Sixteen years ago, I took my mom and two still nursing children on a trip to northern Ontario. It was a lot āfour of us cramped into three airplane seats with busy bags, my momās purse full of snacks in twist-tied baggies, and a tiny, crappy CD player with 10 disks full of Thomas the Train and Bob the Builder. When our plane landed in Thunder Bay, nearly eight hours after weād left the house, we were only halfway there. We had a six hour drive ahead of us. Well, six hours if your kids love sitting in their car seats and you donāt have to stop every 20 minutes.
At the time, I was working on a project with Judy Da Silva studying the impacts of mercury contamination on the plants, animals and Anishinaabek living in the homelands of Asubpeeschoseewagong (Grassy Narrows), Wabauskang and Wabaseemoong (Whitedog) First Nations. I had been to Grassy a few times before and I knew what to expect ā gorgeous lakes and trees, people with a fierce love of their culture and their community, and Elders with incredible knowledge of land and water that can only come from generations of living on the land in a communal practice that brings forth more life.
This muted November morning, Iām sifting through my eroding memories of that trip. My heart studying the five decades of Anishinaabek organizing parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles, children and youth, Elders and Chief and Councils, scientists, environmentalists, Church groups, reporters, doctors and allied politicians have engaged in to bring us to this present moment.
Iām remembering the words of David Suzuki at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2018 at an event leading up to Grassyās annual River Run action, his voice wavering and in tears, āMy inspiration comes from the fact you havenāt given up.āĀ
READ MORE: Why we march with Grassy Narrows
And therein lies one of the foundational teachings Grassy Narrows has gifted us ādo not give up. Do not expect things to come easy. Keep trying.
An unwavering commitment to take care of their families and the network of life Anishinaabek worlds are enmeshed in has carried this community through broken treaty relations, relocation, the impacts of hydro-electric development, residential schools and child welfare practices, and of course, the eliminating violence of pollution. Starting in 1913 and continuing to present day, the pulp and paper industry in Dryden and Kenora has dumped an array of toxic substances, including the infamous 10 metric tonnes of untreated mercury in the 1960s and 1970s, and more recently bleaching waste that produces phenols, polychlorinated dibenzodioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), also known as dioxins and furans. Though this is only part of the story. In order to make pulp, one needs trees. Trees who share their time and space with bears and moose, blueberries and Labrador Tea. Trees have lived with the Anishinaabek long before their worth, our worth, was measured in dollars.
On that same trip Judy drove me out to the Slant Lake blockade. The blockade began the same year my son was born, and it had taken me four years to visit.
I remember at the time thinking it was remarkable that they had managed to block a logging road for four years.
This blockade started out as a flash point. On December 2, 2022, after more than a decade of letter-writing, meetings, protests, petitions, speaking tours, and legal efforts to protect their homeland from further industrial development without their consent, young Anishinaabek lay down on the logging road to prevent large multinational corporations from destroying traplines, hunting grounds, berry patches, medicines and plant and animal habitats to supply mills in Dryden and Kenora with trees. And while Abitibi and Weyerhaeuser continued to log the more remote sections of Grassy Narrowsā territory, in the summer of 2008 Grassy Narrows and their supporters finally forced AbitibiBowater to give up their license to the Whiskey Jack Forest, and commit not to log without consent from the community. This halted all logging on Grassy Narrows territory.
A tremendous victory, and one that is fragile. Despite their 2018 Land Declaration, banning all mineral staking, exploration, mining, and logging in their territory, Doug Fordās government is proposing to open part of Grassy Narrows territory to industrial logging in their upcoming management plan. The Ontario government has also allowed mineral claims by mining companies and prospectors to grow into the thousands while also granting drilling permits to companies despite the Land Declaration.
Over the past two decades, what started out as a flash point response has transformed into much more than a refusal. This blockade is a generative site where people come together for ceremonies, feasts, drumming, praying and story-telling. It is a place that holds our dreams and visions for making a world that is grounded in care, enmeshed in the natural world and designed to bring forth more life. The Slant Lake blockade has been a place where like-minded Indigenous peoples, land defenders and those engaged in struggle have gathered and learned from the hearts and minds of people that have grown up or grown old with the blockade. It is a place that reminds me that the struggle to make Anishinaabek worlds that refuse exploitation and greed, is long and requires commitment, persistence and sacrifice. It is a place that reminds me that whether the blockade is Wet’suwet’en or Dakota or Anishinaabek, we are all fighting for the something thatās actually quite simple āthe ability to say no to development in our homelands, so that we can live in a way that is counter to the forces that have thrust us all into our current climate crisis.
This December 2, on the twentieth anniversary of the longest blockade in Canadian history, Iām thinking of all those that have passed on and who live with mercury poison and illness. Iām thinking of Palestinians, the Wet’suwet’en, Kayapo and Overhereo, and of Black feminist abolitionists in Canada dreaming worlds beyond and Iām thinking of those precious Anishinaabek that put words into action two decades ago and did what they had to do to pass their homeland to the next generation with as much sanctity as possible. Iām so grateful for Grassy Narrows challenging me to burst out of my scale-down visions of a better world and to remake the worlds of our ancestors where forests and rivers are our precious relatives.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
