Natives are tired of broken promises
Mon Sep 24 2007
FOR a few years now, a growing amount of summer traffic has rumbled past my dad’s house up in Manigotagan. There are trucks of varying pedigrees, sizes and colours. Sometimes an SUV rolls by pulling a trailer with a boat or a four-wheel ATV loaded on. Many cars pass by, too. Depending on their speed and the condition of the gravel road, some throw up more dust than others.
Some of us have a minor sense of interest in these visitors who’ve come our way. Maybe it’s similar to what my ancestors felt when the first batch of newcomers showed up.
If you take the back road to Seymourville and Hollow Water, you’ll see evidence of an encampment right along the beach shore through the trees. Farther down a couple miles, two other camps — major resort developments really — with billboards pointing them out, have cropped up.
I don’t think there’s been much interaction between vacationers and locals. Maybe someone needs directions to the gas station, or checks out the local pub action on a Friday night. Sometimes a boat tugs a water-skier along the river and crosses paths with a fisherman in a boat.
But now, interaction means friction since Hollow Water set up a roadblock Sept. 15 to stop a new cottage lot development and keep the already established cottagers at bay.
There was talk this summer about the province making lakeside cottage lots around here. I’ve listened to it myself over a few cups of coffee. They were going to turn more of our old growth forest area along the north shore of the river where it flows into Lake Winnipeg into a tourists’ playground. But to me, it means more than that.
Hollow Water is where my grandmother and her 11 siblings were born. The blood running through a lot of the people around here also runs through me.
This land provided food for my family for generations. My dad and many others have hunted on this land. He taught all of us — his five daughters — a bit about hunting, too. This land is where he’ll teach my son how to hunt.
I’ve also grown up eating fish from these waters, just like many of my relatives on and off-reserve. For years, our family harvested wood to feed the woodstove and keep the house warm all winter.
My great-grandfather used to trap and he trekked through much of this land on foot when there was no road, and boats made their way up and down the Manigotagan River and Lake Winnipeg to deliver goods.
Back then there were plenty of jobs at the local sawmill.
Like Duncan Twoheart, who discovered the gold around Bissett, my great-grandpa was knowledgeable about prospecting. The medicines he picked back then are still harvested today by people who know their many uses. This autumn blockade is a great inconvenience for many, and it’s regrettable. But remember a far greater loss is at stake for the people who’ve always called this land home.
Aboriginal rights aren’t outdated or open to doubt simply because people from the outside aren’t educated about their validity or historical importance.
Traditional land rights aren’t unfounded, watery claims. They are rights based on a lifestyle my family and many other First Nations and Métis people in the area have continued to keep alive.
Blockades happen when people have no other means to be heard, and are tired of listening to broken promises. The province is wrong for not having dealt with this matter in a timely manner.
Last April, the province signed a “landmark accord” with several southern First Nations, who are members the Wabanong Nakayguy Okimawin First Nation governments. Hollow Water is one member of WNO.
It confirmed a partnership of sharing and consultation when it came to developing the East Side of Lake Winnipeg. This historic agreement — said in a press release to be “the first of its kind in Canada” — seems to have been virtually forgotten.
Comment by Yeah, Yeah, writing from Canada on October 2nd, 2007 at 9:41 pm:
O.K. , I agree with the fact that the Hollow Water residents should have a say in what happens with there tradional land and I’m behind them 100 percent, but to go and block inoscent people from there cabins, cabins that have been there already before this dispute, this is ignorant and not necessary. How does a group of first nations decide on who they are going to screw over to get what they want?
Why don’t they blockade the government homes or cabins and not the average joe’s?