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dam-l PCN chief in Glove and Mail: Cross Lake Cree/more dams



Forwarded message:
From William_J_Braun@mennonitecc.ca  Mon Mar  6 09:52:06 2000
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 08:53:27 -0600
Subject: PCN Chief in Globe and Mail
Date:  3/6/2000  8:22:19 AM


"We won't be beaten up in silence"

The struggle in northern Manitoba is about more than $300-million, says
Cree chief John Miswagon-- it's about justice.

The Globe and Mail
March 6, 2000
p.A11  Comment

Cross Lake Chief John Miswagon

Thirty years ago, without our consent and  against our wishes, Manitoba
Hydro came  to our traditional lands around Cross Lake,  north of Lake
Winnipeg. Hydro and the  government of Manitoba proceeded to dam  and
divert our rivers and flood vast areas of  lakes and boreal forest.
Incredibly, they also  came to conscript Lake Winnipeg as a  reservoir, a
vast storage battery, to hold  back water in the summer and release surges
down the Nelson River to generate power in  the winter.

 We are a hunting and fishing people. For this  reason, Hydro's megaproject
has been a  nightmare for our people. Within just a few  years of Hydro's
arrival, our environment  and our traditional economies lay in ruins.
Solemn promises made by Canada,  Manitoba and Manitoba Hydro in a written
Charter of Rights and Benefits -- of  replacement lands, community
infrastructure  and social development -- have never been  kept. Instead,
our people endure mass  poverty and unemployment, Third World  living
conditions and an epidemic of suicide.  There have been more than 140
attempts in  the last year, and seven deaths. Meanwhile,  Hydro and the
governments extract billions  of dollars of resources in our back yard.

 For 25 years we have tried to tend to our  collective wounds and adjust to
environmental, social, economic and cultural  shock. Only now are our
people emerging  from despair. We are surveying the state of  our
environment, of our nation, and of our  rights in law and nature. We have
resolved  that we will no longer go quietly down a path  of cultural and
political extinction. This is  why we have now launched an international
campaign to tell our story to the world.

 Yet Manitoba Hydro is hotly contesting  what is referred to as our
"claims" about the  impacts of its hydro-electric megaprojects  on our
lands and our lives. A company  spokesman accuses us of a "broad strategy
to embarrass the utility."

 There is much for Hydro and the  governments to be embarrassed about.
Shoreline erosion is continuous; sometimes  burial grounds become exposed,
leaving  skulls and bones sticking out of the mud.  The graves of my
family's ancestors are now  under water. It's indisputable that millions of
acres have been flooded and despoiled and  boreal lands rendered
inaccessible. Also  indisputable are the thousands of miles of  devastated
shorelines, the mercury  contamination, and at the least 50 lives we  have
lost; many trappers and fishermen have  been killed because the territory
they once  knew intimately is now hazardous (Manitoba  Hydro has been found
legally liable in  several cases).

 These facts led Mr. Justice Patrick Ferg to  rule in 1982 that Hydro's
project "drastically  altered" our society and environment and  "almost
turned the [river] system upside  down from a state of nature"; these facts
led  the 1991 Manitoba Aboriginal Justice  Inquiry to characterize Hydro's
project as a  vast assault on the Manitoba environment  with concomitant
social impacts on  Aboriginal peoples. And these facts led a  1999
Inter-Church Inquiry to state that our  lands and people have been
subjected to "an  ecological and moral catastrophe."

 Most recently, the Sierra Club of North  America, after viewing the
megaproject  first-hand, concluded that "hydro-electric  development of
this magnitude and type is  not clean, benign or renewable: It devastates
land, water, species and their habitats, and  the people who live with this
environment,  and it often displaces truly renewable energy  alternatives
and conservation measures." The  Sierrans urged "all [American] utilities
to  divert expenditures from this type of harmful  hydro power to
development and use of  cleaner, renewable alternatives such as wind  and
solar power, and to conservation  programs."

 The United Nations has recently -- again --  found Canada to be in
violation of its  international human-rights obligations,  particularly
with respect to depriving our  people of our rights to self-determination,
our rights to not be deprived of our own  means of subsistence, and to our
natural  wealth and resources, under Article 1 of the  International
Covenant on Civil and Political  Rights. Our people's experience is a case
study of dispossession.

 And now we hear that Manitoba Hydro has  announced plans to double its
hydro-electric  capacity and its exports, already in excess of
$300-million. The company tells the public  that we are simply seeking to
raise some  compensation. It is also said that we are  calling for a
"boycott" of Manitoba Hydro  power by U.S. citizens. But we are only
telling them our story.

 We state: This is a fundamental  misapprehension of our people's rights
and  aspirations, of which we have directly  informed the corporation many
times. Our  struggle is for survival, dignity, a sustainable  and healthy
environment, inclusion in the  benefits of the Canadian economy, and
respect for our rights.

 Compensation money is a corrosive last  resort where mitigation,
remediation and  economic and social development are  impossible. Sadly,
the truly beneficial options  available to Hydro and the governments  have
never been tried.

 The utility should stop attempting to minimize  our rights, and instead
begin to address the  devastating impacts of its activities on our
environment and our lives. This will include  developing a vision of boreal
Manitoba as a  multi-user environment, in which indigenous  peoples,
rivers, lakes, shorelines, flora and  fauna are no longer sacrificed to
mega-development and electricity exports.

 Our people have decided that they will no  longer be beaten up in silence.
We will tell  our story and assert our rights -- in  churches,
universities, human-rights forums,  energy-regulatory agencies, and
financial  markets in Canada and elsewhere. That  includes places where
Manitoba Hydro sells  electricity and bonds. If this causes U.S.
electricity consumers to decline to buy  power that is generated through
the sacrifice  of Cree lives and an entire environment, so  be it. We know
that the Americans have  other energy options that are genuinely
renewable, sustainable, equitable, and  consistent with morality. When
Hydro and  the Crown come to respect our Aboriginal,  treaty and other
human rights, then that is the  story we will tell.

 Hydro and the governments of Manitoba  and Canada are parties to our 1977
treaty,  the Northern Flood Agreement. We are  trying to get them to make
this ongoing  treaty relationship work. But the defence of  our environment
and our human rights is not  a bargaining chip. Our elders remind us that
we Ininiwak were put here by the Creator to  look after Nitaskinan and the
boreal  environment of which it is part. We have  decided to be the
environmental and  human-rights conscience that Manitoba  Hydro, Manitoba
and Canada do not have.

 We will now do so.

John Miswagon was elected chief of  Pimicikamak Cree Nation in Cross Lake,
Man., in September of 1999.

from: The Globe and Mail 

Mennonite Central Committee
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Winnipeg MB  R3T 5K9
Canada
wjb@mennonitecc.ca
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fx  (204) 269-9875
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