Grassy Narrows Declares Moratorium and Challenges MNR Tender Process C

[jennie]

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Grassy Narrows Declares Moratorium and Challenges MNR Tender Process Currently Underway

Grassy Narrows –Today, Grassy Narrows First Nation’s Chief and community leaders declared a moratorium on all industrial activity within their traditional territory without community consent. The moratorium rebukes a Provincial plan to increase clear-cut logging and asserts that any development proposals must gain community consent and participation. The moratorium was issued to government and industry leaders responsible for the ongoing destruction of Grassy Narrows traditional territory, including Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, Ontario Minister of Natural Resources and Aboriginal Affairs David Ramsay, Prime Minister Steven Harper, Abitibi Consolidated, Weyerhaeuser Corporation, and companies sourcing from the Grassy Narrows Traditional Territory.

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The community promises to “take more action with our supporters in the forest, in the markets, in the legislature, and in the courts to assert our rights as the Indigenous people of this land.” The moratorium call comes as the Grassy Narrows logging blockade enters its fifth year of denying logging trucks access to the community’s traditional territory via highway 671.

“Clear-cuts are an ecological crime and a cultural nightmare for communities who depend on the Boreal Forest,” commented David Sone of Rainforest Action Network’s Old Growth campaign. “People don’t want to build their homes with Weyerhaeuser wood products that are stolen from Grassy Narrows.”

Background

For decades the community has sought redress through environmental assessment requests, official appeals, petitions, legal action, and unanswered public protest which gave rise to a community logging blockade, now the longest running in Canada. The action intensified this summer as 100 supporters joined community activists in shutting down the TransCanada highway for a full day. Twenty-one people, including 3 young Grassy Narrows mothers, were charged with mischief as a result of the action.

A lawsuit filed in 2000 by community trappers challenges the authority of the province to issue logging licenses on Grassy Narrows’ traditional territory north of the English River and asserts that clear-cut logging violates the community’s rights under Treaty 3. A full trial was ordered for this case, and in May 2006 the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ordered Ontario to pay the legal costs of the trappers to bring the case forward. The litigation is underway, but the trial likely will not take place until 2008. Meanwhile, clear-cut logging continues unabated.

In a recent submission to the United Nations, Amnesty International argued that current logging on Grassy Narrows’ traditional land violates the community’s Indigenous rights to self-determination and culture, and fails to meet international standards of “free, prior, and informed consent” for development on traditional Indigenous lands.