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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT FOR AMERINDIANS

Canada:

 Culture and conservation

Cooperation agreement between First Nation
and three universities and a college

Corporations are packing up...
 - Pikangikum First Nation is working on real solutions

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Pikangikum First Nation and Partnership for Public Lands signed landmark agreement to work together iin Ontario’s Northern Boreal forest.
Recognizing the tremendous importance of upcoming land-use decisions in Ontario’s northern boreal region, the First Nation of Pikangikum and the Partnership for Public Lands have signed a mutual cooperation agreement to work together to ensure a healthy future for the forests, waterways and wetlands of Pikangikum’s traditional territory.
This agreement embodies the idea that affirming indigenous culture supports a healthy environment. It highlights the connections between cultural diversity and biological diversity in a new and innovative cooperative frame-work.
“We are very pleased to be able to establish our agreement for working together with the Partnership for Public Lands”, stated Alex Peters of Pikangikum First Nation who is leading the Whitefeather Forest Initiative. He no-ted: “In the past, our people and our indigenous knowledge of our lands has been ignored. For example, when the Nungessor Road was built in the 1970’s, it cut right through a Thunderbird nest (an important spiritual area) between the Nungessor River and Red Lake. It also cut right through areas important for caribou calving. Now, with our agreement with the Partnership for Public Lands, we have consensus on how important our indigenous knowledge is."
Peters concluded his statement: "We will lead the way. Everyone will see just how our knowledge and traditions partnered with the knowledge of others will support a healthy economy and healthy landscape for our people and the people of Ontario and even Canada.”
“South of Pikangikum’s territory, industrial development has transformed the landscape, changing the structure of forests, introducing roads and transmission lines and, in some cases, driving out wild species, like woodland caribou,” points out Anna Baggio, director of the CPAWS-Wildlands League boreal conservation program. “We see the community-based land-use planning being carried out by Pikangikum as tremendously important and we are pleased to be invited to contribute our knowledge to the process.”

First Nations in the northern boreal are planning for new resource initiatives as a way of increasing employment opportunities and community prosperity. However, they have also made it clear that they do not want to implement a traditional resource development model on lands that they have cared for generations. As Chief Paddy Peters noted: “We are willing to work with others in partnership in making a plan and establishing new resource activities on our lands. This is part of our culture – to work with others on the basis of respect and consensus. But we need to make a plan to guide what happens in the future on our land before anything is done. This planning must be led by our community and guided by the traditions, teachings and knowledge of our people that have been passed on to us from our ancestors.”
“It is incredibly important to take a new approach to resource planning in this area,” says Gregor Beck, conservation and science director for the Federation of Ontario Naturalists. “These lands represent some of the largest areas of intact forest left on the planet.” 

For more information on the Whitefeather Forest Initiative, see:
www.whitefeatherforest.com

For more information on the Partnership for Public Lands, see:
www.wildontario.org

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“The Whitefeather Forest Research Cooperative agreement involves an innovative partnership for research supporting the Whitefeather Forest Initiative. Pikangikum First Nation, Whitefeather Forest Management Corporation, the University of Manitoba, the University of Winnipeg, Lakehead University and Sault College are the charter signatories of the Agreement.

The Whitefeather Forest Research Cooperative Agreement has a specific goal: "The goal is to bring together a partnership of supporters and participants in the development of the Whitefeather Forest Initiative in the form of a knowledge network where Pikangikum people are in the driver's seat regarding the research programme."

"We are delighted to be able to enter into such a partnership with Pikangikum", noted Professor Iain Davidson-Hunt of the University of Manitoba. "We have listened to the Elders of Pikangikum tell us how they want to bring the knowledge tradition of their First Nation into partnership with what we are doing at our universities and colleges. We think what they are doing in the Whitefeather Forest Initiative is innovative and internationally significant. Their knowledge of the Whitefeather Forest Planning Area is outstanding. Our goal as university and college teachers and researchers is to honour this knowledge and their vision. We are excited about the opportunity to do research bringing together people from different cultures. It is our objective that our research will celebrate the indigenous culture and land stewardship of Pikangikum people and bring together the best of different knowledge traditions."

