What has happened in Boat Harbour is definitely environmental racism.
This happens across Canada way too often
with our First Nations communities.
And, you know a corporation will come in and
they will do what they can to extract the resources that they need.
The Northumberland Strait is a breeding ground for lobsters,
and for herring and mackerel and rock crab,
everything that our community fishes on, right? So if we go in there and
destroy the habitat for them to reproduce and that,
we're generally going to be f*cked.
People from the reserve, they've been fighting this for 51 years
and it's the fishermen, the non-native fishermen, that have been joining them.
It's just this mill is no good, the pipeline, it's gonna ruin our fishery.
Yea, we all came together for a common interest.
For too long they've tried to take advantage of First Nations people,
but it's going to come to a stop because First Nations people across this nation are rising up.
Go back!
Go home!
Everybody's ready.
We're throwing this, trying to fall out the prop
on that survey boat right there that's coming in.
It will kill our fishing.
If they don't know what the bottom's like, they can't lay that pipeline in, right?
And the only way we are going to be able to stop this
is to stop that from surveying the ocean floor.
They probably never ever thought they'd have this much resistance.
This whole area depends on fishing.
It's the number one main industry for Northern Nova Scotia.
My name is Warren Patrick Francis.
I belong to the Mi'kmaq tribe.
I'm from Pictou Landing First Nation.
I'm a self-employed fisherman.
Our community has been dealing with a lot of asthma, a lot of breathing problems,
and I blame it all on this plant here.
We've been living for 50 years with this garbage.
Northern Pulp uses a bleaching process to make their paper white.
They have to get rid of all the stuff that comes out of the wood,
like all the discoloration and all the heavy solubles and stuff like that.
And you got to take it somewhere to be treated,
and then they got to dump it somewhere
because it's too caustic to run through their pipes.
When the water first gets here from the plant, it takes 28 days
to get here and to go through the whole process
and to leave into the Northumberland Strait there.
The new system they're proposing is only gonna take a few hours
and then they're gonna pump it straight out into the strait.
The smell is horrible, I mean, ugh... I'm even breathing through my mouth
so I don't have to smell it, but the steam and everything that's coming off
this hot water is just... oh it's sickening.
This far corner here is where our reserve is located.
And right here is Boat Harbour, where the treated effluent goes into.
It's not even a kilometer, so we've been living with this poison all our lives.
We've shot deer and rabbits and then when we go to gut them we find lumps in them.
So we sent them to DNR for testing and they're full of cancers.
We're gonna check the clarity of the water.
This is where the outfall for Boat Harbour [is], which treats Nothern Pulp's effluent.
This goes out into the Northumberland Strait.
And it's stuff like this that's going to be going into the strait.
And that water isn't very clean.
You can see it's even purple there.
There's two families in there that fish.
And this is where our fisheries manager lives and his wife fishes.
And the other guy, he works for my brother in fishing.
He's employed by fishing.
This fight isn't just with the fishermen, it's with our community as well.
And this is the leader of our community, Chief Andrea Paul, which is my sister,
and she's the voice of our people.
Because we've dealt with this for such a long time,
trust is such a big word.
In the community, people don't trust the water.
So a lot of people won't drink out of their taps because they're worried that,
you know, maybe there's contamination in our water.
People don't trust the air. And then there's the trust of the soil.
If I plant a garden, is it safe to eat? And that's been a huge one.
Traditionally, that's what people did, right?
We planted food, we fished, we hunted and we gathered our traditional medicines.
All of those were taken away from us.
They had farms and everything else and everybody shared the work
and everybody shared the profits.
We were strong, healthy people. Now, we're all full of cancer and whatnot.
And there's a lot of people that have died from it already, eh?
But there's nothing that says it's because of the mill.
There's been no proof of it.
The mill is way over there and
why did they decide all of a sudden to put the
pipe all the way down to the reserve?
It's not a coincidence,
they just have no respect for Native people.
It's been a struggle for our community for such a long time.
My people never had a voice.
Every time an elder passes, or a community member passes,
that's another person that doesn't get to see the end result.
We fish lobsters, herring, mackerel, rock crab, scallops, snow crab.
Garbage.
Fishing, it's not only a job, it's a way of life.
You know, it's something we love doing.
We love getting up every morning and going fishing.
Without the fishing industry, you know, it would be a ghost town around here.
All our money we make, we spend local.
In the mill, their profits, they go overseas.
We're not backing down, and we'll keep fighting right to the end.