Subscribe!
Comment on this Story
Margaret Dumas
An Interview By Billy Granger
“A lot of bad stuff happened,” says Margaret Dumas, Adult Learning Class Instructor at Fox Lake School, when explaining what it was like when hydro dams were built in the traditional territory of the Fox Lake Cree. Many men working for the dams entered the community, and with that, a time was ushered in when abuses would dissolve relationships and fracture the community.
But things are starting to turn around.
When Margaret Dumas was working with her husband William at the school in Fox Lake, they came up with an idea to reconnect people in the community with their language, traditions, elders and each other. The idea was to have an annual goose hunt where the community members could be on the land together, practicing traditional ways of life. She reports that the program has been successful in creating a sense of community and in reconnecting people to the elders.
“It’s good just to be out on the land with the elders, watching them with the animals and being with them in a more natural setting,” she says. It is progress, and a sign of more hopeful times.
But getting to that point has had its challenges.
As she speaks to me about the challenges facing residents of the east side of Lake Winnipeg like herself, I understand that rebuilding a community is a journey. She tells me how she and her relatives from other communities have been affected by industrial developments over the years, and I realize that many other people in Fox Lake must have similar stories.
When Margaret reveals how her family was impacted during the early days of the fur trade, it becomes obvious to me that the social affects of development and colonization have been at play in the communities on the east side of Lake Winnipeg for a long time.
Margaret’s grandmother was born in York Factory, a place with a history deeply interwoven with that of Canada’s fur trade, and home to Cree people who were later relocated by the federal government to present day York Landing. It was in York Factory where the British and French contended for the control of the lucrative trading post, and a place where the cultures of the indigenous people in the area and Europeans collided. It is a place where part of the history of a new nation was being written, and another part of the land where colonization had begun. When Margaret was there last year, she had the opportunity to view some of the artifacts from that era.
“I had this sense of nostalgia,” she tells me. “It’s like I had been there before.”
From the tone in Margaret’s voice, I can sense there is something mysterious reverberating in her being, something deep inside that can still feel the ancient ways of her ancestors being transformed as Europeans established themselves on the traditional territory of the Cree. As she goes on to tell me the stories of when industrial development started its advance into her father’s home area of Pikwitonei and the successive building of dams near Fox Lake, it is apparent that the momentum of development has yet to miss a beat since the days of the fur trade, and the transformation of their way of life has yet to cease. After returning home from fighting in the Korean War, her father told her that he knew the old ways were gone.
“When you talk to him or read his writings on the changes he’s seen,” she says, “he’s very emotional.”
Adding insult to injury, Margaret recounts how mining companies and Tolko, a multi-national logging corporation, went into her father’s home territory of Pikwitonei without effectively engaging the community.
“They don’t ask, they just take, and if they did ask, they didn’t talk to the right person.”
One day, when Dumas went out to the bush near her father’s home to harvest berries, she found that the area where the berries were had been bulldozed.
“It affects the ecosystem, the fur bearing animals, the berries,” she says. “It really bothers me when they don’t open up communication.”
“We have to start giving back to the Earth, but how will mining give back? It will take the Earth thousands of years to repair itself. They have to try harder.”
July 9th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Margaret speaks the truth. We need to give back when we take. Aboriginal stewardship of the land must continue stronmg if we wish to survive.