Interview with Zachary Paul of Treaty Truckhouse 2, August 21st, 2021
Tacha Reed
So first, we will acknowledge that we are on unceded Mi'kmaw territory, and I'm very happy that you're here with us. This is very exciting. I guess first I'll just ask you to state your name and a little background of who you are and where you're from.
Zacc Paul
All right. So my name is Zachary Paul - Z-A-C-C-H-A-R-Y P-A-U-L, Membertou First Nation in Unama'kik, part of Mi'kma'ki. For several years, I just lived in Halifax, and I was a downhill skateboarder, still am, less seriously now, but for the past year it's kind of been a transition to a new focus, which is really nice. Prior to coming to the truckhouse I didn't really have any idea of indigenous issues really because I was off living a nice happy life, not worried about all that. Yeah.
Tacha Reed
So what was your first introduction to the Avon River? How did you become aware of -- is it something that you always knew existed or was it...
Zacc Paul
No, so this is an interesting story actually. It all started on July 1st, two years ago or last year. That's last year, yeah.
Tacha Reed
2020?
Zacc Paul
Yeah, so I decided that my original plan last year was to go on a tour, a skate tour across North America. I had a bunch of events lined up, then COVID happened. So I decided I still wanted to do something. So me and my friend we're going on this trip. We're going to go travel around the Maritimes, find all these hills, but on my first day of travel on July 1st, I was driving down the highway and I saw a porcupine on the side of the road, stopped and poor guy was still alive so I had to help him go over, and I picked up a bunch of his quills while I was there. And so we did our trip. And when I was in Annapolis Valley, I ran into Sandy. This is my second time meeting Sandy, and I was like, "Oh, hey, Sandy, what are you doing?". "Oh, I'm at the river", and I was like, "Okay, I'll come say hi someday; you'll see me there". So three weeks went by. My buddy cut his hands really bad, had to go back home, and my other friend came and took him, so I was alone. I remember I was in Red Clay Farms in North Economy -- or Upper Economy rather. I had a full tank and $3.87 when I left there. So I get to Truro, I'm low on cash, I remember these porcupine quills. I said, Hey, you know, if someone's gonna buy them, it's gonna be the trading post there. So I went there; they gave me 25 bucks. I took that 25 bucks and I put -- you know, filled up Christine, my car, got a cup of coffee. I was like, All right, man, I'm happy, haven't had a smoke, though, so let's see if we can go find some smokes. Went over to Sma‘knisk in Truro; they're a smoke shop. Walked in. "We've got no cartons, we got no packs, we've got no tins". And I was like, "All right, you got any singles?". "Yeah, 3 for 5". Sitting outside, right, I had my coffee, full tank, cigarette. Man, I was happy, right, sitting there, nowhere to go. No plans. And then this guy started talking to me. It turned out he was the owner of the shop. I asked him if he had any cash work, and he got me stripping tepee poles that evening. Gave me a hundred bucks and left. Like, that was -- that was wild. "Here's your money. See ya." So then when I was done there, I was driving south, no idea where I was going. It was nighttime. I saw that exit for Windsor. Boom. Sandy pops up in my head, and I went down there and showed up. That night I slept next to the fire, and, well, the next day I got the briefing, and, I mean, here we are over a year later.
Tacha Reed
So you've been there ever since?
Zacc Paul
Um hum.
Tacha Reed
Amazing. So the place that you're talking about is Treaty Truckhouse 2. Most people don't realize, locally, what the treaty truckhouse stands for and what you do there. Do you want to just explain that a little bit.
