Reconciliation in action

Reconciliation in action

Hi, my name is Ronnie Chickite.

I'm the Elected Chief of the We Wai Kai First Nation and I'm also an A-Tlegay board member.

Today, we're out on the water getting some FSC for the community. This will be given away for food to the community.

So the PICFI program, was a program that was designed to help First Nation communities get back into the fishing industry.

All the licenses that we've gotten through PICFI over the years have all been used by the community members, and it's helped us be able to build as we had more younger fishermen coming into the industry.

PICFI has really helped us get our program going like it was designed to.

One of the main reasons that PICFI has been so successful for us is the mentoring program. And we've been very successful on helping mentor young and older people who have never been in the fishing industry.

We have a couple of young people who've really stepped up through the mentoring program and Chance is one of them. I was lucky enough to mentor Chance for a few years.

It's great to see a young fisherman come along and, you know, within two years buy their own boat. And before you know it, they're buying, you know, their second boat to help them be a successful fisherman just like the rest of us.

My grandfather was a fisherman and I went out fishing with him when I was really young. And then it's been in my blood since and I've never thought of anything else.

The PICFI mentor program I started when I was maybe 17, 16.

This was able to help me get right into it, from day one, right into all the fishing right away.

Fishing is huge in our community because it enables for us to bring, you know, food and ceremonial fish back to the community. And also for the jobs that we're able to create.

It's a way of life, it's in my blood and it's in their blood.

And as First Nations people. That's what we've always done. For centuries, we've relied on salmon and I think for us, it's key just to continue that in the community. I hope we're able to rebuild the salmon stocks.

I know that a lot of Nations have always talked about rebuilding because salmon is our way of life.

We've had a longstanding Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy program going on.

There's an agreement between Canada and the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, to provide fisheries funding.

The RMOT position is a fisheries junior technical position. Justin Blondeau in particular, this was an opportunity to have him move from a seasonal position to being funded full-time as we build more capacity in the Nation to look after fisheries.

I was hired as an RMOT eight months ago. In the eight months, I've learned quite a bit.

Basically working in the field just about every single day. Picking up my swim crew, going out to the rivers.

Well, what you'll see on the river with the snorkel crew is them swimming alongside the fish, grouping them together, getting a rough estimate of how much fish is in that pool.

So we collect this data so we can get a more accurate count on how many fish returned.

We're not seeing any fish today due to the water being dirty from erosion. All the fish are hopefully shooting straight up to their spawning beds. It's been a super dry, dry summer. Now all this rain. Yeah, pretty happy about it. Happy that our fish get to make their way up the river finally.

So in this river that we're on right now, we'd be tagging Chinook salmon. And they'd be releasing them back into the water once they're tagged. After that we'd see how far that fish gets up the river.

My hope for the fish is we get a healthy, healthy return over the years to come.

Makes my heart feel happy. Being out in the wilderness, out in the field all day, enjoying the rain.

The Twinned Watersheds Project is a project that's a collaboration between Cowichan Tribes and Halalt First Nation to look at the stocks and the health of the rivers for both the Koksilah and the Chemainus River.

The BCSRIF funding was a catalyst for both rivers. By providing really key data to show what is happening to the health of the salmon.

So the primary role of the work is to count fish in the watershed, to try and understand the health of the stocks in both rivers.

The second component of the project is to look at long-term habitat in the rivers and what might be lacking and what we might need to do to restore that habitat.

So in the last week we've spent four out of the five days placing rocks and making small rock weirs to increase the flows for the fish.

And we're happy to see that the fish are moving up the river.

This hasn't really been done on this river before.

This is the first time we're getting counts. We're getting numbers of juvenile fish, fry fish that are leaving the system.

It's a five-year project. Gives you an idea for the first year and if it's decreasing or increasing in numbers.

I'd like to see, you know, an abundance of fish, a lot of water.

And I think that's the goal is to get it back to what it was like when I was a child.

Well, I'm hopeful because that's why I'm here.

That's my passion as Chief and as a Fisheries Guardian, Fisheries Officer.

So it's number one priority for me to ensure those stocks are back for my youth and the next generation.