Hello, my name is Clarence Happyjack. I am the Interim Niskamoon Officer for the Cree Nation of Waskaganish, replacing Ernie Moses, who is currently on temporary leave. Before this, I worked since 2019 as the Field Coordinator, assisting Ernie on the many projects that we oversee in Waskaganish, funded by Niskamoon. I work closely with Land Users, tallymen and other beneficiaries that may be involved in various projects within the framework between Niskamoon and Hydro-Quebec. I help preparing project proposals, collecting all necessary documents and writing final reports. A lot of my work involves trying to anticipate the needs of land users as well as helping them to develop ideas that address different challenges. We often try to work with existing local resources to solve our problems.
Although the research is project is less present in Waskaganish, it is still important for us, especially because it has a very close connection to a resource that we hold very close to our hearts: geese!! This animal is on our community logo!
We hope that the research teams continue to do work in the Waskaganish territory, especially in the area of Boatswain Bay where eelgrass is present. The land users are very happy to share their knowledge with the researchers in these areas.
It will be important that this project helps us understand the many changes our elders have observed on the coast over the last decades. We hope that this area will continue to provide for future generations as it has for past ones since time immemorial.
I enjoy working with the Coastal Habitat Comprehensive Research Program Team. Most notably, I had a chance to attend a very interesting Conference in Halifax on Dec. 2-6, 2019 based on “Arctic Climate Change”. They were about over thousand people from all over World and I was able to meet other indigenous people from across the country.
