First Nations

Announcing Heart of the Boreal action alert/website

Canadian, Manitoban and U.S. organizations have joined together in an action alert to urge the Manitoba Government to stand firm on its commitment to not construct the BiPole III hydro transmission line on the east side of Lake Winnipeg and to protect millions of hectares of unique boreal forest as an UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS).

The Boreal Forest Network (BFN), Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), the Wilderness Committee (WC) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) are calling on the public, in Canada and the United States, to tell the province to continue to say no to an industrial transmission line on the east side and to move forward with the creation of a World Heritage Site.

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WINNIPEG — First Nations in western Manitoba say they are determined not to allow a proposed Manitoba Hydro transmission line to cross their territories until Ottawa and the province complete an environmental audit of "past impacts and effects" of hydro operations on southern First Nations.

The First Nations made the announcement after a meeting earlier this week in Dauphin.

"Manitoba Hydro must be held to account for its past practices before it talks about going through our traditional territories for anything new," said Southern Chiefs Organization Grand Chief Morris J. Swan Shannacappo. Manitoba Hydro's activities have had a significant impact on southern Manitoba, first nations leaders say.

They say the relationship between the dams and economic consequences is not as obvious as in northern Manitoba, but impacts of artificial water levels has serious consequences in terms of flooding of First Nation lands and harvesting of traditional foods.

"We are going to be standing up for our treaty and standing together as treaty people. This gathering wasn't the end of something. It is the beginning," said Chief Derek Nepinak of Pine Creek First Nation.

Within Manitoba there are 16 First Nations that belong to either Treaty 2 or Treaty 4 territory. They are on the west side of the province or in the Interlake.

More than 50 First Nations people, many of them elders, are packing a downtown federal courtroom this morning, hoping to persuade a judge to make public more than 250 documents that could prove Ottawa culpable for the hydro-dam flooding that devastated three northern reserves.

The elders, from Grand Rapids, Chemawawin and Opaskwayak, will argue that Ottawa doesn't have the right to keep the documents confidential under provisions of lawyer-client priviledge.

"We have a problem," said Grand Rapids Chief Ovide Mercredi as court staff scrambled to accomodate the standing-room only crowd. "Too many Indians."

The case, which started in the early 1990s and has dragged on for years, began when the bands sued Ottawa for failing to protect their interests when Manitoba Hydro and the province built the Grand Rapids dam in the mid-1960s.

The case could be worth tens of millions in compensation to the bands, if the First Nations can prove Ottawa knew or ought to have known that it shirked its duty as the trustee of aboriginal people.

The hearing on the documents could take three days and it's possible the Canadian government will ask for the hearing to be held behind closed doors to protect the secrecy of the contested documents.

The Winnipeg Free Press is expected to opposed any attempt to go in-camera or impose a publication ban.

Some Manitoba cottage owners have joined forces with a First Nation to try stopping a power line project in Nopiming Provincial Park.

The 19-kilometre hydro line project, which received provincial approval in November following an environmental assessment report, is set to start in the spring and be completed by Sept. 30.

However, less than half of the 156 cottages in Long Lake and Beresford Lake will actually be hooked up. Only 72 cottagers have paid $10,000 fee.

'A complete pause is what is required and anything less than that would be to put a rubber stamp on this flawed process and that is wrong for all Manitobans.'-Brian Gudmundson

Cottage owner Brian Gudmundson, who opposes the plan, says Manitoba Hydro is trying to put in the power line without proper consultation or majority support.

The Sagkeeng First Nation also opposes the deal and has criticized the province for not consulting with them.

"A complete pause [of the project] is what is required and anything less than that would be to put a rubber stamp on this flawed process - and that is wrong for all Manitobans," said Gudmundson.

He added the rest of the $800,000 expense to put in the poles and lines and bring power to the area would be paid for by Manitoba taxpayers.

"We shouldn't be subsidizing a small number of elite cottage owners who are demanding subsidy from Manitoba Hydro," he said.

"This is wrong. We're not building a town site. This is a scattering of cottages in a remote park."

Currently, cottagers in the area, on the southeast side of Manitoba, along the border with Ontario, rely on gasoline-powered generators and use outhouses or composting toilets.

Gudmundson, along with other cottagers and the Sagkeeng leaders, are worried the project will lead to further development in the area.

Nopiming, in the Anishinabe language, literally means "entrance to the wilderness."

A group of native trappers and elders is suing Manitoba Hydro and the province for $64 million, compensation the trappers say they are owed for flooding that eradicated their livelihood and culture.

