Pic Mobert creates an economy with hydro projects

By Rick Garrick
PIC MOBERT FN – The construction of two hydroelectric dams on its traditional territory will provide the foundation for a more prosperous future for this Superior Region community.
“We’re going out for tender and once that takes place, we should be having our hydro dams go forward,” says Pic Mobert Chief Johanna Desmoulin. “With the hydro dam, revenue will come in and we will be able to take care of ourselves, sustain ourselves, and have that power and control of where we are going to spend our money and how we are going to help our people.”
Pic Mobert’s Gitchi Animki Hydroelectric Project includes the Gitchi Animki Bezhig (Upper Site) 8.9 MW hydroelectric dam on White Lake, which will replace a Ministry of Natural Resources regulating dam, and the Gitchi Animki Niizh (Lower Site) 10.0 MW hydroelectric dam, which will be located on the White River about 16 kilometres south of Gitchi Animki Bezhig.
Pic River has a 50 per cent interest in the project, which is a joint venture between Gitchi Animki Energy Limited Partnership, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pic Mobert, and White River Hydro Limited Partnership, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Regional Power Inc.
While the community of about 300 citizens is looking forward to opportunities stemming from the project, Desmoulin says educational opportunities for youth have been improving as an experienced educator leads the way with a focus on identity.
“We have our own band member as (elementary school) principal/teacher and she has a lot of the skill and knowledge,” Desmoulin says. “She will ask the students who is your chief, who is your national chief to get them excited about being Anishinabe.”
Netamisakomic Centre for Education principal Jacky Craig says her roots as a Pic Mobert band member had been calling her back home. She now lives next door to her mother.
“This is my second year and I’ve begun making a lot of changes,” Craig says. “One of them is safety for the children — we now have a fence that keeps the students safe during recesses and all dogs out and all (snow machines) out.”
Craig says literacy and numeracy are being improved through a partnership with the Nokiwan Tribal Council and students are going out on the land through a federal program.
“They are taught the different kinds of medicines and they are out snowshoeing, getting exercise,” Craig says. “They’ve gone sweetgrass picking, so a variety of things like that. The kids love it.”
Sewing machines have also been purchased to teach students how to sew and the school is currently working to get their own drum.
Craig says the changes are leading to more success for the students.
“With the testing that we have done this year, there has been improvement academically, absolutely,” Craig says. “One of the biggest challenges I will have is creating an atmosphere of inclusion. I want the kids to feel like they want to be at school, they want to get up in the morning and they want to come to school and they want to learn and they want to see into the future to what their possibilities are and what their potential is.”
Pic Mobert is currently negotiating with the federal and provincial governments to add 16 square kilometres of Crown land to the reserve through a Land and Larger Land Base process, which originally began in 1991.
“We went into negotiations and they said, ‘You do the framework and within two years you will have your larger land base,’” Desmoulin says. “Well, it’s like 22 years later.”
Although an agreement-in-principle was completed in 2002, Pic Mobert is still waiting for the larger land base to build housing and other community buildings and to create economic development opportunities.
“Right now we have a health centre, but there is so much more that needs to be (built),” Desmoulin says. “We’re very tight squeezed; there is no room to move or develop.”
Pic Mobert is also involved in litigation in Ontario Superior Court over a case regarding treaty adhesion and has an Aboriginal Title claim currently in abeyance pending the treaty adhesion case. In addition, the community is preparing a Specific Land Claim against Canada and Ontario for loss of lands located within its traditional area.
The community has inhabited the area surrounding the White Lake and White River watersheds, located about halfway between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie, from beyond the height of the land to the shores of Lake Superior since time immemorial.
Desmoulin says the community is currently located on two pieces of land totalling about one square kilometre, including land bought by community Elders on White Lake in the 1970s.
“Our Elders, or the people before us, bought that piece of land for us,” Desmoulin says. “It wasn’t given to us by the government. (The) treaty commissioner didn’t come down to our area. Apparently we were known as inland Anishinabe; we were basically out on the land all the time.”
Although community members used to gather during the summer by lakes in their traditional territory to do marriage ceremonies, feasts and other activities in the past, she says the band is now working to get community members back out on the land by offering hunting courses, trapping courses, gun courses, help to get boat licences as well as moose hunting and fishing derbies.
“We’re starting to become educated in terms of treaty rights and Aboriginal rights,” she says. “Land use is important for me.  We have a lot of community engagement and a lot of community members involved — that’s what they enjoy.”