The Traditional Land Use Study began due to concerns the community had that as their Elders’ passed their stories about how they used to live on this land would one day no longer exist.  The history of the community had only ever been documented by outsiders, such as historians, anthropologists, and consultants, and the TLUOS was a reaction to this historical omission as it is the documenting of the community’s history in their own words.

For Richard Davis, the Traditional Land Use and Occupancy Study manager at Loon Lake, it is important to conduct Traditional Land Use and Occupancy Studies because:

For thousands of years First Nation people traveled this land. Our history is written in every river, lake and living part of creation. This knowledge is at risk of remaining silent, never to go beyond our memories of our elders if we do not document it now (Davis, 2003: 2).

Other traditional land use and occupancy studies have been completed in Alberta, but the Loon River Cree were the first to have their own community members interview other community members, sometimes their own relatives, in their own language. These interviews are rich repositories of the Cree language and the Elders’ stories, and they are the source for the “Namôhkâc nika-pôni-âcimon” (I will never quit telling stories) book.