Video still from APTN: Land protector cabin before the fire.
APTN News reports: “Two cabins were torched over the weekend at the Mi’kmaw Land Protectors Hunter’s mountain camp. One burnt to the ground while the other sustained major damage. According to the land protectors, this was an alleged hate crime.”
The APTN News video report quotes Mi’kmaw land protector Michelle Carmelina Bernard saying: “This is a hate crime.” Chris Googoo, a member of the We’koqma’q First Nation, who had donated the two cabins on behalf of the Micmac Rights Association also says: “I feel like it was a hate crime.”
The Cape Breton Post also reports: “The two main buildings at the Hunter’s Mountain cultural revitalization camp in Cape Breton burned down early Saturday [December 13] morning. The camp has been the site of a Mi’Kmaw logging protest in Nova Scotia since early September. There are no reports of any injuries, and it is believed no one was staying in any of the buildings overnight at the time of the fire.”
“The camp was built in early September in response to logging practices on the mountain by pulp and paper companies that the Mi’kmaw consider are harming the mountain’s ecology, traditional medicines, and sacred spiritual places.”
The article also notes: “Earlier this month [on December 3, 2025], according to a sub-page of the Nova Scotia Forest Matters group called Wabanaki Forest, the land defenders at Tqamuoeye’katik (Hunter’s Mountain) made the decision to close up parts of camp but maintain a minimal presence there until the thaw and renewed logging threats of late winter/early spring began again.”
“[Prior to that] tents and a couple of log buildings were built as housing during the first month as a steady stream of visitors and defenders from across the province came to support the land defenders and protectors. Many elders, women and children from all five Unama’ki communities spent time staying at the camp.”
A statement from the Mi’kmaq People of Mi’kma’ki posted on Facebook notes: ““[The current provincial government of Nova Scotia—under Premier Tim Houston has] stood by while Mi’kmaq land protectors at Hunter’s Mountain were vilified, criminalized, surveilled, and pushed aside for defending unceded land. …Now, in the wake of that government inaction and inflammatory rhetoric, we see the predictable result: non-Native members taking it upon themselves to burn property left behind at Hunter’s Mountain—property belonging to land protectors. Let us be clear: this is not a random act. This is what happens when governments dehumanize Indigenous people, dismiss Treaty rights, and send a message that Mi’kmaq resistance is disposable. When leaders speak recklessly, others act violently.”
And Nina Newington has commented on social media: “When someone burns the cabins of those land defenders, those water protectors, it is both a hate crime and an economic crime. That’s how it seems to me, as a settler.”
One month ago, the Halifax Examiner reported: “Mi’kmaq land defenders and members of non-Indigenous environmental advocacy groups held a solidarity rally attended by several hundred people in Halifax on Saturday [November 15, 2025] to protest Premier Tim Houston’s resource extraction policies. The event was called Shoulder to Shoulder — We are All Treaty People. It was supported by several dozen environmental groups, along with Mi’kmaq land defenders and water protectors protecting Hunter’s Mountain, known as Tqamuoweye’katik in Mi’kmaq.”
That article noted that the speakers at the rally in Halifax included Mi’kmaq elder Albert Marshall; event organizer Nina Newington; Michelle Paul, a Mi’kmaq land defender and one of the event’s key organizers; Madonna Bernard (Kukuwes Wowkis), a Mi’kmaq grandmother and land defender; and Donald Marshall, 17, the son of Mi’kmaq activist Donald Marshall Jr.
We continue to follow this.
