Supporting Indigenous Women in Transforming Conservation

The Supporting Indigenous Women in Transforming Conservation campaign is being established to honour and celebrate the legacy of late Cheryl Chetkiewicz, Ph.D. who strived to advance equitable and respectful relationships with Indigenous allies throughout her career in conservation. The campaign, conceived under Cheryl’s guidance during the last phase of her life, will support Indigenous women-led initiatives that revitalize and sustain healthy and bioculturally-resilient First Nations communities and territories for future generations. The campaign will mobilize financial and technical resources to enable culturally appropriate training, mentorship, community-building, and networking opportunities, while nurturing communities of practice that assist Indigenous women in their work transforming conservation. The funds raised through this GoFundMe campaign will be donated to the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada (the organization where Cheryl worked most of her career) that is advancing this critical work in a respectful partnership with Indigenous Leadership Initiative.

CHERYL CHETKIEWICZ, PhD: Portrait of a Career

After earning a B.Sc. in Zoology from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, in 1990, Cheryl followed with a Master’s of Science from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks in 1993 entitled: Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) calf productivity and survival on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska. In 2008, after almost a decade’s work, she was awarded a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Alberta. Her thesis was entitled Conservation corridors for carnivores: integrating pattern and process in the Canadian Rocky Mountains.

Such dry recitation hides, of course, a lifetime of experience, the faces and voices of those who influenced her and those she influenced, and years of field experience.

Looking over the long trajectory of Cheryl’s career, one thing that stands out is the incredible range of places, wild and not, where she has lived (England, Zambia, Canada, and the US), studied (University of Alberta, Edmonton, University of Calgary, University of Alaska, Fairbanks), travelled (Peru, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Russia, France, Italy, etc.), and most importantly whose peoples she was honoured to support and work with (Inupiaq of Alaska’s Seward Peninsula, Gwich’in of Canada’s Northwest Territories, Ribeirinhos of Brazilian Amazon, First Nations of Northern Ontario, and Piikani First Nation of Southern Alberta).

While she may have journeyed widely, the reason she went to all of these places can be summed up in a few words – a fierce passion for Nature and respect for its original stewards – the Indigenous Peoples who care for their ancestral lands and waters.

In some ways, Cheryl’s career might be described as a series of stepping stones taking her from one side of the pond with both feet deeply planted in wildlife biology to, with each hop taken, an ever-firmer embrace of Indigenous-led conservation, a sometimes-controversial professional stance.

Her early passion was caught by a journalist in a 2004 article for The Edmonton Journal in a mid-career reflection on of Cheryl’s research catching, collaring, and tracking mountain lions in Southern Alberta as part of her Ph.D. research:

"Born in England, Cheryl was five years old when she moved to Zambia with her family, where she was introduced to an enchanting natural world of hippos, elephants, and wild dogs. 'Those early experiences inspired me to become a biologist,' she said. 'But it was the big carnivores that fascinated me the most. Unfortunately, they’re the ones that are always getting into trouble because they are dangerous and they often compete with people.'”

It seems that, the more she journeyed through these intense experiences—studying bears in Alaska and working with the Inupiaq for her MS, then cats in Peru, cougars in the Sierras, jaguar study involving various Indigenous groups for the Wildlife Conservation Society, then more work with cougars and bears at UofA for her Ph.D. – the more her work brought her into deeper relationships with Indigenous Peoples whose ways of knowing, doing, and being made a deep impact on her thinking. Not long after finishing her Ph.D., she took on a more squarely policy-based conservation job with the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, in northern Ontario, eventually becoming its Director, Indigenous Communities and Conservation. Getting there was a long and winding road, with some serendipity along the way.

As her Ph.D. advisor, Dr. Boyce observed, “Cheryl applied for a black bear study, but I selected someone else. But she wanted to come anyway, and we came up with a corridors project for her Ph.D. working with cougars and grizzly bears in Crowsnest Pass and Canmore.”

“Working with cougars and grizzly bears” hides a multitude of sometimes obscure and arcane skills (biotelemetrist!) and talents that she had already accumulated. She could: plan, pack, and organize expeditions involving often complex transport into hard-to-get places; set up systems for data collection anticipating all the equipment the field team might need; master the complex art of shooting with a tranquilizer dart and, often more difficult, secure the often uncooperative mountain lion, bear, reindeer so it did no harm to itself or others and could be safely released after data collection; deploy GPS-tracking collars and data collection devices in difficult circumstances and conditions. And do this often while supervising and training students and local helpers. These are just a few of her field talents. Once in the wilderness, whether tundra or jungle, others relied on Cheryl’s intelligence, resources, and just plain grit when things, as they will, went wrong.

EarthWatch volunteers Mike and Sally Outibridge shared these memories from a project collaring wild cats in 1994 in Northwestern Peru Biosphere Reserve. Their story begins as they are obliged to move from town out into the jungle as their “transport” to the jungle research site keeps on shedding wheels. This is from a letter they wrote to her recently.

