CPTnet
June 26, 203
ASUBPEECHOSEEWAGONG: Is a Logging Blockade Really About Logging?

By Matt Schaaf

"Oh, we're learning something new every year. We're always improving. When
my dad logged here with horses and huge crews of men, they cut in ways that
would be illegal today. But today we do it all by the book."

Jim Ambs, a hard-working man born in the Whiskey Jack Forest forty-one years
ago and currently contracted by pulp and paper giant Abitibi-Consolidated,
sits astride his four-wheeler ATV and explains to us that his logging
operations are 100% above board.

Ambs would rather use less destructive harvesting techniques than
clear-cutting the traditional territory of the Anishinaabek. However, he
adds, it doesn't make sense economically: clear-cutting yields the fastest
and most efficient profit. "We're living in the real world here. The
blockaders have got to understand that." Ambs, his men and their machines
follow the rules set out by Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources.

Anishinaabek (Ojibway) people of Asubpeeschoseewagong (Grassy Narrows)
blockade the main entrance to Amb's cutting site later that day. The
blockaders allow loggers to leave the site, and inform them they cannot
return.

Ambs expresses his disgust and anger that the blockade is making it tough
for him to survive. Abitibi tells him where to cut and he feels he must
comply or lose his contract.

Ambs is correct that clear-cutting is legal in Ontario In fact, Ambs and
other bush workers have a right to work and live in the forest -- a Treaty
right, guaranteed by Treaty #3 and upheld in the Canadian Constitution Act
of 1982.

So why the blockade?

Treaty #3 is an international agreement between Canada and the Anishinaabe
Nation. It reflects the intention between the indigenous and settler
nations to share the land and the resources. There are several versions of
the terms of Treaty #3, including the oral tradition of Anishinaabe elders
affirming that the land is to be shared peacefully among their people and
the newcomers.

The Canadian government prefers its written version, in which the chiefs
"cede, release, surrender, and yield up . . . all their rights, titles and
privileges" to the land.

The settler communities have flooded the Anishinaabe with hydro-electric
development, poisoned the fish with mercury, forced aboriginal people into
residential schools and reserves, and clear-cut the trees until trapping and
hunting become fruitless. This is how we have shared the land.

Until right relations are restored between the Anishinaabe and the rest of
Canada, until the Treaty is acknowledged, the people whose home is the
forest -- Grassy Narrows band members and Jim Ambs -- will be subjected to
the bullying of Abitibi and the governments of Canada and Ontario.

Is this blockade just about logging, or does it provoke us to ask whether
the "real world" really requires us to break our agreements with our
Anishinaabe neighbours in order to survive?