A dozen freighter canoes lie idle on the rocky bank, their owners no doubt thinking the same as Hunter. “I don’t like this weather,” he repeats, “but maybe it’ll get better by the time we reach the coast.”

Hunter is Omushkego Cree. He was born on the tawich and still lives off and for it. It’s his ancestors’ land as much as it belongs to his grandchildren, and it’s always been like that. But Hunter, Weenusk First Nation’s natural resources monitor, worries about the future. He’s seen first-hand the changes wrought by permafrost thaw, forest fires and a stunted sea ice season, driven by climate warming and endangering the animals and plants that underpin Omushkego culture.

So, when the Mushkegowuk Council — the organization that represents seven Omushkego nations — and the federal government rolled out a plan to create a Cree-led marine preserved area along western Weeneebeg, or James Bay, and southwestern Washaybeyoh, or Hudson Bay, Hunter saw it as a step toward safeguarding the land for his grandchildren. While his community and Fort Severn First Nation to the northwest aren’t members of the Mushkegowuk Council, they’ve signed on to become part of the proposed Mushkegowuk national marine conservation area.

Stretching nearly 1,300 kilometres along Ontario’s northern coast — from the Manitoba border to Quebec — the offshore area and shoreline holds one of the most biodiverse and pristine ecosystems on the planet, supporting beluga whales, polar bears, walruses, caribou and millions of shorebirds, ducks and geese that nest or stop over during their migration.

Hunter has already been engaged for years in the preservation of the tawich, working both for his First Nation and with research scientists to monitor and record biodiversity, water quality, weather and landscape changes. But the official approvals process for the Mushkegowuk national marine conservation area got underway in 2024 — all communities in the area must vote in favour of implementing the marine conservation area for it to become reality. One of the reasons Hunter needs to go to his coastal cabin on such a dreary day is to get ready to host a team from the National Audubon Society and the Toronto-based conservation group Wildlands League; there’s some tidying up to do after a black bear rummaged through it for food the previous week.

So, despite the weather, Hunter pushes his boat into the current. Zigzagging downriver to avoid propeller-shattering shallows, he looks stressed as he glances up at slate clouds colliding with black spruce. But the closer he gets to the sea, the smoother his facial expression becomes; by the end of the two-hour boat ride, he almost looks content. “I still don’t like this wind,” he says as he ties the boat to driftwood. “But I think we’re in for a couple of nice days.”

The wind foils Hunter’s plan to fish. (The traditional Omushkego way is to drive stakes with a net into the mudflat at low tide and pluck fish from it at the next low tide.) While cooking caribou and mashed potatoes on the woodstove, he says willows have crept closer to the coast over the past 40 years. The land here used to be tundra-like, save for a few knee-high shrubs. Those shrubs have grown to become trees. “The Elders say this kind of growth has not been seen in over a thousand years,” Hunter says. The permafrost is thawing, and the ground, once frozen firm, is now soft or even swampy, allowing plants to move in and take root and willows to shoot skyward. “It’s less safe now because bears come right up to the cabin before you know it.”

YEHEWIN ASKI — or the Hudson Bay Lowland, as scientists call it — is the second-largest carbon store on the planet, even larger than the Amazon rainforest. Holding between 30 billion and 40 billion tonnes of carbon in the peat and permafrost, the lowland plays an enormous role globally in mitigating climate change — as long as it’s kept intact.

Around the time Hunter is scaring off polar bears, Lorna Harris, Adam Kirkwood and Haley MacLeod of Wildlife Conservation Society Canada are busy installing permafrost monitoring equipment to track ground temperatures around Peawanuck at sites chosen with input from Hunter. As the team heads out on one of the bogs, they can barely walk straight across the quaking carpet underfoot.