Zacc Paul
So truckhouses are -- they're a provision in the 1752 Treaty, basically says, "said Tribe of Indians shall have constructed at the river Shubenacadie or any other river of their resort, a truckhouse furnished therein with all the necessaries, and they may trade their fish, fur, feathers, fowl," all that kind of stuff, at the truckhouse. So that was back in the 1750s. That quickly fell out of use. It turned into the Certified Trader Network, which was essentially traders were licensed to do business with indigenous people, and they were given, you know, basically a list. Here's your trading items, and here's what they're worth. Beaver pelt would be worth, you know, so many pounds of flour, so many pounds of another meat, so on and so forth. Moving into more contemporary times, we have --they've basically retook that truckhouse idea and used its legal precedence because that's legal precedence to have a structure next to a river that's occupied by First Nations, whatever river it is. And the truckhouse is the legal reason that you can be there, one of the legal reasons they can't kick you out. And now it's kind of turned into a political tool. So when there's an issue -- so at first -- the first truckhouse we saw was Alton Gas on the Shubenacadie River. Second truckhouse was Truckhouse 2. Third truckhouse was down in Saunierville. It has since been removed. But -- and then there's talk of another one going up maybe for Owl's Head, but they're basically a very strong lease -- legal precedent to gather and to occupy a space, usually used when there's an issue, very important issue, that needs addressing. Salt caverns, blocked river, moderate livelihood, although they're changing the name to Treaty Fishing being threatened, and, you know, the sale of endangered areas and protected areas.
Tacha Reed
So when the -- I'm trying to think back to when, kind of, this all started. I believe it was Darren Porter doing his hunger strike next to the causeway gate that kind of brought attention to the Mi'kmaw community and brought people out, initially, and from my understanding, you've been kind of recording when they open the gate and recording fish kills. What have you seen taking place at the gate site over the last year since you've been there?
Zacc Paul
So originally, back before the ministerial order was in place, we saw the only operations of the gate really were a 6-minute opening and closing window in the middle of low and high tide. So this, this would basically be, your tide would be coming, in coming in, coming in, coming in, the gate's still closed. Then at a certain point it would open a little bit. Most of that time water would be going out because the head level would be higher on one side than the other. A very low velocity period for a very small window. So it was basically open for 12 minutes a day. And really, only believably passable for fish for about 4-6 per day. So that was what we originally saw. There was a lot -- the only time there would be an extended gate opening would be when there was excess water. And so we'd see, you know, a 6-12 hour opening of one gate and a lot of water coming out, which is not conducive to fish passage.
Tacha Reed
And was that more related to, like, spring flooding, like, letting the water through that was coming from the lakes?
Zacc Paul
Even in the fall, but yeah, anytime there was the former Lake Pesaquid was getting too high, they just drain it. And that was the only reason. You know a lot of people are trying to say that there was constant fish passage, there was consistent fish passage; there really wasn't. Then I think those operations continued through the fall into the winter. And then in the spring, the ministerial order got enacted. Almost immediately, we saw an extended gate opening, 45 minutes to an hour, to let the incoming tide in. They've since kind of rolled that back a little bit, but it's been kind of weird. They'll let, like, just above the minimum in during the day. 15, 20 minutes, something like that. But then in the evening, they'd let almost double that in. Just for numbers, often in the day we'll see the gates closing around 2.3, 2.4 meters above keel blocks. In the evening, we're seeing 4.2, 4.5, 4.8 when the gate's closed. So in the evening they're letting almost double the tide in when everyone's asleep, conveniently. That might be part of the idea to say "Oh look, it's not letting enough water in and if you guys -- look at all these problems, it's so low". When in reality they can let through a lot more. But as for the gate operation themselves, I think that's a pretty sufficient description of what we've seen. One of the best days we ever had there was the day those gates opened and we saw a river running out for the first time. Man, that was real nice. It was really nice.
Tacha Reed
So now that we have a new local government change, and we're now PC, what would you like to see happening over the next little while in relation to the causeway?
