Trapper a descendent of rugged mountain people

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Russel Plante was raised in the Rocky Mountains. In fact he comes from a breed of rugged mountain people who have trapped and hunted in the mountain ranges and valleys near Hinton, Alta. Since the early 1800s.

He was born at a place called Entrance, appropriately named because it is the gateway to the Western Rocky Mountains - the Grande Cache and Jasper regions.

His eyes always alert, Plante slowly takes a puff from his cigarette in his home at Marlboro and says "You want to interview. OK, but remember. I speak on what I know, on what I feel. Nothing else," warns the quiet Metis man.

He says in the early years the area between Marlboro and Entrance was filled with animals to trap and hunt for meat and clothing. The air was mountain fresh and the only pollution came from the smoke chimneys of town houses and trappers' cabins.

His father was a trapper and Plante is a trapper but he says the country he traps has changed greatly for the worse.

Plante says he witnessed oil and gas and logging companies cut away the forests with promises of employment.

"I feel for the people in the north with Al-Pac and Daishowa (pulp mills) going in there. We went through that in the 1950s.

"Logging, poisonous gas, cutlines, they've destroyed the land around Marlboro and the animals have moved further into the mountains.

"Fish and wildlife says we don't need a trapline to subsidize our living. Heck, I couldn't make enough in the bush anyway to feed my family with all the activity going on. And where's all the work promised us? It's all lies," he says angrily.

Plante says broken promises are nothing new to him.

"They said they would do wonders for us, jobs, a better living. But it ends up the educated, the experienced outsiders get the jobs. Then they're gone after the land is ruined and we're left with what? Nothing."

Plante says he is now involved with the Aboriginal movement. But he says he'll have nothing to do with the Metis Nation of Alberta - formerly the MAA - because they took away his membership card.

"I started to be heard and got my card pulled. If you rattle the chain, you get it pulled," says Plante raising his hands in a 'what can I do?' manner.

Once the president of the Marlboro Metis local, he disbanded it because he was frustrated with the way the local was being ignored by the Metis Nation and their treatment of him, Plante says.

"I am an Aboriginal member of the Cree Nation. I don't need a card to tell me who I am. I know who I am."

A father of five children, Plante worries about their future.

"When we start thinking about our future as one people and not about filling our hip pocket, we may have something left for the nest generation. I want our children to benefit. But everytime we take money, we lose something, until the next generation ends up with nothing.

"We have a white system that separates us. It says 'you're Metis, you're treaty, you're non-status' and it's sad. We're being torn apart with only a few who benefit while the rest of us suffer," says Plante.

He adds the breaking of treaties, present and past, and the way Native people in power sometimes treat their own "brothers and sisters" is why he has declared himself an Aboriginal person.

"You know how important Mother Earth is to Indian people. Yet we're being robbed of everything the Creator gave us. It's always take, take, take."

He cites an Indian legend that was said a long time ago when treaties were signed between the white man and Indians.

"As long as the grass shall grow, the sun shall shine and the rivers shall run, these treaties will not be broken. Well, the sun is still shining but the treaties have been broken many times. Why make agreements if they're not intended to be kept?" questions Plante.

When a pulp mill was built near Marlboro in the 1950s local people were promised everything, he says. But today, he says the timer is gone and his trapline is half-gone and filled with the criss-cross of cutlines.

"If logging continues, the fish willbe poisoned and what will we be left with in this area - fish and game farms?

"Wild animals were never meant to be penned up. Look how they've all contacted tuberculosis. They have to be shot, buffalo, elk. What's happening?" he asks.

Like many other mountain people in the Marlboro area, Plante is deeply worried about the "death of the forests, rivers and mountains" that is their home.

Raising his cup of tea to his mouth he looks out his window towards the distant mountains. Then he slowly turns and watches his children playing in the living room. A long silence follows and then he says, "I'm concerned for our children but our voice only falls on deaf ears. We can't go on like this, Mother Earth must be given the chance to heal."