Garden River First Nation member and Trent University student Jessica Pauze is looking to improve Ontario’s fish consumption guidelines within her community through her Master’s thesis in environmental and life sciences. The provincial guidelines overlook crucial details important to Indigenous groups, says Pauze, and the data is often hard to access and decipher for non-scientists. To address these limitations, she started field work last summer to create an inclusive and comprehensive system for gauging fish health—and overall ecosystem characteristics—in lakes within Garden River’s reserve, east of Sault Ste. Marie.
Contaminants are concentrated differently in different parts of a fish’s body. And while the Ontario guidelines call for testing fillets with the skin off, “First Nations consume more than just that portion of the fish,” says Pauze, who is studying in Trent’s Transdisciplinary Action Confronting Contaminants in the Environment Lab. “There is a knowledge gap. What’s in the sample the government tests might not be representative of the contaminants First Nations are being exposed to.”
Last July, as part of her thesis work, Pauze and members of Garden River’s Lands and Resources department worked with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources on fish surveys to gather data, netting fish and taking samples of muscle and stomach tissues to test for heavy metals, persistent contaminants such as per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (they’re also called “forever chemicals”), and microplastics.
“At the end of all this, you are still left with most of the fish intact and safe to eat, so they were given away to community members,” she says. “The goal now is that others who are interested in the project will be commissioned to go out to lakes of concern and harvest fish for the study.” Pauze will be back on the water this summer and plans to complete her fish consumption guide by winter of 2026.
Pauze hopes to create clarity around safe fish consumption, and reveal the way fish point to broader ecosystem trends, drawing on knowledge of the Indigenous relationship with fish. “Fish take up contaminants in the water and this bioaccumulates up the food chain,” she says. “They indicate what is going on in the health of the water, which is directly related to our health as well.”
This article was originally published in the June/July 2025 issue of Cottage Life.
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