Harris and Kirkwood have been tracking peatland dynamics in the region for years, while MacLeod, an aquatic ecologist and toxicologist, is here for the first time, interested in monitoring whether thawing permafrost leaches methyl mercury into rivers. While the three support the creation of a national marine conservation area, they stress that to do so properly, it’s also necessary to protect the watersheds that flow into the Hudson and James bays. “Bogs hold rainwater. Any excess can drain into fens, which in turn can release water into rivers,” explains Kirkwood as he pulls a chunk of frozen peat from an auger. Harris puts it more bluntly. “If you don’t protect the watershed, if you don’t protect the peatlands, you are not protecting the bay.”

The land here is at once terrestrial and aquatic. For the animals to thrive, “keep the land the way it is,” says Margaret Mack as she stops by Peawanuck’s boat launch on the Winisk River. The community’s nurse, Mack grew up on the tawich and has a camp not far from Hunter’s on Washaybeyoh. She’s eager to retire so she can spend more time on the land, teaching youth how to pluck geese, gut fish and snare hares. For Mack, long-term wealth means keeping the tawich natural. She points to promises of jobs made by the Victor diamond mine south of here, which she says ended up being short term before the mine closed completely in 2019. “I worry about what’s going to come floating down the rivers if mining starts in the Ring of Fire,” she says, turning her eyes onto the Winisk, into the wind, which keeps pushing her long hair across her face.

Mack’s worry is shared by Lawrence Martin and Ernest Beck. Nearly 800 kilometres south of Peawanuck, in one of the Mushkegowuk Council’s offices in Timmins, the two have just wrapped a staff meeting. Off to one side, a map outlining Treaty 9 codifies the dream of a Mushkegowuk national marine conservation area.

Martin, the director of the council’s lands and resources department, traces a finger inland from James Bay to a roughly 5,000-square-kilometre area known as the Ring of Fire. He then taps on a sheet showing more than 30,000 mining claims in the Ring of Fire alone. “This is what we’re up against,” he says, then pulls out a copy of the Omushkego Wahkohtowin conservation plan (wahkohtowin roughly translates to “kinship with the land”). “Our goal is to protect all of our treaty lands from forestry, mining and hydroelectric projects that may cause harm to Cree culture,” he says. “Protecting the marine area through an NMCA is the first step — the tool that’ll allow us to bring land protection to the table.”

The national marine conservation area forms part of the larger Treaty 9 protection objective in the Wakohtowin conservation plan. As Beck puts it, “sea and land are connected; they’re one.” And if anyone needs proof of a tangible link between the terrestrial and the aquatic, consider the polar bear. Ontario is one of the only places in the world where female polar bears, after heading into the lowlands from the bay, dig a hole in the peat to give birth.

Sam Hunter, for one, has seen mother bears and cubs as far as 160 kilometres inland from his nearshore camp — emphasizing the need for Indigenous knowledge, participation and leadership in conservation.

It also underscores why the Omushkego Cree want the land protected from industrial development: if you disturb the peatlands, you undermine both the habitat of species important to Cree culture and the future of the Hudson Bay Lowland as a climate buffer for the entire planet.

Yet the national marine conservation area proposal is not without opposition. For starters, “Ontario wants mining, not conservation,” says Martin about the provincial government’s eagerness to open the Ring of Fire to critical-minerals extraction. It’s been challenging to get the province to hear the council’s arguments for expanding the marine protected area inland.

Locally, there’s mistrust of what is essentially a government scheme. (A national marine conservation area is initiated by the government, unlike an Indigenous protected and conserved area, which has weaker legal protections.) Initially, people worried their inherent, treaty and constitutionally protected rights to hunt, fish and trap on traditional territories might be diluted under a government project that endorses conservation. It’s a valid concern, considering Canada’s history of having excluded Indigenous Peoples from or limiting their access to traditional lands for the sake of creating parks. “But the whole idea with this NMCA is to strengthen Omushkego control of our lands and waters, and that includes upholding our inherent and treaty rights,” says Martin.

Beck adds that the national marine conservation area “will be Cree led, with Parks Canada in a supporting role.” Despite skepticism, there’s cautious optimism all nine communities will eventually vote in favour of the proposal. And if things turn out the way Martin and Beck hope, the conservation area should give the Omushkego Cree the sovereignty they need to shape their current and future kinship with the tawich.