“As the populations decline, these things that we may not take for granted have always been available to us become less and less. And what that does is it creates this scarcity mentality, right? We’re seeing overhunting right now. We’re seeing people worried about when they’re going to be able to go get caribou next. We’re seeing rising gas prices. We’re seeing all these other factors come together at the same time, which is leading people to overhunt, to feel worried, to make decisions that aren’t in line with the decisions we’ve made as Dene people for forever. And it worries me that as we see more regulations – which I do believe are good – we see more of these pushes out of a place of fear and worry for different groups, different people, that their way of life, a way of life that’s been taken from us, a way of life we’re trying to reclaim, is slipping through our fingers. 

My hands are my grandfathers are his grandfathers are his. To process this animal as we have with modern tools, to give as much as I can, is just an extension of those people and the goodwill that’s come down from my family for generations. It doesn’t feel good or bad. It feels correct. It feels like I’m making the right decision in the moment. When I work and butcher the animal, when I give it away to my friends and family, there’s a lot of things I think as a modern Indigenous person, where we’re steering through uncharted waters, and in those moments it feels almost like a lighthouse – that this is the direction I should go, this is the right thing or me to do. So it feels correct. And it feels good, I will take that back. It does feel good to share, it does feel good to harvest. It feels good to get better at it everyday. I feel privileged to be given those opportunities. And I hope these are opportunities that aren’t as much of a privilege for my kids and their kids. I hope that we go back to it being a normal thing in generations. To be out there harvesting, to come home, to share. I hope that we can all experience that.”