Lessons from Fort Albany

My hometown has many First Nations community groups and also serves as a commercial hub for all the communities in Ontario’s far north. For years I’ve been very interested in the challenges facing First Nations peoples in the north – many isolated reserve communities face huge challenges in education, infrastructure, health, and so forth, yet most Canadians are unaware of this. Although I’m studying International Development, my goal is to apply my knowledge locally and work with Canadian communities. In this post I want to talk briefly about my experience visiting the northern community of Fort Albany.

I travelled to Fort Albany in 2009 with the Timmins MNR Far North team. The purpose of the weekend visit was to allow a face-to-face meeting with members of the community and MNR staff where a number of things would be discussed, including but not limited to some new policy changes, animal and fish population tracking, water quality in the Albany River, and band council and elder concerns.

We took an 8-seater plane on a 5 hour flight to Fort Albany from Timmins. Upon our arrival, we were screened for H1N1 and given information packages about the virus. At the time, there was great concern over the fact that isolated First Nations populations seemed to be more susceptible to H1N1 than other Canadian demographic groups.

Most discussion was through a translator, as many of the elders were not fluent in English, and the MNR staff (and I) were not fluent in Cree. The meeting lasted for several hours, during which I was taken aback many times over the differences between how such a meeting would proceed in any ‘Western’ town, as opposed to a Aboriginal community.

Near the end of the meeting between the MNR and the Fort Albany community leaders, the floor was opened up for general discussion. A community elder introduced as Gilbert stood up and spoke for about 45min (about an hour and a half with a translator).

He told us about how the whitefish in Albany River have become slimy and sick compared to how they were in his youth, and how the river had become dirty and cloudy. He knew that there was a greater amount of sediment in the water because he could no longer make tea from river water by letting the sediment settle to the bottom of his teapot – the water was just too murky. Finally, he spoke about a place where the river was eroding the edge of a cemetery and how coffins and bones were becoming uncovered (I was shocked to hear this).

The reverence with which the other community members and the MNR staff listened to his discussion made me think, ‘This is the way it should be’. Often we – Westerners - brush off the opinions of older generations as being old-fashioned or uneducated, when really we should be listening and learning. This cultural difference reminded me that I was a ‘Western’ visitor to the local Native culture.

Fort Albany, ON is located about 450km north of Timmins on the Shore of the Albany River, near James Bay.