Heather House studies full-time through McGill University’s distance learning program, and when she’s not immersed in books she’s raising her eight children with her husband Do not be shyThe northernmost community in Quebec accessible by road.
Feeding a family of eight children, two parents and two elderly people in a remote community where grocery prices are among the highest in the country would have been a major challenge if it were not for access to land preyFishing, trapping and berry picking.
“Most of my family’s food comes from hunting, from the land,” said House, 34, in an interview at the Retro Days cafe in Chickasibi.
The cafe has the feel of a bar, filled with young adults playing pool and snacking on chicken wings, but there is no beer on tap because Chisabi is a “dry” community where alcohol sales are banned. Sitting in the cafe last October, House opened a computer to display a map of active mining claims in Quebec.
“When you look at the map, there are a lot of mining claims in the area of the Trans-Taiga Highway on traditional Cree hunting areas,” he said, referring to the gravel road that starts east of Chisasibi and extends almost as far is spread. Labrador.
“If these mineral claims turn into mines, and they manage to take whatever they want from the land, what land will be left for the next generations?” House asked. “Where will my children and grandchildren go to hunt and feed themselves?”
Where trapping is still a way of life, Quebec lithium project raises fears for future
Real-life Doogie Howser: 9-year-old boy becomes one of the youngest high school graduates ever
There are currently about 400 mining exploration projects in all of Eeyou Istchee, the traditional land where about 20,000 James Bay Cree live in nine communities. With over 5,000 residents, Chisabi is the largest of the Cree communities.
For House, the forests, lakes and rivers are inseparable from Cree cultural identity. Along with her hunter and trapper husband, she teaches her children to hunt moose, geese and caribou in order to become self-sufficient, as their parents and grandparents had done for them.
She dissuades her family from relying on “stores full of processed foods” in Chickasibi, where products are sometimes “stale or rotten” before they hit the shelves because they’re meant to get there. travel thousands of kilometers. That said, the land has everything needed to provide food for its people.
A 2015 study by the Institut National de Santé Public du Québec supported their claim: among Quebec First Nations living in remote areas, “the traditional diet is healthy and high in various essential nutrients,” while “commercial A form-based diet, which is high in refined sugars, trans fats and sodium and low in essential nutrients, contributes to chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
According to public health statistics, the prevalence of diabetes is 3.5 times higher in Chisasibi than in the rest of the province.
House is concerned that the potential extraction of lithium and other important minerals, as it deprives the Cree of some hunting grounds, will exacerbate food insecurity in the same way that major Hydro-Québec projects have had negative effects on local food supplies. .
In addition to flooding vast hunting grounds, the development of the La Grande Complex facilities in the 1980s resulted in mercury contamination of fish, particularly those at the top of the food chain such as northern pike.
A 1998 study by the Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay concluded, “For the Cree, the only way to prevent high exposure to methylmercury was to radically change their lifestyle and reduce their consumption of fish.” “
“When they built the dams, they didn’t listen to us,” House said. “They didn’t listen to us when forests were cut down to scare away moose and caribou in some areas, and now they want to mine for lithium and other metals.”
In 2019 researchers from the Université de Montréal, the University of Ottawa and the Assembly of First Nations published a decade-long study on First Nations food, nutrition and the environment.
More than half of the 6,487 Indigenous adults consulted said access to traditional foods had been disrupted by climate change, but also by industrial activities such as hydroelectric dams and mining. The study also noted that First Nations lack “sovereignty” over food resources.
While pregnant in November 2020, House went on a two-week hunger strike to protest the La Grande Alliance, a memorandum of understanding signed between the Quebec government and the Grand Council of the Crees.
Trudeau visits rare earth element plant as Ottawa OK lithium mine project
How inflation is taking a toll on a Montreal senior who ‘absolutely can’t stop working’
Among the objectives of the multibillion-dollar infrastructure plan is to “position Quebec as a significant player in the global mining sector, including lithium”. The plan calls for the construction of a 700-kilometer rail network along the James Bay Highway, hundreds of kilometers of new roads and power lines, as well as a deep-sea port.
“Like many people in the community, I learned about La Grande Alliance the day the memorandum was signed” and “Then, they promised a year of consultation, but nothing happened in the months following the signing. COVID came and the lockdown started a week after the announcement,” said House.
She wrote an open letter to the Cree and Quebec governments, condemning the lack of consultation prior to the signing of the memorandum of understanding and the failure to inform the Cree community of its contents.
“Remember our grandparents, our great-grandparents and the ancestors before us,” the letter said. “They survived, barely. We are the products of their trauma; we are their voices when they could not speak.
“It’s time to say no.”
During her hunger strike, she only ate broth made from caribou or fish. However, his actions were not enough to persuade Grand Chief Abel Bosum of the time to meet with him.
In July 2021, a little over a year after signing the La Grande Alliance, Bosom lost the election, and Mandy Gal-Musty replaced her as head of the Grand Council of the Kree.
In an interview with The Canadian Press, Gal-Musti acknowledged that the Cree people had not been adequately consulted by their own government before signing the La Grande Alliance.
“Some people told me that they were not familiar with the consultation process and that the Grand Council should have done more, which I also believe,” the 42-year-old leader said. Information officers have been working in recent months to publicize the project in various communities.
The Grand Chief said the impact of mining projects on lakes, rivers and hunting grounds is a “very legitimate concern”.
However, he pointed out that the Grand Council of Cree has already negotiated to protect 30 percent of Cree territory from industrial activity by 2030. These protected areas will preserve the habitats of many species that are vital to the survival of traditional Cree. lifestyle.
La Grande Alliance plans to create jobs in the energy, housing, natural resources and conservation sectors.
“There are many job opportunities and Cree communities will be involved,” said Gal-Musti, who sees the La Grande Alliance as a way for Cree to potentially gain more autonomy.
“It is important to understand that the La Grande Alliance is a memorandum of understanding and feasibility studies are underway,” Gal-Musti said. “Once we have compiled sufficient information, we intend to inform our members before deciding on next steps.”
A spokesperson for La Grande Alliance told The Canadian Press that “feasibility study results” will be presented early this year.
Stephen Blass received support from the Michener Foundation, which awarded him a 2022 Michener-Deacon Investigative Journalism Fellowship for reporting on the impact of lithium extraction in northern Quebec.