“Taking food away from a family is a serious infringement on our rights. Indigenous peoples are, and always have been, an integral part of this ecosystem. The Innu did not cause the reduction of the Labrador caribou herd; rather it’s a result of development, resource extraction, the DEW line and other man made factors. Forcing our people away from wild foods amounts to a subsidy for private commercial food retailers and furthermore results in devastating health and social problems as well as loss of language and culture. – Chief Shawn Atleo
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/February2010/24/c4320.htm
Resource hoarding by the government has been an effective and long-standing means of limiting aboriginal growth and sustainability. While Treaties do theoretically allow for rights to environmental resources, subsequent manipulation and separate government practices have all but eliminated these rights. At best, repeated challenges by Inuit, First Nations, and Métis peoples are required in order to reaffirm those same rights.
The latest stance by Chief Atleo is that The Assembly of First Nations is defending the right of Innu hunters involved in a dispute with the Newfoundland and Labrador government. Newfoundland is upset with the activities of about 150 Quebec Innu that it says are camped out in a closed hunting site.
A Productive Strategy
One reader to the story in the Globe and Mail states “Better for all of us to leave the animals and herds that is [sic] distress, alone and hope for the best.” (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/afn-chief-atleo-defends-innu-hunt-of-at-risk-caribou/article1480716/ )
The do nothing and wait for the animals to die out is not an answer, nor is hunting them to extinction. The real answer is a proactive one allowing both the animals and the cultures to grow. By allowing conservation ranching, as other nations do with their reindeer, we could achieve positive goals. Through ranching, a portion of existing herds with return to the wild of i.e. 10% stock herds annually would provide protection, study, and replenishment of the wild stock. At the same time it would reinforce cultural Dene/Innu traditional skill sets and supplementary conservation employment for the country.
Other animals could be used to provide wild meat stock to other First Nations communities and even a limited number of white tablecloth specialty restaurants. Reindeer meat is believed to be one of the best tasting and highly valued meats in the world.
Canada Shouldn’t Repeat its Failures
In the mid-1950’s the Sayisi Dene of Manitoba were almost wiped out by the federal government act of separating the peoples from their original homes and their central livelihood; the hunting of caribou. – Bussidor and üstun Bilgen-Reinhart, Night Spirits: The story of the relocation of the Sayasi Dene, 1997, University of Manitoba Press
The caribou are a nomadic species and as are the people who depend upon them. The fact that herds travel from one modern-day jurisdiction to another cannot be allowed limit the rights of the peoples.
The caribou have inhabited this country and proliferated in harmony with the native peoples for thousands of years. It is only since the advent of non-aboriginal activities such as oil exploration and mining and the technologies that have allowed for more devastating commercial hunting practices, that species such as caribou have been threatened. It is in the interests of the Dene and Innu peoples to maintain the herds. Cooperation, not conflict, should provide the path to the future.
Proactive Conservation
The government conservation departments in fact do little to actually conserve species. Instead what little research is done is to document and count the falling numbers as the species and the cultures that value them are diminishing. If these governments and their agencies really wanted to preserve the regions, they would incorporate the resident populations in the conservation process.
Rather than hoard natural resources only to see them to waste away in the process, we need a new approach in environmental conservation and economic growth that benefits Canada and all of its peoples.
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