Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[Witness speaks in his native language]
It's an honour to be here in the coastal territory once again, down here in friends' territory.
This was very short notice for me, so I don't have very many speaking notes. Of course, for the issues I'm going to speak on, there aren't a lot of statistics. I'm going to talk about first nations economy and the poverty related to the salmon resource in British Columbia. I'm only speaking specifically for my community, the Siska Indian Band, and it's a member of the Nicola Tribal Association, so I am speaking on behalf of those other seven communities as well. I can't speak for other communities in regard to their relationship to the salmon resource and the economies they derive from salmon in their traditional territories, but I am going to speak very seriously about my area in the Fraser Canyon.
For the last three years we have been very, very hard-pressed to catch any salmon in our community. As a main provider in my community, I fish for extended families, single mothers, and elders. My family alone will harvest 600 to 700 salmon, which is distributed out to community members, single parents, and elders. For the last three years that has been very, very difficult to do. This year alone my family ate one sockeye salmon--one. I got calls from elders and single parents in the Merritt area and extended bands because they had relied on us to provide them with fish, and they haven't had that this year. So there's a huge, huge impact on my community and the fish economy and how that salmon resource supplements their income and their economy.
We worked with the University of British Columbia and we did a project called The Creator's Gifts, looking at the gifts that were here on the land that first nations people utilize. Of course, in our area salmon was one of the predominant ones. Prior to contact, our community was wealthy--very, very wealthy--because of the valuable trade commodity of wind-dried salmon. Fraser-bound wind-dried salmon has been found in archeological digs down in the States, in Ontario, and in Manitoba, so it was a huge, huge trade economy. Prior to contact we were rich.
During the transformative changes when first nations were slowly removed from that fishery and the economy of that fishery, intense poverty began. Even in the current status of where we are today through such cases as the Supreme Court decision on Sparrow and aboriginal peoples' right to make a moderate living from the fish resource, well, it's non-existent. When you look at the statistics, there are no statistics out there on this relationship between salmon and first nations poverty.
We did research on The Creator's Gifts to talk about how much salmon actually gets consumed in our community. Because of the high levels of unemployment--over 90% are unemployed--you're either working on the railroad or you're working in the bush in the Lytton area. Those are pretty well your options for long-term employment, and everybody knows that the forest industry has crashed. The railroads have cut back hugely and have been laying off people, so the economy in my community really has risen, and the need for the fish resource became even more paramount.
We worked with UBC and we went through and talked to all of our households about how much salmon they consumed in a year. If you look at Statistics Canada, I think they recommend three or four ounces per week. Even based on that, each household would have to have a minimum of 64 salmon per person per year. We're not even getting close to that. So now you have people who are on social assistance, who cannot put that high-quality protein on the table. They are then stuck going to the store and buying that low-grade, crappy hamburger and store-bought food--and the low-grade store-bought food. They're buying pasta and rice and potatoes and flour, so they have a really terrible, terrible diet, and it affects their economy.
I guess it's awfully difficult trying to share this with the panel, because there isn't a lot of research being done out there on how this and the lack of salmon relates to poverty in first nations communities. Specifically, as I was saying, once again, I'm talking about my community. Other communities along the coast aren't as impacted as the ones that are inland, because they get a crack at the fish before we do.
I guess I'm asking the standing committee how it can assist first nations so that they are fully engaged and involved in co-management of the salmon resource as it relates to first nations' poverty.
In our community we developed the very first inland communal commercial fishery, and we were trying to increase employment and the economy around our fish resource, but it has failed miserably because there are no fish. This last year we tried to process pink salmon, and of course it was impossible, because our facility is so small. It produces only 30,000 fish, and we don't have the capacity to compete in the big market where they're harvesting millions of these things. That's one of the biggest challenges.
Is there a way this standing committee can assist first nations communities in the replacement of that protein source? I know what they have down in the States. Whenever their returns don't happen the American government steps in and compensates those first nations so that they can have a way to put that protein back on the table. That is certainly something that this province or the Government of Canada should be doing. When the salmon resource crashed, there should have been some way for them to provide resources to first nations people so that they could put that protein back on their table again, however it was done. They do it in other places, and it's something I would certainly like to see this committee do.
That's basically what I came here today to say. I had very short notice, and I can speak directly only to the poverty in my community and its relationship to the salmon resource. Is there any way this committee can encourage government to engage first nations so that they can be fully involved in co-management of the resource, and try to encourage government to find a way to supplement first nations communities when the salmon resource does crash?
Kukstsemc. Thank you very much.