“… we provided rudimentary lighting, a shower and safe toilet facilities, for the rest of the volunteers. We passed our time constructing cages, placing chickens inside as bait and then hiking into the hot humid forest to place them. You then taught us how to use the telemetry equipment, but as we had no cats to track, we collared each other and played a high-tech game of hide and seek, in the surrounding forest.

We spent a happy (in retrospect) two weeks in this beautiful part of Peru and for a few days we were trusted with seeking out a new site for the relocated research station, the current one being on the main cattle rustling route.

Such happy memories we have cherished for nearly 30 years. Knowing the phenomenal woman you are has given us some fantastic experiences and memories which we dine out on to this day.”

In sharing their thoughts about Cheryl’s work life, one of the recurring themes from colleagues and students, for some of whom she was a first supervisor, was her deep and very personal commitment to helping others, a profound duty of, as a conservation scientist, not just stewardship but also practicing science through a lens of social justice, particularly when it came to Indigenous Peoples reclaiming their rights. In Canada, this happened in earnest almost in parallel with Cheryl’s career. What stands out in these thoughts is how inspirational she has been to so many and also how she seems to have had that magical ability not to show people what she wanted them to see, but to guide them so they could see it for themselves, always and everywhere.

Here are the words of a few of those she mentored and colleagues.

From her Gwich’in work in Inuvik, NWT in 1995, colleague Wynet Smith recalls:

“At the Gwich’in Renewable Resources Board, we had the opportunity as young professionals in a new Land Claim Agreement area, to really explore working in a new context. I always thought Cheryl displayed great empathy and connection with the Gwich'in folks we had the opportunity to interact with in meetings and in the field. She was always attentive and engaged when interacting and collaborating with the Gwich'in beneficiaries. I always think of Cheryl as having both a big vision for conservation but also one rooted in pragmatism and a love of fieldwork.”

From Colleen St. Clair, who worked with Cheryl on a multi-author chapter for a professional review based on one chapter of her PhD thesis:

“Her instructions were to write a short review of a few pages, but what she produced was massive, thorough, and impressive! We altered the target to suit Cheryl's thorough style and she led "Corridors for Conservation: Integrating patterns and process," a review article in the prestigious Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. As of today, that paper has been cited 557 times, an incredible (and rare) achievement with a Ph.D. chapter.

Working on that chapter together was so instructive for me. Cheryl had an impressively thorough knowledge of the literature and she has a talent for synthesis. She is so thoughtful about science; so wise and yet so humble.”

From Megan Hornseth, WCS colleague:

“Cheryl shaped my career in more ways than I can count. Her passion for conservation, especially Indigenous conservation, was inspiring. Cheryl's ability to develop relationships with the Mattawa First Nations in a time when their voices were not well heard was a turning point in my career. After learning about Cheryl's work and developing our working relationship, I realized that I had much to learn from my mentor (and still do!) about how to engage with Indigenous peoples, Indigenous conservation, and integrating different ways of knowing.”

After joining the Wildlife Conservation Society of Canada in 2009 as a Conservation Scientist, she became Director, Indigenous Communities and Conservation, at WCS-Canada in 2017. No one can describe her contributions better than Justina Ray, her boss and a longtime colleague in the trenches of conservation science for more than two decades.

“Cheryl has made huge advances in defining how scientists and non-government actors work with Indigenous individuals and communities in a genuine way and what defines this kind of relationship, particularly in the era of Reconciliation. Right from the start, she had an unusual, quiet and forward-thinking way of looking at this that shifted views. It certainly shifted mine and while I feel well-armed as a result of the years of conversations we have had, I am still a bit unmoored at present. She certainly does not feel her work is done in this area, and I would agree of course. Yet, if we have to carry on without her, we could feel very confident that the foundation she has seeded is solid. It’s mostly the way she goes about this – with a mixture of deep intellect and historical perspective (from digestion of enormous amounts of material), her openness to different viewpoints, and her extraordinarily kind and thoughtful and compassionate personality and means of interacting.

Cheryl has also been an important leader in Canada on processes and science aimed at managing cumulative impacts of natural resource extraction and climate change. This includes her work in Alberta through the lens of species for her Ph.D. and then in northern Ontario where she has done some seminal work on the topic in the context of the proposed Ring of Fire development in north-central Ontario. She has been a model for applied ecology in conservation and the science-policy interface, particularly related to regional-scale land use planning and impact assessment.”

In the words of Donald Reid, WCS Canada Emeritus Scientist, who has worked alongside Cheryl for a decade, we hear her fierce passion, we see the indigenous advocate, we see Cheryl.