The trappers from the Chemawawin First Nation say flooding from the Grand Rapids dam has led to a 50 per cent drop in their standard of living and cost them and their families at least $64 million in lost income for as many as 118 trappers or their descendents. That's according to a statement of claim filed last month in the Court of Queen's Bench in The Pas.

Though Hydro paid to relocate the Chemawawin band in the mid-1960s and paid out millions in compensation since then, trappers like Malcolm Thomas, Fred Thomas and Edward Thomas say they were left out of that process.

But lawyer Brian Maronek, who is acting for the trappers, cautioned the statement of claim is largely a precautionary measure in case a new round of negotiations with Manitoba Hydro fail.

Talks broke off last fall after Hydro offered the trappers $6 million. The trappers were asking for $33 million.

Maronek said he is hoping talks resume later this month. The trappers are claiming a long list of damages spanning decades, including loss of income from trapping, damage to equipment, breach of treaty rights and the duty to consult, bad faith dealings, deceit and negligence on the part of Manitoba Hydro.

"Specifically, they knew that one of the best wildlife areas in North America would be destroyed and the damage would be catastrophic to the trappers," reads the claim.

Those claims have yet to be tested or proven in court and Manitoba Hydro has not yet been served notice of the potential lawsuit or filed a statement of defence. Grand Rapids, one of the first northern dams to be built, is among those that flooded First Nations land and created a costly legacy of mistrust between Hydro and First Nations that has only begun to improve in recent years as Hydro has sought genuine partnerships with northern bands.

Manitoba Hydro did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the lawsuit. Chemawawin Chief Clarence Easter said he's supportive of the trappers' attempts to win compensation from Hydro, but he said it might take too long. Many of the men are in their late 60s or 70s and a court case could drag on.

Easter said Hydro has not properly compensated band members for unforeseen impacts from the dam. And he said elders had little option but to relocated the band in the early 1960s.

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca

Times of trouble

1957: Manitoba Hydro starts planning for the Grand Rapids dam, the first one built up north. It uses Cedar Lake as a forebay or reservoir, causing large-scale flooding that left about 500,000 acres of shoreline underwater.

1960: Manitoba Hydro starts negotiating with the Chemawawin band, a small, isolated community of about 350 people with no road access or electricity but a vibrant traditional trapping and hunting culture built on the fertile marshland where the Saskatchewan River turns into Cedar Lake.

1963: Chemawawin is relocated to a planned townsite at Easterville on the southeast shore of Cedar Lake. The town had power, running water, new homes and a collection of schools and recreation centres. But alcohol and drug abuse took hold as it became clear the new site, built on bedrock, was no good for traditional trapping, hunting and agricultural practices.

1968: The Grand Rapids dam opens, pumping 480 megawatts of power onto the grid.

1990, Manitoba Hydro signs a $13.7 million deal with Chemawawin to compensate the band for the outstanding effects of the dam.

2008: Feeling ignored and overlooked for decades, a group of trappers form a committee and begin negotiations with Hydro for compensation. They ask for $33 million, but Hydro offers $6 million.

Fall 2009: Talks break off.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 8, 2010 A6

The United Nations has declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity. It would be great if the year could be simply a celebration of the Earth's biological richness, but Biodiversity Year is occurring while non-human life on our planet is in a more perilous state than ever before.

Experts believe the world is in the midst of a biodiversity crisis on par with earlier mass extinction events. Some 17,000 of the plant and animal species that we've identified and assessed are now in serious decline, including many that are well-known and well-loved by Canadians, such as caribou, polar bears, and some salmon populations.

This perilous situation for plants and animals threatens not only the ecological health of ecosystems like old-growth forests and arctic tundra but also the wellbeing and welfare of human communities that depend on the ecological goods and services that nature provides. The deep bio-cultural ties to the land and its resources, especially wild plants, that many of Canada's aboriginal people have long held offer a direct illustration of this, as well as a source of knowledge that can benefit everyone.

A report just released by the David Suzuki Foundation and its allies, Conservation Value of the North American Boreal Forest from an Ethnobotanical Perspective, considers the importance of Canada's boreal forest to aboriginal people as a storehouse of plant resources. Boreal plants, like Labrador tea, wild rice, jack pine, and countless other trees, shrubs, and herbs have always played a significant role in the culture of the people who inhabit this vast northern region that extends from Newfoundland to the Yukon.

Food and beverage plants, such as wild chives and chokecherry, provide essential nutrients to complement a predominately meat-based diet. Medicinal plants, such as lingonberry, mountain alder, and common juniper are at the core of a holistic approach to healthcare and have been used for millennia to treat a myriad of ailments, from easing aches and pains and curing urinary-tract infections to assisting in childbirth. Before the introduction of modern technologies, boreal plants also offered materials for transportation, such as balsam fir timber used to make canoe frames and tamarack fibres used in snowshoes.

