Ontario communities draw line in sand

As resource companies line up to pay multi-million dollar royalty fees to the provincial government for the right to harvest the vast untapped resource wealth of northern Ontario, First Nations have served notice that their interests can no longer be ignored.
Two remote Ontario First Nations find themselves at ground zero in the battle to bring a halt to the jurisdictional ping pong game that gets played between federal and provincial governments when Aboriginal land rights are involved.
The fight against resource harvesting permits issued by the province on lands under claim at the federal level has already landed in court. Ontario Superior Court Justice Nancy Spies ordered the province to pick up the $3-million legal bill for the ongoing dispute at Grassy Narrows. Lawyers for the band will make the case that Treaty 3 protects their traditional lands from provincial jurisdiction. The judge ruled the case is of pressing public interest and told the Ontario government to pay the bills for both sides.
The Asubpeeschoseewagong First Nation (formerly known as Grassy Narrows) is located 80 km north of Kenora. In December 2002, Grassy Narrows established a blockade on a logging road in its territory where forestry companies Weyerhaeuser and Abitibi were logging under a provincial permit without the Aboriginal community’s consent. Grassy Narrows has been unable to prevent the logging of the vast territory but continues to oppose it whenever possible.
Hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake north of the 51st parallel. The question of resource revenue sharing for Native people in Canada could well be decided in this part of the country.
And it will be a battle. After members of the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation (or KIFN, formerly known as Big Trout Lake) prevented mining exploration company Platinex from searching for platinum deposits on their traditional lands, the company fought back by filing a $10-billion lawsuit against the band. The band filed a counterclaim naming the company and the province as defendants.
KIFN is within the boundaries of the 1929 adhesion to Treaty 9. The community of 1,550 members is located 600 km northwest of Thunder Bay.
KIFN Councillor Jon Cutfeet was reached by telephone as lawyers were making his council’s case in Thunder Bay provincial court on June 24. He noted that the Stephen Harper government dismissed his council’s concerns even though the rights of First Nations to be involved in meaningful consultation before action is taken on their traditional lands has been strengthened in several recent high court decisions, most notably in the Mikisew, Haida and Taku cases.
But federal and provincial officials have been slow on the uptake, Cutfeet said, forcing his community to go to court to force those governments to follow the rule of law.
“The [federal] government sees us as executing criminal acts as we stand up for our rights, rights that are constitutionally entrenched. The federal government is claiming that this is a law enforcement issue for the province. They have a land claims policy that covers land entitlement cases of which we have an outstanding one,” Cutfeet said.
“Both Premier [Dalton] McGuinty and Prime Minister Harper talk about enforcing the rule of law as first peoples stand up for their land rights—rights that are entrenched in the Constitution, the highest law of the land. Both governments, however, fail to enforce this constitutional law. Either they are selective in which laws they enforce or they are intentionally ignoring constitutional law.”
Cutfeet, who holds the lands and environment portfolio on the KIFN council, said Ontario has not updated its mining act to be in compliance with the recent Supreme Court of Canada decisions.
“Before they handed out the permit to Platinex to do drilling in our territory they never came and talked to us about it. That is the requirement of Mikisew, that before they hand out any permits to companies they need to consult with us,” he said.
Ontario NDP leader Howard Hampton grew up in northern Ontario and his constituency office is located in his hometown of Fort Francis. He addressed the chiefs at the 32nd annual All Ontario Chiefs Conference at KIFN on June 28.
He encouraged the member First Nations of the Nishnswbe Aski Nation (NAN) to stand firm.
“I simply pointed out to everybody there, especially the NAN First Nations, that $80 billion takeovers are only happening because mining companies see what’s happening to the world price of gold, silver, nickel, zinc, copper, lead, you name it. The prices are all very high. There’s a connection between that and the drive, by just about every mining company on the continent and some from off the continent, to get into NAN territory,” he said.
Hampton said the biggest part of northern Ontario is still untouched by resource companies.
“If you look at mining in Ontario, the existing mining region extends from about the 49th parallel up to almost the 51st parallel. At Red Lake near the Manitoba border about $10-billion worth of gold has come out of there in the last 10 to 15 years,” he said. “That’s a long slender belt. Most of NAN territory is immediately north of there. NAN territory is huge both geographically and in terms of its mineral potential. It’s essentially the same geology and the mining companies know that, which is why all the mining companies are beating themselves up to get access to NAN territory. In many ways it is the last frontier in Canada because no mining development—with two small exceptions—have been permitted there since the mid-1970s. In the mid-1970s, because of some political issues that arose at the time, all development of the north in forestry and mining was essentially suspended while the Royal Commission on the Northern Environment was held.”
While First Nations in other regions have sat at negotiating tables and looked out the window as trucks rolled by loaded with the resource wealth from the lands that were the subject of the negotiations, Ontario First Nations have learned not to fall into that trap, he said.
“I really take my hat off to the people of KI because they’re obviously taking on a battle for all of the NAN First Nations. I told the chiefs ‘It’s very important that you win this.’ Mining and forestry can be done with some good environmental rules and some land use planning with Aboriginal people having some control over what happens and being able to share the revenues and share in the economy. That’s one option,” he said. “But the other route that has been followed too often in the past is that mining companies come in helter-skelter, dig a hole, take out what’s most valuable and leave behind some debris that’s not very nice. And they essentially exclude Aboriginal people from having any say or any involvement in the economy.”
He pointed out that NAN chiefs are not opposed to development.
“The consensus that has been expressed is that they’re not opposed per se to mining activity, nor are they opposed per se to forestry activity. But the communities are saying after you sit down with us and negotiate and sign a comprehensive agreement like the Quebec agreement, then we can talk about individual mining sites, mining exploration and forestry development operations,” Hampton said. “Until those issues are addressed I don’t think NAN First Nations are going to allow any of this to proceed. Frankly, I’m in 100 per cent agreement.”