember going up onto the Horstman Glacier at Blackcomb when the t-bar was still there. They had to take the t-bar out because the glacier had receded so much.

And there are runs on Whistler that are basically inaccessible because the glacier has gone and a run that used to be a blue run that is now probably one of the world’s steepest black runs because the glacier has receded.

How are you processing it all?

Of course, I worry about it, this is really serious. I’m on the board of Protect Our Winters Canada (POW), and I advocate so hard for people to make changes in their day to day life but also for policy to change. I went to Ottawa last year with Protect Our Winters to talk to parliament about climate change.

As we grow and as our following with POW grows, we’re becoming more visible to government – we had five meetings with members of parliament last year and they do want to hear what we have to say.

That’s great, though I guess the oil lobby in Canada is quite big too…

Yes, especially in Alberta.

Indigenous people are here to try to protect the land because that’s what we’ve been doing for millennia. But with us not having as much say as we should then issues start to arrive.

When you say your voices aren’t being heard, do you mean politically or in the media?

Everywhere. Indigenous people are starting to come out into the light and being heard but there is a long way to go until we’re actually involved in decision making on our own territories.

Indigenous people are all about protecting and preserving and not taking more than we need, and when you do take stuff, everything is used, nothing is wasted.

Do you feel like Western society is waking up to the fact that’s how we all should be living?

There is still a long way to go, and that’s not so much to do with people’s day to day lives but with government policy and [the power of] big companies and organisations.

How do you feel like the ski and snowboard industry is doing?

I really think about who I represent because I want to be in full alignment with them. I ride for Jones Snowboards and they’ve created this new Re-Up technology where you can take old snowboards and chop them up and compact them and put them in new boards. Arc’teryx, who I also represent, have done that with ReBIRD, where they take old Gore-Tex jackets and create new outerwear, there is a shift happening.

As far as resorts go, we’re seeing a little bit more of an attempt at sustainable practices. We’re losing our winters, so they have to do something.

Were there any visible First Nations athletes when you were growing up?

No, there was nobody. There were three of us from the First Nations snowboard team that progressed onto the British Columbia freestyle team, and I was the only one left after three years, my friend had passed away unfortunately and then another friend went off and started a family.

My best friend was Jonathan Redman. He was an idol and mentor to me and a much better snowboarder than me. We would go out together all the time and just having that connection and history and shared being from Indigenous backgrounds. He had a traumatic upbringing on the reserve.

Once they were gone, it was hard for me to continue on but I knew I had to and now because of what I’ve done we have kids coming up to me asking how they can get a job in the outdoors or career in the outdoors and it’s beautiful to see the next generation coming up and getting into these sports that we didn’t really participate in when I was a kid.

Were you in the outdoors a lot during your childhood?

Well, no on reserve we’re kind of brought up to play team sports like softball, soccer, and basketball but I didn’t really enjoy that, I liked to be on my own doing my own thing. My parents would take me skiing every once in a while, with the school, but we were mainly on snowmobiles. When I was 15, I bought my own snowboard with my own money, because I just wanted to try this thing out. Whistler is 20 minutes’ drive from my house, so I thought: “Why am I not doing this?”

I got into competing as I thought it was the cool thing to do, you know park rats and half pipes, it was fun, but now I just want to get out on my own and be on my own in the mountains. I’ve gone towards this whole guiding career as I wanted to feel safer out there and more secure with my own knowledge.

I did my Canadian Avalanche Association Operations Level 1 and from there I decided to keep going. The learning curve has been pretty terrifying sometimes but I’m really enjoying it and stoked for the next steps.

I’ve noticed more and more North American resorts including land acknowledgment statements for Indigenous people on their websites…

They acknowledge they are on the land. We never let them [on it], they just came in and did it. Now they’re acknowledging it, which is the first step, but it’s a baby step. At Whistler Blackcomb, I run the backcountry programme and a mountain bike programme in the summer for Indigenous youth and they do support us with passes, so there are little steps that are happening. But having that land acknowledgement on your website doesn’t mean anything unless there is action behind it.

What has driven the land acknowledgments?

It was the finding of 215 kids in a mass grave outside a residential school in British Columbia. To this day they’re digging up even more kids, as the truth about residential schools is surfacing. It was genocide and so people are waking up to that and wanting to help out and support. With residential schools came trauma for the youth that survived, and they share that with the kids they have and their families, it’s called intergenerational trauma and it’s very much alive.

What needs to happen at a government level?

Burn the Indian Act. It was created to suppress Indigenous people and to assimilate them into settler culture, so we live under these laws that the rest of Canada doesn’t have to live under.

In the Lil’wat Nation our traditional territories are 800,000 hectares but we were confined to 0.004% of that. We had to get written permission from the government to leave those lands because we were hunting and foraging for sustenance, and they didn’t like that. They wanted us to move more into farming and agriculture and to get rid of our history and culture.

What is the situation with reserves, do people still have to live on them?

They are still there but people don’t have to live on them. It’s very hard to be on reserve because there are so many things connected to government and land in Canada. When you get land put in your name for example on reserve it takes an extra-long time because they are still micro-managing us. I’ve been waiting six years for some land to come into my name and there is no sign of it happening. There are so many things in our day to day lives that are still affecting us because of the Indian Act.

Things are changing. In Lil’wat nation we have control over our natural resources to an extent and the BC Parks are starting to listen to Indigenous voices on what happens in those recreational areas.

You also teach mountain biking in the summer, how is that being affected by the climate crisis?

With the droughts that were going on last summer it was so dusty and scary to be riding in. At the Whistler Bike Park, they had to use so much water from the reservoir to water the trails to keep them from falling apart. That would have been needed for snowmaking, not that we could make snow because it was too warm anyways.

What gives you hope for the future?

That every day on the mountain is healing.

You can follow Sandy on Instagram here and find out more about Indigenous Women Outdoors here.

Other news:

The amazing Dr Maddy Orr, who I interviewed for the last newsletter, shared this interesting piece on the actual carbon impact of using high-polluting sponsors in snowsports.

I know there has been some (justified) controversy about the Brighton and London Marathons’ partnership with the water bottle brand Buxton, but I actually feel like there is a lot of good work going on behind the scenes at London Marathon Events to push for a positive social impact and to minimise their environmental impact.

All the event medals this year will have a QR code that links to this piece I’ve written on why runners, swimmers and cyclists should care about the environmental crisis. In it, I got to amplify the awesome work done by The Ella Roberta Foundation, Protect Our Winters, Surfers Against Sewage, Trash Free Trails, Running Up For Air, Lewis Pugh Foundation, The Green Runners and Trees Not Tees.

I wrote about Sea Sisters, a pioneering surf school in Sri Lanka that’s empowering young women and fighting plastic pollution, for Huck Magazine. Thanks to Dr Easkey Britton for putting them on my radar.

This article in The Atlantic on climate boomtowns was a good read, as was this, albeit less positive, Guardian piece on how the climate crisis will affect our brains.

As ever, please fwd this newsletter to anyone who you think might be interested & if you have any story tips on any of these themes pls get in touch.