The Matrilineal Threads running through the islands in Atlantic Canada

“Being brave doesn’t always mean being seen.”

National Geographic photographer Ami Vitale shares this reflection a few weeks after returning from a road trip across two of the provinces on Canada’s eastern seaboard—Prince Edward Island (PEI) and Newfoundland and Labrador. Vitale is considered one of the world’s foremost photographers of wildlife, but she is just as interested in human beings, often celebrating the resilience of communities and unsung heroes facing up to social and environmental challenges. “Setting out on this journey, I was really interested in women’s stories,” she says. “Everywhere I go, I find that women hold incredible invisible power—as storytellers, as artists, and as stewards of the landscape.”

One such woman is Julie Pellissier-Lush. Pellissier-Lush is a Mi’kmaw Storyteller, musician, bestselling author and PEI’s first Indigenous poet laureate. Vitale meets her on Lennox Island, a Mi’kmaq First Nations community in Malpeque Bay off PEI’s northeast coast.

“We have lived here since there was still ice covering this beautiful continent... We followed the animals as they made their way across the ice,” she tells Vitale as the two walk along a deserted stretch of beach strewn with moon snail shells. “What we love to do is engage people and share who we are as a people. And to make sure that who we are doesn't get lost again for another couple of hundred years.”

Pellissier-Lush and the community on Lennox Island are part of a movement that is revitalizing Mi’kmaq culture and helping people of Mi’kmaq descent to reclaim their heritage. From drum making to dancing to baking traditional bannock bread, visitors like Vitale are encouraged to connect in ways that are both fun and meaningful with people who have lived in these lands for thousands of years before the first Europeans arrived in Canada.

“Julie’s way of combating the history of exploitation is with fierce love,” reflects Vitale. “She is fierce, but with very female energy—gentle and lyrical and poetic. It almost mimics the landscape—I found PEI to be much gentler and more lyrical.”

Gentle, yes, but working the land, or the sea for that matter, is not easy. Self-described lobster fisher JoAnna Howlett is a case in point. When Vitale joins her on her lobster boat late morning, the 28-year-old has already been out hauling traps with the crew since before sunup.

“How did you get started in this?” Vitale asks Howlett as she works.

“I guess my reason for being curious and wanting to be in that space was in spite of my grandfather, because he didn't allow women on the boat. Like point blank thought it was bad luck,” recalls Howlett. What started out as an act of defiance turned into genuine passion. “I fell in love with it,” she tells Vitale. “When you're doing this task over and over again every day, it becomes kind of a meditative process.”

Besides fishing, Howlett is a multi-disciplinary artist and philosopher, whose work examines the maritime culture into which she was born. Back in her studio that afternoon, she shows Vitale some of her work—and introduces her to her grandmother Maureen Howlett, a woman who exemplifies “invisible power.”

Besides raising four children, Maureen would paint buoys, mend nets and lobster pots—whatever was needed. “My grandmother just has this—not to steal a slogan!—but this “just do it” mentality. Like her with sewing… if it doesn’t work, you just seam-rip it out and give it another go,” says Howlett.

“I love the relationship JoAnna has with her grandmother,” Vitale observes. “Her grandmother did all of this invisible work, she was the glue that held the entire community tighter. Her labor was entirely unseen, but vital to everybody’s survival. It’s clear that she’s the strongest woman JoAnna has ever known and this has helped shape how she moves in the world.”

There is a powerful intergenerational thread that Vitale observes everywhere she travels in Atlantic Canada. On the neighboring island of Newfoundland, she meets Amanda Oake, an entrepreneur and beekeeper of Mi’kmaq heritage who runs a business, Pollen Nation Farm, in the small rural community of Little Rapids alongside her partner Nathan, a chef who loves to source ingredients straight from nature. For Vitale, she embodies the kind of gentle stewardship of nature rooted in Indigenous tradition—and indeed, Oake later describes herself as a “proud steward of the noble honeybee.” Vitale photographs her as she tends her hives, pointing out the queen as she busily lays eggs. “Beatrice must be the most photographed bee in Newfoundland,” Oake laughs. “She’s getting her squats in—and she'll do that up to 2,000 times a day.” 

Vitale learns that Newfoundland bees are not affected by the varroa mite parasite that has been decimating hives around the world. Plus, the bees at Pollen Nation Farm are being reared within a rural community that doesn’t use pesticides, fertilizers or antibiotics. “Sustainability is such a buzzword right now,” says Oake. “But really it goes back to Indigenous wisdom of leaving stuff behind for future generations.”

“I always find that people mimic the land they come from,” Vitale observes. “The thing that everyone I’ve met here has in common is a connection to place. The relationship to the land doesn’t feel linear—it’s more cyclical and reciprocal. The women I’ve met have this really strong sense of identity: They look back at the past, but they are very rooted in the present. And there is a sense of quiet activism in everything they do.”

She pauses for a moment to consider.

“And an unshakeable sense of purpose.”

Watch the full Road trip here.