Treaties, trees and sharing: Report from the Grassy Narrows blockade

The following article was written by Will Braun, who attended the blockade and is on sabbatical from PCN... The Forest Action Network is supporting the Grassy Narrows struggle.


It was past midnight as we stood around the bonfire beside a logging road in Northwestern Ontario. I'd never been to a blockade before. It was a one night "roving blockade", part of a high stakes game of cat and mouse between the Anishinaabe people of Asubpeeschoseewagong (Grassy Narrows) and Montreal-based logging giant Abitibi Consolidated.

As we awaited the loggers - who haul at night on various roads leading to the pulp and paper mill 80 km south in Kenora - there was a heightened energy in the air. But instead of the Oka-esque militancy that stereotypes might conjure, it was the quiet Davidian confidence of a people prepared for the corporate Goliath.

As we stood in the night forest, one could imagine sections of the daily paper scattered on a coffee table somewhere in suburbia, the product of trees taken earlier from clearcuts near the blockade; and in New York or Montreal an investor checking the price of his Abitibi shares, oblivious to the fire burning beside that remote road and in the hearts of the people there.

Tired of watching logging trucks haul away the bounty of their 2,500 square mile Traditional Land Use Area, the people of Grassy Narrows are inserting themselves into decision-making in their boreal homeland.

Joe Fobister is one of those around the fire. "I can't describe the feeling," he says, "It 's like my heart being pulled out of my chest every time I drive into a clearcut."

The next day I join Fobister as he drives past the main blockade to a large clearcut in an area where his parents took him for months at a time when he was young. "I can't even imagine anymore what it used to be like," he says.

Joe Fobister and his grandson in a homeland ravaged by clearcutting.
Photo by Jennifer deGroot.

He surveys the scene silently as his grandson Jeremy climbs a pile of freshly cut logs. "When they look at the forest," he says of Abitibi, "all they see is money." In 2002, Abitibi revenues topped $5.1 billion.

A menacing machine, with claws, blades and an evident appetite for trees sits on the naked hillside that was once home to birds, animals and a proud family. Empty oil pails litter the site.

Referring to logging activity in the area, Abitibi spokesperson Marc Osborne says "this is not clearcutting to me." The company operates under "self-regulated" licenses granted by the province, and replants harvested areas. "Sustainability" is the saving watchword; the same one seemingly used to describe most all industrial resource extraction.

"We're not shying away from our responsibility," Osborne says, noting ongoing communication with Grassy Narrows.

In a June 1998 letter, Abitibi wrote to Grassy Narrows: "We realize the way we manage the forest may be considered catastrophic, but we also believe that in the long run it is best for the forest. If the forest were left with no cutting or with no large scale catastrophe, it would become old and would not renew itself."

On the way back from the harvest area we cross the Wabigoon River. Fobister says it doesn't smell like sewage the way it used to. But beneath the tranquil surface of the river, fish ingest neuro-toxins dumped into the riverby a pulp mill upstream in the 60s and 70s. Last year, 86% of Grassy Narrows residents tested, showed signs of mercury poisoning.

In addition to mercury and logging, flooding and water fluctuations from a hydroelectric dam built in the 50s still wreak havoc with fragile shoreline ecosystems. At low water, bones from eroded graves have been exposed.

Then in 1963, a government-engineered community relocation rattled the social foundation of the people and brought them within easier reach of the Indian Agent, whose programs had no more success there than anywhere else. Predictably, dependence, welfare and cultural decay increased. After hearing this litany recited, I barely dare to even ask about residential schools.

It is pointed out to me that each of these plagues has been in compliance with, or even arisen directly from, government policy. Indian Affairs officials were "not prepared" to comment on this legacy.


Treaties and trees

The ultimate goal of the blockaders is Asubpeeschoseewagong jurisdiction over their customary lands; something that could give them the ability to both protect their boreal homeland and access its wealth and opportunity.

Grassy Narrows youth at the blockadesite.
Photo courtesy of Christian Peacemaker Teams.

Provincial spokesperson Shawn Stevenson says there is extensive "consultation" with Grassy Narrows on forestry planning, but when pushed on how much say Aboriginal people actually have, he says "[Aboriginal] input on site-specific issues," is "considered" in forest planning. This "consideration" is little comfort to Fobister, who says decision making power lies elsewhere.

The matter of Aboriginal rights to customary lands outside reserves is critical, both in terms of Grassy Narrows' hopes of attaining self-reliance and in terms of the very make-up of the country. The 1000 people of Grassy Narrows cannot survive off a 14 square mile reserve.

