Linking land displacement and environmental dispossession to Mi'kmaw health and well-being: Culturally relevant place-based interpretive frameworks matter

Abstract

For over five decades, Pictou Landing First Nation, a small Mi'kmaw community on the northern shore of Nova Scotia, has been told that the health of its community is not impacted by a pulp and paper mill pouring 85 million litres of effluent per day into a lagoon that was once a culturally significant place known as “A'se'k,” and which borders the community. Based on lived experience, the community knows otherwise. Despite countless government- and industry-sponsored studies indicating the mill's pollutants are merely “nuisance” impacts and harmless, the community's concerns have not gone away. Using a “Piktukowaq” (Mi'kmaw) environmental health research framework to guide the interpretation of oral histories coming from the Knowledge Holders in Pictou Landing First Nation, we convey the deep, health-enhancing relationship with A'se'k that the Piktukowaq enjoyed before it was destroyed, and the health suppression that has occurred since then. Conducting the research using a culturally relevant place-based interpretive framework has demonstrated the absolute necessity of this kind of approach where Indigenous communities are concerned, particularly those facing health impacts vis-à-vis land displacement and environmental dispossession.