Practicing conservation differently: Reflections of a PhD candidate on a visit to the proposed National Urban Park in Windsor

Written by Allison Bishop (she/her), a third-year doctoral candidate in the SOPR program and is the Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership Manager. Allison’s doctoral work is focused on helping to deepen decolonial change within the conservation sector in Canada.

Landscape photo with water in the foreground to the left, a brick pathway on the right, and tall buildings on the horizon.
A photo of Waawiiaatanong Ziibii (the Detroit River) at dusk. What is colonially known as Windsor, Ontario, is on the left, and Detroit, Michigan, is on the left.

Have you ever visited a new place and left feeling that you are a little better off than when you arrived? Like the visit was good medicine you didn’t know you needed? This was my experience as a guest of the National Urban Park Hub (NUPH; “the Hub”) at the University of Windsor in early November.

The Hub is situated in the territory of the Three Fires Confederacy (Ojibway, Odawa, and Potawatomi) and the traditional hunting ground of the Haudenosaunee. It is located near Waawiiaatanong Ziibii (the Detroit River), which means “where the river bends” in Anishinaabemowin (the Ojibwe language). This was my first time visiting this part of the Great Lakes basin – a flat landscape with few trees remaining, beautiful turquoise blue waters, and stunning sunsets.

What stood out to me most about my visit was the love and care our hosts extended to me as a guest, to one another as community members, and to the more-than-human relations in the place they call home. It was a nourishing visit (in more ways than one!), and I was grateful for the co-learning opportunity.

What is a National Urban Park?

National Urban Parks are an initiative of Parks Canada. First announced in 2021, Parks Canada aims to work with Indigenous Peoples and other local partners to create a network of National Urban Parks in Canada’s largest urban centers. While each National Urban Park will be different, they share a collective vision of “conserving nature, connecting people with nature, and advancing reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.” Rouge National Urban Park is the first National Urban Park in Canada. The 2021 federal budget committed to creating a network of up to six National Urban Parks by 2025, and Parks Canada is currently supporting local partners in six urban areas to explore the potential for a National Urban Park. The December 2021 mandate letter included a commitment to 15 National Urban Parks, so this program may expand significantly in the coming years.

One of the candidate sites currently being considered for a National Urban Park is the Ojibway Prairie Complex in Windsor, Ontario. This National Urban Park is now in the planning phase which is meant to facilitate decisions about the park vision, the governance model, and the park boundary while continuing public engagement, preparing a draft budget, and beginning initial operational planning. This is also the stage where a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is signed between Parks Canada and key partners. For Indigenous Nations and their governments, this is a very important stage to ensure Indigenous priorities are foregrounded.

The foregrounding of Indigenous Peoples in conservation is significant because conservation has been and continues to be used as a means of displacing Indigenous Peoples from their territories in the name of protecting an imagined pristine and untouched wilderness. This is called fortress, or colonial conservation, which creates imagined, state-enforced boundaries limiting and controlling who can access land and under what conditions. These practices have also erased Indigenous contributions to co-creating landscapes that support an abundance of life, including human life. This can be exacerbated in urban landscapes, which are often not seen as Indigenous territories by the broader settler public, and where parks often foreground human recreation rather than ecological biodiversity.  

Indeed, when Point Pelee National Park was created, the Anishinaabeg Peoples of Caldwell and Walpole First Nations were forcibly removed from the Land by settlers and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to make way for the park. These Nations are now at the table with Parks Canada and provincial and municipal partners to co-create a shared vision of what a National Urban Park in Windsor could look like, and how reconciliation can be actively practiced in the ongoing care-taking of these lands.

Learn more:

Read Canada’s National Parks are Colonial Crime Scenes by Robert Jago

Read Lessons from Parks Canada’s History Inform New Paths through the National Urban Parks Program by Asvini Kulanayagam


The photos above of more-than-human beings who reside in the Ojibway Prarie Complex in Windsor were taken by Tom Preney from the Ojibway Nature Centre.

What is the National Urban Park Hub?

My friend and colleague, Faisal Moola, and I were invited to visit the National Urban Park Hub (NUPH) by Professor Clint Jacobs, a faculty member in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Windsor and in the inaugural role of Indigenous Knowledge Connector. Clint is a member of Walpole Island First Nation and is the founding director of the Walpole Island Land Trust. I have known Clint for a few years through my role as the Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership manager, though this was the first opportunity we had to meet in person. Clint was an important reviewer and contributor to a report Robin Roth and I recently published, which is intended to be a resource for Indigenous Nations, governments, and organizations that seek to elevate Indigenous leadership and governance in urban spaces. Faisal and I were also hosted by the broader team that comprises the NUPH, including:

As explained by the National Urban Park Hub website, the collective work of the NUPH aims to:

“Honour Treaty responsibilities, promote reciprocal relationships with nature, and enhance engagement with city building through efforts that center the diversity of lived experiences and historical contexts that define the vibrancy and uniqueness of cities in Canada. The NUPH represents Canada’s inaugural effort of this kind, focusing on the implementation of Canada’s national urban parks policy through co-creation and collaboration. The hub has three core objectives: conserving nature, connecting people with nature, advancing reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples”.

