Métis Elder worries young people have lost interest in being on the land

Earl Evans believes Métis young people are losing interest in spending time on the land, and fears that the skills and traditions of their forebears could be lost as a result.

“You try to find a young person to go out in the bush hunting and stuff right now, and it’s very difficult,” the Métis Elder said from his home in Fort Smith. “Everybody’s more interested in iPads and phones and computers.

“I think it’s terrible. I think it’s sad.”

Evans has lived his entire life in Fort Smith, and has been spending time on the land surrounding the community of close to 2,500 people for almost as long.

“We used to go out hunting right from when we were young,” he said. “We used to go out with our fathers and stuff.

“My dad used to take me out rabbit hunting when I was just a kid – just old enough to drag rabbits behind me. He took me out on my first buffalo hunt and my first caribou hunt when I was 14 years old.

“He used to send me hunting with these old Chipewyan Elders, they used to be really good moose hunters. I learned how to walk on snowshoes and hunt moose old style with the old guys. Nowadays, nobody does that anymore. There’s not a person in town, I don’t think, that can strap on a pair of snowshoes and go find the moose.”

In communities all across the NWT, one can find programs that encourage young people to get back out on the land, and learn the skills that were imperative to the survival of their ancestors. Unfortunately, as Evans pointed out, these programs are often brief, and can end up being little more than a temporary distraction for the young people that participate.

“You might have a cultural camp or something, [where] you’ll go and someone will show them how to fillet a fish or whatever, but it’s small, it’s not like you’re living out in the bush and doing things like you would if you were really living out in the bush,” he said. “The minute the fish is filleted, the kids are on their phone trying to see what they missed. The interest is really not there.

“You’ve got to want to do it. You can’t just say, ‘OK, the kids are going out in the bush’ and that’s it. You’ve got to have people that want to go and enjoy themselves when they’re out there, not just wait to get back to town,” he added.

It’s not just the young people around Fort Smith who are spending less time out on the land, according to Evans. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer Elders are participating in activities like hunting and trapping, as they are no longer fit or healthy enough to do so.

“A lot of our Elders are gone now,” Evans said. “All my old friends are all banged up, they have health problems, so they can’t go anywhere. It makes it very difficult.”

Even Evans himself has been spending less time trapping, which was once a central part of his life. That’s due, in part, to the fact that he has very few people to go with, but also because local wildlife is disappearing amid the “devastating” effects of climate change, while the cost of trapping often exceeds the potential payout.

“I haven’t trapped for several years now, ‘cause it’s not worth it,” he said. “The trapping that used to go on before in the ’70s and ’80s and ’90s, that’s all gone, that’s all dried up,” he added. “There’s no profit in it. There’s no way to make a real living.”

Having spent much of his life working for the territorial government, Evans still finds ways to get out on the land. He’s a long-serving chair on the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq Caribou Management Board, an organization that monitors two of the herds that travel through the NWT. He is also a member of Thaidene Nené Xa Da Yalti, the management board that oversees the Thaidene Nené Indigenous Protected Area northeast of Fort Smith.

Despite the great changes to the environment and the wildlife, he loves the time he spends out in nature for those roles.

“I really, really like it out there,” he said. “Going out in the land, I think, is kind of a healing process for everybody in some shape or form.”

Evans would love to see more young people discover the benefits of spending time on the land, but admitted that his outlook is “pretty bleak.”

“I’d like to see more of them get out there, but how are you going to do that? I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t see a real incentive. I can’t see it progressing.

“I don’t know what kind of magic someone’s going to have to throw out there to get people back on the land,” he added. “At one time, that was our identity, but we’re losing that.”

Tom Taylor, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, NWT News/North

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