The Whitefeather Forest Research Cooperative has been more than a year in the making. The Elders of Pikangikum and members of the First Nation working on the Whitefeather Forest Initiative held meetings to develop the first ideas for the Research Cooperative late in 2002. This dialogue included supporters of the Whitefeather Forest Initiative. Gradually a draft Research Cooperative agreement took shape.   It has been written in both Ojibway (syllabics) and English.

Alex Peters noted on this accomplishment: "Our Research Cooperative Agreement reflects the wishes of our Elders to have our knowledge guiding the Whitefeather Forest Initiative in partnership with the best of what is called "western science". For example, Elder Whitehead Moose told us that the time has come for us to make hundreds of books of our knowledge in our language. We have already started this with our Community Research Team. Elder Lucy Strang has been a strong advocate of a Teaching Centre as a place to support passing on our culture and knowledge to our young people and to support the Whitefeather Forest Initiative. Our Research Cooperative will support this vision of our Elders that includes teaching both our young people and outside college and university students. It will affirm that our Elders are our capacity."

The Whitefeather Forest Research Cooperative will play a key role in guiding research to support the Whitefeather Forest Initiative. The Cooperative will honour the importance of the Elders to this research process. Alex Peters said on this point that: "We are excited that what we will do together will help support the development of the Whitefeather Forest Initiative. It reflects the fact that our own knowledge tradition is being used as a principle source of information guiding the Initiative. The other key information source is our Vegetation Resource Inventory that we are now completing through Whitefeather Forest Management Corporation. Our Indigenous Knowledge products are in new media like digital maps and multi-media books. They will be of use not only to the Whitefeather Forest Initiative but also for teaching in our Enchokay Birchstick School."

One initial research project being guided by the Whitefeather Forest Research Cooperative in partnership with Professor Davidson-Hunt involves examining options and strategies for documenting Indigenous Knowledge in new media. It is building on work already carried out by the Whitefeather Forest Community Research Team.

Another project with Professor Davidson-Hunt and Professor Peggy Smith of Lakehead University involves developing written Criteria and Indicators rooted in Indigenous Knowledge to guide the monitoring of new land uses such as Protected Areas and Forestry within the Whitefeather Forest Planning Area. Yet another project in partnership with Professor Scott Hamilton at Lakehead University and Doug Gilmore, Acting Superintendent of Woodland Caribou Signature Site for Ontario Parks, involves the start of what is expected to become a significant Heritage Resources program at Pikangikum. All of these projects are being developed with the guidance of Pikangikum Elders participating in the Whitefeather Forest Initiative Community-Based Land Use Planning Steering Group. They also involve other members of Pikangikum who are respected for their knowledge of the Whitefeather Forest Planning Area.”

For more information on the Whitefeather Forest Initiative see:
www.whitefeatherforest.com

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Kenora, a typical wood processing town in northwestern Ontario, Canada, is facing an economic disaster. According to a report in the Winnipeg Free Press, the city's largest employer, Abitibi-Consolidated Inc., announced the closure of its paper mill 'indefinitely' as of October 2005. More than 350 employees will loose their jobs. Kenora businesses – which rely on the 82-year old paper mill and its workers for their livelihood – will lose many of their best customers. 'It's bad for me, bad for the people I represent and horrible for the community,' said local International Association of Machinists president Tom Beach. 'The news is about as bad as it can be.' A company spokesman stated that Abitibi is continuing its discussions with the provincial government to try to find ways to reduce the cost of production at the mill, especially on the energy side. He said the only way the Kenora mill can remain open is as a one-machine facility that is efficient and cost-effective.

