Perspectives on Sustainable Development in the Moose River Basin
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Perspectives on Sustainable Development in the Moose River Basin RICHARD J. PRESTON, McMaster University FIKRET BERKES, University of Manitoba PETER J. GEORGE, McMaster University INTRODUCTION For several years now, as principal investigators in the Research Program for Technology Assessment in Subarctic Ontario (TASO), we have been identifying and analyzing the environmental, economic and sociocultural determinants of sustainable development in the Cree com munities of the Mushkegowuk region of the Hudson and James Bay lowlands. We believe that a combination of traditional land-based activities, increased wage and proprietorial income, and transfer payments will constitute the economic base of viable Cree communities in the future. A number of fundamental concepts have guided TASO's work, two of which we want to discuss in this paper. First, we contrast some conflicting perspectives on the meaning of sustainable development, and second, we advance the notion of cumulative cultural impact assessment (Preston 1994). Specifically, we discuss Cree perspectives on sustainable development versus industrial developers' perspectives on sustainable development, by addressing the question: sustaining what, to develop whatl The answer depends on whose interests are being served. It also depends on what factors are contributing to the actual events of these developments. Environmental, technological, economic, political and cultural factors all cumulatively effect the course of development. Documenting and evaluating the whole context of development is the purpose of cumulative environmental and cultural impact assessment. We are presently attempting to frame a methodology for a more complete and appropriate assessment of industrial developments in the Moose River region. The starting point for an analysis of sustainability and development is the issue of world view, the way in which a culture looks at and orders the world around it. We regard the crucial question as being, whose 380 PRESTON, BERKES AND GEORGE world view determines sustainable development in the Moose River region? Different perspectives on the world have differently guided human activities in the region, ranging from the holistic perspective of the indigenous peoples to the more specialized perspectives of those who came into the region with a particular, specialized purpose. While our main purpose here is to contrast the perspectives of the contemporary Cree and Ontario Hydro, we will briefly describe three historically relevant perspectives — those of the 19th-century Cree, the Hudson's Bay Company, and the companies building railways into the region — before turning to our primary task. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT The "traditional" (19th-century) Cree perspective was focussed on sustaining family and community life by hunting and the use of other land-based natural resources. The concept of development seems foreign to this milieu, except in terms of the ideal of enjoying a long life with many surviving children to carry on the small personal community after one's life on the earth was ended (Hallowell 1955). The meaning of "holistic" in characterizing the traditional Cree perspective can be given some specification by working interpretively from oral tradition and written documents. For example, It was thought by some of the elders interviewed by John Long in the 1980's, that the Indians taking part in the treaty negotiation intended to mean that the Indians go with the land, as a part of the land's "dressing", which includes the animals, trees, rivers — all that is on the land. (Preston 1990b) Essentially, the meaning here is a Cree cultural gloss: that there is a vital connection or integrity of all creatures with each other and with the land. For our reader's clarity of understanding, we note that for the term ecosystem there is a comparably holistic scientific meaning, though it has a more limited and secular sense. We would say that the Hudson Bay Lowlands ecosystem is a combination of diverse physical (abiotic and biotic) components, some of which are human, and that the perspective of ecosystemic science is that all of components are interrelated in a condition of dynamic equilibrium. From either of these holistic perspectives we can see that the Cree signing the treaty responded to the pressures they felt from southern PERSPECTIVES ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 381 intruders and from hardships arising from scarcity of food animals. They felt that these pressures on the people and on the land were beyond their ability to deal with effectively, and so they were giving over to the king (kihci-okimaw) their responsibility for "looking after" the integrity of the ecosystem, including the people who lived there. By this means they hoped to be able to live unmolested. There is an important comparison to be made here. The fact that many Cree and ecologists share a holistic perspective does not mean that modern ecological concepts are necessarily identical with traditional aboriginal ones. The issue of aboriginal responsibility