The Drum

Native activist might be heading for corporate world

March 22, 2006 by Drum Staff

When a young Ojibway woman decided to stop logging trucks 39 months ago, she never thought that her defiance would take her to the headquarters of one of the largest corporations in the world.

But that is where Bonnie Swain will be going next month when she will be nominated for a position on the board of directors of Weyerhaeuser, the multi-national forestry giant that has been feeding off the timber cut from the forests of western Ontario, where

Swain and her sister set up a blockade Dec. 3, 2002. Rainforest Action Network, a California-based environmental organization, is working through sympathizers who own shares in Weyerhaeuser in an attempt to get Swain elected to the board at the company's annual meeting in April 20 in Seattle.

"I just wanted to take that chance to be heard in front of the shareholders," Swain said in mid-March, explaining that her goal is to educate investors about the effects of logging practices.

The blockade began almost as if it had been written by a screenwriter. The theme was that of dozens of movies. The little guy – or in this case two women – who decided they'd had enough and weren't going to put up with it any more.

For Swain and her younger sister, the decision came one day when looking at the clear-cut left in an area where her stepfather used to take her hunting. The logging had been moving closer and closer to the Grassy Narrows First Nation and her community's traditional lands were being cut bare, she explained.

"I guess we just said: 'That's it. No more."

The first day just the two Swain girls – Bonnie, 28 and Chrissy, six years younger – blocked trucks from getting to sites where Abitibi-Consolidated was cutting trees from Grassy Narrows traditional lands. The next day 20 more people joined them.

Since then interest has grown, with the blockade getting national attention as media outlets, environmental and Aboriginal rights organizations, and websites, took interest. The group Friends of Grassy Narrows has been formed and supporters of the blockade have paid for speaking tours by Bonnie, Chrissy and other blockaders.

This month Rainforest Action announced sent letters to the chief executives of Weyerhaeuser and Abitibi telling them to "immediately desist from all logging and industrial resource extraction" on Grassy Narrows traditional land or face "a fierce international campaign."

In telephone interview March 10, David Sone, an old-growth forestry specialist with Rainforest Action, said the campaign could take in the corporate customers of the two targeted companies. For instance, it may warn consumers against buying paper marketed under the labels of companies supplied by Weyerhaeuser.

Abitibi logs the area near Grassy Narrows but Weyerhaeuser is major customer. Both companies operate mills in western Ontario, although during the past year Abitibi has closed two milling operations in Kenora.

Sone said that some logging companies cut the best sources of timber in a region and then abandoning operations, leaving behind replanted clear-cut areas. Replanting is ecologically inferior to natural growth forests, which contain a wide range of vegetation and habitat for many types of wild species. Logging in Canada's boreal forests is, in many ways, like an experiment because the long-term implications of cutting in areas where the soil is sometimes only an inch thick is unknown.

Both companies are major players in the industry, with Abitibi having annual sales listed as more than $3 billion on one website. Weyerhauser, which has 54,000 employees in 19 countries, has more than $22 billion in sales. Grassy Narrows, in contrast, has about 1,200 members, a third of whom live outside of First Nation boundaries.

Two communities in western Canada are currently feeling the sting associated with the downside of economic activity created through large- scale forestry. Last year Abitibi announced closure of Kenora milling operations that employed 320 workers and at the end of December it also sold 485,000 acres of privately owned timberlands near Thunder Bay to North Star Forestry. Weyerhaeuser, meanwhile, announced it was closing its mill at Prince Albert, Sask. and 690 people would be laid off if the mill couldn't be sold.

Sone said these announcements were typical of what regions experience. Large timbering corporations harvest the most lucrative timbers and leave behind clear cuts and huge job losses. In the long run communities would be much better off with smaller, diversified operations that would also be conducive to hunting and tourism.

Communications officials for the two logging companies never responded toThe Drum's request for information, partly because key communications officials were off during the time the story was being written, but in earlier media reports Weyerhaeuser was reported as saying it was meeting criteria set by the Canadian Standards Association and the International Organization for Standardization, and Abitibi-Consolidated indicated that efforts at negotiating a solution with Grassy Narrows stalled in 2004 demands exceeded what the company would – or in some cases could -do.