Forestry deal a final blow

Page 6

Editorial

"He (whiteman) kidnaps the earth . . . his appetite will devour the earth . . . continue to contaminate in your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste."

The above is an excerpt from Chief Seattle's speech, delivered in 1854 as he prepared to sign treaties with the whiteman who had overrun Indian lands. The great Indian orator obviously knew what his tribe would burdened with when they surrendered land to the newcomers.

His vision is true. Even the tribes who did not sign treaties for some reason or other have watched the whiteman devour their lands and livelihoods. The Lubicons, who missed the treaty settlements in the early 1900s, have suffered for year as they witnessed the destruction and raping of their land.

And now, the provincial government, while pretending to negotiate a land settlement with both the Lubicon band and Ottawa, has just wrapped up a deal with a Japanese forest products company. Daishowa Canada Co. has been given control of the surface rights on the very land that the Lubicons have been fighting for.

The Japanese firm was gladly handed over 29,000 square km of land, while the Lubicons have been denied a mere 230 square km. For that matter, they've been denied a small chunk of their very birthright for the last 48 years!

This week we heard Forestry Minister LeRoy Fjordbotten say the Lubicons stand to gain from the Japanese firm's operations by working out a forest-harvesting agreement with the Japanese firm. How are they supposed to do this when they don't even own the land that the trees grow on? And where is the logic here?

The provincial government has just given the Lubicons all the more reason to protest the Olympics. And their timing couldn't have been better.

Truly, the whiteman's appetite is devouring the land. The very land the Lubicon's need to survive.