COVER
COVER:
Grassy
Narrows Fights for their Future
BIOGRAPHY
Eskasoni's Icon: Seymour
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Sophie
Pierre, Lifetime Achiever Seeks a Better Future for Children
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Road Revisited
Interior
First Nations Awarded Forest Licenses
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CULTURE
A
Mother's Prayer for Son's Safe Return
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Hospitality "Future Tourism Leaders" Scholarship
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Bee in the Bonnet:
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MODERN
TREATIES
Top Court
to Determine Scope of Metis Rights
Grassy Narrows Fights for their Future
By Lauren Carter
The people of Asubpeeschoseewagong (Grassy Narrows First
Nation), located 80 kilometres north of Kenora, in Northern Ontario, have
seen more than their share of suffering.
In the early 1960s, they were uprooted by Indian Affairs. In the 1970s,
the government informed them that several tonnes of inorganic mercury
from a pulp and paper mill upstream in Dryden had contaminated their water
and fish.
While the band eventually received compensation from the
Reed Paper Company and the Federal Government, the mercury remains, seriously
affecting the health of the land, and a percentage of the 14-square-mile
reserve's residents still suffer the effects of mercury poisoning.
Add to this the ongoing flooding of their sacred sites,
traditional lands and wild rice fields by Ontario Hydro, threats to dump
nuclear waste on their Customary Lands, the nightmare of residential schools,
sky-high unemployment, and resulting cultural and social problems and
you've got a fair mix of misery.
And it isn't over yet.
More trouble on the way
In the latest threat to their well-being, Montreal-based forestry giant
Abitibi-Consolidated, which pulled in more than four billion dollars in
2002 and supplies Knight Ridder newspaper chain, the New York Times, and
the Washington Post (among others) with newsprint, is pushing for approval
of a 20-year-plan to "manage" the Whiskey Jack Forest including
the last remaining stand of old-growth boreal forest on Asubpeeschoseewagong
traditional lands.
The Grassy First Nations might as well be on the moon for
the amount of trees and plants and animals they'll have around them if
this plan goes through.
While regeneration is seen to be the great hope, it will not assist inevitable
soil erosion and the 40 percent of plant and animal species dependent
on the sensitive ecosystem of the boreal forest.
Irrevocable
damage has already been done.
"Over 50 percent of our traditional land has been clear-cut. There's
reforestation but it's all monoculture tree farming. They plant trees
they're going to harvest again. The land is turning into a tree farm,"
says Joe Fobister, spokesperson for the Grassy Narrows First Nation Environmental
Committee.
Abitibi's new plan, dubbed the "Whiskey Jack Management Plan"
would secure the corporation's right to harvest the forest in five year
increments from April 2004 until 2024 despite Aboriginal treaty rights
set out in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, further secured by Treaty #3
and, further still, by the Canadian constitution.
The community has been battling Abitibi, the Ministry of Natural Resources
(MNR), and the Ontario government for years in an effort to develop selective
logging practices that would sustain the ecosystem that the local First
Nation's depend on.
In 2000, Joe Fobister, Willie Keewatin and Andy Keewatin Jr. initiated
a case against the Ontario government (with defense from the Sierra Legal
Defence Fund) arguing that Abitibi's operations infringed on their constitutional
rights to hunt and trap in their traditional lands.
That same year, protesters lobbied when the corporation
clear-cut a large area in Wahgoshig First Nations traditional territory,
cutting trees that marked graves on ancestral burial sites. This cut came
irregardless of on-going talks between Abitibi, the MNR, and Wahgoshig
leaders.
Clear cutting continues
Despite all efforts - including raising issues in Abitibi's public
consultation sessions, a process that has proved irrelevant for many -
clear cutting has continued, eliminating the forest, destroying the ecosystem,
bit by bit.
"We're seeing animals that are diseased. The Government of Ontario
claims that it's caused by parasites but we never saw these diseases up
until ten years ago. It's becoming a common thing to see animals with
tumours on their lungs, white spots on their livers," Fobister says.
And no one, it seems, will listen.
Part of the problem is that the Government of Ontario is insisting that
the band's Customary Lands - 2500 square miles surrounding the 14 square
miles of their reserve - is actually Crown Land.
For the Government, the MNR, and the corporation, this belief, as false
as it is according to Treaty 3 and the Canadian Constitution, means that
there is nothing wrong with exiling 700 members of a land-based culture
onto a tiny island in the middle of a weak and unhealthy forest, largely
stripped bare by clear cuts.
"[The Province of Ontario] won't recognize our existence," Fobister
says in frustration. "The MNR is serving the corporation. I'd say
they're in bed together."
Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault has refused to become involved in
the issue, saying it is a matter for the MNR, and angering many.
Public support grows
In response to being ignored while the system-at-large gradually whittles
away their land and their way of life - a process that suggests to many
a continued cultural genocide - members of the Grassy Narrows First Nation
decided to take the process into their own hands.
Last December, they issued an invitation for public consultation
with Abitibi and the MNR - to take place in the middle of a clear-cutting
access road, five kilometres from the Grassy Narrows community. Since
then, protesters have been blocking company access into the last remaining
old growth of the Whiskey Jack Forest. Solidarity - from First Nation's
communities and both Native and non-Native activist groups - has been
strong.
And still, Joe Fobister says that in Abitibi's annual work schedule, exhibited
to the public in early April, it appears they plan to continue logging
on the land that the protesters are occupying. It'll be business as usual
once the roads dry, and the logging trucks resume their duties.
While the corporation waits, the blockade maintains a presence with a
handful of people. Two portables - out of the four used to house people
and school the youth over the winter - have been taken away.
But Judy DaSilva, also from the Environmental Committee says not to worry.
Plans continue for further actions including a youth gathering at the
blockade in June.
And once the trucks have started moving again, near the
end of May, the warriors will return to their positions en masse. For
if they don't protect the land for themselves and for their children and
their children's children, who, exactly, will?
For more information on how you can help phone the Grassy Narrows Band
Office at 807-925-1041 or email fobister@hotmail.com