The Toronto Star

First Nation declares ban on industrial activity

January 17, 2007

BY Chinta Puxley

A northwestern Ontario First Nation is trying to stop clear-cutting within its traditional territory by declaring a moratorium on all industrial activity without its permission.

Grassy Narrows spokesman Joe Fobister said the moratorium on logging in the territory north of Kenora, Ont., doesn't have any legal weight, but is a strong statement that clear-cutting is hurting the aboriginal community.

The First Nation hopes this declaration will prompt the provincial government to stop the clear-cutting that Fobister said is disrupting aboriginal trap lines.

"We've tried everything else," Fobister said. "Nothing is working. The government has totally ignored our concerns. Logging continues to this day. It's business as usual."

In the meantime, Fobister said the logging is closing in on the community.

"Our culture is disappearing with logging, our spirituality, the list goes on," he said. "The government has to be serious about resolving the problem."

The community isn't opposed to logging generally, but objects to the practice of clear-cutting, he added.

But Anne-Marie Flanagan, spokeswoman for Natural Resources Minister David Ramsay, said clear-cutting is allowed in northern Ontario, and is done in a way that mimics natural disasters like forest fires and strong winds.

"It is an acceptable practice," Flanagan said. Aboriginals are consulted when it comes to development in their

https://ran.org/media_center/news_article/?uid=4560[3/19/2010 15:09:46]Rainforest Action Network: News Article

traditional territory, and the government includes aboriginals in its forest management planning, she added.

"But the duty to consult does not mean that aboriginal communities have a veto," Flanagan said.

Two Ontario environmental groups are also joining the fight against logging in the province's north. The Wildlands League and Sierra Legal plan to file a submission to the province's environmental commissioner Thursday criticizing Ontario's handling of its forestry resources and its lack of consideration of aboriginal people.

"If a bank were to manage the finances of its clients in the manner that the Ontario government manages the wood from its public forests, it would be bankrupt very quickly," Trevor Hesselink of the Wildlands League said in a statement to be released Thursday.

The moratorium call comes as a Grassy Narrows blockade enters its fifth year of denying logging trucks access to community territory via Highway 671.

Twenty-one protesters were charged by provincial police following two related blockades last summer on a nearby highway.