Grand Council Chief visits Pays Plat during Northern Superior Region tour
By Rick Garrick
PAYS PLAT—Grand Council Chief Patrick Madahbee enjoyed his first boat excursion on Lake Superior during a mid-July visit to Pays Plat.
“We threw a line in the water for a little bit and went out to the islands and went right out to see the big water,” Madahbee says. “It was the first time on Superior for me by boat. It was fantastic out there, it was very beautiful and it is immense territory when you get out there and you see that water. You know, the water goes right down until you can just see the sky and the water meet over there when you look out on the big water.”
Madahbee also checked out some of the cultural features on Powder Island and Wilson Island during the July 22 boat excursion with Douglas Moses, Pays Plat’s Economic Development Officer, and other community members.
“Friday was a little bit quiet around here, so [Pays Plat Councillor] Raymond Goodchild arranged for Doug Moses to take me out to see around on the land,” Madahbee says. “It’s nice out there. And we got some good weather to go out. It wasn’t too choppy.”
Madahbee visited Pays Plat during a tour of four Northern Superior Region communities.
Goodchild says the islands are “very sacred” to the community.
“[It’s] where we fast, where we camp, where we fish,” Goodchild says. “It’s part of where we go hunting and harvesting some animals. It’s a healthy environment and a safe area [for animals] to go to have their young ones during a certain time of the year.”
Goodchild appreciated Madahbee’s interest in going out on the land to check out the community’s traditional territory.
“I wish I could have joined him,” Goodchild says.
Pays Plat Chief Xavier Thompson says the community’s traditional territory encompasses the land, the water, and the islands.
“That is one of the things we make sure that when we are in negotiations that we include the islands,” Thompson says. “Pays Plat was mainly a fishing community way back when and we used to go to these islands all the time.”
Thompson says the cove adjacent to Pays Plat is sheltered by the islands and is good for fishing.
“It is a very defensible area,” Thompson says. “The weather is quite lovely here. The French people that came over here and named it, named it proper because it is the flat land between the two huge mountains that surround us.”
Thompson says the Pays Plat River is also connected by river systems to James Bay.
“There is actually a family that used to come through here every summer,” Thompson says. “And they actually ended up staying here.”
Thompson says the cove and other local waters are included in the Lake Superior National Marine Conservation Area.
“We traditionally used that area quite extensively in the past,” Thompson says. “We’ve been involved with the LSNMCA since the early 2000s.”
The LSNMCA extends along the north coast of Lake Superior, from Thunder Cape on the Sleeping Giant to Bottle Point near Terrace Bay, to the Canada-U.S. border in the middle of Lake Superior.