October starts, Snowchange has a North American tour slated for the first part of the month. Pärjänjoki, a sub-Arctic river is emerging in the Landscape Rewilding Programme.
In early October Snowchange will have a sets of events and a tour of partner communities in North America. First visits will be made to British Columbia and several First Nations there. Then there are events in California. Lastly an extensive Workshop will bring coordinators, scientists and Indigenous representatives together in northern Minnesota to plan for the North America Snowchange work in 2025.
In Finland, the Landscape Rewilding Progamme has reached a milestone – 6000 hectares (15,000 acres) over 127 sites owned by Snowchange and over 55,000 hectares of areas benefitting from the work. Pärjänjoki river, a sub-Arctic river flowing over 65 kilometers including inside the Syöte national park has been the focus of 2024 with several sites added along this whole river and Snowchange owning a stretch of the river, now protected from mining and other industrial land uses. We celebrate Pärjänjoki and continue restoration efforts along this stream in years to come.
An American production company PrettyGoodProductions and Snowchange have finished a new documentary film about Koitajoki after three years of work. It is free to watch online.
Seining for a Song is a documentary by the American film director Thomas Miller, which deals with the history, culture and nature of Koitajoki in Eastern Finland.
The focus of the film is the country’s only river seining tradition, which renews the spawning areas of the endangered whitefish population. At the same time, the culture of the villages has changed and the restoration and rewilding efforts are under way.
The film is part of the cooperative’s extensive restoration activities in Koitajoki.
As the late-summer sun sets in the doorway of a hundred-year-old barn on the shores of Lake Mekrijärvi, Eastern Finland, Sutej Hugu sings about catching flying fish in the waters of his home island – Pongso no Tao – which lies in the Philippine Sea some 8,000km to the south east.
Listening to Hugu in a rapt semi-circle are fishing people from across the world: voyagers of star and sea from Taumako in the Solomon Islands; Inuit hunter-fishers from the Greenland ice shelf; glacial dip-netters from Alaska; Saamí from the Arctic Circle, and Finnish fishers from waters salty and fresh, east and west.
This unlikely and truly global community has gathered for the Festival of Northern Fishing Traditions – a unique fisher-to-fisher exchange which offers a space for Indigenous and small-scale fisherpeople to meet in-person, share knowledge and re-charge the stores of care and confidence needed to face up to challenges from climate change to the devastating impacts of industrial fishing.
See full re-cap of the Festival here. See BBC coverage of fishing-led restoration by Snowchange here.
Fourth Festival of Northern Fishing Traditions, conceptualized by Olli Klemola, one of Snowchange founders in 2000s, brings over 40 international and Indigenous delegates to North Karelia to learn from restoration, river seining and Snowchange fisheries. Additionally dozens more will come from the Finnish villages.
Koitajoki river seiners
4th September delegates will arrive in North Karelia.
5th September will be an international ‘Fisher’s Market and Exchange’ in Tohmajärvi, Snowchange HQ including workshops and information booths on all international fishers, Snowchange fisheries and restoration using latest science and traditional knowledge especially from Koitajoki, a wide-ranging restoration landscape supported by the Endangered Landscapes and Seascapes Programme. The day will contain several events relevant to restoration, fisheries and waters.
6th September will be a day of field visits to see the unique river seining in the Koitajoki basin. Additionally the premiere of the Koitajoki Documentary and a public panel will take place in the evening. The documentary captures two years of work supported by Endangered Landscapes and Seascapes Programme in Koitajoki basin and is directed by Koitajoki artist in residency Thomas Miller (USA).
7th September will include visits to restoration sites in the area that support fish, water quality and have included the work of fishers. In the afternoon and evening we will proceed with Cultural Programme including a performance of Jukka Takalo and Heli-Maria Latola, Koitajoki artists in residency, international cultural programme and other events.
The Festival is made possible by the generous support from the Endangered Seascapes and Landscapes Programme and one anonymous funder as well as the incredible efforts of many community fishers around the world who take the time to travel to the Festival from far away places like Western Greenland archipelago, Pacific Islands and Alaska. We recognize these efforts and salute them.
August is here and with that we are only four weeks from the 4th Festival of Northern Fishing Festival! Summer enabled over 400 hectares of pristine and restoration peatlands to be added from Ranua, close to Arctic Circle and Arctic forests in Sodankylä, Northern Finland. We said goodbye to Theresa Neel and Kalevi Veko, two Elders of Snowchange network and look forwards to a busy Autumn.
Snowchange is excited to welcome over 30 international subsistence and artisanal-professional fishers to the fourth Festival of Northern Fishing Traditions in early September! Delegates from the Ahousaht/Nuu-chah-Nulth (Canada), Inuit from Western Greenland, Indigenous fishers from Taiwan and Pacific Islands and fishers from Alaska, and other parts of the North will come together in Tohmajärvi and Ilomantsi in early September. Enabled by the Endangered Landscapes and Seascapes Programme and other funders, this years Festival will focus on the role of fishers and their knowledge on the aquatic restoration and renewal.
In late June we were able to have over 400 hectare large peatland complex in Ranua, close to the Arctic Circle, join the Landscape Rewilding Programme. These Ellala peatlands are important adjacent to Litokaira, over 33,000 hectare protected area, largest of its kind in southern Lapland. Additionally more than 170 hectares of northern boreal OGF forests joined the LRP in July in Sodankylä. This Hämäläinen forest enables direct ecological connectivity between over 90,000 hectare Pomokaira Protected Area and Koitelainen Protected Area – magnificent example of boreal forests central to reindeer herding.
On the Altto-oja ICCA Sámi forest we are having a large week in mid-August with first enabled burns planned and ecological monitoring. The Sámi teams have built traditional shelter on the site and collected Indigenous knowledge of the site for the whole summer. Altto-oja is the first Indigenous protected area ever from Sámi area under the UN registry.
Theresa Neel from Canada and fisher Kalevi Veko, at 90 years, passed away during the summer. Both Theresa and Kalevi have been contributing to Snowchange for over 22-25 years. Kalevi’s work was featured in a science article in the 2020s. We say goodbye to these knowledge holders.
Check back in mid-August for updates on the Festival and other developments.