This range of benefits reflects a long tradition of botanical and ecological knowledge that aboriginal people have acquired over thousands of years of using the boreal forest as grocery, pharmacy, school, and spiritual haven.

Traditional knowledge held by Canada's First Nations is not just a relic of the past. It offers scientists, policy-makers, resource companies, environmentalists, and anyone else who cares about the boreal a vitally important information source to better manage the region's land and resources.

University of Victoria environmental studies professor Nancy Turner argues that we must not overlook the close interrelationships between indigenous peoples and their lands. Scientists must respect indigenous people as keepers of traditional ecological knowledge.

Too often, we undervalue the contribution of aboriginal traditional ecological knowledge in our debates about resource extraction, wildlife management, and land-use planning. We must remember that aboriginal people were actively involved in managing the boreal and other regions long before western science or industrial development came along. For example, boreal people commonly used landscape burning to maintain soil productivity, healthy wildlife populations, and a diversity of habitats. The practice has since been adopted by many forestry companies.

Such scientific information has been encoded in indigenous peoples' languages and has been passed on through stories and place names. Indeed, indigenous people have mapped the landscape and resources of the boreal forest to a much greater extent than scientists had previously understood. For example, the Gwich'in in the Northwest Territories long ago identified black currant island in the Husky River area. The Dogrib call Mesa Lake in the Northwest Territories Gots'okati, which translates as Cloudberry Lake. This type of detailed information on the ecological and cultural importance of places and landscapes that are important to aboriginal people can help planners prioritize what areas should be protected.

We must ensure that wilderness and wildlife conservation, including creating new parks and protected areas, recognizes indigenous rights to land and water and includes the involvement of indigenous peoples. The fact that we're now seeing more and more integration of thousands of years of traditional knowledge with modern science in Canada's boreal forest gives us one reason to celebrate the International year of Biodiversity.

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David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation. Faisal Moola is the director of science at the foundation (www.davidsuzuki.org).

(Original news release from November 23, 2009)

PRIOR LAKE, Minn. – Nearly 400 Native leaders, scholars, elders and Tribal College students from across the country, joined by scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), came together at a watershed gathering, the Native Peoples Native Homelands Climate Change Workshop II, to formulate a collective response to the far-reaching impacts of climate change on Native lands and communities.

The Climate Change Workshop, held November 18-21 at the Mystic Lake Casino & Hotel in Prior Lake, Minnesota, was designed to build on and enrich the recently released 2009 U.S. National Climate Change Assessment. The first Native Peoples Native Homelands Climate Change Workshop was held in 1998 in Albuquerque, NM, and the report from that workshop, Circles of Wisdom, was later included in the first National Climate Change Assessment issued that year.

“Climate change impacts Native peoples first and foremost,” said workshop Co-Chair, Winona LaDuke, Executive Director of Honor the Earth. “In Alaska, some villages are literally falling into the ocean, while severe drought in the Southwest is scorching scarce grasslands and forests. In the Pacific Northwest, salmon runs have been decimated. Vector borne diseases are spreading, and traditional foods and medicines are disappearing in Native territories across the country.”

Dr. Daniel R. Wildcat, workshop Co-Chair and Director of Haskell Indian Nations University’s Environmental Research Studies Center said, “Global warming scenarios point to disproportionate and increased impacts on Native peoples due to their unique relationship to land, the prevalence of subsistence land-based economies, and the deep cultural and spiritual significance of their ties to the land.”

As a follow-up to the White House Tribal Summit convened in November, the White House sent three representatives from the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to the Workshop. The CEQ held a “listening session” to hear the direct experiences of Native peoples disproportionately suffering the adverse effects of climate change. Others offered solutions, including the development of reservation-based renewable energy, efficient and sustainable housing, and Indigenous food production, and urged a federal response through the creation of adaptation policies.

At its conclusion, participants issued a milestone document, the Mystic Lake Declaration (attached), to offer solutions that can help Tribal communities and policy makers form plans to address climate change impacts that threaten the traditional cultures and life ways of Indigenous peoples. The Declaration will be taken to Copenhagen for presentation at the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Sponsored by NASA’s Tribal College and University Program, the workshop was held in collaboration with the nation's 36 tribally-controlled colleges and universities and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium. Because the median age in Indian Country is 18, there is an urgent need to provide curriculum and green jobs training to restore Native economies. Workshop partners included Honor the Earth, Haskell Indian Nations University, Indigenous Environmental Network, Intertribal Council On Utility Policy, the National Indian Gaming Association, and NOAA.

