After a four-year absence, the Porcupine caribou herd has re-appeared along the Dempster Highway near the NWT-Yukon border. Some hunters however have been leaving dead and injured animals on the side of the highway, angering at least one Fort McPherson elder. - NNSL file photo |
Fort McPherson elder upset with dead caribou left on road
Robert Alexie Sr. says in his day they would skin the animal, take meat and cover in snow out of respect for animal, creator
John McFadden
Northern News Services
Monday, November 23, 2015
TETLIT'ZHEH/FORT MCPHERSON
A Fort McPherson elder says that he can't understand why hunters would ever leave a dead or injured caribou anywhere, never mind on the side of the Dempster Highway.
Eighty-one-year-old Robert Alexie Sr. says he thinks it is just the way the Northern lifestyle has evolved and shows a lack of respect for the land. Back in his day, according to Alexie, hunters had to work hard to go out on the land and hunt caribou. Now, he says, hunters can shoot them along the highway.
"I'm not saying they are lazy but some of them are the same people who want to get paid without hardly working," he said. "We didn't hunt more than we needed for food and skins."
The issue came to light after the Porcupine caribou herd re-appeared along the highway in the territory's northwest region this fall after rarely being seen along their traditional migratory route for about about four years, according to Alexie.
"We didn't know where the herd was, it was probably as far North as Alaska. But no one knows for sure. They go where the food is," Alexie said.
Now that they are back, Alexie said he is stumped as to why hunters would ever leave dead or injured caribou on the side of the highway.
"That's a good question. They've never been taught the old ways. You can't leave them on the side of the road or anywhere. I was brought up by old timers who hunted in the late 1800s when there was lots of caribou," Alexie said. "When you kill a caribou you skin it, you take the meat and then you use your snowshoes to cover the animal with snow. Then a fox or a wolf can dig it out. You never left a caribou carcass where the creator could see it from above. The creator made the caribou - you didn't leave it dead to be seen from above. It's given to you so you have to take care of it. Leaving it on the side of the road is no good. You have to take it somewhere where nobody else would see it. You hide it. You don't leave it beside the road, no, no no. It really doesn't look nice."
Alexie said that it gives hunters and all the people of the region a bad name when tourists, truckers or anyone else driving the highway see dead caribou on the side of the road.
"I work with tourists and they want to know what all the fur is on the side of the road. I tell them that it could be road kill or it could be wolf kill - I have to tell a lie," Alexie said. "Then we have to get someone with a truck to come and clean up the animals from the roadside. It's a lot of work."
Hunters can and have been charged in the NWT with meat wastage for leaving usable caribou carcasses behind after a hunt.
Alexie said he is not surprised the Porcupine herd disappeared and then reappeared.
"We hunted in that area for years and then in 1938 the herd disappeared and did not come back until 1956. That's a long time," Alexie said.
