A proposed federal park in Labrador highlights evolution in Parks Canada thinking

On the far eastern side of Canada, along the arctic tundra and coastal rocks of Labrador, a federal park unlike one ever seen in Canada is now developing. In the proposed Mealy Mountain National Park, for the first time in a federal park’s history, there could be legal rights for local groups to snowmobile, guide, hunt, fish and gather plants for the indefinite future. Those rights are in turn throwing up questions about rights of groups on existing national parks and high-lighting the way a park like Jasper was formed versus how national parks are formed today. The new laws are also causing some conservation groups in Canada to wonder if Parks Canada even really knows just what exactly a park is anymore.

While other recent federal parks in Canada have allowed local aboriginal and other groups with a distinct connection to the land to hunt, fish, and gather plants on the land, these rights have always been couched by sunset clauses, typically extending until all the local residents alive when the park is established are dead. At Mealy Mountain, the sunset clauses have been removed and the nomadic lifestyle that defines many people on the spartan coast of Labrador could conceivably go on forever inside the park.

“Perhaps the number one issue that we heard of during the consultation period was that we needed to find a way to accommodate and allow the continuation of people’s ways of life on the land,” said Kevin McNamee, director of the park establishment branch for Parks Canada. “Without that, a significant portion of the land would have been lost.”

Some believe that by agreeing to this, Parks Canada has lost something else.

“Well, to turn things around, we need to ask ‘Is this really what a park is for?’ said Gretchen Fitzgerald, director of the Atlantic chapter of Sierra Club Canada. While she said native rights are something that always have to be considered in the context of any national park, she wondered if the new park really reflected values that all Canadians share. “We need to really think more about whether or not going down this road is protecting critical features and biodiversity for all of us.”

She questioned whether all of the money that is going to be spent on setting up the proper regulation for the hunting and fishing on the park could not be better spent on conservation. 

“That’s sort of the point of the park,” she said.

Further more, she wondered if other interest groups would be able to hijack the native rights issue and use it to advance other interests, such as guiding hunters or fisherman who come from outside the park.

The 11,700 sq. km of land proposed for the park is harsh and, to some, bleak but it also has a vast sort of untouched grandeur. Bear, moose and caribou wander the rocky tundra landscapes and entire watersheds, where wayward icebergs wander, are essentially untouched from industrial pressures. 

It is estimated that some 40 existing cabins will be incorporated into the policies that will allow for hunting, guiding and other activities in the park. No major roads will lead to the park, but in the winter, a snowmobile can access the border within a few hours from Goose Bay. Numerous points are accessible by the sea. 

The land is home for Innu and Inuit natives, as well as small pockets of settlers. Local populations around and in the park number in the 9,000 range, although that is a broad estimate.

Like many aboriginal groups in Canada, the Innu and Inuit both claim that they are deeply connected to the land. Hunting, trapping, and being on the land are a distinct part of their culture. During consultations with parks in 2001, when the park was first proposed, numerous residents argued that to lose their ability to be on the land, would be to lose their culture.

How far these rights stretch is debatable. One lodge in the area has argued that they should be able to continue to be allowed to guide fishermen and travelers into the park. McNamee said this is possible, but by no means concrete.

McNamee said he believes the ecological integrity of the park can be maintained while also bringing local groups on board. For instance, while hunters can hunt in the new Mealy Mountain park, they can only hunt on a subsistence basis, which will generally mirror hunting trends seen on the land now. Bears, caribou and other big game will be off limits. Hares, squirrel and other small fare will only be on the kill list.

McNamee says that the park would have died had the locals not been brought on board, he knows this because it’s happened before.

In the 1970s, Parks Canada brought plans to natives around Great Slave Lake to develop a park there. They were told that their hunting and nomadic way of life would have to change in some major ways. Native groups told Parks they could not support the park and the plans died.

“Over the past 40 years, Parks has learned to be very careful to ensure the support of local people,” said Paul Kopas, author of Taking the Air: Ideas and Change in Canada’s National Parks. To do that, he said that parks had to adopt a different way of defining what ‘park’ means.

Kopas explains that Parks Canada used to operate under the ‘Yellowstone model’ in the first half of the twentieth century. Parks in Canada were seen as pristine sources of wilderness meant to be cordoned off from humans, except those who wanted to recreate without causing consequences.

“There’s this acceptance now that human interactions on the land has some sort of role to play when it comes to defining ecological integrity,” said Kopas. “Human beings are part of that natural landscape and need to be incorporated somehow into policy.”

This cultural component inside a national park idea and the desire to build support among native groups appears to already be influencing decision making at Jasper National Park.

For instance, the Jasper National Park’s Aboriginal forum that began in 2006 has made it so certain aboriginal groups, such as the Alexis Nakota Sioux First Nation, are able to officially harvest specific plants in the park for traditional purposes and can also hold ceremonies at traditional ceremonial sites. The average visitor to Jasper National Park isn’t allowed to do these things.

As well, members of the Alexis Nakota Sioux First Nation groups are also now able to access the park without paying at the toll gates. There are plans to bring other native groups in the area on board with this plan.

These types of plans only go so far however. Jasper National Park spokesperson Thea Mitchell said there were no plans to allow hunting in the park now or in the near future. Snowmobiling appears to be out too.

Still, if aboriginal groups on the eastern side of Canada are allowed to hunt inside of a federal park, why aren’t they allowed to hunt inside of Jasper National Park? 

Fitzgerald at the Sierra Club said it doesn’t seem fair that one native group in Canada is going to be allowed to hunt in a park, while groups outside of a place like Jasper National Park, who have the same kind of historical connection, are not.

“Parks has really gone along with this sort of ‘pitch/patch consultation process, whereas if they were really concerned with respecting cultural differences and empowering groups, they’d be more willing to open up these processes on a larger scale,” she said.

Part of it is context, explained Larry Innes executive director of the Canadian Boreal Initiative and a lawyer for native groups around the Mealy Mountain who sat in on the steering committee for the proposed park.

“In the context of this place [Mealy Mountain] at this time, this is the right solution,” said Larry Innes.

In 1907, when Jasper National Park was created, things were different. Numerous historian around the country have argued that Canada intentionally meant to exclude natives from the formation of Canada’s first parks, often in the name of sport and tourism, not in protecting the wilderness. Essentially, the natives were deemed not worth negotiating with, let alone even talking with. In 2010, things are different.

“[The inclusion of cultural issues] creates  a different sort of dynamic when we approach groups about setting up a park... It really expands the toolbox when we start to consider the cultural character of a place, and how it can be incorporated into a park,” said Innes.

Illustrating just how far Parks Canada has come in it’s thinking since a century ago, Innes explains how preserving native identities is now seen by some quarters in Parks Canada as key to protecting a park itself.

“We want to preserve the cultural character of this place,” said Innes. “And part of what that means is protecting the identity of the groups who have a historical connection here. Creating this model for a park, one that allows these sort of activities, it may be a way of doing that.”