Media release: BOYCOTT OF DAISHOWA!!!!
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Recognizing the impending threat to the very existence of the Lubicon society
and the fragile northern eco-system, a coalition of Calgary groups, consisting
of the Calgary Labour Council, the Calgary Rainforest Action Group, the
Committee Against Racism, Northern Light and the Plains Indian Cultural
Survival School are today joining other groups from across Canada in their
call for a boycott of Daishowa and their products. This boycott will be
effective until Daishowa makes a clear, firm and public commitment to not cut
and not to purchase any wood cut on unceded Lubicon territory until AFTER A
SETTLEMENT of Lubicon land rights and negotiation of a harvesting agreement
with the Lubicon people that takes into account Lubicon wildlife and
environmental concerns. The coalition is also calling on Daishowa to
immediately cease all of its clearcutting and purchasing of trees from the
Wood Buffalo National Park, a World Heritage Site of the stature of the
Pyramids of Gizeh and the Grand Canyon, and to implement sustainable forestry
practices in all of its FMA areas.
This call for a boycott of Daishowa is also being made today in Edmonton,
where a coalition of groups, including the Action Canada Network and the
Missionary Oblates, is joining in to stop the genocide of the Lubicon society.
A call for a boycott of Daishowa and its products by the Friends of the
Lubicon in Toronto has so far resulted in several companies agreeing to stop
using Daishowa products, e.g. Cultures Fresh Food restaurants, Knechtels
Wholesale Grocers, Ho-Lee-Chow restaurants and The Body Shop. Additionally
the YWCA in Toronto, which is currently asking for tenders for their paper
products, has stated that it will not accept any bids from suppliers using
Daishowa products.
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Background: Daishowa and its Threat to the Survival of the Lubicon Cree Nation
In a meeting between Lubicon Chief Bernard Ominayak and Daishowa Senior Vice
President and General Manager Koichi Kitigawa on March 8, 1988, an agreement
was reached that Daishowa would stay out of unceded Lubicon territory until a
settlement of Lubicon land rights had been achieved and a logging agreement
regarding Lubicon wildlife management and environmental concerns worked out
with the Lubicon people.
The March 8, 1988, agreement between Daishowa and the Lubicon people was
negotiated in the context of nation-wide protests over a February 8, 1988,
announcement that the Alberta Provincial Government had sold Daishowa the
trees from an immense, 29,000 sq. mile area which completely blankets the
unceded Lubicon territory. The trees from this huge area are intended to feed
a massive, environmentally questionable bleached kraft pulp mill which
Daishowa was proposing to build just outside of the traditional Lubicon
territory with millions of dollars in Federal and Provincial Government
subsidy money.
In retrospect it is likely that officials of Daishowa really believed at this
point that Lubicon land rights would be settled before they planned to log
unceded Lubicon territory starting in 1990, and that therefore all they had to
do was quiet the raging storm by basically making whatever kind of agreement
they had to with the Lubicons -- like in the old treaty-making days when
treaty commissioners admitted that they were prepared to promise the Indians
almost anything in order to avoid a confrontation before Canadian Government
military forces were sufficiently strong to suppress any possible resistance.
On September 14, 1989 -- some 18 months after negotiation of the March 8th
agreement and without benefit of any further discussions between Daishowa and
the Lubicon people -- a 20 year Forest Management Agreement was signed between
Daishowa and the Alberta Provincial Government. The Peace River pulp mill was
opened in September of 1990.
Lubicon land rights of course were not settled by the fall of 1989 and by then
didn't seem likely to be settled in the foreseeable future. Officials of
Daishowa consequently grew increasingly restive and started making a number of
moves clearly intended to circumvent the March 8, 1988, Lubicon agreement.
Attempts by Daishowa to circumvent the March 8, 1988, agreement included
- claiming that there never was an agreement with the Lubicons;
- claiming that there was an agreement, but that it only exempted the
proposed 1939 reserve area, and not the traditional unceded Lubicon
territory;
- claiming to honour the agreement while starting to clearcut unceded
traditional Lubicon through a Daishowa-owned subsidiary and
subcontractors;
- claiming wrongly that the Lubicons had allowed Daishowa to log in
traditional logging areas;
After over a decade of government-sponsored and encouraged massive oil & gas
exploration, and without the benefit of a settlement of their aboriginal land
rights, the Lubicon society now faces the threat of large-scale clearcutting
of its traditional hunting and trapping area.
The damage done to the fragile ecology of Alberta's north by the effects of
clearcutting and the pollution caused by the outdated and irresponsible kraft
process of producing wood pulp is matched by the devastating effects this
large-scale intrusion will have on the already battered Lubicon society.
Should this new phase of un-checked 'development' go ahead, the destruction
and extinction of the traditional Lubicon society is certain.
For further information contact:
Committee Against Racism (403) 282-6845
Northern Light (403) 244-1975
Calgary Labour Council (403) 262-2390
Calgary Rainforest Action Group (403) 244-5083
Friends of the Lubicon, Toronto (416) 972-6293, 947-0808, 783-4694
Action Canada Network (403) 483-3021
Missionary Oblates (403) 488-4767
Lubicon Lake Indian Nation (403) 436-5652