Fort William First Nation invites citizens to participate in Traditional Knowledge interviews this week

By Rick Garrick

FORT WILLIAM FIRST NATION — Fort William is inviting citizens to participate in Traditional Knowledge interviews from Dec. 13-17 after holding a Virtual Traditional Knowledge Study meeting on Dec. 11.

“It’s for the Waasigan Transmission Line that is going up with Hydro One,” says Bess LeGarde, consultation liaison officer at Fort William. “With the consultation part, we are doing a Traditional Knowledge study where we collect data and do mapping of where people are hunting and fishing and using the land.”

LeGarde says the Virtual Traditional Knowledge Study meeting was held as an information session to inform the community about the project. Fort William citizens who are interested in doing a Traditional Knowledge interview can register with LeGarde at 252-7038 or besslegarde@fwfn.com. The interviews are being held from 9 a.m to 4 p.m. at the Old Ski Club Chalet in Fort William.

“We’re hosting [Traditional Knowledge] interviews from Monday to Friday and that’s where we would do a one-on-one interview with [citizens],” LeGarde says. “We would talk to them about their traditional knowledge and their land use, so in each interview that’s basically the data we are collecting and we are having them map it on a map. We’re really encouraging our [citizens] to come in and do interviews with us.”

Fort William Chief Peter Collins says the Traditional Knowledge study will provide the community with tools to better negotiate with Hydro One now and into the future.

“It gives us actual tools of what and where our people travelled also, so it’s an important aspect of what we do when we’re talking to industry and talking to developers within our region, within our territories and within our community,” Chief Collins says. “So it’s a really good tool to make sure we do all of our work in proper consultation with our [citizens] and proper consideration for our people that travel throughout the lands.”

Chief Collins says the Traditional Knowledge study will also provide government, industry and developers with information on how they are impacting Fort William’s lands and the best practices for development within those identified areas.

“So it’s an important aspect for the next generations to come,” Chief Collins says.

LeGarde says Fort William is doing the project in partnership with the University of Manitoba and Maawandoon Inc., a national firm in Indigenous community engagement with an office in Fort William.

“Shirley Thompson (associate professor, Natural Resources Institute at the University of Manitoba) is the lead with the university — she is very well versed in Traditional Knowledge data collection and land use mapping,” LeGarde says. “Maawandoon … is working with each First Nation involved in this whole project doing Traditional Knowledge studies.”

The Waasigan Transmission Line Project is a proposed new double-circuit 230 kilovolt (kV) transmission line between Lakehead Transformer Station (TS) in the Municipality of Shuniah and Mackenzie TS in the Town of Atikokan, and a new single-circuit 230 kV transmission line between Mackenzie TS and Dryden TS in the City of Dryden. Information about the project is posted online.

The Thunder Bay-CEDC 2020 Mining Readiness Strategy indicates that electricity demand is estimated to grow by 180 per cent in the region by 2026.