Natives face extinction, warns environmentalist

Page 7

The world's oldest Native culture will be extinct in nine months if logging in Southeast Asia isn't stopped immediately.

And Alberta's Aboriginal people could someday face the same crisis if pulp mill companies don't curtail the same deforestation here, said a prominent Canadian environmentalist during a presentation in Calgary Oct. 2.

As part of a North American campaign to support Native bands living in the Malaysian rainforests of Sarawak, Thom Henley spoke to more than 400 peace and environmental activists at the Southern Alberta of Institute of Technology.

He told them scientists have determined that the Penan Aboriginals will be wiped out if international timber suppliers don't stop logging activity throughout the life-sustaining jungles where the 5,000-member band has survived for at least ten

thousand years.

Japanese wood producers, which are the leading importers of timber on the Malaysian island of Borneo, are planning two pulp and paper projects in northern Alberta.

Japanese-owned Alberta Pacific Forest Industries Ltd., which is proposing the world's largest pulp mill near Athabasca, is still being considered for construction licensing.

Daishowa Canada Ltd. has already started construction on its $130 million mill near Peace River. Daishowa recently signed a 120,000-square-mile forest management agreement (FMA) with the Government of Alberta.

"If I were a Native in Alberta, I would be very worried," Henley said after an hour long slide film presentation showing the devastating effects deforestation has on the nomadic cultures that live deep inside the Borneo rainforests.

"What's happening there is the same thing that's happening in B.C., Alberta and the rest of Canada. We tend to know very little about it here, so we become unconcerned."

Henley, founder of the Rediscovery International Foundation, has made similar presentations in Lethbridge, Vancouver, Minnesota and Washington D.C. where he addressed a congressional committee on human rights.

His message warned of the annihilation of all traditional cultures worldwide if the cumulative forest industries don't start recognizing Native people.

The director of the Mother Earth Society in Edmonton says her members have been trying to warn Albertans that the same timber crisis could happen here.

"But the media and everyone else is ignoring it. Our heritage has to be maintained. Our Treaties have to be maintained," Lorraine Sinclair said.

Henley noted that the Penan have similar treaties with the government of Malaysia but the agreements have become insignificant to the mulinational corporations who have already sponsored the logging of one-third of the Sarawak jungle which

has a 125,000 square kilometer land mass.

Reg White, an environmental sciences graduate student at the University of Calgary, said Aboriginal people should protest the development of pulp and paper mills because they have the most to lose if their forests are destroyed.

"The Native people here have to get it together. They have to wake up and take charge," he said.

"They can't let themselves become enthralled by economic promises. I've been the Philippines (and other Asian countries) and have seen what's happening. You can't just draw boundaries."

Alberta's environment coalition is demanding that Alberta Pacific reveal specifics of its forest management agreement before the environmental impact assessment review is completed.

Members of Friends of the North, which includes a Treaty 8 chiefs environmental committee, have banded together to protest the review board's terms of reference which does not include the agreement.

Bigstone band Chief Charles Beaver has lashed out at the provincial and federal governments for not considering the effects that forestry projects will have on his people.

Alberta Pacific is owned by Crestbrook Forest Industries Ltd. of Cranbrook, British Columbia.

Crestbrook's primary shareholders are Japan-based Mitsubishi Corporation and Honshu Papr Company.

According to the Japan Timber Imports Association, Mitsubishi is one of the largest wood importers from Sarawak.