Grassy Narrows First Nation reflects on 20 years of logging blockade, and worries about future extraction | 24CA News
In early December 2022, group members from Grassy Narrows (also called Asubpeeschoseewagong) braved winter temperatures to assemble round a sacred fireplace and feast in celebration.
They have been marking 20 years of that sacred fireplace burning — 20 years of a blockade to forestall clear-cut logging and mining from taking place of their conventional territories.
It’s a blockade that is wanted as urgently now because it was within the 2000s, say group members from the Ojibway First Nation in northwestern Ontario.
“We have to keep fighting. We have to keep saying no. We have to keep protecting this place,” stated Chrissy Isaacs, one of many authentic blockaders.
Land that the First Nation considers a part of its Indigenous protected space may very well be reopened to logging as Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) prepares a brand new 10-year forest administration plan within the Whiskey Jack Forest, in response to a ministry spokesperson.
There are additionally about 3,200 mining claims within the space over which Grassy Narrows is asserting jurisdiction, the spokesperson added in a press release.
As the Treaty 3 First Nation continues to say its sovereignty and tries to forestall useful resource extraction from occurring, group members shared with 24CA News their reminiscences of the early blockade days and the way the importance of their work has modified.
A rising resistance
For years, individuals in Grassy Narrows have been involved in regards to the quantity of logging taking place within the Whiskey Jack Forest that surrounded their group.
“We had lived with the logging industry our whole lives, you know, driving behind logging trucks,” recalled Judy Da Silva, a longtime spokesperson for the First Nation.
In the late Nineties, the logging bought quicker and nearer to the group, Da Silva stated.
“We had been hearing from the hunters and the trappers that, you know, one weekend their hunting grounds were there, and then the following weekend the hunting grounds would be logged over and they’d have no more trap line.”
As forest administration paperwork confirmed plans to proceed slicing proper round Grassy Narrows, girls from the First Nation started organizing, Da Silva stated. They despatched letters to politicians, constructed relationships with like-minded activist teams internationally, and went into their school rooms to coach youthful generations about their work.
“It had been a buildup of us getting educated about the logging industry, how they’re destroying our habitat, how we’re getting poisoned by them with mercury. It just went on and on,” Da Silva informed 24CA News in an interview from the blockade web site.
A late evening catalyst
The blockade itself, which continues to this present day, all began one darkish evening within the winter of 2002, with two sisters on a drive.
“We were just having conversations about what the future is going to be like … talking about our kids, how they might miss out on being able to hunt and pick berries and have that knowledge of the land,” Isaacs stated.
“As we’re talking about that, a big logging truck went by and then I remember saying we have to stop that, and she said, ‘OK, let’s do it.'”
It was a spur-of-the-moment resolution; Isaacs and her sister picked up a 3rd particular person with a chainsaw they usually went out proper then to start out the blockade, slicing down bushes to dam the highway.
Da Silva remembers the tales from that evening.
“They tried to cut trees down to block the road, and they said the first one went backwards, so it didn’t go on the road. The second one went halfway on the road, but then their car broke down,” she stated.
Their dad, Robert Williamson, drove out to assist his daughters, Da Silva stated.
“When everybody went home,” Williamson was there “all alone and he stopped one of the first logging trucks by himself,” she added.
The subsequent day, Dec. 2, college students from the native college and different group members heard in regards to the blockade and got here down to dam the roads, and stop logging vans from going into their territory.
Roving blockades
There are video recordings of these early days, in a documentary known as As Long because the Rivers Flow, by David Clement and Thunder Bay Indymedia, that reveals interactions between loggers, law enforcement officials and blockaders.
Photos and video present youngsters mendacity on the roads, standing in entrance of vans, holding up indicators to show away the loggers.
WATCH | People from Grassy Narrows flip again logging vans
Archival video reveals an encounter throughout the early days of the blockade in December 2002 between younger activists from Grassy Narrows First Nation, a forestry contractor, and an officer with the Ontario Provincial Police. The video was shot by David Clement and Thunder Bay Indymedia as a part of their documentary As Long because the Rivers Flow.
At first, the blockade web site was simply the sacred fireplace, chairs and a tarp to dam the wind, Da Silva stated, with some short-term buildings going up over the approaching months and years. But as time went on, Da Silva stated the First Nation realized logging vans began utilizing completely different roads all through the territory.
Barbara Fobister remembers she and some others began doing “roving blockades,” the place they’d patrol completely different forestry roads, in search of new cuts and logging camps.
On one specific snowy night, Fobister stated she, her sister and a pair others — largely girls — have been going out to a brand new logging camp to ship eviction notices.
“We were kind of scared, like [mostly] women going to the campsite,” she stated.
They arrived and knocked on the trailer door. When it opened, Fobister stated the view was a little bit of a shock.
“The loggers were all sitting there watching hockey, and they were all in their long johns,” she laughed. “It kind of eased the fear in us, like it kind of was a comical sight … we found it funny, like these loggers that we were so scared of are sitting around in their pyjamas.”
Fobister stated they served the loggers with their eviction discover — “signed with an X, just like how the treaties were signed” — they usually informed them to vacate inside 24 hours. The subsequent day, she stated they have been gone.
Fobister’s daughter, Melissa Bunting, had a new child child on the time, and laughs at reminiscences of her mother.
“I wasn’t out there with them, but I do remember her sometimes getting phone calls, and she’d be like, ‘oh my gosh, really? OK, OK, I’ll be there. I got to go.’ And she would just jump up and leave.”
Blockade led to no-harvest space designation
As the blockade continued on and other people from Grassy Narrows continued to use political stress, the First Nation gained commitments from authorities and pulp and paper corporations.
In 2008, newsprint firm Abitibi-Consolidated ended its logging operations within the Whiskey Jack Forest space.
Almost a decade later, in 2017, the MNRF formally designated a no-harvest zone that encompassed 76 per cent of the forest underneath the 2012-2022 provincial forest administration plan. The moratorium on logging in that space was then prolonged till 2024, when a brand new plan presently underneath improvement is anticipated to come back into impact.
More not too long ago, in October 2022, the president of Weyerhaueser, which owns a big, regional mill within the space, despatched a letter to Grassy Narrows saying they’ll honour the First Nation’s no-harvest zone, and “commits to working with the Grassy Narrows Land Protection team, under the guidance of Chief and Council, prior to sourcing wood from within Grassy Narrows traditional territory.”
Blockade’s given Grassy Narrows ‘a way of id’
Over the years, Bunting stated, the precise blockade web site has modified.
Gone are the short-term buildings. In their place are everlasting sleeping quarters, a Sun Dance floor, and a wigwam that capabilities as a land-based training house.
“It almost feels like a home now. When you go there … you feel comfortable. It’s a place where we all gather now for celebrations,” Bunting stated.
Da Silva added the world has turn into “way more than just a blockade.”
“It’s a cultural revitalization … there’s these young people that never saw the action of the blockade, but they feel the history of it,” she stated.
Then a brand new mom, Isaacs is now a grandmother to a number of little ones.
“When I was a child, I don’t remember really any cultural things going on, or I don’t remember being taught about who I was. But now there’s a sense of identity because of the blockade,” she stated.
“That’s the whole purpose for me … to make sure there’s something here for my kids and my grandkids — a place of finding ourselves, getting connected to the land again.”
