In January, SER2025 Film Festival Co-Chairs Jillianne Segura and Sharif Durzi were introduced to Ryan Deneault, a member of the Skeetchestn First Nation and a cultural communicator, through Cultural Committee Co-Chair Natalie Tashe. Natalie and Ryan quickly recognized how their complementary knowledge and experiences allow them to facilitate meaningful dialogue between developers, First Nations communities, and restoration practitioners.
Over the past year, Natalie and Ryan have made significant progress in advancing reciprocal learning and ensuring the voices, knowledge, and perspectives of First Nations peoples are included in land-use planning conversations across British Columbia, Canada.
Early discussions with the two inspired the addition of a fourth category in the SER2025 Film Festival: Weaving in Indigenous Perspectives. It also sparked the idea to record a conversation among Natalie, Ryan, Jill, and Sharif to share insights about their collaborative work.
In this recorded interview, the group explores how ecological restoration practitioners can strengthen project outcomes by integrating Indigenous knowledge, and how storytelling and filmmaking can help communicate restoration goals to non-scientific audiences.
Read on for highlights from their conversation, recorded on 4 May 2025.
Jillianne Segura
Part of the reason we brought the Film Festival to the first conference was to find a different way for people to share stories of ecological restoration. Storytelling has been the way that knowledge has been shared for thousands of years. We wanted an opportunity for stories to be told, and get people connected through emotive storytelling, which reports don’t quite convey.
Sharif Durzi
Nobody cries from reading a scientific abstract, right? That message doesn’t stick. One of the main focuses of the Film Festival is to feature indigenous perspectives and highlight those approaches to ecological restoration. We’re thrilled to feature the voices of Natalie Tashe and Ryan Deneault, who have high regard for filmmaking as a craft and the art of storytelling. Ryan, would you like to introduce yourself?
Ryan Deneault
My name’s Ryan Deneault. I’m a fourth-generation settler in interior British Columbia and a Skeetchestn band member, part of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation. Four years ago, in November 2020, I sobered up and became free of addiction for the first time in my life after 30 years. That journey of healing led me to slowing myself down enough to listen to the whispers in my life. Through that journey I came back to the mining industry with a much different perspective, and ended in the place to communicate end land use and the incorporation of indigenous knowledge
I was just fighting for my own survival and in doing so, somehow this ripple effect happened when I decided to open and share publicly about my recovery process. I decided to open and share publicly about my recovery process. That was the most difficult public speaking event I’ve ever been involved in. I was shaking, crying during it. The entire room got emotional. I was sharing in a different way, and I kept true to being as vulnerable as I possibly could. That was the seed of healing between worlds.
I’m a person that lives in two different worlds by being indigenous and being British. I see both sides of this equation. I see what happened to the indigenous nations and I also can relate to Canadians when I’m teaching about history through an indigenous lens and about cultural safety training. The one organization lives in the colonial world and the other organization lives in the indigenous world and they’re trying to come together because they can see the benefit of that. But they’re triggering each other and they’re having traumatic responses to one another. And they don’t know why. So, I’m going in there and I’m helping them decipher that and understand how to communicate.
I became comfortable with being vulnerable and navigating vulnerable situations, and I believe I stumbled across the opportunity to build safe space for others. There’s something between the synergy between the way that Natalie and I navigate these worlds that we’re able to influence people from both sides in a way I’ve never seen before.
Natalie Celeste Tashe
I’m Natalie Tashe, Co-cultural chair for Society for Ecological Restoration’s conference this year. I’m 30 years working on the land with a technical perspective and a few degrees under my belt. I have a settler immigrant background, and my relatives were responsible for some transformation of the land from forest to agricultural use. My grandfather shot a grizzly in an area where there is no longer grizzly bear, shot buffalo where there is no longer buffalo. I have that in my history. My dad came from a mining background. Now I’m on the opposite end – now we gotta put it back or do it more sustainably if we can.
Jillianne Segura
We’ve heard both of you describe this beautiful way with which you’re using storytelling within your practice of restoration, not just the reporting on the project. And your roles are in connecting people and communicating which have come up multiple times in conversations in the past.
Ryan Deneault
We had meetings today between Indigenous knowledge keepers, elders and the mining company. They were healing today, and one of the elders spoke for the first time in 30 years in such a setting. I feel like somebody’s finally listening. We’re finally moving the needle. They’re seeing us and we’re seeing them for the first time. This goes much further than the land. This is a human experience. A profound experience for indigenous people and, you know, over the years I’ve seen the breakdowns in indigenous people when they’re trying to be heard, and no one is hearing them. I’ve seen that tragic outcome of a person that feels like it’s just hopeless and insurmountable.