Presenters included an impressive cross-section of Native experts and leaders from across the nation including Billy Frank, Jr., Chairman of the Northwest Indian Fish Commission; Inupiat whaling captain Eugene Brower; Cheyenne Arapaho Tribal College President Henrietta Mann, Ph.D.; Lakota spiritual leader Chief Arvol Looking Horse; Alan Parker, Director of the Northwest Indian Applied Research Institute at The Evergreen State College; Debra Harry, Executive Director of Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism; Susan Masten, President, Women Empowering Women for Indian Nations; Katsi Cook, Mohawk midwife and Executive Director of Woman is the First Environment Collaborative; Patrick Spears, President of the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy; and Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network.

Tribal governments, Indigenous organizations, individuals, and others may read and sign on to the Declaration by going to www.nativepeoplesnativehomelands.org

Full bios and photos are available for keynote speakers and presenters at:
www.nativepeoplesnativehomelands.org/ and www.honorearth.org

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Bloodvein First Nation is joining four other east-side bands in a bid for a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The band, located 210 kilometres north of Winnipeg on the east side of Lake Winnipeg, is adding about half its traditional territory to the protected area, which is already the size of Belgium.

The four bands -- Poplar River, Pauingassi and Little Grand Rapids in Manitoba and Pikangikum in Ontario -- are preparing a bid due in 2012 to turn a huge swath of virgin boreal forest into a UNESCO site. The hope is that will protect their traditional areas from development and also attract tourists.

Like the other four bands, Bloodvein is in the process of creating a land-use plan for its territory, which will determine exactly which parts of Bloodvein's land will be included in the UNESCO bid.

city.desk@freepress.mb.ca

WINNIPEG—December 22, 2009—Bloodvein River First Nation has become an active member of Pimachiowin Aki Corp. joining with four other First Nations to have a portion of the Manitoba-Ontario boreal forest designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Bloodvein River’s decision means that additional lands will be added to the project planning area.  Bloodvein River spokesperson William Young says he anticipates that more than 50 percent of his community’s traditional territory will be added to the 40,000 square kilometres currently in the World Heritage Site project area.  Bloodvein River’s land use plan is being developed and when complete will determine exactly which part of the First Nation’s traditional area will be included within  the UNESCO bid.

Located 210 kilometres north of Winnipeg, Bloodvein River First Nation sits on three kilometres of shoreline on the east side of Lake Winnipeg directly north of the Bloodvein River and is home to about 1500 residents both on and off the reserve.

Bloodvein River First Nation was an original partner in the creation of The Protected Areas and First Nation Resource Stewardship Accord, which first set out in writing the First Nations’ vision to seek UNESCO World Heritage status; however Bloodvein River has not been active on the board of directors of Pimachiowin Aki Corp.(PIM AH CHEE OW WIN AHH KEY).

Through a recent Band Council resolution, Chief Frank Young and the Council of Bloodvein River First Nation renewed its support for the World Heritage Project and Bloodvein River’s ongoing membership in Pimachiowin Aki Corp.

“Our community knows that a World Heritage Site can help protect the boreal forest and our culture. We want to be closely involved in the development of the nomination to UNESCO and in the future management of a new World Heritage Site,” says Young who joins representatives from Pikangikum First Nation of Ontario and the Manitoba communities of Poplar River, Pauingassi and Little Grand Rapids; and the Manitoba and Ontario governments on the board of directors of Pimachiowin Aki Corp.

Pimachiowin Aki spokesperson Sophia Rabliauskas says everyone is pleased that Bloodvein River is participating in the process.  “Having Bloodvein River fully involved allows us to do an even better job of building the nomination that will show this land deserves recognition by UNESCO,” says Rabliauskas (RAW-BLOUSE-KISS).

The UNESCO nomination document is due in 2012.

For more information or interviews contact:
Gord Jones, project manager, Pimachiowin Aki, 204-275-1564 (office); 204-232-8528 (cell); whp@shaw.ca, www.pimachiowinaki.org

Sophia Rabliauskas of Poplar River First Nation - “Our vision is to protect the land and water for future generations and that’s why we support this resolution.”

Two Manitoba First Nations are stating their support for a resolution to protect more than 50% of Canada’s Boreal Region in a network of protected areas that allow for species to migrate and adapt to climate change. Last month, over 1500 scientists, conservationists, and concerned citizens from 51 countries around the globe passed the resolution in Merida, Mexico at the World Wilderness Congress. The resolution, proposed by the Manitoba chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), calls for achieving this goal through First Nations community-based land-use planning including eco-system based resource management across the remaining landscape.

• Read the entire news release