Treaty 3, which applies to Grassy Narrows, makes provision for Indians to "pursue their avocations of hunting and fishing" throughout the area they inhabited (not just on reserve), subject to certain limitations. That's hard to do in a clearcut. The view of the treaty among blockaders seems to be that it is intended to ensure equitable sharing of resources.

Indian Affairs official James Cutfeet would provide no clarification, position or policy of Indian Affairs on the fundamental matter of treaty rights outside reserves. He would not say whether logging infringes on treaty rights. "It's a provincial matter," he says. But the province does not formally recognize the Grassy Narrows Traditional Land Use Area. As this game of jurisdictional hot potato goes on, the trees keep falling and the trucks keep hauling.

A Christian Peacemaker Teams human rights observer at the blockade says, as a non-Aboriginal, "All of my treaty rights have been met; sometimes at the expense of Aboriginal treaty rights." Matt Schaaf's comment acknowledges that non-Aboriginal occupation and use of areas covered by treaties is also an ongoing treaty right. It goes both ways; but the exchange of rights has worked better for some than others. If Treaty 3 was intended to ensure equitable sharing and peaceful coexistence, something has gone wrong

"What was supposed to be a two-way relationship," says Schaaf, "has turned into a one-way road leading out of Asubpeeschoseewagong territory to the [pulp] mill."

When asked whether Indian Affairs is working to increase the access Grassy Narrows has to the forest wealth surrounding it, Cutfeet says they are free to access the department's economic development programs.


Squeezed out

On the road into Grassy Narrows, a sign that once warned about forest fires reads "Our future depends on Forests. Don't destroy it! Be careful with Abitibi!", the final word having been revised

Forest advocates revised the bottom line of this sign near Grassy Narrows.
Photo courtesy of Christian Peacemaker Teams.

by forest advocates. The sentiment is echoed by non-Aboriginal trapper Don Billard. At blockade headquarters, he pulls plasticbags of files out of a pickup that appears ready for Dodge heaven. He pours over maps with webs of roads and networks of blotches on them. The coloured blotches, Billard explains, are areas already cut or slated for cutting - the map is very colourful.

Pointing to a purple blotch where he has a cabin with a Grassy Narrows trapper, he says, "If they cut here, we'll have to pretend we're living in a forest." His passion is simple; he cares about old growth forests and a way of life. "The fact of the matter," he says, "is that what their doing is wrong."

He started out expecting to work cooperatively with Abitibi. They weren't interested. "They act like they own the forest," he now says of Abitibi, "[they] act as though we are accountable to them."

Out of one plastic bag Billard produces a Monsanto brochure titled "Improving Wildlife Habitat with Herbicides." It advertises Vision, a product used by Abitibi on his trapline. He does not want this sort of "improvement."

As he is squeezed into a smaller and smaller area, Billard says he is loosing his grip on forest management.

With international attention shifting from decimated rainforests to the "emerald halo" of boreal forest atop the globe, forestry practices in Canada will face greater scrutiny. Protection of boreal forests, which constitute a majority of the world's remaining intact forest, are seen as critical in maintaining carbon balance and averting climate crisis.


Who benefits, who pays?

After the US reader puts her newspaper in the recycling, and the New York investor cashes in his dividends, Fobister is left standing on a bald hillside with the hope that he will have more than clearcuts and Abitibi-managed tree farms to pass on to his grandson.

Youth are central to the blockade. Trailers at the main blockade serve as makeshift high school classrooms. The implicit lesson seems to be that the students' future is linked to insistence on a new approach to the forest -- one that is not centered around trucks hauling the opportunities of their homeland off to the mill while they sit in classrooms preparing for jobs that may not exist.

Economic opportunities are needed badly. Fobister believes a multi-use approach to the forest would provide more jobs and opportunity. Rather than clearcutting an area once or twice a century, eco-tourism, trapping, wild rice harvesting, fishing, and selective logging could be carried out simultaneously in a region over the long term. This is part of Fobister's vision of what Aboriginal access to resources through treaty rights might look like. The by-product could be greatly reduced dependence on government programming.

The people of Grassy Narrows, who have been on the road since December 3, say they will stay as long as it takes. This is not surprising given the options they face. And only time will tell how this David and Goliath tale will unfold; whether treaties can be made to work for both non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal parties, and whether Joe's grandson will be taking his grandchildren for a stroll through a clearcut or an old-growth forest.