Without Natalie, I’m not heard the same, and I don’t know exactly what that is, but there’s something to that.
Natalie Celeste Tashe
Reciprocally, you’re reaching the nations in a way that I could never do. They seated me with another scientist, but they seated Ryan on their side. For that conversation, they were allies.
And there are some barriers politically, and we must show in the field of ecological restoration, those barriers can’t exist. We got to work globally, and I wanna make that really clear that it’s good when the barriers go down and we’re on the same team. And I think part of it is, you know, having someone like Ryan who’s advocating
Sharif Durzi
How was storytelling and communication involved in approaching that breakthrough?
Ryan Deneault
Well, you know, occasionally, I would hear about this community end land use plan, and I’m like, I don’t remember ever reading that. Finally, I asked what it was, and they said, “Oh yeah, we had that produced by a third party, there’s just not much of value there.” And so, I said, “well, can I have a look at it?”
In reading it, I came across discussion of the four food chiefs. The mine employees didn’t realize that nobody shares origin stories like that, especially on paper and especially to a mine. When I saw it, I jumped up for joy. I said, “You guys are way further ahead than you think you are, but you need to get this right.” To the environmental manager’s credit. They absolutely did. And they ran with it. And they’ve tried to incorporate as much of it into the application that’s going in. And the nation’s reaction to us starting there was profound.
Natalie Celeste Tashe
The fun fact about this community plan – they accompanied it with a film. And this film, like you said, is a very different way of communicating than the document. You know, scientists are good at data and graphs and all sorts of things and sometimes it’s important to tell a story in a different way.
So, for example, in the film, the engineers are talking about the tailings facility, It’s a massive feature of liability risk that the indigenous nations will be left with forever. The engineer is talking about all the engineering pieces, and then he mentions, “Gosh, did we ever see a lot of mice and snakes. Like an inordinate amount.” That is the story nations responded to. And that has much more meaning then, here’s our graphs showing this level of metal concentrates in the vegetation, and this is the water quality and graphs and sometimes you just want to know what does it mean? What does it feel like?
That has more scientific meaning in the indigenous world than any graphs or tables. Knowing that we have revegetation, and we have snakes and mice – that is the story nations responded to. It just shows you the power film and ecological restoration. There is power in film and telling the right story.
The fun fact about this community plan — they accompanied it with a film… That has more scientific meaning in the Indigenous world than any graphs or tables. Knowing that we have revegetation, and we have snakes and mice — that is the story nations responded to. It just shows you the power of film and ecological restoration. There is power in film and telling the right story. – Natalie Celeste Tashe
Ryan Deneault
The engineer was just telling the story of him walking and feeling uncomfortable because there’s a lot of snakes. Not for one second did he think to tell anybody about that because it meant something. When we peeled it back and told them how important that was, I watched the light bulb go on, I watched him change in that moment and he’s going to remember this.
Sharif Durzi
That’s such a fantastic example. And it leads into one of questions I want to ask you, Ryan. You’ve discussed seeing improvement in the use of reciprocal learnings and how reciprocal appreciation for contemporary science and indigenous science has led to an advancement in the application of restoration science, but from your perspective, how can that approach be even further improved? And how do you see the application of storytelling and reciprocal communication be applied to achieve those goals?
Ryan Deneault
One mistake I’ve observed is this western way of being risk averse has caused us to not want to have the more difficult conversations with indigenous groups, while the indigenous group knows these conversations are needed. I believe that harder conversation is how you build a relationship. Taking time to create safe space, build the relationship, and doing your homework – understanding that even though we’re speaking the same language, sometimes we have different definitions for terms. You know what does reclamation mean? What does restoration mean? What does end land use mean? It can mean one thing you and another thing to an indigenous group. And you might be offending one another because you don’t have that same definition for that word, and you don’t even know that you’re doing it to each other. And so those are some of the things that can really help moving forward in having that complex conversation.
To harness storytelling and reciprocal learning I think you must provide the opportunity for the indigenous group to have the time they need to tell that story and trying to get away from the timelines on the agenda. Today with upper and lower Similkameen Indian Band, we asked: do you feel comfortable having this conversation and how much time do you think you need? They spent the next 35 minutes telling us about the different chiefs and how they interact. Even giving us input on how to order discussion of the food chiefs in the document. Prior to that, we were coming from the exact opposite order as made sense to them. It was through them telling us that story that we gained that knowledge. And if we hadn’t taken the time to do that, we would never have understood it this way.
