BUSINESS
COVER:
Grassy
Narrows Fights for their Future
BIOGRAPHY
Eskasoni's Icon: Seymour
Doucette
Sophie
Pierre, Lifetime Achiever Seeks a Better Future for Children
BUSINESS
Tobacco
Road Revisited
Interior
First Nations Awarded Forest Licenses
BOOKS
Fatherhood,
History, and Art
CULTURE
A
Mother's Prayer for Son's Safe Return
EDUCATION
CHIP
Hospitality "Future Tourism Leaders" Scholarship
HUMOUR
Bee in the Bonnet:
Circle the Wagon
MODERN
TREATIES
Top Court
to Determine Scope of Metis Rights
Tobacco Road Revisited
By
Dr. John Bacher
The terrible way of organized crime disguised by the rhetoric of the Warrior's
Society, which peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Iroquois country,
had its roots in the assault on the lands held sacred by native people
through the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway during the 1950s.
This was a decade in which basic political rights, such as the vote, were
denied to native Canadians, which crippled their voices to protest the
assault suddenly unleashed on their ancestral lands.
The assault on the Seaway was combined with the other invasion of other
Iroquois lands. This included the preliminary Oka Golf course and the
construction of dams, which flooded much of the New York State reservations
of the Tuscarora and Senecal; including the Cold Spring Longhouse from
which emerged the sacred message of the peace prophet, Handsome Lake.
The assaults on the earth in the homeland of Iroquois launched a complex
and complimentary toxic brew of hatred, deadly chemicals, polluted waters,
violence, racism, corruption and despair. Once again, war and terror came
to a land that had not seen violent political conflict since the Saskatchewan
Metis Rebellion of the 1880s.
Turning the turbulent St. Lawrence into a canalized channel for ocean
commerce was pushed forward by right wing Republicans prominent in the
presidential administration of Dwight Eisenhower.
Similar business tycoons influential today in the U.S. presidential administration
of George Bush are trying to further expand the Seaway to larger ships,
for the same narrow interests of the polluting coal, automobile and steel
industries.
They remain blind to the widespread contamination this would cause through
the introduction of more exotic marine species and the destruction of
islands and shoals by dredging and explosions.
The 1950s Seaway scheme was born out of another tragic episode: the ecocidal
invasion of the Innu homeland, Nitasssinan. Until this decade, the homeland
of the Innu of Quebec and Labrador remained pristine wild lands, where
these people were able to continue to live through a traditional subsistence
economy, respectful of the vast herds of caribou that teemed their land.
Then an industrial assault suddenly appeared in a virulent form through
iron ore mines, since abandoned, in the interior of Quebec and Labrador.
These were serviced through a new train line to the port of Sept Isles
blasted through old growth boreal forests. The main reason for the construction
of the Seaway was to get iron - marginally cheaply for a few decades -
from Sept Isles to steel refineries in Ohio.
For short-term steel industry profits, enormous harm was done to the earth
during an era when native Canadians could not vote and environmental assessment
legislation did not exist. The greed of a few well-placed plutocrats in
the Republican Eisenhower Administration devastated the traditional native
subsistence economy based on fishing.
An abundance of marine life had nourished Mohawk communities along the
St. Lawrence for more than a thousand years, since the valley had been
part of Iroquois territory from time immemorial. When Jacques Cartier
arrived at what is now Quebec City he found a large Iroquois community
numbering in the thousands. The plagues brought about by Europeans compelled
the Mohawks to retreat to the central New York area until they had regained
sufficient population to return to their ancestral territories.
Organized crime lays roots
One of the leading and courageous foes of the drift to organized crime
is Kanentiio, a Mohawk journalist and author, more widely known as Doug
George, who for many years braved the gunfire of the Warrior's Society
and their organized crime allies.
Despite bearing the brunt of considerable hostility from these elements,
involving serious threats on his life, and a period of imprisonment from
a trumped up charge manipulated by the Quebec government's of dam building
maniac, Robert Bourassa, George has no hesitation in tracing their origins
to the greedy devastation of the St. Lawrence for the Seaway's construction.
In his book Iroquois Culture and Commentary, published by Clear Light
Press in 2000, George describes the great bounty of the St. Lawrence before
the coming of the Seaway. Before its completion on the dark day of April
25, 1959, he recalls:
"A family could do well on the river. Like the lifeblood of our mother,
it provided all one needed to survive. The rapids scoured the water clean
so that when the river finally slowed at Akwesasne, it was a shimmering
green. The turbulence brought a rush of rich oxygen into the waters.
Species of fish such as sturgeon, walleye, northern pike, trout and
salmon took to the rich beds with excitement. When the ice surrendered
in defiant, crashing roars in the spring, the fish began to run, spawning
by the millions. A family working together, with gill nets and spears,
could catch enough bullheads in two weeks to care of their financial needs
for a year."
George stresses that the problems caused by the drowning of the St. Lawrence
rapids causing former fish breeding ground to be choked with weeds, were
compounded by the toxic contamination unleashed by new industries that
located in the region to take advantage of heap hydro power.
"Powerful, arrogant and flush with cash, companies such as Reynolds
Aluminum, the Aluminum Company of America, Domtar, Courtland Textiles,
and General Motors built new factories or expanded old ones along the
St. Lawrence. Employing thousands of workers in upstate New York, they
became virtual lords of the St. Lawrence."
Fluoride contamination from an aluminum refinery in Massena, New York,
resulted in the demise of cattle farming. After Mohawk fish consumption
was reduced by pollution, the rate of adult-diabetes began to soar. Captured
fish became too toxic to use for garden fertilizer.
The slow process of environmental litigation and cleanup eventually revealed
some of the scope of corporate abuse of the St. Lawrence. The Alcoa refinery
eventually received a $3.75 million fine, the largest criminal penalty
ever assessed in the history of the United States, for a hazardous waste
violation. A foundry of General Motors in Massesna was convicted of illegally
dumping 31,000 tons of PCB contaminated waste.
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