Grassy Narrows takes 'last stand' on nuclear waste

An Earth Day week environmental gathering and powwow provided the people of Grassy Narrows First Nation with the opportunity to celebrate their role in stalling a proposal to bury nuclear waste in northwestern Ontario.

The gathering was funded by money raised from an annual Honor the Earth tour of musicians headlined by Indigo girls, a Grammy-winning folk rock duo. The primary focus of the 1997 North American tour was on the issue of nuclear waste storage on Native lands.

"Seventeen of 21 nuclear dump sites have been slated for Indian land," said Priscelle Setee of tour sponsor Indigenous Women's Network. She was drawn to Grassy Narrows by an article written in 1996 by local resident Judy DaSilva in which she expressed concern about an Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. proposal to bury nuclear waste in the Canadian Shield.

"To myself, I feel like this is the last fight," DaSilva wrote in a follow-up article. "We need to take action now, even though they are not burying the waste on our lands yet.

"At the moment, we can still drink water from the lake, but perhaps in a few years. . . the radiation will be all around us and our people will be dying from all kinds of cancers.

"Either we keep moving towards being docile, timid beings where everyone steps on us or we start pushing ourselves out of the semi-sleep we have been in the last 50 years."

DaSilva and others opposed to the burying of waste in the Canadian Shield have already gained one victory. On March 13, a Canadian Enviromental Assessment Agency panel recommended that a search for a specific disposal site should not proceed until a suitable Aboriginal participation process was established.

As of late April, the federal government had not responded to that recommendation.

Former Grassy Narrows band councilor Mary Nelson was credited by Dan Berman of the Aboriginal Rights Coalition in Ottawa for influencing the committee's decision with an eloquent presentation last November.

"I'm confident they will never get permission from the Native people of this country to bury nuclear waste," Berman added.

There are other concerns more immediate for the more than 700 residents of Grassy. The 80-kilometre drive northeast to the First Nation from Kenora takes you past a proposed sight for a new municipal dump, near pristine Silver Lake. Previously, in the 1970s, the First Nation's water system was polluted by mercury from Dryden's pulp and paper mill.

Former Treaty #3 grand chief and Grassy Narrow resident Steve Fobister said he was once even contacted by a Toronto mayor about having the city's garbage shipped to this religion via a railway built specifically for that purpose.

And gathering organizers Yolanda Fobister and Roberta Keesick noted that they have come across logging clear-cut areas that resemble deserts while berry picking along area back roads.

"Before any more devastation happens, we want to gather to educate ourselves and others of the effects," they said.

Most of the close to 100 people who came to learn on the gathering's first day were students. In one workshop, participants heard from Edivio Battistelli, former president of national Indian Affairs in Brazil.

"Land's the most important element for the physical and cultural survival of the Ojibway people here," he said. "I don't believe Native people can live the way it is right now."

He suggested that the people of Grassy Narrows lobby for a bigger reserve land base which would also move potential environment danger further away from the community.

"There's so much land in this country, I don't understand why companies have to clear-cut so close to the community," he said.

"One of our wrongdoings in Brazil was to put 7,000 people in an area the size of Grassy. How could they live off the land? With no land, they couldn't be Native people and they didn't want to be white, so what do you do?"