Grassy Narrows debates its future path

Several dozen teenagers and young adults marched the length of Asubpeeschoseewagong (Grassy Narrows) First Nation on May 2 in sweltering 26 degree Celsius heat.

At a community barbecue to celebrate the end of their walk against logging, the teens lounged in the back of pickup trucks and under the branches of roadside trees. Veteran Elders of the northern Ontario Anishinabe community’s 13-year-long land defence battle ate burgers beside the reserve’s recently refurbished welcome sign.

Band councillor Randy Fobister welcomed Windspeaker to the barbecue and said the youth walkers represent a new generation stepping up to protect Grassy Narrows’ traditional territories from industrial logging and pollution.

“The youth are starting to stand up on this issue again,” he said. “When I see the youth getting more involved … I’m glad they will be at our community meetings to have a say in what happens on our territories.

“I met with them and heard their ideas about the forests. I’m amazed at the ideas they have.”

But tensions continue to simmer over logging in the Whisky Jack Forest surrounding the northwest Ontario community. Despite the fact that Grassy Narrows’ ongoing blockade has not ceased since 2002 — making it the longest such protest in the country’s history — the province has initiated negotiations with members of the community, including the chief and several councillors, to negotiate restarting forestry in the area.

Grassy Narrows has entered into the provincial talks alongside two other nearby bands, Naotkamegwanning (Whitefish Bay) and Wabauskang first nations. At stake is who will inherit the logging permits to the provincially issued Sustainable Forest License in the Whisky Jack.

Some community members, including some seasoned blockaders, told Windspeaker that divisions have emerged among band members and even within families over whether taking over logging of the territories is the right path forward for the community.

A change in leadership has raised the stakes for a band that has garnered global headlines and seen victory in the province’s top courts over the issue.

In April 2014, the remote Anishinaabe community north of Kenora voted in a new chief, Roger Fobister Sr., after 12 years being headed by Simon Fobister, whose leadership coincided with Grassy Narrows’ international anti-logging battle.

He acknowledged the tensions over which way to proceed.

“There is clearly a division within our own chief and council,” he said. “I’m very pro-development myself. There are some councillors who are more reserved or don’t agree with any form of working with the [Ministry of Natural Resources] regarding cutting any more trees in our Aboriginal territories.”

Reflecting on his first year in office, Fobister Sr. told Windspeaker he considers himself an “economic development chief” — one who supports harnessing logging for the benefit of the community, among other strategic goals to bring revenue and employment. He estimated that 80 per cent of Grassy Narrows residents, who comprise nearly two-thirds of the band’s more than 1,500 members, are unemployed.

“After the last 10 years, there’s been no jobs created,” he lamented. “The whole focus was on the forestry issue with nothing on economic development.

“There’s no jobs in my community other than the core funding we receive from governments to operate our band office and clinic. That’s all the jobs that we have. There’s nothing in tourism or forestry yet … I take it as my personal responsibility to create jobs in the community.”

But Councillor Randy Fobister, who was first elected in 2008, worries that there wouldn’t even be that many jobs from logging, because today’s industry is highly mechanized and workers have been largely replaced by machines.

“They’re not going to hire a bunch of people,” he said. “Forestry is about making money for the companies, not about jobs.

“We want the legislation changed so there’s no clear-cutting — then we could take over our own territories and what happens there. But for now, it’s just the rules under the Ministry of Natural Resources.”

The community’s long-standing blockade was launched in 2002 by the local residents organized under the banner of the Grassy Narrows Environmental Group, who were outraged by the clear-cutting of their traditional territories by multinational corporations. They said it violated their Aboriginal and treaty rights to hunt, fish and trap on their territories.

By 2008, following an international boycott campaign, one of those companies — timber giant AbitibiBowater — had announced an end to logging in the territories, as did Weyerhauser.

Three years later, Grassy Narrows won a case in the Ontario Superior Court when judges declared their Aboriginal rights had been violated by the province when it issued logging permits on Crown lands to the detriment of the Anishinabe traditional way of life as guaranteed in Treaty 3.

But high unemployment levels and so-far minimal economic development have some in the community hoping for a change of approach. According to a 2014 audited financial statement, required under the new federal First Nations Transparency and Accountability Act, Grassy Narrows receives more than 40 per cent of its annual revenues from Aboriginal Affairs and is therefore labeled in the audit as “dependent” on the federal government.

“Grassy Narrows First Nation is right in the middle of the Whisky Jack Forest,” Chief Fobister Sr. said. “Surely, in our economic pie, one of the wedges is going to be forestry.

“But what kind of forestry are we going to do? We’re not going to be big-time harvesters like these clear-cutters. We’ll be harvesting selectively, for value-added stuff … Now we have the opportunity to manage the forest ourselves. We can control the rate of cutting of our forest.”

For Fobister, the argument is moot because he says the band can already selectively harvest timber under its treaty for value-added and local uses.

“It feels instead like we’re turning away from the treaty,” he said. “I’m glad that, 13 years ago, people stood up. The grassroots people stopped [the logging].

“After all the support we got around the world, not just in Canada, if there’s clear-cutting starting again, that’s a lot of hard work gone.”

Photo caption: Pictured are just some of the youth who walked to raise attention to a long-standing battle over logging in Grassy Narrows territory.