Zacc Paul
I'd like to see this obstinate stance and this this problem-oriented thinking -- a lot of people I've seen, it's just basically issues -- we've got this problem, we've got that problem, we've got this problem. There's no real solutions being put forward for anybody. What I'd like to see is the new government in the area focus on that. Stop trying to override the Fisheries Act; stop trying to override DFO; stop trying to override indigenous rights; and, you know, move forward. This is what we have to do. It's federally legislated that the gates have to be open, that fish passage has to be a priority. And we're kind of seeing the end of humans having more priority than our environment. It's a very strong idea of mine that humans are the only species that are able to, like, really, really sculpt our environment. We can bend, and we can move, and we can fix our own problems. Fish and our other brothers and sisters, the swimmers, the four legged, the crawlers, all of them, they can't. They've just got to kind of deal with what we do to them. So with species with the ability to modify the landscape as much as we are, I believe we have the ability to bend our society to cause the least amount of impact on our brothers and sisters who don't have that ability. And it's really our duty as -- well, we're the stewards of the lands, all of us. We all have to take care of this place to ensure that our society doesn't hurt others.
Tacha Reed
Is there anything else you'd like to share? Is there any advice for people in the community who maybe don't fully understand what's going on? Anywhere that I could recommend to direct people to educate themselves?
Zacc Paul
Yes, come on down to the truckhouse, Truckhouse Number 2 on the Avon River causeway. Our address is 1705 Highway 101. Please do not stop on the side of the highway. There is Exit 7, and there's Exit 6. Exit 7 is probably your easiest way to come in. If you're coming from the Halifax direction, then you would come in and go onto the off-ramp, and right before you get to the overpass, there's a flag on the left. Follow the road that flag is on. It will take you right to our encampment. If you're coming from the Valley way, you would go on the off-ramp, you would take a left, you would go over the overpass, and the flag would be on your right. Same thing, follow that road down. Exit 6 is -- you can go off of... this is the weird part. You've got to go off of the highway onto the off-ramp, and then halfway on the off-ramp, you've got to stop and take a left to go over the median and then go over the on-ramp, and then you'll get to the road that takes us to there. So if you want to try that one, you're more than welcome, but Exit 7's the easiest. And, you know, we're -- we've got people on site 24/7. We're pretty much there all the time. We're more than willing to have these conversations with anybody who's interested. Anybody with contradictory viewpoints -- like, that's the thing. We're a very non-judgmental space. We'll just sit and have a conversation with you. If we don't come to agreement, we don't come to an agreement. There's no animosity there. We'd like to be as open as possible to all the peoples so that we can have a well-rounded viewpoint and express a well-rounded viewpoint as well.
Tacha Reed
Thank you so much for sharing your story of what brought you to the Avon River, and I really hope that as a community we all come together and find solutions that work for future generations to keep this such a wonderful place to live.
Zacc Paul
Um hum
Tacha Reed
And that we stop destroying Mother Nature, and try to remedy some of the harm that we've caused in the past.
Zacc Paul
Right, because the only thing that's going to happen, man, is she's going to buck us off. Mother Nature don't care. The planet's been depopulated many times before, and it's come back. If we do enough damage to the Earth that we'll be unable to survive on it, she will continue. The human race at that point will be a thing of the past, and life will come back. So that's -- it's not, really, we're going to destroy our planet it's just going to destroy the planet for ourselves. The planet is a living being, and it's very powerful, it's very strong, very resilient. It's come back from way worse before, and it'll do it again. So we've really got to be concerned about the next generations of our people. All of our people. Because if we mess up, there's really no second chance for us. And that'll be a shame, you know, be a shame. We're capable of so much, and we're capable of seeing so much and achieving so much, but everyone's getting stuck up in the grind. Money's important, things are important, but your planet and the way you treat her isn't. Thankfully we're seeing a lot of people wake up, and, you know, start to realize that what we're doing is unsustainable. We've got to change things. But those people need to speak up more. You know, we need to come and gather and talk to your elected officials, talk to your government bodies, and lobby for change. Don't lay down and accept what they're doing when you know that it's wrong. Stand up and fight. Stand up and stand for what you believe in. And the more people we have doing that, then the harder it's going to be to ignore.
Tacha Reed
Thank you, Zacc.
