DavO, you make some fair points for a moniyaw ;-) (non speaker of our language), as do Robson Valley and Jan. But let me tell it from where I sit now.
For maybe 12 or 13 thousands of years man in Canada has been living up here. Compared with how I see your people live, I think we live far more in harmony with nature than you can ever hope to do.
We do not hunt predators. We know they take the things we eat and/or trap and sell a little. They live too on our land and like us sometimes find it difficult and hard going. We don't mind, they are like us. The martins we hunt are preditors too - like the sable I think. When the moniyaw traders asked us many years ago to hunt the beaver, the fox, the marten and other fur animals, we did so because that is what we did and we were paid or traded. No different to why you work I guess. But there were only so many of us Nehiyawok (Speekers of Cree), but demand from moneyaw grew and so many more moneyaw hunters from the south, the cities and europe came here and hunted them until they were scarce and no longer profitable. By the sixties and seventies the demand by your people - for our furs crashed. We went hungry and our income dropped. Like the animals we had to find other way to eat. Now these animals are back - in our lifetime too. We take care to make sure we only hunt enough in one area long enough to do no harm, then we move our camps or village to another area for a while and so on. Our houses are made from the forest and do not come far. Many of our southern forests are cut and sold to moneyaw from big cities and I often wonder when I see cut forest if there are many europeans living in homes made by from them.
I think our way of life is far,far more environmentally sound than the life most people live in towns, or cities. You have an automobile I guess? You buy your food from the store? where does it come from? You buy all your clothing? Where is it made? How do you keep your house warm in winter? From the forest? Everything I saw in your stores came from far away places. Fruit from many countries, meat from many countries, clothes from China, Thailand and similiar places. Many, autombiles? Englishcars? hell no! All these environmentally friendly folk driving vehicles made in Japan! many autombiles made the towns smell = and where did all that oil come from? Our hunting homes we use when we are travelling have no electric or central heating like you and we use only wood to heat them. They came from the forest and will return to it.
The place we call Nikis has only one new road, before a few years ago there were no road, in or out. I never thenhad visited amiskwacwaskahikan, our nearest city (Edmonton) or your land. We had no need. I live in the bush. We have a few skidoos, pickups, mostly old and bad. Every single bit of meat I eat I know where it came from and what it fed upon. and it is free from chemicals - it lived in the forest like we do. ! It is where out of choice I live and work. When I die my waskahikan will fall back into the forest like all our other houses and no trace will remain.
I think this is good choice for us - its why we are here.