for the integrity of the ecosystem is currently being disputed (Martin 1978, Krech 1981, Brightman 1993, Koenig 1994). We have learned that discerning aboriginal conservation practices is more subtle than trying to discover current principles of environmental management in an aboriginal guise. What we do find are traditional cultural institutions that support sustainable animal populations, for the good reason that people wanted to be able to return year after year to find their living. And we find that the traditional Cree ethics of relations with animals that are their food includes notions that apply to the well-being of animal populations. The "traditional" (19th-century) Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) perspective was focussed on the development of trade of particular land- based natural resources (mainly fur) for profit. The Company's method was first to get the Indians to bring their furs in to the post for trade, and secondly to increase the intensity of fur-harvesting activities. The HBC records for the east side of James Bay, for example, frequently express concern about how they can persuade the Indians to spend less time on caribou hunting (a major source of food) and more on the "productive" activity (from the HBC perspective) of fur trapping (Francis and Morantz 1983). HBC notions corresponding to sustainability may have been of the European farm management type, focussing on trying to maintain a population of breeders and avoiding the destruction of mothers and the very young, though we have not determined to what extent this was a concern for particular post managers. It is difficult to say if the demands placed by the HBC on hunters resulted in their harvesting non-sustainable quantities of beaver and other fur resources. Elsewhere we have postulated that the intensification of harvesting may have resulted in the 382 PRESTON, BERKES AND GEORGE emergence of a tighter cultural institution, with family-controlled territories and "beaver bosses" acting as stewards, in place of a looser, communal territory system (Berkes 1989). The major episodes of beaver scarcity coincide with periods of competition between fur companies and fur harvesters, as happened in the early 1800s. Fur returns and thus profitability gradually declined until 1821 when the HBC absorbed its rival, the North West Company. Fur harvests reached a low in 1825-29 in the Rupert's River District (James Bay); presumably the recovery phase followed the amalgamation, to return to a high in 1830-34 (Francis and Morantz 1983:130). Both in the 1800s and in the later fur depletion episode of the 1920s, beaver were overhunted as a result of the breakdown of the Cree institution of beaver hunting territories and beaver bosses, by incursions from the outside (Feit 1986), essentially creating open-access conditions leading to a "tragedy of the commons" (Berkes 1989). How did the HBC react to the depletion of beaver? Brightman (1993) has documented that the HBC responded to the crisis of 1820-30 by instituting conservation measures to protect mother beavers and the very young. And we know that at this time HBC Governor Simpson ordered a beaver preserve to be set up on Charlton Island (Frantz and Morantz 1983:129). These conservation measures probably represent the first European-style management regulations. But without detracting from the value of these activities, we would argue that success in sustaining the recovery of fur-bearer populations was dependent on the recovery of aboriginal institutions for the regulation of land use and for proper conduct of the hunt. The "modern" railway developer's perspective was focussed on getting and sustaining access in order to transport natural resources from the north, and to transport immigrants into the north, and then to transport merchandise to them. Opening the Northern Ontario frontier by constructing railroads had more direct results than the developers anticipated, because of the discovery of very valuable mineral deposits in the process of excavating the roadbed. Other direct results were deliberately anticipated, such as choosing railway routes that passed close to sites with identified potential for mining and hydroelectric construction. The impact of the presence of many hundreds of railway and hydro PERSPECTIVES ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 383 construction labourers in the region was partly environmental, partly technological, partly economic, partly political, and partly cultural. Native people were no longer physically or culturally secure on their land, as the ethics of relations with other people and relations to the animals were not shared or respected by most of the intruders. When confronted with a large number of people who did not share their understanding of the desirable way to respect each other's rights, or the desirable way to treat animals, the natives lacked effective means for protecting their hunting environment. In consequence, the sustainability of their hunting culture was seriously challenged. In the case of the most directly impacted group, the New Post band, the consequences were quite lethal; all but two of the families who took treaty in 1905 had died out by 1943.