GRASSY NARROWS: HISTORY OF THE FIGHT
Mercury poisoning, clear-cutting and government collusion
by Dave Brophy
This is the second of three articles about Indigenous struggle in what is now known as Northwestern Ontario. The first article, in the Feb/March/April 2005 issue of NS, briefly examined the relationship between the Anishinaabe of the lake of the woods region and the Canadian state during the years leading up to and following the signing of Treaty 3 in 1873. The article described how the Canadian state violated the agreement and initiated a campaign to destroy the indigenous economy that had historically allowed the Anishinaabe to be a prosperous people.
This article will examine how the Canadian state continues to undermine the livelihoods of the Anishinaabe and the political factors that are shaping Grassy Narrows’ present fight for their lands.
A reasonable starting point for sketching the historical background to the present struggle of Grassy Narrows is the hydro development on Anishinaabe lands in the 1950s. Ontario Hydro built two major dams at Ear Falls and Whitedog, causing significant and unpredictable fluctuations in water levels which affected wild rice beds, the habitat of fur-bearing animals and the local fishery.
In the 1960s Grassy Narrows was relocated by Indian Affairs so that it was more affordable to provide services to the community. Although the move wasn’t far from the original site it had a considerable impact on the community. For the first time, there was a school on-site, which meant the kids were no longer taken by the government and sent to far-away residential schools. But the move also meant the community was now accessible by road, which caused considerable social upheaval.
In 1970 the community was faced with another major upheaval, when the government publicly acknowledged that the English-Wabigoon river system had been contaminated by several tons of inorganic mercury, which was being dumped into the water upstream at the Dryden Pulp and Paper Company’s mill. Recent media coverage of the impact of the mercury poisoning has drawn attention to the severe, on-going health problems of many members of both Grassy Narrows and White Dog First Nations, the two communities most adversely affected by the contaminated river system. But the impact of the mercury poisoning on the local economy has not received attention for a long time, even though the high rate of unemployment that currently plagues both Grassy Narrows and White Dog can be largely traced back to it.
As noted in the previous article, despite extensive development throughout the Treaty 3 area from the late 1800s onward, racist hiring practices limited employment opportunities for the Anishinaabe. Employment discrimination in white-controlled industries was com-pounded by the fact that the steady degradation of the land caused by outside development undermined traditional alternatives to waged work. Neverthe-less, in the 1960s many members of the Grassy Narrows band were able to earn a decent livelihood as commercial fishers or as fishing and hunting guides for white-owned outfitters.
But this all changed dramatically as a result of the mercury contamination. The employment rate plummeted from about 90% to 10% when the government acknowledged the mercury poisoning and declared commercial fishing on the English-Wabigoon river illegal.
The government was horrendously slow to provide any compensation to Grassy Narrows and White Dog for the enormous economic and health effects caused by the mercury poisoning. Indeed, 15 years passed before Canada, Ontario and the corporate successor of the company that dumped the mercury coughed up about $10 million for the people of Grassy Narrows and White Dog. This meagre offering, which amounted to about $10,000 per person, was to make up for destroying the communities’ source of water, a major part of their diet and their most important source of income.
Bearing in mind the Dryden Pulp and Paper Company’s responsibility for the mercury contamination, we can see that clear cutting of the Whiskey Jack Forest by Abitibi-Consolidated, the most immediate reason for the current logging road blockade at Grassy Narrows, is only the latest instance of a forestry companies’ destruction of Anishinaabe lands in the Treaty 3 area. This should be no surprise. After all, the stakes are high. Across Northwestern Ontario an estimated 15,000 jobs are related to the forestry industry, which also generates about $600 million in tax revenue for governments.
GOVERNMENT COMPLICITY
The Canadian state is structured in such a way that it undermines Native peoples’ self-determination. For treaty peoples, the nation-to-nation agreements that they signed with Canada provide a legal basis for asserting their Aboriginal rights. But when treaty rights concerning traditional land are violated, Natives’ demands that these rights be upheld are dodged by the Canadian state through legal obfuscation.
The last article ended with a quote from a speech given in 1946 by Treaty 3 Grand Council spokesperson Tom Roy, addressing members of the federal parliament in Ottawa:
“We contend that the terms of our treaty were violated…by the federal government on or about April 16, 1894 when, without notifying the Indians, the federal government transferred the natural resources to the provinces, with whose laws we have [had] to comply since then. The Indians have tried to protest against this…. The answer has been: ‘This comes entirely under the provincial governments, and there is no authority whatever vested in our department to change their laws’.”
The Grand Chief’s words apply just as well today. The blockade at Grassy Narrows went up in December, 2002 but a decade of protest against the clear cutting through official channels preceded it.