Zacc Paul
Thank you, Tacha.
So first, we will acknowledge that we are on unceded Mi'kmaw territory, and I'm very happy that you're here with us. This is very exciting. I guess first I'll just ask you to state your name and a little background of who you are and where you're from.
Zacc Paul
All right. So my name is Zachary Paul - Z-A-C-C-H-A-R-Y P-A-U-L, Membertou First Nation in Unama'kik, part of Mi'kma'ki. For several years, I just lived in Halifax, and I was a downhill skateboarder, still am, less seriously now, but for the past year it's kind of been a transition to a new focus, which is really nice. Prior to coming to the truckhouse I didn't really have any idea of indigenous issues really because I was off living a nice happy life, not worried about all that. Yeah.
Tacha Reed
So what was your first introduction to the Avon River? How did you become aware of -- is it something that you always knew existed or was it...
Zacc Paul
No, so this is an interesting story actually. It all started on July 1st, two years ago or last year. That's last year, yeah.
Tacha Reed
2020?
Zacc Paul
Yeah, so I decided that my original plan last year was to go on a tour, a skate tour across North America. I had a bunch of events lined up, then COVID happened. So I decided I still wanted to do something. So me and my friend we're going on this trip. We're going to go travel around the Maritimes, find all these hills, but on my first day of travel on July 1st, I was driving down the highway and I saw a porcupine on the side of the road, stopped and poor guy was still alive so I had to help him go over, and I picked up a bunch of his quills while I was there. And so we did our trip. And when I was in Annapolis Valley, I ran into Sandy. This is my second time meeting Sandy, and I was like, "Oh, hey, Sandy, what are you doing?". "Oh, I'm at the river", and I was like, "Okay, I'll come say hi someday; you'll see me there". So three weeks went by. My buddy cut his hands really bad, had to go back home, and my other friend came and took him, so I was alone. I remember I was in Red Clay Farms in North Economy -- or Upper Economy rather. I had a full tank and $3.87 when I left there. So I get to Truro, I'm low on cash, I remember these porcupine quills. I said, Hey, you know, if someone's gonna buy them, it's gonna be the trading post there. So I went there; they gave me 25 bucks. I took that 25 bucks and I put -- you know, filled up Christine, my car, got a cup of coffee. I was like, All right, man, I'm happy, haven't had a smoke, though, so let's see if we can go find some smokes. Went over to Sma‘knisk in Truro; they're a smoke shop. Walked in. "We've got no cartons, we got no packs, we've got no tins". And I was like, "All right, you got any singles?". "Yeah, 3 for 5". Sitting outside, right, I had my coffee, full tank, cigarette. Man, I was happy, right, sitting there, nowhere to go. No plans. And then this guy started talking to me. It turned out he was the owner of the shop. I asked him if he had any cash work, and he got me stripping tepee poles that evening. Gave me a hundred bucks and left. Like, that was -- that was wild. "Here's your money. See ya." So then when I was done there, I was driving south, no idea where I was going. It was nighttime. I saw that exit for Windsor. Boom. Sandy pops up in my head, and I went down there and showed up. That night I slept next to the fire, and, well, the next day I got the briefing, and, I mean, here we are over a year later.
Tacha Reed
So you've been there ever since?
Zacc Paul
Um hum.
Tacha Reed
Amazing. So the place that you're talking about is Treaty Truckhouse 2. Most people don't realize, locally, what the treaty truckhouse stands for and what you do there. Do you want to just explain that a little bit.
