The Yuneŝit'in government, one of six communities within the Tŝilhqot'in Nation, has teamed up with Associate Professor John Bass of UBC’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) to develop a housing design prototype with technical and policy innovations related to wildfire-related impacts to be built on the Tsilhqot’in plateau. The housing project responds to the increasing threat of climate change-induced wildfires faced by the community, whose dry climate and isolated location already makes it particularly vulnerable. Fire-resistant housing and infrastructure is just one of more than 30 calls-to-action outlined in “The Fires Awakened Us”, the 2017 Report and Action Plan developed by the Tŝilhqot'in Nation Government in response to the devastating 2017 wildfires (with collaborations from UBC scholars from the Peter A. Allard School of Law, Dr. Jocelyn Stacey, and Anthropology, Emma Feltes).
Professor Bass, who recently collaborated with the Heiltsuk Nation on the Heiltsuk tiny homes initiative, successfully received two grants to support his work with Yuneŝit'in: the Community-University Engagement Support (CUES) fund and the IC-IMPACTS grant from the Canada-India Research Centre of Excellence. Together, the project partners are working on the first stage of the project, which will see the co-development of a design for a prototype home. The proposed research framework hopes to address questions including what health-related problems are linked to wildfires in the community, how ventilation, air filtration and monitoring (or other) instruments can address these problems and how fire- and mold-resistant building materials address these health and wildfire concerns.
IRSI supported the Heiltsuk tiny homes project and will work with Yuneŝit'in and its partners to develop research protocols and a project charter.