Some of the ways the NUPH is achieving these objectives include:

  • Engaging with Indigenous populations across the city through land-based teachings, fostering intergenerational connections, and partnership-driven approaches to capacity strengthening in Nature-based roles and monitoring efforts
  • Harmonizing environmental monitoring practices and co-creating monitoring approaches to bridge knowledge systems and cultural protocols as part of these efforts
  • Place-making series and engagement events with local community organizations across the city
  • A recent public series called  ‘Park Talks’ to explore and deepen local understanding of the Urban Park Policy objectives 

Most importantly, the NUPH foregrounds respectful, reciprocal relationships with People and Place in all aspects of its collaborative work. This includes the elevation of the rights and responsibilities of Indigenous Peoples to care for the Lands, waters, and more-than-human relations in their territories, including Windsor’s National Urban Park candidate sites and Nature in the city as a whole.

Interpretive sign for the Ojibway Prarie Provincial Nature Reserve
Interpretive sign for the Ojibway Prarie Provincial Nature Reserve

About my visit

After arriving in Windsor, I was treated to a delicious dinner with Catherine and her colleagues, Summer Garcia and Montana Riley, from the Walpole Island Heritage Center. We enjoyed some of Windsor’s world-famous pizza (it’s a thing!). We then headed over to the Ojibway Nature Center and park, where Clint facilitated a discussion with Faisal and me as part of The NUPH’s Park Talks Series, a three-part public lecture series designed to foster community engagement and promote discussions that align with the National Urban Park Program’s core objectives. This includes exploring the intersections of nature conservation, equitable access, and Indigenous-led stewardship and how these principles inform the vision for Windsor’s National Urban Park. The event space was prepared by Elder Dr. Myrna Kicknosway and members of the Indigenous Youth Circle. Elder Myrna opened the event with words of gratitude for the people and more-than-human relations that contributed to the event and guided us through a grounding exercise.

Faisal shared key insights from a recent paper he co-authored with colleagues about the potential for Indigenous-led conservation in urbanized landscapes. I provided an overview of how conservation is changing in Canada through the leadership and advocacy of Indigenous Peoples, making space for a conservation paradigm and practice that recenters the rights and responsibilities of Indigenous Peoples to care for the Lands and waters in their territories. We were offered beautiful gifts by our hosts, including a locally harvested and prepared braid of wiingaashk (sweetgrass), semaa (tobacco), a handmade mug by a local maker, locally roasted coffee (delicious!), and this guide to locally loved places and spaces in Windsor.

Inside the tallgrass prairie we saw dark-eyed juncos feasting on seeds, a little brown snake that had emerged from its den to enjoy the warm sunny weather, red-tailed hawks catching thermals to help them glide on their fall migration, and many beautifully intermingled plant species. We smelled the delicious fragrances of hairy mountain mint and wild bergamot. We saw a witch hazel about to bloom and were reminded of the vital role all beings have in the ecosystem – witch hazels bloom in the fall and produce seeds in the spring, making them an essential food source for seed-eating beings in the springtime. We also walked through the black oak savannah adjacent to and intermingled with the tallgrass prairie. The trees in this space were so gorgeous and the smell of the leaves was delicious. I loved the loud crunching sound the leaves made as we walked through the trail. Black oak trees are an essential keystone species, acting as a larval host for an incredibly diverse range of insects.

Tallgrass Prairie Stewardship

We learned that the tallgrass prairie and the black oak savannah are extremely important and rare ecosystems – and that they require fire to survive. Prescribed burning is a critical stewardship practice used by many Indigenous Peoples that colonial processes, including colonial approaches to land management, have disrupted. Indigenous fire stewardship is a part of Indigenous-led conservation and is an expression of Indigenous rights, responsibilities, and sovereignty. In the Ojibway tallgrass prairie, Indigenous fire stewardship is complicated by overlapping jurisdiction and lack of resources, as burning in a densely populated and fragmented landscape is an expensive and operationally challenging practice. However, the proposed National Urban Park may offer new material and structural supports to help elevate Indigenous stewardship in the park, including through cultural and prescribed burning. It remains a hope that cultural practices can be further incorporated into stewardship of the Land when it becomes a National Urban Park, and across the city where tallgrass prairies stewardship is taking place.

In the afternoon, we were fed a beautiful lunch from a local Lebanese restaurant (so yummy!) before Faisal and I offered a presentation to staff, faculty, and students from the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research and others at the University of Windsor. We closed the day with a circle, sharing reflections and gratitude for two days of relationship-building, sharing, and collaborative learning. After the formal activities for the day wrapped up, I walked back to my hotel along the river with the sun setting behind me.

Reflections on social practice and transformational change in the Windsor National Urban Park Hub

My short time in Windsor left a big and lasting impression. I was struck by the deep love and sense of responsibility the NUPH team has for the place they call home. I saw a community creating conversations to envision and practice conservation differently. I saw the emergence of conservation with the potential to address past injustices, honor and respect Indigenous rights and responsibilities and treat human and non-human well-being as intrinsically interconnected.

These conceptual shifts are reflected in the NUPH’s everyday practices, including:  

  • Gift-giving and celebrating local
  • Pausing before entering the home of our non-human relatives
  • Intergenerational knowledge sharing
  • Integrating ceremony and cultural practices into gatherings and conservation activities
  • Generously sharing food
  • Visiting with one another (humans and non-humans) to cultivate meaningful, respectful, and reciprocal relationships

In her 2017 book, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (2017) states, “Practices are politics. Processes are governance. Doing produces more knowledge” (pg. 20). The Social Practice and Transformational Change program also emphasizes the transformative potential of everyday practices, and in Windsor I witnessed this happening in real-time. We can learn something from the work of the NUPH. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have visited and am excited to see what new possible conservation futures emerge in Windsor.   

Waawiiaatanong Ziibii (the Detroit River) with the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor and Detroit and the sunset in the background.

Learn more