Lubicon Lake Indian Nation Little Buffalo Lake, AB 403-629-3945 FAX: 403-629-3939 Mailing address: 3536 - 106 Street Edmonton, AB T6J 1A4 403-436-5652 FAX: 403-437-0719 December 10, 1990 Enclosed for your information are two newspaper articles and an editorial on growing tension in the Lubicon area. Over six years ago the Toronto Globe and Mail printed a feature story on the struggle of the Lubicon people entitled "Last Stand of the Lubicon". That characterization was basically accurate but a bit premature at the time. It's no longer premature. ***************************************************************************** Windspeaker, December 07, 1990 CHARGES AGAINST OMINAYAK LIKELY, SAYS RCMP by Amy Santoro Windspeaker Staff Writer Lubicon Lake Nation, Alta. Charges will likely be laid next week against Lubicon Lake Chief Bernard Ominayak in connection with the torching of equipment used by a logging company harvesting trees on land claimed by the band, says Peace River RCMP Staff Sgt. Lynn Julyan. Julyan said charges will be laid against several people and "Ominayak will likely be one of them". RCMP searched a cabin owned by Ominayak in the Fish Lake area four days after men disguised with ski masks set fire to trailers and burned about $20,000 worth of equipment at the Buchanan logging camp, said Julyan. He said the RCMP were looking for gasoline, cloths and beer bottles because "the evidence would support the investigation". Sounding defiant in an interview Tuesday, Ominayak said "I believe in the cause and no RCMP or developer is going to stop me. If they want to stop me, they'll have to hang me." When asked how he intends to plead if he's charged the chief said he is protecting his people's rights and "that's not wrong under any kind of law. How can the Creator point the finger at me who has devoted his whole life to helping my people? How can anybody be wrong doing that? I certainly haven't done anything I can be found guilty for." On Nov. 8 Ominayak issued a final warning to all logging companies working on lands claimed by his band. He told about 200 protesters in Edmonton the Lubicon Nation gave notice "effective today all companies will have to have proper authorization permits from the Lubicon people if they wish to continue exploiting resources on unceded Lubicon land." He said logging equipment working on lands claimed by the Lubicons would be "subject to removal at any time. This is the only warning they'll get." Rod Hill, a Mohawk observer from the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ontario, said police will invite trouble if they arrest Ominayak. "Then the war paint comes on," he said. Meanwhile, Norcen Energy Resources plans to resume production by mid-Dec. from 18 oil wells in the Lubicon Lake area which have been shut in since Nov. 30, 1989, after threats from Lubicon members to sabotage the wells which are partly owned by Petro-Canada. Ominayak said the band plans "to stop Norcen whether the RCMP arrest me or not. What kind of laws does this country have when the government lets developers steal our resources?" He said the Lubicons have been patient by "putting up with more than any developer would have. They've destroyed our way of life. The solution is simple: deal with us or stay out." Ominayak said he hopes there will not be a violent confrontation but "if that's what it takes to stop it then fine." Julyan said the RCMP has "beefed up patrols in all problem areas." Ominayak said it is "terrible when heavy-handed forces control a political problem. The RCMP has no business being involved." Indian Association of Alberta president Regena Crowchild said she does not condone violence. "I'd rather see peaceful negotiations to reach solutions." Dana Andreassen, executive assistant to Attorney General Ken Rostad, would not comment specifically on the equipment-burning incident but did say "if illegal activity is found on behalf of the Lubicons, they will be legally dealt with." Rostad could not be reached for comment. ***************************************************************************** Windspeaker, December 07, 1990 DAISHOWA BREAKING AGREEMENT MADE IN 1988: OMINAYAK By Amy Santoro Windspeaker Staff Writer Lubicon Lake Nation, Alta. Daishowa Canada officials say the Lubicon Lake Indian band misunderstood the details of a verbal agreement made in 1988. Jim Morrison, the general manager of Daishowa's corporate offices in Edmonton, says "no commitments were made in 1988. We expressed sympathy toward the Lubicons. We have fulfilled all our obligations with them. They understood the agreement much differently than we did." In March 1988 following a meeting in Vancouver with Lubicon Chief Bernard Ominayak, Daishowa vice-president Koichi Kitagawa said his company would cooperate with the Lubicons to develop an acceptable logging plan for the area, which the band claims as its traditional hunting and trapping area. Ominayak says "there was an agreement not to log until our claim is settled. But regardless we will not allow it to continue." Wayne Crouse, Daishowa's communications coordinator, told Windspeaker in Oct. there would be "no logging in Lubicon-claimed areas by Daishowa, its contractors or subsidiaries". He said the company stands by the agreement made in 1988 to leave the land alone until the claim is settled. But in a telephone interview Nov. 27 Crouse said "the Lubicons misunderstood the agreement. There was no objection to the continuation of traditional logging by companies like Buchanan who were there before Daishowa came along. We said we wouldn't log as a corporation and we're not. Really Daishowa is in the middle of this issue." Crouse says Daishowa has "no control over contractors and suppliers." Lubicon Lake band advisor Fred Lennarson, who attended the 1988 meeting, says Daishowa promised not to log in the disputed area without first consulting with the band. "Morrison is a liar. He says something different every time he opens his mouth. I was there. They said there would be no logging until there is a land settlement." Brewster, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Daishowa and Buchanan Lumber of High Prairie, began clear-cutting on Lubicon-claimed land in November. Ominayak says this is a clear breach of the 1988 agreement. Morrison says Daishowa "would not log in any new areas. Brewster is cutting in an area it has logged for 12 years." Morrison also claims the company's Forest Management Agreement lies outside the disputed land claim area. But Barry Heinen, Daishowa's woodlands operations superintendent, says "the agreement still stands. We won't log within our FMA until the dispute is settled. The government issued the FMA