I’m sure not a day passes when some Cree somewhere doesn’t see a logging truck piled high heading south. And not one day passes with a Cree tallyman, hunter or trapper not mourning the damage done by Quebec’s clearcutting practices in the Cree territory. I remember flying over the land and seeing what is not readily seen from the main roads. Large tracts of land laid bare without care for what was there before. I felt both angry and a deep sadness and this was for the land that was not even under my care. How much more the tallyman must feel when witnessing this devastation that accompanies deforestation?
The Cree bush home life and the animal populations living there trampled by government orders.
A way of life is threatened by those non-Crees who look at the “challenges of new lands” that are ripe for “exploitation and development.” If a perceived frontier is out there then people will not be far behind, someone once said. This frontier vision looks at trees as a commodity or at best an obstacle in the way of progress.
Looking at it in this light the upcoming Cree forestry case is a battle between two cultures to control the vision of what a frontier forest means to them. To one, a home, and to another, a commodity to be exploited.
The Cree case says Cree rights and the way of life as guaranteed by the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement must be looked at, considered and protected from haphazard exploitation.
Personally I think the forestry case has further importance than just to the Crees. In the past 30 years almost half of the world’s frontier forest has been destroyed. “Frontier forests” is what the World Wildlife Fun calls our planet’s original forest cover, large tracts of relatively undisturbed forests that support a wide variety of animal life. They filter water through the forest watershed, produce oxygen, support wildlife diversity and generally help keep the eco-system up and running.
The World Resources Institute says half of the frontier forests remaining in the world are boreal forests. These boreal forests were untouched for so long because
of long winters, poor soil condition and other factors make farming difficult. The second is northern boreal forests tend to be slow growing, scrawny and widely dispersed and they weren’t touched until modem technology and an increased wood demand made it possible for commercial loggers to exploit them. The institute’s maps say the boreal forests in the Cree territory are under “medium to heavy threat.” The highest rated danger is commercial loggers.
Not only does the logging threaten the forests but it also opens it up to other threats. Hunters who do not respect Cree ways come in with dangerous hunting practices at times. Trappers in Waswanipi’s Zone 17 cannot even hunt to the harvesting levels guaranteed by the JBNQA because of habitat destruction and sports hunt practices for example.
Premier Lucian Bouchard’s threats to occupy the Cree territory are coming true as the municipality of Radisonnie gives out five to seven-year leases for non-Crees to live in the Cree territory. No Cree person, entity or organization is ever consulted. If you look at a map you will see that the leases follow the logging roads. What impacts will this have on the Cree way of life?
And of course there are the bad economic practices. The Quebec government charges forestry companies some of the lowest stumpage fees on the continent. As the World Resources Institute says, “Frequently, the governments and industry reap the profits while frontier peoples receive only a sliver of the benefits but bear the brunt of forest mismanagement.”
All this without even talking about Que-bec’s double standard which says treeplanting is a must in the south, where the majority of the population lives, while in the north “natural reforestation” or no tree planting is allowed.
But what affects the forests affects the world. In the end a Cree forestry court,while it may help the Crees as a whole, can do nothing but help the world as a whole inkeeping a balance between two peoples.
