‘No where to go:’ Indigenous people recount losses in Wood Buffalo National Park
An extensive report done on Wood Buffalo National Park contains testimony from Indigenous people in the area. Here are a few examples of what they said:
Matthew Lepine: For birds, I have nowhere to go in fall, spring, summer for eggs … they are gone. There are places you cannot travel at all. In some places you can smell the stale water. We still try to go to those places, hoping there is water. We get little pitiful (muskrats) now. It’s all we have left. They are hardly even edible.
Jocelyn Marten: Now it’s just a lot of algae. Oh my God, more algae than anything else! Come see in June, July, August the three lakes called Frog Lakes where we used to spend summer. That was one of the main nesting areas for ducks and (coots) and fish. You can’t even go there now these years with a boat. You can’t run a motor in there.
Larry Marten: (Birds) tour around the delta on account of the oil plants. Just a few come in. Even if we have the water we will never have the birds as we used to as the oil plants won’t move. Migratory birds are using different routes because of the plants and no water. Where we used to hunt birds … I used to drive my dogs or use a snow machine. Now there is nothing!