Joe Wilmot
December 10, 2010
Listuguj

"Don't just take what's there."

Joe Wilmot, Mi'qmaq

The ancestors walked in the forest without making any noise. They hunted according to their needs and showed respect for the animals slaughtered. They protected resources for future generations. Is it possible to develop a form of economic development based on traditional Indigenous values and practices? Plant trees instead of just cutting them down? Restore the vitality of salmon populations by setting up hatcheries near rivers where they’ve been returning for millennia? Make sure that in return for everything we borrow from nature, we show kindness and vision? These are all questions that Joe Wilmot asks himself.

Indoors. Extreme close-up of Joe Wilmot.

Interviewer

What you think your people should do?

Joe Wilmot

Oh! See, you getting political on me now. [laughs] Oh, well like everybody else, I have an opinion, sure. I would, instead of logging, I would like to see people up in, up in our forced areas planting trees. Maybe, maybe tree farm, of some sorts, if it was possible, you know what I mean? Replenishing instead of cutting every, everything down. Same with our fisherman. We could possibly be up river, uh, fish hatcheries for salmon, help the salmon out and stuff like this. Trout, trout need to be, you know. That don’t mean fish farms, I mean, uh, hatchery where, where they would grow them to a certain size, release them and, and they become part of the, uh, product, they become the product. I guess you would say, “Once, once they go out to sea and everybody has...” That’s what I would see happening.

There has been some efforts in that. Uh, we have, we have a boat sitting over here by the bridge who was used, uh, used to, uh to, to grow a mussel farm a few years back. So, there’s some equipment. I’m not sure that anybody still manning the mussel farm, if it still exist. I don’t know, I couldn’t say. Uh, but that was a good example of what could be happening, at least, at least they were producing, they were, they were producing a product that we could all use, uh, and not just take in what was there, you know what I mean?

Because that’s what happening with our salmon. People are just, you know, we’re not, we’re not replacing anything, you know? We’re, we’re just taking. And our trees, our, our forest are good example of this. Just take a drive up, just take a drive up the reserve, go up in the woods up there and you’ll see there’s nothing left, you know? There’s no trees. No, no big trees, like, uh, like there used to be. Uh, it would be nice to have maybe that kind of economic development, long, long range economic development. Maybe more selective cutting then what has been done in, in, in the past few decades, I mean, there’s no trees up there.

I remember, maybe because I was young or something but, there used to be stands of trees, humongous trees. But, uh, because I used to work, my father worked me in the woods when I was young, and I remember we, you know, there was not enough, there was not enough of us to cut down all the trees. But now, there’s more lumberjacks up there than there are, there are, uh, you know, trees! Yeah, they have to go a long way to find trees. It’s the same with salmon. The salmon, the salmon I think, in my opinion anyway, to me, the salmon are not as plentiful as they used to be. Even just going back twenty years. You know?

Is it possible that a fish hatchery would have made that difference for sal, for the salmon? I don’t know, but there’s a perfect place up river, there’re natural places for them to be where just they’ve gone for millennia, the salmon. And to manage these places and make sure that the salmon get up there, and even if we have to do it artificially, but get them up there, you know? It would, uh, one, one ,one, one, one female salmon could lay quite a few eggs you know? And so, if one third of those makes it back, you know, you’ve done something. So I, that’s just me again, I was, a kind of, there is a political ring to that because everything goes into the economic development now instead of, instead of replenishing, you know?

Jocelyn Paul
March 26, 2011
Wendake

"All economic activity revolved around our Indigenous identity."

Jocelyn Paul, Wendat

The production of necessities didn’t only meet the needs of the communities. For some nations, it was on an industrial scale. In the 19th century, the Wendat of Wendake supplied the British army with snowshoes and moccasins, then supplied the Canadian army with canoes. The annual production of thousands of moccasins required very large quantities of moose and caribou skins that hunters and trappers brought back from their territories. The creation of parks and administrative measures have dried up the sources of raw materials and therefore begun the decline of industrial production, slowed the momentum of prosperity and undermined the transmission of ancestral know-how.

Telephone interview with Jocelyn Paul. A picture of him graces the sound of his voice.

Jocelyn Paul

There are more trappers in the Huron village now than we had 30 years ago.

Interviewer

Oh! Yeah?

Jocelyn Paul

Oh! Yes, yes! What we must realize is that access to the trapping territory, became very difficult with the creation of the, the Laurentian National Park at the end of the 19th century. When the Laurentian Park was founded, well look, uh, I mean, they took the Indians out of there. It was hunting, uh... Actually, hunting was prohibited.

Interviewer

Today, this is no longer the case?

Jocelyn Paul

Well, administrative agreements with the governments have been made. There's still a little tension. You see it in the papers, especially when it comes to moose hunting. But, y’know, the Council is trying to have administrative or political agreements with the government so that everyone can be somewhat accommodated. But, for us in Lorette, listen, I was just talking with some elders; they used to go, go trapping, until the 1920s, the 1930s. There were a few, a few elders who still did it, but they were a bit like poachers.

Interviewer

Yeah, that's right!

Jocelyn Paul

They were pursued by the game guards. And then, uh, so, these people, these elders, they clung to that way of life, but it was a way of life that was, that had become, almost impossible to practice. At some point, also, you have to realize that in Lorette, y’know, the production of moccasins, canoes and snowshoes, they go way back. During the mid-19th century, there was an excessively flourishing economy regarding the crafts sector. But also, people in Lorette made moccasins for British troops. They made snowshoes for the stationed British army.

Interviewer

Yeah, that's it, that's it! I heard about it, yes.

Jocelyn Paul

In my master's thesis, I mentioned this a little bit, and I wrote a few other papers, including an article written for “Recherche amérindienne” perhaps about ten years ago, where I studied the issue in detail. As for all the economic activity in Lorette, uh, it revolved around our Indigenous identity. But to make thousands of moccasins every year, it took moose hide, it took caribou hide. So, hunters brought back hides. We really had an economy based on, that was based on this, and which was quite successful, eh. But at some point, listen, uh, it became very difficult for hunters.

Interviewer

Because of the access to the territory, uh, like the basketry in Odanak, which had also been quite successful, but which declined for X reasons.

Jocelyn Paul

Well, basketry in Lorette is also very, very, very important. Here, at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa, there are woven baskets that were made by Nathalie Sioui, my great-great-grandmother. They’re presently in the window display. Uh, it was very flourishing in Lorette as well. But it's knowledge that kind of disappeared in the 50s and 60s. That knowledge was lost even before that here.

Interviewer

Ha!

Jocelyn Paul

But today, basket weaving is taught in the Huron village.