Zacc Paul
So truckhouses are -- they're a provision in the 1752 Treaty, basically says, "said Tribe of Indians shall have constructed at the river Shubenacadie or any other river of their resort, a truckhouse furnished therein with all the necessaries, and they may trade their fish, fur, feathers, fowl," all that kind of stuff, at the truckhouse. So that was back in the 1750s. That quickly fell out of use. It turned into the Certified Trader Network, which was essentially traders were licensed to do business with indigenous people, and they were given, you know, basically a list. Here's your trading items, and here's what they're worth. Beaver pelt would be worth, you know, so many pounds of flour, so many pounds of another meat, so on and so forth. Moving into more contemporary times, we have --they've basically retook that truckhouse idea and used its legal precedence because that's legal precedence to have a structure next to a river that's occupied by First Nations, whatever river it is. And the truckhouse is the legal reason that you can be there, one of the legal reasons they can't kick you out. And now it's kind of turned into a political tool. So when there's an issue -- so at first -- the first truckhouse we saw was Alton Gas on the Shubenacadie River. Second truckhouse was Truckhouse 2. Third truckhouse was down in Saunierville. It has since been removed. But -- and then there's talk of another one going up maybe for Owl's Head, but they're basically a very strong lease -- legal precedent to gather and to occupy a space, usually used when there's an issue, very important issue, that needs addressing. Salt caverns, blocked river, moderate livelihood, although they're changing the name to Treaty Fishing being threatened, and, you know, the sale of endangered areas and protected areas.
Tacha Reed
So when the -- I'm trying to think back to when, kind of, this all started. I believe it was Darren Porter doing his hunger strike next to the causeway gate that kind of brought attention to the Mi'kmaw community and brought people out, initially, and from my understanding, you've been kind of recording when they open the gate and recording fish kills. What have you seen taking place at the gate site over the last year since you've been there?
Zacc Paul
So originally, back before the ministerial order was in place, we saw the only operations of the gate really were a 6-minute opening and closing window in the middle of low and high tide. So this, this would basically be, your tide would be coming, in coming in, coming in, coming in, the gate's still closed. Then at a certain point it would open a little bit. Most of that time water would be going out because the head level would be higher on one side than the other. A very low velocity period for a very small window. So it was basically open for 12 minutes a day. And really, only believably passable for fish for about 4-6 per day. So that was what we originally saw. There was a lot -- the only time there would be an extended gate opening would be when there was excess water. And so we'd see, you know, a 6-12 hour opening of one gate and a lot of water coming out, which is not conducive to fish passage.
Tacha Reed
And was that more related to, like, spring flooding, like, letting the water through that was coming from the lakes?
Zacc Paul
Even in the fall, but yeah, anytime there was the former Lake Pesaquid was getting too high, they just drain it. And that was the only reason. You know a lot of people are trying to say that there was constant fish passage, there was consistent fish passage; there really wasn't. Then I think those operations continued through the fall into the winter. And then in the spring, the ministerial order got enacted. Almost immediately, we saw an extended gate opening, 45 minutes to an hour, to let the incoming tide in. They've since kind of rolled that back a little bit, but it's been kind of weird. They'll let, like, just above the minimum in during the day. 15, 20 minutes, something like that. But then in the evening, they'd let almost double that in. Just for numbers, often in the day we'll see the gates closing around 2.3, 2.4 meters above keel blocks. In the evening, we're seeing 4.2, 4.5, 4.8 when the gate's closed. So in the evening they're letting almost double the tide in when everyone's asleep, conveniently. That might be part of the idea to say "Oh look, it's not letting enough water in and if you guys -- look at all these problems, it's so low". When in reality they can let through a lot more. But as for the gate operation themselves, I think that's a pretty sufficient description of what we've seen. One of the best days we ever had there was the day those gates opened and we saw a river running out for the first time. Man, that was real nice. It was really nice.
Tacha Reed
So now that we have a new local government change, and we're now PC, what would you like to see happening over the next little while in relation to the causeway?
