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dam-l National Church Coverage, May 2000
To: Aboriginal Coalition
From: Will Braun
Date: 5/16/2000 7:54:13 PM
Subj: National Church Coverage, May 2000
Floods of despair
A Manitoba hydro project leaves northern communities struggling to carry on
The Observer (National paper of the United Church of Canada)
May 2000
pp. 24-5
By John Bird
The news that yet another young person in Cross Lake had
taken his own life came at the end of the second day of hearings there
last year into how flooding on northern Manitoba's Nelson River has
affected the community, recalls Very Rev. Stan McKay. It was one of
seven youth suicides -- and more than 140 attempts -- in the space of a
year for the Cree community of less than 5,000.
Those tragic deaths are tied to the "high levels of unemployment" in Cross
Lake, "and a deep
sense of frustration" with Manitoba Hydro and the provincial and federal
governments after two-decades of foot-dragging on promised compensation
for the flooding, says McKay. A former United Church moderator and a
member of the Cree Nation from Fisher River, Man., McKay was one of the
five panelists on the inter-church inquiry into the Churchill-Nelson
hydroelectric project.
Five dams constructed on the Nelson and Churchill rivers by Manitoba
Hydro in the 1970s use Lake Winnipeg like a giant battery, backing up
water during the summer to run generators in winter when the power
demand is high. The dams have altered water flows and levels throughout
almost a fifth of the province, and have provided southern Manitobans
with some of the cheapest electricity in the world. "Most of the cost
(of the hydro project) is going to the northern peoples while the
benefits are going to the south," says McKay.
The panelists called the hydro project "an ecological and moral
catastrophe for northern Manitoba and its indigenous peoples." They said
they encountered "a pervasive sense of ill health in the affected
communities as a result of a destabilization of a very fragile
ecosystem." The panel's full report is to be released this spring.
The Cree name for Cross Lake is Pimicikamak. It means "People of the
River" or "People of the Waters," says McKay, and it refers to the
Nelson River, which drains the waters of Lake Winnipeg and the Red River
basin from North Dakota all the way up to Hudson Bay. But in the last
quarter century since the Churchill-Nelson project has come online,
these very waters on which the Crees of Pimicikamak have based their
lives for thousands of years, have turned treacherous.
The river has become "difficult to travel in the summer, and almost
impossible in winter, because of fluctuating water levels," says McKay.
To leave the community for hunting, fishing or trapping means "you have
to risk your life on a boat or a Ski-Doo," Pimicikamak youth leader
Jason Miller told the inquiry. "Because of these conditions, few of our
young people have the option to learn the hunting and fishing skills
they would need to raise a family on the land."
Pimicikamak Chief John Miswagon charges that while Manitoba Hydro and
the governments "extract billions of dollars of resources in our back
yard," millions of hectares of boreal forest have been flooded,
despoiled or rendered inaccessible, and thousands of kilometres of
shoreline have been devastated by erosion. Mercury has been released
from the drowned forests, contaminating the water, and as many as 50
people have been killed "because the territory they once knew intimately
is now hazardous (Manitoba Hydro has been found legally liable in
several cases)."
He adds that "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."
But "the most basic, brutal fact of life in Cross Lake is that there are
no jobs," Miller told the panel. "The Northern Flood Agreement of 1977
promises an end to mass poverty and mass unemployment, but today 85
percent of our people are unemployed. Eighty-five percent of our people
are on social assistance."
In 1977, five affected Cree communities -- Cross Lake, Nelson House,
Norway House, Split Lake and York Factory -- signed the Northern Flood
Agreement (NFA) with Manitoba Hydro, the province of Manitoba, and the
government of Canada. Faced with already ongoing construction on the
hydroelectric project, they felt they had little choice.
"Dam systems were being planned, river diversions were staked but the
nation who owned the land had not been consulted," says retired United
Church minister Rev. Jack McLachlan. "It was a case of build first,
negotiate later." As president of Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario
Conference in 1973 when Manitoba Hydro began construction, McLachlan
"started the ball rolling" with Anglican, Catholic, Mennonite and
Lutheran support "towards the first set of inter-church hearings." That
helped push Hydro and the governments to the negotiating table and led
to the eventual NFA, promising compensation for the loss of lands and
livelihood.
And now, he has been instrumental in the decision by Immanuel United,
the Winnipeg church he attends, to tithe 10 percent of its electricity
bill to the community of Cross Lake, in recognition of the cheap-power
benefits the Northern Flood Agreement has brought the congregation -- at
the expense of northern Cree communities.
The Northern Flood Agreement "was intended to give back some of what we
lost," Rita Monias said in a Pimicikamak Women's Council brief. "Much
that was destroyed by the hydro project could never be replaced; our
Creator's creation was destroyed. But at the very least we were supposed
to have the prosperity of our community restored."
The agreement promised all parties would work together "for the
eradication of mass poverty, and mass unemployment, and the improvement
of the physical, social and economic conditions and transportation."
Instead, says Monias, "everything we received over the 20 years since we
were given the NFA came at a cost of struggle, arbitration, courts and
legal fees. The people of Cross Lake continue to live in conditions of
overwhelming poverty."
Now something called a Comprehensive Implementation Agreement is being
pushed. Monias alleges it will "terminate the most important of our NFA
rights and benefits."
Under pressure and a need to see some benefits, the other four Cree
communities agreed to sign the implementation agreement. On the advice
of its elders, Cross Lake, however, has refused.
Information distributed by:
________________________
Will Braun
Mennonite Central Committee
Energy Justice Coordinator
134 Plaza Dr.
Winnipeg MB R3T 5K9
Canada
wjb@mennonitecc.ca
ph (204) 261-6381
fx (204) 269-9875
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