For years, the Feast in the Highlands atop Hunters Mountain – just off Cape Breton’s Cabot Trail – has been a Mi’kmaq fall tradition, but this year was a bit different.
“(It) sucks that you can’t hunt moose in Cape Breton this year, for three years. I’m kind of bummed out,” said Isaac Propser, a Grade 11 student from nearby We’kok’maq First Nation.
“They had been kept away from Hunters Mountain for decades, and they finally won the rights to come back and harvest moose under the treaties and under their Aboriginal rights, so it became a celebration of that,” said Mi’kmaq rights negotiator Eric Zscheile, explaining the history behind the annual feast.
Last July the Nova Scotia government and the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq Chiefs made the joint decision to suspend moose hunting in the Cape Breton Highlands – for Mi’kmaq hunters and non-Native licence holders alike – for the next three years due to low moose populations.
Despite …