Clear-cutting threatens Cree way of life

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Northern Quebec is becoming a big new flashpoint in the debate over forestry in this country.

With the Great Whale hydroelectric project on ice for the moment, the Crees of James Bay are focusing renewed attention on what they see as an immediate threat to their way of life - indiscriminate clear-cutting that is permitted under the province's notoriously lax rules for logging companies.

"Our land is being raped without our knowledge and consent," said Sam Gull, a member of the Youth Council of Waswanipi, one of the Cree communities hardest hit by clear-cutting.

"Are we going to have any land left for our children? Are we just going to be talking about the Cree way of life or are we going to be practising it?" asks Gull, who is also the Waswanipi First Nations director of personnel.

In early January, residents at the community's general assembly voted in favor of a proposal by Gull to hold a broad public inquiry into the impact of development projects, first and foremost forestry, on the state of the Cree way of life in the community.

Forestry has become a top concern throughout James Bay, but nowhere more so than in Waswanipi, one of the southern-most Cree communities. Already, traplines have been clear-cut, say local trappers.

Paul Dixon, Waswanipi's local fur officer for the Cree Trappers' Association and a band councillor, supported the demand for an inquiry.

"We hunters and trappers feel we have been set back 300 to 600 years," he wrote in an impassioned document published in the Cree magazine, THE NATION, last summer. "We are witnessing the dying of one of the three greatest hunting societies still existing today in Canada."

Dixon speaks of finding headless moose carcasses left behind in the bush by non-Native trophy hunters who drove into the territory on the new access roads built by the logging companies.

Local hunters and trappers tell haunting tales of trooping across miles of barren land devoid of trees in search of non-existent game.

"Moose and bear are not plentiful," said Dixon, 92-per-cent of whose family's trapline has been razed by loggers. "Ask any Native hunter if they killed a moose or bear during the last hunting season. I am sure most will respond negatively."

Now, the forestry company Domtar Inc. is building a new logging road into the heartland of the moose lands northeast of the community.

"I don't like it all," Dixon told Windspeaker.

"They're going into new virgin grounds. It's a very sensitive area. The tallymen there don't like it. Everything is being shoved down their throats."

The worries about logging are so great in Waswanipi that when the band started working last year on a deal to build a sawmill in a joint venture with Domtar, the opposition to the project was fierce despite the fact that the sawmill will create 59 desperately needed jobs in a region beset by soaring unemployment.

The Cree Regional Authority has warned that if logging and sport hunting continue at present rates, there will be no more moose left in the Waswanipi Territory in four years.

"It's a crisis," said Rene Dion, a CRA biologist. "Crees need the moose and the moose need the Crees in this case. We're not only trying to save the population of moose, but also the right of harvest."

But the Quebec government has refused to act despite the warnings from Crees. The Quebec wildlife department is considering mild restrictions on non-Native sports hunting in the southern part of James Bay, but wants Crees to cut back on their harvest, too.

"If the other (Crees) continue to exploit and exploit, you have the same problem," said wildlife spokesman Denis Vandal.

Quebec's position clearly violates the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement of 1975, which guarantees each Cree community a minimum year moose harvest.

Under the agreement, which is a treaty that is a part of Canada's Constitution, Quebec must immediately restrict sport hunting by non-Natives if moose numbers fall and Crees are unable to arvest their allotted minimum kill.

So far, this provision has not been enforced.

"With all the faults of the James Bay agreement, there are a few things in there that protect Cree rights," said Dion.

Meanwhile, many Crees are saying enough's enough. If the government doesn't curtail the destruction of the forests, Crees will.

"What's happening is it's killing off our culture," said Waswanipi's Gull. "In order for us to survive as a people, we need to protect our wildlife and our land."