https://owensoundhub.org/news/14243-twenty-year-grassy-narrows-blockade-saving-15-million-trees.html

Today Grassy Narrows people are feasting to honour the 20 year anniversary of their ongoing grassroots blockade against industrial logging, for Indigenous rights, and to protect the sources of life.

This small Northwestern Ontario First Nation succeeded in kicking out the world’s largest newsprint company, halting all logging on a 7,000 sq. km. area since 2008, saving 15 million trees that were slated for logging, and helping to build a movement for Indigenous Land Back.

Recently, American logging multinational Weyerhaeuser committed not to use wood from the area that Grassy Narrows is protecting – the last regional mill to make the commitment.

“As Anishinaabe people, when we blockade we are following the guidance of our ancestors that flows through our veins,” said grassroots mother and grandmother Judy Da Silva. “Protecting the land is like protecting ourselves, and everybody else on the earth, and all future generations. That is our responsibility. Through our perseverance we have accomplished so much. Let us live the way we want to live, let us take care of our forests, and our people will be healthy again.” 

Within living memory, Grassy Narrows was a thriving and independent community with healthy people, a vibrant culture, and a robust livelihood.

But the imposition of residential schools, relocation, hydro dams, mercury poisoning, clearcut logging, and mining exploration have taken a terrible toll that persists to this day. In the face of this intense oppression, the people of Grassy Narrows are actively resisting the continued destruction of their territory, re-occupying their lands, reviving their culture, and fighting for control over their lands and for self-determination. 

Following the poisoning of their river system by mercury, in the 1970s Grassy Narrows demanded protection and control over their forests, the remaining pillar of their way of life. Instead the government expanded industrial logging permits throughout the Territory. In the 1980s the introduction of highly mechanized logging led to a dramatic increase in the area clearcut on Grassy Narrows land. 

As clearcuts encroached on beloved hunting, trapping, medicine picking grounds, sacred sites, and birth places, the First Nation exhausted efforts at consultation, letter writing, speaking tours, and meetings, but the logging continued unabated.

On December 2, 2002, in the dead of winter, grassroots youth, women, landusers, and Elders put their bodies on the line to physically block logging trucks from passing, refusing to watch as their forests, and their future, were hauled away on trucks.That blockade continues to this day. 

“As Grassy Narrows youth we were sick of everything that the government and these companies do to our people,” said Chrissy Isaacs. “I was 23 when the blockade started and I vowed to be a warrior woman for my people who are under attack. Now I take my grandchildren to the blockade to show them what it means to be Anishinaabe and to live free on the land that the Creator put us on. We will always be here and we will never stop defending our natural way of life and the forest that gives us life. We will thrive.”

Following the initiation of Grassy Narrows’ blockade of the main logging road near their village, logging companies shifted their extraction to more distant parts of the Territory using other roads to access forests that were too difficult to defend. In response, Grassy Narrows built a vast network of alliances and launched boycott campaigns against the two logging giants responsible.

In 2008, facing blockades, boycotts, litigation, and contract cancellations, AbitibiBowater (now Resolute Forest Products) withdrew from Grassy Narrows Territory and surrendered their license to log on the Whiskey Jack Forest. 

American multinational logging giant Weyerhaeuser refused to respect Grassy Narrows, and continued for 14 years to insist that the company required Grassy Narrows wood for their Kenora Timberstrand mill. That finally changed on October 20 of this year, when Weyerhaeuser Canada president David Graham committed in writing not to use wood from the area that Grassy Narrows is protecting for as long as the community says ‘no’.

With this commitment all six regional forest products mills have committed not to use conflict wood from Grassy Narrows: Resolute, Weyerhaeuser, Domtar, EACOM, Boise, and Greenfirst.

However, the threat to Grassy Narrows Territory persists. The Government of Ontario has proposed to open up 20 per cent of Grassy Narrows Territory to renewed clearcut logging in the next Forest Management Plan, scheduled to take effect in April 2024.

Ontario has also allowed a boom in mining claims on Grassy Narrows Territory in recent years with over 4,000 claims now held by companies who are mostly seeking to find and extract gold.

Grassy Narrows is calling on the governments of Canada and Ontario to put an end to the attacks on Grassy Narrows’ land, health, and way of life by respecting the Grassy Narrows Land Declaration, an Indigenous law declaring the Grassy Narrows Indigenous Protected Area under Grassy Narrows’ control and care.

“I honour the grassroots people of Grassy Narrows whose perseverance has gotten us this far against great odds”, said Chief Rudy Turtle. “It is past time to start on the path of reconciliation by respecting our control over our own land so that we can heal the forest and heal our people. We won’t rest until our Territory has permanent protection that respects Grassy Narrows law. Grassy Narrows will be free.”