Newswise — For the Mi’kmaq of Pictou Landing First Nation, the estuary known as ‘Boat Harbour’ and the surrounding area have provided them with their food, medicine, transportation, shelter, and tools for generations. In the 1960s a pulp and paper mill began dumping pollutants into Boat Harbour which continued to this day (albeit with increasingly sophisticated treatment practices). Despite these pollution checks and controls, Boat Harbour has become a dumping ground for toxic waste, a place of fear and unrest embroiled in political, legal and economic tension, and rife with environmental health concerns for members of the First Nation and for others living throughout Pictou County. Dalhousie University research Dr. Heather Castleden is launching a research study to determine the health risks to the local population.
"This research matters because Aboriginal peoples' health has been seriously (negatively) impacted since the arrival of Europeans and the issues associated with Boat Harbour are representative of what many Aboriginal communities are experiencing across the country," says Castleden. "These issues are a matter of social, environmental, and health justice. Given this reality, our research is long overdue; it it like the legacy of the Sydney Tar Ponds in Nova Scotia but without the publicity or action."
The research goal for the project is to document and understand the state of health of Boat Harbour’s residents from a “Two-Eyed Seeing” approach that utilizes a number of Indigenous and western research methods (sharing circles, ceremony, oral histories, water quality testing and monitoring, marine toxicological analysis, air quality assessment) to meet this goal. The project aims to confront the socio-political, historical, environmental, legal, and economic issues at play in Boat Harbour, all of which play a role in determining the health of the community’s residents.
The project has six research objectives are: 1. collect oral histories to reconstruct the Mi’kmaq physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual understandings of Boat Harbour over time and within their unique cultural, political, and historical context; 2. amass Mi’kmaq perspectives and map community time-activities concerning the current environmental conditions of Boat Harbour; 3. identify and systematically review existing data concerning the Boat Harbour ecosystem; 4. collect and compare baseline water and air quality data with existing data to determine the current state of the Boat Harbour ecosystem (and, as much as possible, changes over time); 5. using biomonitors identify the current water and air-borne contaminants there to determine associated human health risks; and 6. monitor and evaluate the research processes and outcomes in terms of community empowerment, ownership and control.
"The women of this community simply want an answer to a very important health question so that they can decide how to move forward," says Castleden.
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