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Shawna Snache
November 5th, 2009By C. Hunnie
For millennia, Canada’s indigenous peoples have sustained complex relationships with the wildlife and environments in which they lived. This wisdom embraces the need to live in harmony and peace with the earth and with one another. Shawna Snache carries on this cultural tradition, inspiring change through her words and her actions.
“By simply being Anishnaabe people we’ve been given a responsibility to take good care of mother earth and her children,” she states. “I’m afraid that a lot of us have forgotten but I also strongly believe that we will awaken and remember what is it we are supposed to be doing. We will remember our medicines and how to prepare them. We will acknowledge our part in Creation once again […] We are getting stronger and with that will come a return to our original roles and responsibilities [...]”
Characterizing Canada’s landscape is the boreal forest, one of the last intact forests left in the world. The boreal is the world’s largest land-based storehouse of carbon which helps moderate the global climate. Its trees also produce great amounts of oxygen dubbing it the ‘northern lungs of the planet.’ On a local level, the boreal is important to Aboriginal people for fishing, medicine-gathering, trapping, hunting and other traditional activities. Though its continued health is of great significance, it is being threatened.
“We’re living in a time when our most precious resources are being threatened on a daily basis; if we don’t act it will be the generations yet to come who will suffer for our ignorance and greed. If we don’t pressure our elected officials to police industry and corporations they will continue to exploit in the name of profit without any repercussions or consequences. It’s a terribly sad cycle that we can only begin to challenge and when we as a people decide that we will not stand for irresponsible industrial activities any longer. It’s important that we expose the truth and educate while we advocate for our natural resources. Teaching our children the importance of being stewards of the environment will stay with them as they grow and begin to fill the roles of the future.”
“Teaching our children the importance of being stewards of the environment will stay with them as they grow and begin to fill the roles of the future.”
Shawna’s community, as well as her husband’s, has been directly affected by the destruction caused by industrial activities. According to Shawna, her husband’s community of N’daki Menan, or the Teme-Augama Anishnabai have seen most of their family lands, boreal forests rich in natural resources, displaced by mining and logging activities.
Shawna’s community of Georgina Island First Nation, an island community in the middle of Ontario’s Lake Simcoe, also faces environmental destruction. The lake’s health is at risk due to phosphorus overloading which causes eutrophication, killing aquatic life; its watershed supports a population of roughly half a million people, including the northern portion of the Greater Toronto Area.
Recently, a number of organizations and individuals, including the Georgina Island Ladies of the Lake, have coalesced in order to rescue Lake Simcoe. Utilizing clever strategies to bring attention to the problems Lake Simcoe faces, including a nude calendar, the Ladies of the Lake are taking action to protect the place they call home.
“I am a political advocate for all that I feel is right and just. I will always stand up for the issues that need attention and especially for those that don’t have a voice of their own to use. They can use mine. I will speak up for those that can’t for whatever reason. I will always encourage other to get educated, get informed and get involved.”
Their efforts have paid off, and Shawna hopes with the new legislation called the Lake Simcoe Protection Act, the lake will once again return to “a state of homeostasis and vibrant health.”
“This importance of a healthy Mother Earth to me is felt very deeply and very personally. Because I’m a mother myself, the health of this planet will affect my children’s future. Everyone should feel the same sense of responsibility to future generations to take extra good care of our Mother. If she becomes sick, we are all responsible for allowing that to happen.”
November 24th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Thanks for your great work Shauna. I hope it inspires may others to act to portect our environent