The sad stand-off at Canoe Lake, by Valerie Langer
CANADA'S LONGEST LOGGING BLOCKADE, A SIX-MONTH PROTEST BY THE
PROTECTORS OF MOTHER EARTH, REFLECTS A NATIVE COMMUNITY SPLIT
BETWEEN THE OLD WAYS AND THE NEW.
Canoe Lake is a typical native reserve set on a lovely lake in
the midst of the boreal forest in northwestern Saskatchewan.
Everyone has a television set. The houses are standard, Indian-
government issue. There are a lot of kids and dogs and cars.
Everyone knows everyone else. And why not. Their families have
lived here for more than 5,000 years.
Now many of the 1,000 residents--though by no means all--
object strongly to the presence of logging companies that are
clear-cutting land they rely on for sustenance and, they say,
destroying their section of the mixed pine, spruce and poplar
forest that covers Canada's North.
In protest, six months ago the Protectors of Mother Earth, a
group organized by the local Sakaw-Aski Aboriginal Elders council,
set up a blockade to prevent trucks from retrieving cut logs for
Mistik Management, the company that manages local forests on behalf
of NorSask Forest Products.
The final straw for the Elders council had been the opening in
February of the Millar Western pulp mill, owned by an Alberta-based
firm and situated on a gravel road near Canoe Lake, 350 kilometres
north of Saskatoon. Until then, the elders had been participating
in forums organized by the government to try to resolve the logging
debate.
Today, the protest by the Protectors of Mother Earth has
entered Canadian history as the longest-sustained blockade ever.
Three hundred men and women, including representatives from
aboriginal groups from as far away as South America, have joined
the protest on a highway midway between Canoe Lake and Meadow Lake,
100 kilometres south.
There is an additional sad twist to this story: Both NorSask
Forest Products and Mistik Management are largely owned and
controlled, not by white men, but by the Meadow Lake Tribal
Council. (Tribal councils are non-traditional forms of native
government set up by the Canadian government; an elders council is
the traditional form, involving a hierarchy of chiefs and clan
mothers.)
Thus, this protest reflects the deep split within native
communities between the desire to maintain the old ways and to
participate in the new, in the market economy of Canada.
Guy LaRiviere, acting chief of the tribal council at Canoe
Lake, says of his torn community: "I have half the reserve crying
out about unemployment and the other half crying about the trees.
I have to find a middle ground."
Mr. LaRiviere, who supports the logging, says the tribal
council agreed to three of four demands by the elders council, but
negotiations still failed.
Cree officials like Mr. LaRiviere contend that the decision to
log the surrounding forests was justified to alleviate economic
hardship. But the blockaders say the tribal council's agreement
with them, which promised an end to clear-cut logging and the use
of mechanical harvesters, failed because it was not legally binding
and was therefore meaningless.
The Protectors of Mother Earth have seen difficult times over
the past half year. On Canada Day, six weeks into the protest, a
SWAT team of more than 80 heavily armed RCMP officers surrounded
the blockade for three days. After searching the camp for weapons
and finding none, they arrested 29 elders and two pregnant women.
Flora McCallum, one of elders, recalls being handcuffed at
gunpoint and hearing her granddaughter cry, "What are they doing
with my grandmother!"
After a subsequent meeting between the province and the
protesters, NorSask agreed to sign an agreement to set up a co-
management board with the protesters that would identify logging
areas and sacred or traditional lands.
But the proposal got bogged down because the Protectors feared
a co-management committee would end up as nothing more than an
advisory council. And so the protest continues.
At the blockade, protesters have built small cabins and a
communal kitchen in preparation for the long winter ahead. Set
amid jackpines, the scene would be idyllic were it not for a barren
clearcut across the road. Seedlings of about 20 centimetres have
been planted in the sandy furrows of the flat land. Almost all are
dead.
"We are only protecting our rights." says Leon Iron, a 69-year
old retired fisherman and blockade organizer. "We're living here,
fishing, trapping, picking wild rice and berries. Then the forest
companies started disturbing our way of life."
Logging, coupled with a Federal Weapons Testing Range nearby,
is threatening trapping and other "traditional subsistence
practices" that the Protectors say are entrenched rights under
Treaty 10, the agreement local native groups have with the federal
government. One proof of the logging's effect, the protesters
note, is the woodland caribou, dependent on forest-floor lichens
for winter feeding, are disappearing.
The logging has consequences beyond the forest. Joe Optkekew,
a trapper and wild-rice gatherer in his mid-70's, says the water
levels of lakes in logging areas have dropped by up to one-third of
a metre: "Clear-cutting affects the little lakes. They don't have
protection from the sun or siltation. They dry up." Mr. Optkekew
says he has had a poor wild-rice harvest for three consecutive
years.
Fifty years ago all the residents of Canoe Lake supported
themselves through hunting and gathering; now the reserve counts
itself 95-per-cent unemployed. Members of the tribal council
control funds from the federal government and distribute the money
to local band councils.
Joe Durocher, one of the more vocal members of the "no clear-
cutting" camp, leans over the counter of his gas bar on the reserve
and says: "We Indians have had lots of agreements of good faith
and they don't mean anything."
No one can even guess how long the blockade will continue.
The Department of Natural Resources is trying to evict the natives
from what one side considers treaty-rights land and the other side
considers Crown land.
But this week Mr. Iron launched a legal suit that the
Protectors feel might help their cause. On behalf of the Sakaw-
Aski Elders Council, Mr. Iron is taking the government of
Saskatchewan and the logging companies to court. He contends they
did not follow the terms of the Environmental Assessment Act before
building the Millar Western mill and allocating the forest
licences. At stake is 3.3 million hectares of boreal forest
licensed to NorSask by the provincial government for logging, all
of it within the Treaty 10 area.
The blockaders say they will remain firm. Their camp has
become a small village of resistance--and not just to clearcutting,
either. Signs along the gravel highway approaching camp say,
"Protectors of Mother Earth -- Welcome. No Drugs, No Alcohol" and,
finally, "No More Clearcutting."
Around the campfire, Cecilia Iron, 72, stands with her
daughter, grand-daughters and great grandson. "All I care about is
saving something for the future generations," she says. "I don't
care to have many things as long as I have a roof and a little
food." Then, having made her point, Mr. Iron and her family return
to speaking in Cree.