By Sara Jean Green
Windspeaker Contributor
MONTREALA solidarity campaign kicked off in Montreal at the end of January in support of the Lubicon Lake Cree of Alberta and the Ontario-based Friends of the Lubicon.
The newly formed Amité Lubicon-Quebec staged a demonstration at the Ville St. Laurent sales offices of the Japanese multi-national pulp and paper company, Daishowa. Reinie Jobin of the Lubicon Lake Cree Elders' Council presented a Daishowa representative with letters to be sent to the company's Toronto, Vancouver and Tokyo offices asking the corporation "to make a public commitment to neither cut nor buy trees cut on Lubicon land until a land rights agreement" is reached. They also asked that Daishowa "drop the legal proceedings against the Friends of the Lubicon." The Daishowa representative refused to comment.
In spite of Daishowa's silence, Jobin was appreciative of the support shown for his nation.
"Daishowa doesn't like outsiders like the Friends of the Lubicon to expose them for what they are - a greedy multi-national," he said. "The boycott of Daishowa has been a big moral boost for my people."
Jobin was referring to a boycott campaign initiated by the Friends in 1991. The Toronto grassroots organization successfully convinced 47 companies representing 4,300 retailers to stop purchasing pulp and paper products from Daishowa and its subsidiaries. Daishowa was granted cutting rights to 29,000 sq. km of land by the Alberta government in 1988. This cutting area covers the entire traditional territory of the Lubicon.
The Lubicon Lake Cree have claim to 10,000 sq. km of land in northern Alberta . Huge multi-national corporations - oil and gas, pulp and paper and logging companies - have eagerly moved into the area to exploit its natural wealth. There have even been rumors that diamond exploration may soon commence.
First promised a reserve by the federal government in 1939, the Lubicon still do not have a land settlement agreement. They have never been party to any treaty and even though they have entered negotiations with the federal and provincial governments three times in the last decade, talks have broken off because the parties involved have failed to agree on the size of the land mass and monetary compensation that should be allotted to the Lubicon.
Although they have never ceded any rights to their traditional territory, the Lubicon face constant pressure from the federal and provincial governments, as well as big business interests, who want to "develop" the resource-rich area. Since 1980, over $7 million in oil has been extracted from the land while the Lubicon themselves suffer extreme poverty.
"So far, the Alberta government has taken royalties worth $9 million off of Lubicon land and 95 per cent of my people are on welfare. We haven't benefited one cent from any government - except welfare," said Jobin. "Today, we have alcoholism [and] suicide and a very short time ago, my people were self-sufficient."
The community of Little Buffalo, located 600 km north of Edmonton, has seen drastic changes to their traditional way of life in the past 20 years. Since 1978, when the first road was constructed on Lubicon territory, the moose population - the staple of the Lubicon diet - swiftly declined. Moreover, environmental pollutants caused by oil and gas companies have created numerous health problems, including a high number of still-births, birth defects, asthma, tuberculosis and various cancers, said Fred Lennerson, an Edmonton-based advisor to the Lubicon.
"Their people are dying. It's genocide," said Lennerson.
"They are fighting to defend themselves - they are under siege. Not [fighting] is not an option."
The Lubicon see Daishowa as the latest threat to their people. The Alberta government granted Daishowa cutting rights in 1988 and 1990. Despite objections from the Lubicon, a subsidiary of Daishowa began clear-cutting operations on unceded Lubicon land.
In response to the Lubicon Lake Cree's cry for help, the Friends of the Lubicon began their boycott campaign of Daishowa pulp and paper products in 1991. Since then, Daishowa has refrained from cutting on Lubicon territory, but has refused to make a binding commitment not to cut until a settlement agreement is reached with the federal and provincial governments.
Jim Morrison, media relations agent for Daishowa-Marubeni International, pointed out that negotiations for a Lubicon settlement have been going on for 50 years.
"At some point it will be necessary to start harvesting in that area," said Morrison. "We can't make an indefinite commitment because we would be forfeiting our rights as defined in the Forestry Management Agreement with the Alberta government."
The Daishowa-owned subsidiary, Brewster Construction, cuts up to 11,000 trees to produce 1,000 metric tons of pulp per day. Morrison claims that the company harvests three per cent of the 29,000 sq. km a year which is "reforested immediately." Moreover, Morrison contends that "it's not like using up a resource - it's a renewable resource."
However, Jobin stated "that's a bunch of crap - we live right there and they're not replanting, they're clear-cutting." Although Daishowa has stated that they will not be cutting from the 10,000 sq. km territory, or "Lubicon area of concern" this year, the company continues to harvest all around it. Of further concern is a $900 million expansion of a Daishowa plant on Peace River which will greatly increase the demand for trees.
The boycott campaign of Daishowa initiated by the Friends of the Lubicon was extremely successful. So successful that Daishowa began legal action in 1995 to have the boycott shut down.
Because none of Daishowa's companies actually sell products directly to the public, the Friends conducted secondary picketing of Daishowa customers. Between 1991 and 1995, 47 companies severed their economic relations with the Japanese corporation. In February 1995, Daishowa went to the Appeals Court of Ontario which granted an interlocutory injunction against the boycott in January 1996. Madame Justice Marie Corbett ruled that "irreparable [financial] harm [to Daishowa] has occurred and will continue to occur which cannot be adequately compensated for in damages." A trial date has been set for September and Daishowa is claiming over $10 million in lost revenues and damages.
However, there is concern that the Ontario court's ruling will set a dangerous precedent in regards to citizens' freedom of expression.
"It's an attempt to silence opposition and shut up their critics," said Kevin Thomas of the Friends of the Lubicon. "I think it's a real problem for Canadians for the courts to outlaw boycotts. Are you allowed to run a boycott so long as you don't harm the company in question? How you run a boycott without doing that is beyond me."
In its case, Daishowa named three individuals along the Jane Doe, John Doe and persons unknown. Therefore, "anyone in Ontario who goes against the ruling and tries to persuade customers to boycott Daishowa is in contempt of court," explained Ed Bianchi, also with the Friends of the Lubicon.
Because of the lawsuit, the Friends now spend most of their time trying to raise money to cover court costs.
Friends' lawyer Karen Wristen of the Sierra Legal Defence Fund stated that an appeal has been made to the Supreme Court of Canada to overrule the Corbett decision, but the Supreme Court has not yet said if it will hear the case.
Although Daishowa won the injunction to stop the Ontario boycott, the company is still receiving plenty of bad publicity. Ralph Nader's Multinational Monitor named Daishowa as one of the 10 worst corporations of 1996, and called the Japanese multi-national "rotten to the core" for its "effort to silence citizen dissent in Canada."
Despite what is going on in Ontario, groups in support of the Lubicon are springing up in both Canada and the United States. For instance, a group in Seattle has started organizing a campaign against U.S. West which prints all of its telephone directories on Daishowa paper. Members of Amité Lubicon-Quebec are researching a possible boycott of Daishowa products in the Montreal and Quebec City areas.
Marc Drouin of the Amité Lubicon-Montreal visited Little Buffalo last August and drew an analogy between the Lubicon and the Newfoundland Beothuk who were completely wiped out shortly after the arrival of John Cabot in 1497.
"There is no other issue involving Native rights in the last 20 years that has been so pressing," said Drouin. "The Beothuk have been reduced to a footnote in the history book and it was justified because there were only about 500 of them. [There is only] about 500 people in the Lubicon nationand what we're witnessing at this point in history is the total disintegration of another culture."