If the caribou help us, perhaps there is hope

I am going to tell you a story that you may think you have heard before. Bear with me. I was taught by my elders that our territory and our people are different and special—that before time existed, something very great allied itself with the Eeyou Cree and had formed a relationship with us. My people come from Eeyou Istchee and our traditional territory covers some 450,000 square kilometres. It includes the lakes and rivers that drain into eastern James Bay and south-eastern Hudson Bay. This enormous territory embraces a wide range of environments, from the salt marshes and islands of the coastal zone to the upland areas far inland, and from the dense, coniferous forests in the southern areas to the sparsely-treed tundra further north. For the Cree, all of it—the lands and waters, the plants and animals—is sacred. In each territory across this continent, whether it is Nunavut, Denendeh, Eeyou Istchee, or any other place, there is a deep and ancient knowledge of how to live in a good way and connect through traditions. We face immense opposition to our responsibility to maintain that alliance with our territory: two conflicting understandings of wealth and land use. Even the most basic primary school history book will teach that indigenous peoples do not see the land as something that can be owned, which must have been a great puzzle to the first European colonizers. Cree poet Margaret Sam-Cromarty defines the relationship we have with our territories when she writes of her parents, “They were the land.” In regards to territorial development from an indigenous perspective, the Crown and all governments must, as the Supreme Court of Canada ruled, “reconcile pre-existing aboriginal sovereignty with assumed Crown sovereignty.” Innately included within indigenous sovereignty is that original treaty with the land that we are required to honour. It is the same obligation we have to care for our parents as we are literally connected through blood, culture, and time. In Eeyou Istchee I drive on logging roads; I see land that has been harvested and scarified. There is a lot of change. Our lands are ruined, damaged. Animals are leaving. A recent study on the three herds of woodland caribou that live in Quebec concludes that the populations of the three herds are no longer self-sustaining. For 40 years I have seen frustrating forestry consultation meetings and heard stories about unmaintained roads washing out, unmonitored non-native cabins spreading, and artificially planted forests uninhabitable by most species. If there is any hope for the Eeyou it will be as my brother Allan says, “If the caribou help us.” We understand the treaty that the Eeyou hold with all entities living in Eeyou Istchee to mean that if recent caribou reports are heeded, all development would have to respect our agreement to live well together. The imperative of saving caribou herds will not only save the lands from environmental and climate destruction, but it will also save humans. This is a modern-day example of the practical applicability of the Eeyou connection to the land, working to ensure that a life and culture-sustaining relationship with caribou—along with moose, goose, fish, and beaver—can be enjoyed by Eeyou of all generations on the shores of lakes across Eeyou Istchee. Reading the report by Mary Simon, the special representative on Arctic leadership to the minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, I hear from the Inuit she spoke with, the same ancestral knowledge of our obligations to our lands as indigenous peoples that I was taught. I strongly recommend that anyone interested in the North read her report. Unfortunately, it is too long for me to reproduce here, but I would like to highlight one of her recommendations. If we are to speak about development, policy, and self-determination in the North, then the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report and its calls to action, and, I will add, the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, “must become both the roots and branches” in the creation of a new framework. Found therein are centuries of collective indigenous knowledge of what must be done and the correct way to move forward. Romeo Saganash is the NDP MP for Abitibi-Baie James-Nunavik-Eeyou, Que. and his party’s critic for indigenous and northern affairs, the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, and intergovernmental aboriginal affairs. The Hill Times

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If the caribou help us, perhaps there is hope

Environmental destruction must be stopped and reversed, and indigenous knowledge can show us how.

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