Sacred Harvest, Sacred Place: Mapping Harvesting Sites in Wasagamack First Nation

Shirley Thompson,Keshab Thapa,Norah Whiteway

doi:10.5304/jafscd.2019.09b.017

Abstract

This paper tells a place-based story of food in the Wasagamack territory in Manitoba, Canada, through traditional land-use map biographies with 49 active Indigenous harvesters, video interviews with eight key informants, and input from community workshops. Although harvesters in Wasagamack First Nation do not depend solely on wild foods, map biographies show that traditional land uses remain important and occur throughout their ancestral lands. This land remains pristine, with virgin boreal forests, natural flowing waters, and abundant wildlife, and occupied almost exclusively by Indigenous people who continue to harvest wild foods and speak their language fluently. All Wasagamack people interviewed (N=57) regarded the land to be perfect as the Creator made it, and sacred; they did not want development interfering with their traditional practices of hunting, gathering, and fishing and with their land-based spirituality, despite the community economic and infrastructure poverty. In opposition, the province of Manitoba, which governs natural resources, favors mining and settler development and is unsupportive of traditional stewardship of the land. Mapping traditional land use enabled the exploration of the cultural and ecological dimensions of Wasagamack food over time and territory, providing an important tool for food researchers to explore food sovereignty, wild food access, and foodsheds. See the press release for this article.

Highlights

The people of Wasagamack First Nation in Canada connect intimately with their ancestral land through food, as well as through history, environmental stewardship, culture, language, and ancestral knowledge
Does harvesting wild food play into the continuing food story of the Wasagamack people? This paper is unique in mapping traditional land use of an Indigenous community to explore the cultural and ecological dimensions of food over time and territory
Because the families in Wasagamack territory were governed by the Island Lake band until 1969, the first section tells the broader story of Island Lake from precolonial times through most of the colonial period

Summary

Introduction

The people of Wasagamack First Nation in Canada connect intimately with their ancestral land through food, as well as through history, environmental stewardship, culture, language, and ancestral knowledge. This fly-in community in northeastern Manitoba, like many remote Indigenous communities in Canada, obtained all their basic needs, including food, from their territory until the middle of the 20th century (Kuhnlein et al, 2006; LaDuke, 2002; Paci, Tobin, & Robb, 2002). This paper is unique in mapping traditional land use of an Indigenous community to explore the cultural and ecological dimensions of food over time and territory. The Inuit Land Use and Occupancy Project helped the Inuit reclaim sovereignty of the Northwest Territories, through comprehensive land claims (Freeman, 2011)

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Results

Conclusion