The community’s concerns about clear cutting by Abitibi-Consolidated have been repeatedly ignored by the federal Ministry of Indian and Northern Affairs (INA) and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR). INA is officially responsible for upholding the responsibilities of Canada as signatory to the treaties, while OMNR is designated official jurisdiction over land resources in the province of Ontario, and is thus responsible for issuing logging permits.
Before issuing these permits, OMNR is obliged to consult with First Nations, but decisions are often made without the support of the communities affected. This was the case with Grassy Narrows, whose participation in the consultation process with OMNR and Abitibi amounted to tokenism. Despite the community’s staunch opposition to clear-cutting, OMNR consistently approved plans that allowed Abitibi to clear-cut on traditional lands.
GRASSROOTS STRUGGLE
When Aboriginal and treaty rights of First Nations like Grassy Narrows are not respected by the terms of logging permits issued by OMNR, they are told to consult INA. But when they appeal to INA, the federal ministry insists that Ontario’s jurisdiction over land and resource allocation prevents them from taking action. The collusion of the two levels of government thus creates a situation in which corporations gain easy access to resources in First Nations’ territory.
Native peoples’ self-determination is further undermined by the Canadian state from within. The Indian Act imposes the elective system of band government on First Nations, which deprives traditional leaders of recognition by insisting that the only spokespeople of the band are those elected according to the Indian Act.
In a community like Grassy Narrows, where there is mass unemployment because people’s livelihoods have been taken away from them, the main sources of income are welfare checks and band council jobs, both of which depend on government funds. Obviously, such deep economic dependence on a state that has waged a centuries-long campaign of genocide and assimilation against you is devastating in terms of chronic poverty. But what is just as debilitating is the social stratification that this situation causes. The band council jobs are virtually the only locally accessible means of employment and adequate income, and therefore those who control the band council, the local political class, wield power disproportionately in the community.
Not surprisingly, then, strong resistance from First Nations to exploitation and oppression has not often come from the official leadership. This was true in the 1970s, when there was a major upsurge of militant grassroots action among native peoples throughout North America. The nearby town of Kenora was in fact a focal point of this upsurge in 1974. With the upheaval and repercussions of the mercury poisoning still reverberating acutely through Grassy Narrows and White Dog, protest led to the armed occupation of Anishinaabe Park, which lasted over two weeks in the summer of 1974.
Some of the activists involved in the Anishinaabe Park occupation went on to organise the Native People’s Caravan that crossed the country from BC to Ottawa in September of the same year, ending with a march of almost a thousand native people on Parliament Hill. While the natives’ anger was directed most forcefully at Jean Chrétien’s Ministry of Indian Affairs, there was also much frustration expressed at the grassroots with band councils’ failure to take action that properly reflected the radical demands being made by members of their communities.
This is not to say that the official leadership of First Nations in Canada are inherently corrupt. But it is important to note the structural factors that cause band councils to sometimes follow a policy of conservatism that does not properly represent the majority of band member. Overt self-interest may be the cause of this, but most often band councils are simply faced with a great challenge. Given their dependency on Indian Affairs for funds to provide basic services to their impoverished communities, they have to make difficult decisions on if and how to make demands of the state.
At Grassy Narrows, the current blockade was initiated by three young people, who were quickly supported by a core group of other activists in the community. It was a year before any meaningful response came from Abitibi-Consolidated or the governments. Predictably, it was the Grassy Narrows Band Council, rather than the blockaders, who were approached, even though the former had nothing to do with initiating the blockade and had largely remained aloof from it during the first year.
The relationship between Grassy Narrows community activists who have spearheaded the blockade and the local Band Council has been perhaps similar to the situation at Sun Peaks, where community activists have had to negotiate a delicate relationship with the official leadership of the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council. The blockaders at Grassy Narrows were supported by their Band Council only reluctantly at first, and more recently have been excluded from talks with Abitibi and the provincial and federal levels of government, while the official leadership has gladly taken the opportunity to negotiate, with leverage, on behalf of the community with high-level representatives of the company and governments.
But Grassy Narrows’ fight for their homeland is far from over. Talks have so far yielded nothing but a rejection of scant offerings from Abitibi, with INA and OMNR participating solely as passive observers, in keeping with their typical strategy of non-intervention vis-a-vis upholding aboriginal rights. Meanwhile, Abitibi is talking about making further job cuts at the Kenora mill, and politicians are calling for corporate welfare to prop up the forestry industry in Northwestern Ontario.
The final article in this three-part series, appearing in the July/August 2005 issue of New Socialist, will look at the struggles of Grassy Narrows activists to address these and other recent developments and discuss strategies for activists trying to work as allies to native, anti-colonial movements in Canada.
Dave Brophy is a member of Friends of Grassy Narrows Winnipeg