“Cheryl is a person driven by an overwhelming desire to right the injustices of the world. Most of what I know of her seems to be motivated by an impressively selfless set of moral convictions she has formulated in pursuit of this desire. The injustices she has chosen to challenge largely have to do with the colonization of Nature and of Indigenous peoples by the materialist, racist, and rationalist forces rooted in Eurocentric philosophies. She has found a powerful place of hope and inspiration in the professed metaphysical and cultural dependencies of Indigenous peoples on the natural world. This has clearly been a well-spring of inspiration for Cheryl, and she has spread this inspiration to so many of us around her.

Cheryl is clearly a very empathic individual, expressing her care for both Nature and oppressed people in all that she does and in how she behaves day to day. I believe this comes from a deep spirituality on Cheryl’s part, and the realization that some things are sacred. The world desperately needs a better developed collective sense of the sacred, something that Cheryl can inspire us to pursue.”

Chery’s work could also be very technical, taking her into the nuts and bolts of environmental regulation, land use, long-term ecosystem cumulative effects, and associated planning.

Researcher and early colleague Alberta Parks ecologist John Paczkowski relates the primacy of her contribution to Canadian conservation science:

”Cheryl’s work was the first real scientific focus on wildlife movement (bears and cougars). Since then, I think there have been at least a dozen projects and papers written on wildlife corridor and wildlife movement in the Bow Valley, but Cheryl’s work laid the cornerstone for this ongoing work. In fact, right now we are revisiting the updated GPS grizzly bear data to further our knowledge of wildlife corridor use and conservation building upon the work that Cheryl started decades ago. Her contribution to wildlife connectivity has and will continue to reverberate into the future.”

Colleague Matt Carlson points to her work around the multibillion-dollar Ring of Fire mining project in the remote James Bay Lowlands of northern Ontario. This project neatly captures the intertwined conflict of First Nations’ rights and needs played against Canada’s need for copper, cobalt, and nickel as it transitions to a greener economy.

Matt was teaching Cheryl how to use ALCES, a landscape simulation model, to investigate cumulative effects of the project on the surrounding environment in northern Ontario.

“Cheryl’s contribution [to Canadian conservation science] was to demonstrate the need for strategic regional land use planning in Ontario’s Far North. It is one of the most intact ecosystems on earth and also home to the Ring of Fire, the potentially massive mining development. Cheryl has dedicated years of her career to tirelessly push for comprehensive land use planning for the region before it is opened up to large scale development. The existing regulatory regime is insufficient in this regard, given its focus on project-by-project environmental assessments. Cheryl has played on important role in having the region selected by the government of Canada as a priority for strategic regional environmental assessment, which should require decision makers to give pause and think not only about economic benefits of developing the region but also the ecological risks.”

Supremely confident and talented in the field, a graceful and inspiring mentor, a thoughtful force in Canadian conservation science, a committed advocate for indigenous peoples—Cheryl is all of this and more.

Amongst her many accolades, perhaps the most precious reflection of her career-long dedication to Indigenous leadership in conservation is her Blackfoot name Ut-ksoo-nut-tsee Aimmonisi Aa-kii-koan (the Blue Otter Woman), gifted in a ceremony by dear friends and Piikani elders Ira and Ruth Provost in celebration of her indefatigable spirit, love for Nature, and respect for Indigenous Peoples.

“Ruth and I adopted Cheryl into our Blackfoot way of life through ceremony, we captured her kindness and pursuit of a good way of being,” explains Ira Provost. “Cheryl is a guide and a lady of an immense and beautiful spirit; she will always have a seat in our camp and be free to belong to our way of life.”

Valérie Courtois, Executive Director, Indigenous Leadership Initiative, reflected in her letter to Cheryl, “I can't thank you enough for being the ally you've been for Indigenous rights, Indigenous-led conservation and stewardship over the years, and for having done that with your whole self. Cheryl, you rock!”

Shaunna Morgan Siegers, Valérie’s colleague at the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, wrote to Cheryl, “You are a perfectly suited ally for Indigenous peoples: a friendly, kind, compassionate and humble soul. You bring your scientific intellect and orderly thinking to the table and respect Indigenous knowledge and storytelling traditions.”

Jennifer Simard, a Moose Cree First Nation ecologist, told Cheryl, “You are the first western accredited scientist that I met who showed deep appreciation of our Illilewuk knowledge, someone who gave me hope that collaboration was possible and hell yeah-- we are achieving it with your colleagues and friends. At a time when I was about to pivot and go back to school, you came along and helped to spearhead this new relationship with WCS which continues to blossom with each season. I can't express how grateful I am, Mikwec Love.”

Cheryl is survived by her son, Aidan Raygorodetsky, her husband and soulmate Gleb Raygorodetsky, her father, Jan and brother Chris Chetkiewicz.

Though dearly missed, she lives on in the contributions she has made, the students she has guided, and the deep respectful relationships she has nurtured with First Nations' communities, leaders, and practitioners of conservation.