without recognizing the land claim." Brewster, Buchanan and other companies in the area supply Daishowa with spruce and aspen chips for its $500-million pulp mill which began operating in September. Daishowa's primary source of timber is at stake in the dispute. The Lubicon's 10,000 square kilometre land claim lies entirely within the company's 29,000 square kilometre FMA. Ominayak says "the Lubicons never ceded our traditional area to the federal government in any legally or historically recognized way. The federal government didn't have the right to transfer our traditional area to the provincial government." ***************************************************************************** Windspeaker, December 07, 1990 Editorial entitled: FRIENDS AND ENEMIES IN HIGH PLACES Ever since the white man darkened the shores of North America, Native people have been caught between a rock and a hard place. In 1990 that rock and that hard place, more often than not, is the provincial government and the federal government respectively. Native people are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Take the Lubicon Lake Indian band for instance. The federal government has little interest in settling the band's 50-year-old land-claim dispute. And the provincial government, which benefits from the resource development carried out on land claimed by the band -- logging, oil and gas development - - tells the band to respect the law. "We've given it our best shot in helping the band reach an agreement with Ottawa," says Native Affairs Minister Ken Rostad. "Your fight isn't with us or the developers." Meanwhile, the developers and the province are laughing all the way to the bank. What are the band members to do? Sit and twiddle their thumbs until the trees are all cut and the oil is all gone? Yes, if Rostad's line of reasoning is to be accepted. Meanwhile, where is Indian Affairs, which is supposed to protect the interest of Canada's treaty Indians? Rather than standing in the corner of the Lubicons as the band's trustee, the department chooses to abandon that role, content instead to carry the government's football. The continual conflict of interest the department finds itself in is the most compelling argument for banishing it to the ash heap. The Supreme Court, in the Sparrow Case earlier this year, noted "the honor of the Crown is at stake in dealing with aboriginal peoples." Well, the federal government isn't too much concerned about its honor when it comes to the treatment of Native people. Nor is the Indian affairs department. Its concern is the honor of the government of the day. And where is Indian affairs in the fight of the Peigan Indians and the Lonefighters Society against the destructive Oldman dam? Nowhere to be found. Where were department officials when scores of RCMP officers and government workers invaded the Peigan reserve recently to repair the Lonefighter's attempt to divert the Oldman River? In hiding. What are the Peigans to do? Sit back while the province destroys their reserve and their sacred land? What law is protecting their interests? But Native people aren't without friends in high places. Max Yalden, chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, frequently picks up the balls fumbled by Indian affairs only to have his wrists slapped by the department for refusing to mind his own business. Case in point was his recent nine-page scathing, but reasonable critique of federal aboriginal policy. Thin-skinned Indian Affairs Minister Tom Siddon, who obviously hadn't read the report, quickly condemned it as "very unprofessional" and "irresponsible". If he had read it, he would have had to agree with many of the conclusions: an independent land-claims commission should be established to put an end to the conflict of interest position in which Indian affairs is often found; that the "outdated and paternalistic Indian Act" be replaced. "The Indian Act is fundamentally and irreparably flawed. No amount of tinkering can alter that"; and the government should seriously consider replacing Indian affairs, which is "a relic of a past that must be put behind us". At the same time Yalden was delivering his report, Prime Minister Mulroney was in Rome having to defend the government's treatment of Canada's Native peoples. In the absence of laws to protect their interests, Natives are getting help from the Pope, the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Supreme Court. With friends like that, it is the provincial and federal governments which will more often find themselves between a rock and a hard place. More's the pleasure. ***************************************************************************** Transcript of CBC Radio News Broadcast (4:30 P.M.) Tuesday, December 11, 1990 Krysia Jarmicka, CBC News Police say several people will be charged shortly because of last month's arson attack on logging equipment in northern Alberta. People wearing ski masks torched equipment on land claimed by both the Lubicon Indians and the Alberta Government. Damage was estimated at more than $20,000. Staff Sgt. Lynn Julyan of the RCMP in Peace River says several people will likely be charged this week. He confirmed his officers are now meeting with the Crown prosecutor to work out details of the charges. Julyan won't say if the people being charged are Lubicon Indians. The Lubicons said that logging companies working on their land without their permission would be removed. ***************************************************************************** Lubicon Lake Indian Nation Little Buffalo Lake, AB 403-629-3945 FAX: 403-629-3939 Mailing address: 3536 - 106 Street Edmonton, AB T6J 1A4 403-436-5652 FAX: 403-437-0719 December 11, 1990 Attached for your information is a copy of a letter sent to Alberta Premier Don Getty and Federal Indian Affairs Minister Tom Siddon by a Canadian concerned about the survival of the Lubicon people. Flooding Federal and Provincial politicians with such letters may now be the Lubicon's only hope. ***************************************************************************** Letter from Hans Sinn, R.R. Perth, ONT, Canada K7H 3C6 to Premier Don Getty, dated December 06, 1990 Dear Sir: I urge you to prevent logging operations on unceded Lubicon lands until Lubicon land rights have been settled. I further urge you to prevent police harassment of the Lubicon people, who are upholding their land rights. Yours truly, Hans Sinn ***************************************************************************** For more information contact web:car by e-mail or in writing Aboriginal Rights Support Group Committee Against Racism P.O. Box 3085, Station B Calgary, Alberta T2M 4L6