https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/
Abandoned exploration camp on John Rupert’s trapline one of almost 500 such sites in Cree territory
After many, many years of asking, John Rupert’s trapline is finally scheduled to be cleaned up. The Whapmagoostui elder knows it’s likely too late for him to return to hunt there, but maybe not for his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
“Because of my age, I might not be able to go back there,” said Rupert, 71, whose trapline, as traditional hunting grounds are called in northern Quebec, is 60 kilometres southeast of the community. It’s a place he knows so deep and so well that he and his father used to travel there in the dark, in a time before flashlights.
“I have younger brothers and our families — grandchildren — might go there. I want to know how long it will take for us to hunt in that area again,” he said. The last time Rupert hunted on that land was in 2006, when a large prospecting camp moved in. It’s not clear what they were looking for. Whapmagoostui is the only fly-in community at the northern edge of Cree territory in Quebec.
For the rest of this article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/cree-trapline-cleanup-john-rupert-exploration-pollution-1.7312916