Cree mother wonders how mining development in northern Quebec will affect food supply

Heather House is concerned that the potential extraction of lithium and other critical minerals will exacerbate food insecurity in northern Quebec.

Heather House studies full-time through McGill University’s distance education program, and when she is not immersed in books she is raising her eight children with her husband in Chisasibi, the northernmost community in Quebec accessible by road.

Feeding a family of eight children, two parents, and two elders in such a remote community where grocery prices are among the highest in the country would be a major challenge if it were not for access to the land for hunting, fishing, trapping and berry picking.

“The majority of my family’s food comes from hunting, comes from the land,” House, 34, said in an interview at the Retro Daze Café in Chisasibi.

The café has the feel of a bar, filled with young adults playing pool and snacking on chicken wings, but there is no beer on tap as Chisasibi is a “dry” community where alcohol sales are banned. Seated in the café last October, House opened a computer to display a map of active mining claims in Quebec.

“When you look at the map, there are a lot of mining claims in the area of the Trans-Taiga Highway on traditional Cree hunting territories,” she noted, referring to the gravel road that begins east of Chisasibi and stretches almost as far as Labrador.

“If these mineral claims turn into mines, and they manage to take what they need, what they want from the land, what land will be left for the next generations?” House asked. “Where will my children and grandchildren go to hunt and feed themselves?”

There are currently close to 400 mining exploration projects in all of the Eeyou Istchee, the traditional lands where approximately 20,000 James Bay Cree live in nine communities. With more than 5,000 residents, Chisasibi is the largest of the Cree communities.

For House, the forests, lakes and rivers are inseparable from Cree cultural identity. With her hunter and trapper husband, she teaches her children to hunt moose, geese and caribou in order to become self-sufficient, as her parents and grandparents did with her.