Boreal forest protection urged

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Indigenous people and environmentalists tried to find common ground at the second annual international Taiga Rescue Network conference.

The week-long conference on boreal forest preservation got underway in Edmonton Aug. 23 with Indigenous and non-governmental organizations participants from 30 countries. Representatives from Greenpeace International from Holland, the Citizen's Coalition for Economic Justice form Korea, and the Japan Environmental Exchange also joined the conference.

Canadian participants included representatives from the Algonquins of Barrier Lake, the Labrador Innu and Nova's Scotia's First Nations Environment Network.

The first two days of the conference focused on the effects of large-scale exploitations of forest products and Indigenous communities and forest ecosystems.

Russell Diabo, who represents the Algonquins of Barrier Lake, said the conference was an excellent meeting place for people to network.

The Algonquins want an extension to a trilateral agreement on the development of an integrated resource management plan for forests and wildlife in their area.

The agreement involves surveying wildlife numbers and monitoring logging operations in a 10,000 square kilometre area.

The network will encourage companies from the U.S. and Europe to boycott forest products form Quebec unless that province provides the two year extension required by the Algonquins to finish their study, Diabo said.

The chair of the Indigenous profgram, Lorraine Sinclair of the Mother Earth Healing Society, opened the conference with a brief overview of a meeting with the Lubicons at Little Buffalo prior to the conference.

"There were 75 to 1 100 Indigenous people who attended, from 16 different nations, to prepare themselves to come here. One theme came out - tht there is a clear process of cultural genocide of Indigenous peoples," she said.

Kelly White of Nanaimo agreed. The meeting at Little Buffalo provided an opprotunity to find out what was happening to Native people form coast to coast, she said.

Other speakers were optimistic about the outcome of the conference.

"I've seen a lot of positive things happen at this forum. We need to build alliances and form friendships. Aborignal people are trying to build a circle. This forum is allowing people to join hands.

"It's not a circle yet. We need enough people to form a circle around Mother Earth," said Daniel Ashini, leader of trhe Labrador Innu.

Conference chair, former New Democrat member of the legislative assembly, John McGinnis, said the event is an extremely improtant step in linking commong enviornmental concerns between groups.

"The whole conference is about the coming together of activiists and Indigeous peoples who share a common culture," he said.

"The issue is to find common stragegy and to link our joint porgram with consuming countries. We have people who represent buying countries - countries that buy forsest prodcts."