Xavier Kataquapit

At the start of this winter, when the snow began to accumulate and the cold temperatures had hardened the ground, my older brother Ah-twen headed out into the open tundra north of Attawapiskat. His English name is pronounced Antoine Kataquapit and he is a traditional hunter, trapper and knowledge keeper who has years of living on the land. The place he went to is called Mooshoowak, an area on the corner of land where the bays of the Hudson and James meet. The Cree word is a description that basically describes the land as ‘clear’ or ‘without features’.

As First Nation people, I know most of us worry about development on our lands by companies in mining, forestry, hydro and other resource sectors. We come by these suspicions honestly, as we have been left out of the loop with all kinds of development on our traditional lands for a more than a hundred years.

One of the most talked about news stories on social media and news sites recently had to do with a disturbing video of an Indigenous Elder and a group of young predominantly Caucasian teenagers in Washington DC. Video footage has shown the Elder, Nathan Phillips chanting and using his hand drum while participating in an Indigenous Peoples March as he walks peacefully into a group of young high school boys and is blocked by one of them. The boy is smirking at the Elder and his fellow students are making fun of Elder Phillips.

For some time now huge companies have been taking water from the ground, bottling it and selling it to make big profits. For the most part these companies like Nestle don’t pay all that much for the right to draw this water out of the ground and they do a good job of marketing it all across Canada.

I got involved in journalism over 20 years ago because I was lucky enough to meet a seasoned journalist who convinced me that I should put my writing talents to use by producing a column and articles for Native publications. As a teenager growing up in Northern Ontario, I dealt with low self esteem as myself and my peers felt marginalized and isolated in our tiny First Nation of Attawapiskat . Whenever my people happened to be featured in newspapers, television news or on the radio it was focused mostly on some terrible tragedy. Very few Native people were involved in media production.