Copyright © 1999 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

"In our culture we don't say good-bye," said a trapper as we ended our stay at Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishnabek (Grassy Narrows First Nations).

This trip to Grassy Narrows in September was a follow-up to CPT's fact-finding visit in May 1999. Since then the Ontario Minister of the Environment has rejected the community's application for a review of Abitibi-Consolidated Inc.'s 20-year plan for clear-cut logging on Asubpeeschoseewagong land. The community is frustrated but still determined to regain control over its own resources even if that requires confrontation and blockades.

One Anishnabek man spoke to us for half an hour without stopping. I know that I was not the only member of our group who left his yard feeling numb and stunned at the same time. He drove the point home that the abuses wrought by residential schools, logging, and mercury poisoning still cut deep:

"I'm a terrible father. I don't know how to be a father. I'm not like you--you lived with your mom and dad. I never knew my mother until I was 30. At school I had a kind of family. I read about them in a book. There were three kids Sally, Dick and Jane, and two pets, Spot and Puff."

"I've seen the Bible used by the Ku Klux Klan, by all kinds of people. I could get the Bible to justify me to hate people. The "corporates" go back to the Bible to subdue and undo the land. They're terrible liars. I hate liars."

"At the environmental conference in Ottawa they asked us to tell our 'success' stories. I told them that we hang our fish upside-down until the barometer drops. When the mercury drops to the bottom we cut their heads off. That's our 'success' story." [The waters and fish around Grassy Narrows are still poisoned by tons of mercury dumped by a local pulp mill].

"Thomas Aquinas School spilled eight ounces of mercury and the government sent all kinds of people to get rid of it. They shut down the whole school for a week. There's 50 tons of mercury in our river and it took the government 30 years to even admit it. They've done nothing to remove it. We're worth nothing."

"[Singer] Anne Murray was near a Coke bottle when it exploded and she was struck in the leg with a glass splinter. She sued Coke for 48 million dollars. Grassy received 8 million dollars in compensation for the mercury in our water. How can one white woman be worth more than a whole nation of people? Not that money is the answer, but it says something."

Enough said.