... because they are looking for quick profits, worldwide ...
Udo Staschik stated in a letter to the editor of the local Daily Miner & News:

'The mill closure in Kenora was predictable. Globalization and the inexperience and naïveté of the town administration and elected town officials could not prevent this closure. Large national and multinational corporations are only interested in generating quick and easy profits; they have no interest in sustainability or local involvement. Shareholders of Wal-Mart, Zellers, Weyerhaeuser, Abitibi are residing in Hong Kong, Zurich, Seattle. New York and Toronto. Why would they bother about a town in northwestern Ontario? Town officials and the mayor are inexperienced and naive in believing that attracting large national or global companies to Kenora is of any benefit. Just to the opposite: it creates a dependency on these large outside controlled companies.'

... and can count on the incompetence of local officials
'[...] The mayor abdicated his responsibility to represent the citizens of Kenora to Abitibi, Wal-Mart and other companies and now has to realize that these companies have no interest in supporting him or Kenora. [...] in less than six months Wal-Mart or Zellers will notice a drop in sales and income and will close the store in Kenora. Instead of wining and dining large global companies with a limited attention span the city should have focused on supporting locally driven business enterprises. It is very unlikely that a (somewhat local, medium-sized) manufacturing or servicing company like Docks and Lifts, Prendiville Industries, Moncrief or Godbout's Towing relocate to another location. They have a reason to be in town, Wal-Mart or Zellers have not.'

The truly amazing thing is how long people in northwestern Ontario hold on to their blind faith into wood processing transnational corporations. The trend to more and more efficiency has started a while ago and paper mills, for example, employ drastically less people with every phase of so-called 'modernization'.

But another world would be possible ....
Faced with the lobbying power of big corporations sustainable land and forest use projects like the Whitefeather Forest Initiative of the (Ojibway) Pikangikum First Nation (www.whitefeatherforest.com) have generally a tough time. In 2001, the pressure on the First Nation included the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND) cutting normal funding of the Band, pretending that the Band’s leadership was unable to manage and govern. The arguments used were arbitrary and were later, after a lengthy trial, rejected by the court.
The insight that virtually no Native Canadian was employed in the high-tech wood processing plants was central to the resistance of the Pikangikum people. They realised that clear-cutting on their territory would waste and destroy a heritage which could be the basis of a diversified small scale local economy. This in turn could bring tangible improvements to the Native communities, suffering from extremely high unemployment rates, at the origins of many of their social problems they are left alone to solve.

Pikangikum Native Canadians are working on real solutions
The aim of a territorial inventory of their resources, compiled by the Whitefeather project, was to use the profound indigenous knowledge of the local people, accumulated over many generations, as a basis for the detailed planning and use of regional natural resources. The approaches used to achieve this have turned the Whitefeather initiative into a pioneering model of best practice. Today, it is even supported by the Government and cooperates with renowned Canadian universities.

Young unemployed Pikangikum people interviewed their grand-parents who knew the resources of the bioregion intimately (see http://www.whitefeatherforest.com/the_initiative/cb-lup-gatheringinfo.html). For the Pikangikum community, this fulfilled an important precondition for further planning. From their perspective creating jobs is the most important task. Yet even this main aim has to respect the tradition of biodiversity and sustainability for future generation.
The knowledge of the elders is immense and encompasses the growing seasons and locations of medicinal plants, the breeding places and traveling routes of wild animals, knowledge about pests and their cycles. This treasure of knowledge is only starting to be recognized by Western science.

It is sobering to realize how easy the destruction of unique natural resources would have been just a few years ago. It would have benefited a one dimensional economy which has totally lost a longer term view of its positive function - even with regard to the regional white population.

The information from Kenora shows clearly that economic planning has to be done on a long term basis and should be rooted in the principles of sustainable development.

For more information on the Whitefeather Forest Initiative, see:
www.whitefeatherforest.com

More information on what is at stake...
 

website updated March12th 2010