Winnipeg Free Press

Rights group backs call for logging moratorium

April 20, 2007 By Alexandra Paul

One of the world's most respected names in human rights is backing up a call by Grassy Narrows First Nation for a logging moratorium north of Kenora.

Amnesty International said the Ontario provincial government and the Canadian government are ignoring widely-accepted United Nations human rights conventions by allowing clear-cutting on crown land claimed by the 1,000-member first nation, 80 kilometres north of Kenora.

The prominent human rights agency conducts fact-finding missions around the world to draw attention to human rights abuses.

It sent in a team of Canadian and foreign researchers to Grassy Narrows this week to examine the impact of logging in the Whiskey Jack forest which is part of a land mass of 6,500 square kilometres claimed as traditional territory by Grassy.

After four days, the head of team, Amnesty's secretary general for Canada, Alex Neve, said the concept of indigenous rights upheld by United Nations aren't even given lip service.

UN conventions call for consultations with indigenous people over resources taken from traditional lands as well as their free and informed consent, Neve said.

The Ontario government has issued cutting rights on Crown lands that are disputed as traditional territory and allowed entire swaths to be laid bare by clear-cutting.

"Grassy Narrows First Nation stands as a stark example of the inadequate safeguards for the land rights of Indigenous peoples in Canada," Neve summed up in an open letter to Ontario Premier Dalton McGinty, asking for a meeting with the Ontario premier.

Amnesty International is prepared to support Grassy with a report on its findings and a campaign of petitions and letters to put public pressure on provincial and federal politicians, Neve said.

The federal government has ducked its legal obligation to protect aboriginal rights with Grassy, which Neve described as "unacceptable."

Weyerhaeuser, one of the world's biggest forestry conglomerates, buys wood Abitibi Consolidated cuts from the Whisky Jack Forest to supply its mill in Kenora.

All but five per cent of shareholders at Weyerhaeuser's headquarters in Seattle voted down a resolution yesterday for a study to look at other sources of wood. A spokesman said there are no other economic sources of wood in the region.

Grassy Narrows has battled industrial development on its traditional land for decades.

Since the 1950s the band's been forcibly relocated to make room for hydro dams, seen their commercial fishery destroyed by mercury pollution and their forests and traplines devastated by clear cutting.

Amnesty claims about 50 per cent of the traditional territory is logged out and the province keeps issuing logging licences.

Four years ago, Grassy set up a blockade on a logging road to protest the cutting. In January, band leaders called for a moratorium on further industrial activity until federal and provincial government specifically obtain their consent.

"What were are seeing now in the people of Grassy Narrows is they are taking a very firm position in defense of their rights and that defence is rooted in this longer history of never being allowed to be the ones to decide their own fate," Neve said.