𝒶𝓀𝒾𝓇𝒶

new romance: adit priscilla for indie mag issue no.69

Adam Fuss - Love, 1993 & Bryan Christie - Every Angel is Terror, 2014

Shūji Terayama, Taken from Photothèque Imaginaire de Shūji Terayama: Les Gens de la Famille Chien-Dieu, 1975.

kiko kostandinov aw23

[T]he Broadback Forest has never been logged or known the incursion of roads. The forest floor is coated in moss, with scarves of lichen draped over tree branches. The Broadback River, full of fish, bends through the forest as it jogs toward Rupert Bay, at the south end of James Bay. The forest is a sanctuary for wildlife such as migratory songbirds and at-risk woodland caribou, and it provides sustenance and meaning for the Cree. “In the Cree identity when you say Cree you say Eeyou. And then when you speak about the Cree territory you say Eeyou Istchee,” says Gull […].  But the Cree say logging could expand into the southern portion of the Broadback forest this year [2020], under a five-year forestry plan that proposes a harvest of six million cubic metres of wood in Waswanipi territory

To reach the Cree community of Waswanipi, […] you drive north from Montreal for eight hours on a trip […] “not for the faint-hearted,” especially in winter. You can’t miss Waswanipi; you’ll cross a long green bridge over the Waswanipi River and the community of 1,700 will be on your right, ringed by the boreal forest and further away, like the expanding ripples from a skimmed stone, by logging cut blocks. In Cree, Waswanipi means ‘light on the water,’ a reminder of the days when torches were lit with pine tar and sturgeon several metres long were […] caught at the river’s dark mouth. […] Whapmagoostui [is] on the Great Whale River at the shore of Hudson Bay. Great Whale, as the town is often called, is the most northern community in James Bay Cree territory, accessible only by boat or plane. Waswanipi, more than 600 kilometres away as the crow flies, is the most southern […]. In between the two communities […] lies a dense forest of mature spruce and pine called the Broadback. […]

Like many Cree, most of Gull’s diet consists of country foods […]. In Chibougamau, she’s been out picking wild blueberries. She brews medicinal tea from Labrador tea bushes, often found in swamps and bogs, and from pink fireweed plants. […]

For almost 20 years, the Cree have been working to protect the primary forest in the Broadback watershed from logging and other development such as mining and road-building. The Broadback — with its carbon cache and abundant wildlife — is one of the few remaining areas on Waswanipi Cree territory untouched by industry. Ninety per cent of the territory has been impacted by industrial development, Gull says, and close to 30,000 kilometres of forestry roads criss-cross through her homeland. […] “The Broadback is a big part of that connectivity because it spans right across the territory,” Gull says.

The Broadback Forest is one of the few remaining large tracts of intact boreal forest left in Quebec. It stretches over more than 1.3 million hectares, an area considerably larger than Cape Breton Island.

The Cree call the Broadback watershed Misigamish, meaning a large body of water. Almost two decades ago, following extensive consultations, they developed a Broadback Watershed Conservation Plan to protect key areas for culture, carbon storage, clean water and biodiversity. […] But the Broadback’s remaining rare primary forest, which includes white birch and trembling aspen, is open to industrial development such as logging and mining. Among other values, the unprotected Broadback Forest connects the Assinica and Nottaway caribou herds […]..

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Text, photos, captions: Sarah Cox. “’It’s like paradise’: The Cree Nation’s fight to save the Broadback Forest.” The Narwhal. 22 August 2020.

Charles Culver (1908 - 1967) - Resting Deer. Chalk, pastel and watercolour.