Zacc Paul
I'd like to see this obstinate stance and this this problem-oriented thinking -- a lot of people I've seen, it's just basically issues -- we've got this problem, we've got that problem, we've got this problem. There's no real solutions being put forward for anybody. What I'd like to see is the new government in the area focus on that. Stop trying to override the Fisheries Act; stop trying to override DFO; stop trying to override indigenous rights; and, you know, move forward. This is what we have to do. It's federally legislated that the gates have to be open, that fish passage has to be a priority. And we're kind of seeing the end of humans having more priority than our environment. It's a very strong idea of mine that humans are the only species that are able to, like, really, really sculpt our environment. We can bend, and we can move, and we can fix our own problems. Fish and our other brothers and sisters, the swimmers, the four legged, the crawlers, all of them, they can't. They've just got to kind of deal with what we do to them. So with species with the ability to modify the landscape as much as we are, I believe we have the ability to bend our society to cause the least amount of impact on our brothers and sisters who don't have that ability. And it's really our duty as -- well, we're the stewards of the lands, all of us. We all have to take care of this place to ensure that our society doesn't hurt others.
Tacha Reed
Is there anything else you'd like to share? Is there any advice for people in the community who maybe don't fully understand what's going on? Anywhere that I could recommend to direct people to educate themselves?
Zacc Paul
Yes, come on down to the truckhouse, Truckhouse Number 2 on the Avon River causeway. Our address is 1705 Highway 101. Please do not stop on the side of the highway. There is Exit 7, and there's Exit 6. Exit 7 is probably your easiest way to come in. If you're coming from the Halifax direction, then you would come in and go onto the off-ramp, and right before you get to the overpass, there's a flag on the left. Follow the road that flag is on. It will take you right to our encampment. If you're coming from the Valley way, you would go on the off-ramp, you would take a left, you would go over the overpass, and the flag would be on your right. Same thing, follow that road down. Exit 6 is -- you can go off of... this is the weird part. You've got to go off of the highway onto the off-ramp, and then halfway on the off-ramp, you've got to stop and take a left to go over the median and then go over the on-ramp, and then you'll get to the road that takes us to there. So if you want to try that one, you're more than welcome, but Exit 7's the easiest. And, you know, we're -- we've got people on site 24/7. We're pretty much there all the time. We're more than willing to have these conversations with anybody who's interested. Anybody with contradictory viewpoints -- like, that's the thing. We're a very non-judgmental space. We'll just sit and have a conversation with you. If we don't come to agreement, we don't come to an agreement. There's no animosity there. We'd like to be as open as possible to all the peoples so that we can have a well-rounded viewpoint and express a well-rounded viewpoint as well.
Tacha Reed
Thank you so much for sharing your story of what brought you to the Avon River, and I really hope that as a community we all come together and find solutions that work for future generations to keep this such a wonderful place to live.
Zacc Paul
Um hum
Tacha Reed
And that we stop destroying Mother Nature, and try to remedy some of the harm that we've caused in the past.
Zacc Paul
Right, because the only thing that's going to happen, man, is she's going to buck us off. Mother Nature don't care. The planet's been depopulated many times before, and it's come back. If we do enough damage to the Earth that we'll be unable to survive on it, she will continue. The human race at that point will be a thing of the past, and life will come back. So that's -- it's not, really, we're going to destroy our planet it's just going to destroy the planet for ourselves. The planet is a living being, and it's very powerful, it's very strong, very resilient. It's come back from way worse before, and it'll do it again. So we've really got to be concerned about the next generations of our people. All of our people. Because if we mess up, there's really no second chance for us. And that'll be a shame, you know, be a shame. We're capable of so much, and we're capable of seeing so much and achieving so much, but everyone's getting stuck up in the grind. Money's important, things are important, but your planet and the way you treat her isn't. Thankfully we're seeing a lot of people wake up, and, you know, start to realize that what we're doing is unsustainable. We've got to change things. But those people need to speak up more. You know, we need to come and gather and talk to your elected officials, talk to your government bodies, and lobby for change. Don't lay down and accept what they're doing when you know that it's wrong. Stand up and fight. Stand up and stand for what you believe in. And the more people we have doing that, then the harder it's going to be to ignore.
Tacha Reed
Thank you, Zacc.
Zacc Paul
Thank you, Tacha.