To harness storytelling and reciprocal learning I think you must provide the opportunity for the Indigenous group to have the time they need to tell that story… It was through them telling us that story that we gained that knowledge. And if we hadn’t taken the time to do that, we would never have understood it this way. – Ryan Deneault
Jillianne Segura
Natalie, you’ve discussed the power of incorporating ceremony. Can you tell me about the impact on relationship development?
Natalie Celeste Tashe
I’m going to leave that one to Ryan, cause Ryan facilitates the ceremony. Ryan does ceremony himself and has allowed me to participate with him in ceremony and it’s a personal thing when you talk about ceremony.
Ryan Deneault
It is very personal. Before Natalie and I started working with upper and lower Similkameen Indian Band, it was apparent the mining company had not incorporated any ceremony in any meetings. So is the first place that I focused on. I asked, “would you feel more comfortable if we had an opening prayer before our meeting?” And so we started to do that.
One day, an elder brought some earth and some water to the meeting and wanted that it to have a seat at the table. Because of my respect for their ways, the next time we had a meeting, I stopped and did a ceremony myself, and I brought my smudge, gathered the material, had a prayer and tobacco offering. And then brought it to the meeting.
And what was interesting was that same knowledge keeper didn’t have time to do it that day. And when I brought it in, I honestly believe it changed our relationship. When I was that attentive and I was listening that well, but a part of that’s because I’m indigenous and I completely understood it.
Natalie Celeste Tashe
When we start workshops, we can’t be stuck behind computers. In our first meeting Ryan and I showed up for, we were in a boardroom talking about the land, and The Nation told us, “We want to be outside”. From then on, every meeting we have in person, we’re outside. We will acknowledge and bring in the land, show us your water and we’ll take that time to not just introduce ourselves but introduce the water, the rocks, the land and we do that every time, whether virtual or outside. When indigenous nations come, they try to come prepared mentally for meeting, it’s emotional, and it’s interesting what they’ll bring into the room.
So, for the next meeting, Ryan and I went to the river together, we grabbed some water. Beautiful clearwater, we grabbed some rocks, grabbed some cedar branches. Some other people brought feathers, and we put it in the center of the room
And then someone from community brought a pail of water, put it beside ours and he said, “This is the same river. Look in my bucket and look at your bucket.” and I said, “where did you collect it from?” His was murky with slimy rocks and algal bloom, while our rocks were like mountain clear. And he said “It’s from where those legacy tailings are pouring into our river. I brought the river that’s sick. So, you can understand why we don’t trust the mining company because we have tailings in our river.”
So, he brought the sick river for us to look at. What a profound way of saying it. And so, it’s there’s a lot of healing that must happen in their community, cause they’re living with it. And then the mining companies go away, and the money has gone. And that legacy is a global issue. Everyone has that. There’s not a place on the planet. that hasn’t got that legacy environmental disaster that nobody owns.
Sharif Durzi
As a practitioner, Natalie, you probably are aware of some of the blind spots that the practice of ecological restoration has, especially with respect to First Nations people and indigenous communities. How do you see that proper application of involving storytelling and reciprocal communication to overcome some of those blind spots?
Natalie Celeste Tashe
I’ll give you an example. Let’s use climate change. To address uncertainty, scientists make models – we take inputs, put our logic to it, but we don’t know how accurate it is, right? What the nations will do is say, we’re noticing our fish tasting different, we’re noticing different species showing up on the land. It’s observation. They live on the land they hunt; they taste it. They’re on the land, they’re eating from the land. They taste, smell, feel, climate change a lot more than the scientific models. They’re seeing climate change in a way that can help refine those models, so, take that model input and soften it to what you can add from direct observation, like field fitted. That would be an example of reciprocal learning.
Jillianne Segura
I can’t wait to see what comes out of this and I am a little bit sad that it will only be a small clip because the amount that that Sharif and I have learnt from listening to you guys is amazing. So, thank you for including us and sharing with us.
Sharif Durzi
Well, Natalie and Ryan, thank you all so much for your time. Thank you for sharing your perspectives. Every time we talk to you guys, we learned so much about, about the growth we all need to go through to ensure that we’re doing this the right way. So, thank you guys so much.
Natalie Celeste Tashe
Thanks for allowing us to share it and we learn from you too.
Ryan Deneault
Thank you.