From Andy Miller - Staff Scientist

The Seton Community Farm is an aboriginal farm and food security project launched in partnership by the Seton Lake Indian Band and the Wilderness Community in 2005 in an attempt to get more First Nation youth healthy and involved in wilderness protection projects. It began as an offshoot of our project with Toxic Free Canada to help the Seton Lake Band become the first toxic free Indian reserve in Canada!

The Seton Lake Band territory encompasses some of the most wild wilderness areas remaining in southwestern BC in the Cayoosh, Bendor, and South Chilcotin Mountain ranges. The farm project was begun as a wild idea to encourage healthy eating, fitness, and a passion for wilderness among St'at'imc (pronounced Stat-lee-um) Nation youth. It has been wildly successful. So much so that I have spent 12 of the last 16 weekends ferrying international activists from the WWOOF program (world wide opportunity in organic farming) to and from the project site and organ zing youth from the Seton Lake Indian band to participate. To date 55 international activists from 27 countries have committed 2 weeks or more to work on the project and countless native youth and adults have gotten involved. The project has now expanded to include clearing ancient First Nation wilderness trails so that native youth can easily access and use their traditional territory for medicinal plant collection, wild food gathering, and hunting and trapping. First Nation families are housing and feeding the activists and more and more kilometres of ancient trails are cleared each week. It has been an amazing experience to participate in this project. Volunteers from Canada are welcome to participate!