![]() ![]() Over time, Fort McKay has witnessed the incredible transformation of the boreal, from a sustainable resource for their traditional livelihood into “overburden” stripped to make way for open-pit mines, tailings ponds and processing plants. ![]() Today Fort McKay are a nation of about 800 people, situated 65 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, the heart of the Alberta oilsands, one of the largest oil deposits on the planet. One of these rabbits was discarded due to an unhealthy looking liver. Photo: Aaron Vincent Elkaim / The Narwhal Traditional hunting practices are becoming more difficult for the First Nations people of Fort McKay with less accessible land and questions about contamination of the meat. Snared rabbits on the L’Hommecourt trapline. This way of life, the Fort McKay say, sustained them for thousands of years.īut as one elder Zackary Powder puts it, “It’s not like it used to be. The people, housed in humble shacks, relied for sustenance on the landscape of Alberta’s northern boreal forest and the Athabasca River - the thread that connected the remote community to the rest of Canada. In 1899, the Fort McKay First Nation became a signatory of Treaty 8, an agreement that promised to preserve the nation’s traditional ways of life “as long the sun shines, the river flows and the grass grows.”Īs recently as the 1960s the reserve of Fort McKay had no running water. L’Hommecourt speaks passionately against the destruction of his land by industry, but often finds himself forced to work with those same companies due to a lack of other opportunities in the region. Photo: Aaron Vincent Elkaim / The Narwhal As long as the river flows ![]() Mark L’Hommecourt smokes a cigarette on the Target Road lookout, his favourite place to connect to nature on the Fort McKay reserve. ![]()
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