REIA / Muskowekwan First Nation
REIA is Muskowekwan First Nation's ecosystem restoration and monitoring program. We work on the health of the water, the soil and the living things that depend on both, and we keep the record of whether it is working.
The place
Muskowekwan sits in the Touchwood Hills Upland, in the band of Aspen Parkland that runs between open prairie to the south and boreal forest to the north. The Nation holds three reserves: Muskowekwan No. 85 near Lestock, Last Mountain Lake No. 80A, and a share of the Treaty Four Reserve Grounds No. 77.
Underneath it is glacial till, which left the landscape pocked with undrained depressions. Those are the prairie potholes, and they are why this part of the world matters so much to waterfowl and shorebirds. The soils between them are black chernozems, among the most fertile in Canada, which is also why so much of the parkland was broken for crop.
Before that, this was a mosaic: aspen bluffs scattered through rough fescue grassland, bur oak along the river valleys. Some of that mosaic is still here. Most of it is not.
The parkland as it is now: quarter sections of crop and pasture, with prairie pothole wetlands and their alkali rims surviving in the low spots between them.
What is changing
Grassland is the most converted major ecosystem on the continent, and the species that depend on it have gone down with it.
Those numbers are national, and they describe exactly what has happened here. The parkland broken for crop took the fescue grassland with it. The wetlands drained to move water off farmland faster took the potholes. What is left is fragmented, and fragments hold fewer species than the same area held when it was whole.
Salinity compounds it. Across the prairies, clearing deep-rooted vegetation raised water tables and brought dissolved salts to the surface, leaving saline patches where little will grow. It is a slow problem and a reversible one, but only if something with deep roots goes back in the ground.
Water and salt
The Quill Lakes are an endorheic basin. Water arrives and leaves almost entirely by evaporation, so the salt stays and concentrates. Since 2005, above-average precipitation has raised them by roughly seven metres. They now cover around 635 square kilometres, and they are close to overflowing the height of land into the Last Mountain Lake watershed.
That matters to this Nation directly. Muskowekwan holds reserve land at Last Mountain Lake. And Last Mountain Lake is not an ordinary prairie lake: the bird sanctuary at its north end, established in 1887, is the first federal bird sanctuary in North America, and a National Historic Site since 1987. More than 280 bird species have been recorded there, among them nine of Canada's threatened or endangered species including whooping crane, piping plover, burrowing owl and peregrine falcon.
A proposal to divert water out of the Quill basin through Kutawagan Creek drew a call for a hold from the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations in 2015, and did not proceed. The underlying situation has not gone away.
We keep our own measurements so that when the question is asked, the answer already exists.
Successive shorelines of a rising saline lake. Each band is more flooded land and more concentrated salt, and on a closed basin there is no outlet to relieve it.
The work
Water, soil, living things and climate are not separate problems here, and the field year does not divide them up the way a textbook does. The work is organised by season, because that is when each part of it is possible.
The year comes back around, and that is the unit of measurement. A single reading says almost nothing. The same reading in the same place over many turns of the seasons is what becomes knowledge.
Rooting depth, shallow annual crop at left against native parkland species at right. The difference is why grassland restoration moves soil carbon, water holding and salinity together rather than one at a time.
Restoration
Annual crops root down a few inches. Native parkland species root down metres, and they build soil the whole way. That root mass is where carbon is stored, where water is held through a dry August, and where rising salt gets pushed back down.
So the work is unglamorous and slow. Native seed in the right places. Planting along water margins. Letting wetland edges recover instead of squaring them off. Then several seasons of waiting before the measurements say anything useful at all.
We publish methodology and we publish uncertainty. If a planting fails, the record says it failed. That is the only way a long environmental record is worth keeping.
How we work
Build the long baseline. Federal hydrometric and climate records establish what normal has looked like here across decades. That context is free, it exists today, and it is what lets a reading taken this spring mean anything at all.
Measure in the field. Guardians sample water, soil and vegetation on a seasonal schedule. Nothing enters the record without a person, a date and a location attached. Public satellite imagery fills in between visits.
Look ahead carefully. Climate inputs let us project conditions weeks out, which matters when planning a planting. Forecasts guide the Nation's own decisions. The work never declares water safe, and the absence of a warning is never an all clear.
Report what happened. Results are published against the baseline with method and uncertainty stated, including the results that did not work.
Drainage structure. Where water moves determines where salt collects and which restoration work is worth doing first.
Our data
Environmental data about Indigenous land has a long history of being collected by outsiders and kept by them. This one is ours.
These are absent from the work entirely, not blurred and not hidden behind a login. A blurred marker still tells an outsider that something is there and roughly where. Traditional knowledge is never used as training data. It stays its own knowledge system, on its own terms, and it guides the work rather than being absorbed into it.
Who holds this
Three bodies hold different parts of it, and the division between them is written down rather than assumed.
Sets the protocol for what is recorded, what is left alone, and what returns to the community rather than going out. Chooses the indicator species alongside the technical team.
Approves the annual plan, decides what is published, and answers every outside request for data. Nothing leaves the Nation without Council.
Guardians, the water technician and the coordinator run the seasonal schedule, take the readings, and keep the record honest.
Where this is going
Set with Council, reported against publicly every year, and revised only in the open. A goal without a number and a year is a sentiment.
Native seeding and wetland margin recovery, measured against the baseline rather than counted by acres planted.
Water, soil and vegetation plots sampled on a fixed seasonal schedule, enough to say something defensible about the whole territory.
Guardians and environmental technicians from the community, certified and paid, running the programs themselves.
Partners and supporters
Research partners, funders and neighbouring Nations working on the same questions. Support is acknowledged here and in every report.
The people
Environmental work on First Nations land is too often done by contractors who arrive, sample, and leave with the data. The intent here is the opposite.
Seasonal programs for youth, out on the land, learning what grows here and what is measured.
Field protocol, sampling method, species identification, and the data discipline a long record depends on.
Recognised technical credentials that hold their value anywhere, not only on this project.
Environmental technician roles with the Nation, running the programs rather than assisting someone else's crew.
Get involved
We are early, and we would rather talk to people now than present a finished thing later.
If you are a member of the Nation, or you work in parkland ecology, wetland science, restoration or Indigenous environmental stewardship, we are glad to walk through what we are building.
Ask a question →We are looking for research partners in soil science, wetland and salinity work, and grassland restoration, and for other Nations doing this who want to compare notes without giving up ownership of the result.
Start a conversation →Funding goes to native seed and planting, field equipment, Guardian wages and training, and the analysis that turns measurements into decisions. We can share a budget and what each stage costs.
Request the funding brief →Or write to us directly at info@reia.ca.