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Indigenous small business owner accuses Parks Canada of blocking harvesting rights in salt fight

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About four to five times every year, Melissa Daniels will visit the salt plains in Wood Buffalo National Park and fill a four-litre ice cream carton with salt. When she gets home, she will crush the compound into a powder then mix it with wild flowers, plants and oils to create soaps, lotions and bath blends.

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Daniels says her business honours her Denesuline heritage and ancestors, who used the salt plains for centuries. But last month she got a letter from the park warden who praised Daniels’ small business, but then warned her to stop using the salt in her products. She is ignoring the letter and says the incident shows Indigenous harvesting rights are not being respected by Parks Canada.

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“My business is grounded in traditional knowledge. I would never undertake any action that would harm the land,” said Daniels in an interview. “My rights supersedes the National Parks Act. I’m not going to stop and I’m not going to let Parks Canada extinguish these rights my people practiced and fight for.”

Indigenous peoples are allowed to harvest salt from the park, but are prohibited for doing so for commercial purposes. Daniels argues her ancestors used the salt plains for many reasons—including trade—long before the park existed.

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Daniels is a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) and has run Naidié Nezų (Denesuline for “good medicine”) from her home in Fort Smith, NWT since late 2019. Since Wood Buffalo National Park was created as a bison preserve in 1922, the park has had a tense relationship with the First Nation.

Salt plains in Wood Buffalo National Park. Supplied Image/Melissa Daniels
Salt plains in Wood Buffalo National Park. Supplied Image/Melissa Daniels

A 2021 report, which was based on reviews of historical records and interviews with elders, shows a strict permitting system that came with the park’s creation cut Dené people off from cultural sites, destroyed homes, and caused hunger, poverty and disease. Meanwhile, sport hunters legally hunted hundreds of park bison between 1946 and 1967 as local food supplies dwindled.

“The Dene have resided in what is now called Wood Buffalo National Park for at least 11,000 years. We have a treaty, signed with the Crown, that guarantees access and use of this territory,” said Chief Allan Adam in an emailed statement.

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The federal government has acknowledged the creation of the park, which turns 100 in December, caused hardship for Indigenous people. ACFN’s leaders want an official apology and the right to hunt, trap, fish and forage in traditional lands that are now within the park’s boundaries.

“It blows my mind they have allowed people to commercially harvest and destroy the land in the park, but now they’re coming after me,” said Daniels. “Since the park was created, Indigenous people have been seen as a threat to it.”

Parks Canada spokesperson Tim Gerwing said park leaders prefer to discuss these disputes with Indigenous partners, but regretted that did not happen with Daniels.

“Commercial harvesting of salt in the national park, which is also a World Heritage Site, is not currently permitted,” wrote Gerwing, but “policies and regulations can and do evolve.”

“We are confident that through respectful engagement and discussion, we can find a resolution that meets the needs of local Indigenous peoples while also preserving the ecological integrity of Wood Buffalo National Park for future generations,” he wrote.

vmcdermott@postmedia.com

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