Protest over, logging continues in northeastern Ontario

Page 3

New Post First Nation, located 10 miles southeast of the town of Cochrane in northeastern Ontario, signed an interim agreement March 8 with forestry company Tembec Inc. and the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) that may have interrupted an escalating dispute over clear-cut logging before it turned ugly.

The dispute between New Post and Tembec came to a head in the middle of February. Tembec cut an area of forest the size of 2,500 football fields just east of Fraserdale, about 180 km north of Timmins. This activity destroyed burial sites and 200 marten traps within New Post's traditional land-use territory, where the chief says Native interests are supposed to be protected by the terms of a Sustainable Forest Licence issued to Tembec.

The First Nation was upset that subsequent to issuing the licence, MNR approved clear-cutting of the land parcel at Fraserdale without their knowledge and consent. The devastation was discovered by band members who went to the area to check their traps.

Chief RoseAnne Archibald says the company has destroyed the forest buffer zones around rivers and lakes that according to its licence are supposed to be spared. Also, by not consulting with New Post before extending further cutting rights to Tembec, MNR did not meet the standard of Term and Condition 77 of its 1994 environmental assessment hearing on timber management planning, by which the government was supposed to ensure that First Nations benefit from commercial forestry in their traditional territories.

On Feb. 14, the chief met with Tembec while the logging continued. Subsequent meetings on Feb. 18 and 23 of all three parties failed to resolve New Post's issues, but support was building from other First Nations across Ontario for the rally, march and highway blockades that New Post was organizing. Nishnawbe-Aski Nation Grand Chief Charles Fox also came to lend his support to New Post.

Finally, on March 7, frustrated by the lack of progress in the talks, New Post members and about 20 of their supporters from nearby Wahgoshig First Nation, Moose Cree First Nation and Matachewan First Nation blockaded Highway 101 to prevent Tembec's loaded trucks from getting to the mill in Timmins. A rally and march was begun at the gates of the Tembec mill at 1 p.m. and proceeded to the MNR office in South Porcupine.

The protest, which also drew support from First Nations beyond the territories of the participating bands, had the desired result of bringing Tembec and MNR into negotiations.

Archibald said the tripartite agreement they signed is called "a working relationship agreement" and has a duration of 20 years.

"This agreement balances a lot of things," she said. "Especially protection. How do we protect areas that are sacred and valuable to New Post First Nation? This agreement will address that." She says New Post is not against development, they just want to protect sacred sites, preserve the environment and derive some benefit from forestry in their hunting and gathering areas.

She says as a result of the agreement her nation will meet monthly with MNR concerning all resource development in their traditional lands. In addition, they have a joint trapping committee that will find ways to deal with the effects of forestry on trapping.

On March 8, Windspeaker contacted Tembec's chief forester for northeastern Ontario operations Rick Groves, who declined to talk about the specific terms of the agreement, other than to say "it is an agreement which will align how the three parties, the Ministry of Natural Resources, Tembec and New Post First Nation will be working together, and some of the principles we'll work under, and it'll hopefully ensure that we'll have an effective, positive working relationship for now and well into the future."

He described the terms of the forestry licence and how it affects Tembec's relationship to Native people only as a "process under the forest management planning process that outlines a cnsultation process. But this (the new agreement) is above and beyond that."

It would have to be, because the "consultation process" in this case didn't happen. MNR signed off permission for Tembec to cut timber and New Post found out when it was too late. Groves says that was because "there wasn't a positive communication between the groups."

He added that from Tembec's perspective, "we admitted that yes, even though we were following the letter of the law, there was more consultation we could have done in retrospect to eliminate the issue that happened."

Groves described the March 8 agreement as encompassing "how we will work together as a group to ensure that New Post gets benefits from the resources. And it outlined the principles on how we're going to do that. And that's about as far as I can go on the agreement; all parties agreed not to talk about it," he said.

Groves was reminded by Windspeaker that New Post had stated concerns that went beyond getting a share of the resources. They also expressed concern about the environment and the future of hunting and trapping. Asked if these issues had been addressed in the agreement, Groves said "Yes. How we will communicate on all their issues have been addressed." But he would not say whether or not any compensation for the destruction of marten boxes was included.

The Ministry's district manager for the Cochrane region, Art Currie, was tight-lipped too.

Curry said there had been a "values mapping" process in place for three years in the region. Values mapping involves recording features in a tract of land that are important to users of the area, including cottages, moose feeding areas, burial sites, and hunting, trapping of rishing areas, among other things. But he also made the point, confirmed by a spokesman at Wabun Tribal Council's office in Timmins, that hunting, trapping and gathering "doesn't count" as a Native value, since those activities don't apply just to Natives.

He explained "our efforts with Nw Post have been trying to support them resource-wise that they could produce their own values maps. We haven't gone out and tried to produce those for them, because they've indicated that they are the only people that really can produce them, which is a true point."

The area that was cut at Fraserdale, Currie said, was "very much part of their traditional territory, and there were some values there, but the values that we see on the map don't appear to be of the same level of significance as has evolved through this issue."

Archibald expressed a different view when she spoke to Windspeaker on March 14.

"In this case, we made that value known to MNR and Tembec like for the last few years. There is a zone around our original reserve in Fraserdale - it's about 10 kilometres around the perimeter of the reserve - and we asked that this area not be harvested, because there has been a lot of cut-out in the area already. So everybody was aware that New Post wanted this area protected. And somewhere, I don't know where, we haven't really gotten the exact answer yet . . . someone in the MNR and Tembec said 'well, I think we're just going to go cut in there.'"

Archibald said Tembec writes the plans to harvest and MNR approves them "so these two parties jointly together decided that they were going to harvest this area that was sacred to us and they did it."

The chief said the Fraserdale problem was not an isolated incident. "This is happening to everybody," she said, . . . "right across the province of Ontario. I think what happened in New Post is we just said 'no, we can't let this just slip by.'"

Although relieved that the current crisis was over, Archibald said she thinks the bigger issue is that "they [the other parties] don't understand. They don't have a real deep sense and understanding of what Native values really mean. They don't understand our culture; they don't understand our connection to the land. There's just so much education needs to happen."