Where have all the fish gone?

Kerri Man is a city-born First Nation youth with a love of the outdoors.
He has been living on and off in Bearskin Lake First Nation for the past three years. He is 13 years old and as a teenager, he is not driven by sexual hormone fantasies or window-busting gang activities.
For the past few months his concerns have been directed to the decline of the pickerel population along the Severn Lake and river way.
“Hey Joe, remember a few years back, how many fish we use to catch in our net? What’s with the fish, man,” he asked.
It’s a constant interrogation which leaves me to think the unpredictable weather and water levels have some kind of influence on the declining population. In early June the water levels had been extra low but by month’s end to early July they had risen to their desired levels.
It was then I turned to some of the local hunters and anglers who always verify his concern.
“Well yeah,” says Solomon Fox, a 50-year-plus gentleman whose traditional trapping and fishing area is on the Severn Lake area. “They are slowly killing off the fish by their greedy ways of hunting and fishing.”
Peter Mckay, a soft-spoken man in his mid-70s is also seeing a big change in the activities of the pickerel’s migration and spawning.
“Once the pickerel have finished their time at the rapids they will eventually head for the cooler and deeper waters of the Severn Lake but they haven’t come out yet or maybe they were killed off,” he said.
It’s a painful topic, one community members will not discuss in open conversation, but it is very clear to everyone. For the past few years certain fishermen and woman alike have been scooping the pickerel with nets along the main rapids on the Severn River while they are spawning, thus wiping out pickerel populations before they are able to fend for themselves.
Past experiences within our traditional territory have not deterred these people’s actions.
In the mid 1950s our sturgeon populations were completely wiped out by non-Native fishermen who were given fishing licences by the government. They were flown in with boat and motors and spent the whole summer. The local people took very little notice to their activities while plane loads of their harvest were flown from the traditional waters.
It wasn’t till the last plane carrying the last fisherman echoed off into the distance that the local people along with their councillor made their gruesome discovery. They found piles upon piles of sturgeon carcasses deep in the bushes. The non-Native fishermen were taking only the eggs from the sturgeon, which were then sold as caviar.
The sturgeon never again regained their population at the gravel point along the Severn River and for the past 50-plus years the people of the community caught sturgeon more than 105 kilometres downriver.
A similar experience had taken place in the late 1970s and early 1980s with our whitefish population on the main lake of Michikan. Whitefish had always spawned at the west side of the lake where a rapid connecting Knife Lake and Michikan was the cause of excitement every spring. At first it seemed harmless, a tub full of whitefish for each family. But as the years passed the greed of a few took its toll. Scooping up the fish with scoop nets along the rapids while they were spawning wiped out the whitefish population. To this date they have not yet returned.
But every society, buried in their own poised and peaceful neighbourhood, harbours their own bad apples, the ones that see nothing wrong with their extreme actions, only thinking for today. Our Elders were always the perfect conservationists.
They always knew to think ahead and never to abuse the lands and the animals and fish within.
“The Great Spirit gave us laws to follow,” was always my grandfather Sandy Beardy’s speech to us as we travelled with him during the winter trapping seasons and the commercial fishing activities of the summer months.
“When the Almighty made the Anishne, he put them in charge of the lands they occupy, to care for the animals, the birds and the fish, never to abuse the cycle of life that was established for them. We always take only what we need to ensure all future generations live in harmony within that balanced cycle.”
As I walked and learned from these great hunters of the land it was obvious they followed and obeyed their God-given tasks. Upon approaching a beaver house they could always tell how many beavers occupied this dwelling and they knew how many they could take to ensure a healthier harvest the following year. Even in the commercial fishing seasons they would never over-fish a lake. A few days were the norm to fill their quota from that lake.
Most of our traditional Elders are gone now and the task ahead of us is how we survive within our own environment. Each individual is responsible for their own actions and when that cannot be achieved our leadership must take the appropriate steps to ensure our well being and the well being of the animals, the birds and fish within.
Kerri and I still get out on the boat to set nets or just to cast. The most we’ve had this year using a net has been two pickerel and a few suckers. The sturgeon made a comeback this year and we were in the middle of the fishing frenzy bringing home our quota for the season.
It’s a whole new experience for Kerri being out on the land and being able to hunt and eat the food we catch. This past spring he was chosen as one of three students to hunt with some of the men out on the coast near Fort Seven. It’s an experience that never leaves his mind. The last few days he has been studying mosquitoes.
“Why are there so many of these pests and no way of getting rid of them, Joe man?”he asked.
I didn’t want to tell him about the lack of dragonflies and frogs in the community. No frogs around here are just fine with me, just spray on more repellent.