Women & Environments International Magazine

The Grassy Narrows Blockade at Slant Lake

May 10, 2007 Spring 2007 By Kim Fry

Like many struggles around the globe to stop climate change, women are on the frontlines of the movement to protect Ontario's Boreal forest, it is an important movement that links environmental destruction with human rights.

Stretching from Alaska clear across Canada to the Atlantic Ocean, the Boreal is an astonishing wilderness of forest, rivers, wetlands and lakes. It holds more freshwater than anywhere else on the planet, and plays an essential role in cleaning the air that we breathe and in fighting climate change. For hundreds of years over 500 First Nations communities have called the Boreal home. It is also habitat to rare species of wolves, bears, and woodland caribou, as well as half of North America's songbirds. The Boreal's soils and forests, considered the largest terrestrial carbon storehouse in the world, make it a vital regulator of global climate.

The Canadian Boreal contains 25% of the earth's remaining intact forest and most of the pristine unallocated Boreal is in Ontario. Ontario is also where much of the resistance to the destruction of Boreal forests has been occurring. The resistance has been led by First Nations communities who are seeing their ancestral lands, hunting grounds, trap lines and wild rice harvests destroyed by intensive clearcutting. The forests where traditional medicines were gathered are quickly being eaten up by the logging industry. This industry's escalating destruction has led to what has become the longest First Nations blockade in Canadian history: the Grassy Narrows blockade at Slant Lake.

Grassy Narrows First Nation, the people of Asubpeeschoseewagong live 100 km north of Kenora, Ontario (close to the Manitoba border) and have a long history of environmental catastrophes affecting their community. After being uprooted in the 1960's by the department of Indian Affairs, the community was informed in the 1970's that their water and fish were contaminated by several tonnes if inorganic mercury from a pulp and paper mill in Dryden.

Recently, Grassy Narrows First Nation has been taking on Abitibi Consolidated, a large logging company based out of Montreal which supplies newsprint to prestigious papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post. The Ontario government approved Abitibi's twenty- year management plan that would see the logging of the remaining old growth Boreal in traditional Grassy territory. After launching a legal case against the Ontario government and building solidarity in Southern Ontario, many community members recognized that nothing was being done to stop the destruction of their forests. On December 2nd 2002, the women and youth of Grassy established a blockade on a logging road in their territory, and sparked what is now the longest standing and highest profile indigenous logging blockade in Canadian history.

One of the inspiring aspects of the blockade has been how much the Mothers and Grandmothers of the community have driven the direct action. To a large extent the blockade has been maintained by children and clan mothers, and most of the spokespeople for the blockade are women. When, in 2005 it seemed as though no one was paying attention to Grassy anymore, a youth internship and gathering were organized with help from ForestEthics & the Rainforest Action Network, two U.S. based ENGOs. A shutdown of the TransCanada Highway and blockade of one of the newer logging roads into Grassy territory resulted in dozens of arrests and a brutal raid on the protester's camp, but the actions have helped to remind people that the crisis in Ontario's Boreal Forest has not disappeared and rapid industrialization is still occurring.

The Women of Grassy have also been traveling across Southern Ontario on the "Grandmothers Tour" where they have been calling on the provincial government to revoke Abitibi's logging license and calling on the federal government to honour their treaties. Toronto is a long way from Grassy Narrows and the Boreal Forest, but their story and their struggle is an inspiring and important reminder that the struggle against climate change is happening in all corners of the globe.

English River Rd. blockade. The overnight action was held to stop trucks filled with trees from leaving the Whiskey Jack forest north of Kenora, ON.

It holds more freshwater than anywhere else on the planet, and plays an essential role in cleaning the air that we breathe and in fighting climate change.

Kim Fry has been working in the environmental movement for 15 years and is currently the Boreal campaign organizer in Toronto. Kim spent several weeks this past summer exploring the beauty of the Boreal and supporting the Grassy blockade at Slant Lake.