"Lubicon elder drying meat" Photo: Lubicon Nation
Daishowa Boycott Defends Lubicon Land
By John Goddard
When the Daishowa paper company announced plans to log in north central Alberta last fall, members of a Toronto citizens' group began a campaign which saw results in less than a year.
"It's gotten to the stage now where, yes, we're feeling the economics," Daishowa's Canadian vice-president, Tom Hamaoka, said when asked about the boycott in December. By January, he was predicting that the company would not proceed with a planned $700 million expansion of its northern Alberta pulp mill in 1993, citing the protests as one main reason. "It's no longer good enough to have government support," he said. "The public has to also want [the mill]."
"It's gotten to the stage now where, yes, we're feeling the economics"
In this case, the public did not want the mill and still does not want the mill. In grocery stores, pizza parlours, restaurants and retail outlets, group members examined labels to identify which boxes and bags were made by Daishowa Paper manufacturing Co. Ltd. of Japan. Group members then asked proprietors to stop using such items.
The response was immediate. Ho-Lee-Chow and Knetchel's wholesalers announced cancellation of Daishowa contracts. The YWCA, Cultures Fresh Food Restaurants, Now Magazine and The Body Shop similarly agreed not to buy from Daishowa anymore. And when the Liquor Control Board of Ontario continued to buy Daishowa bags, customers began refusing them as well.
Lubicon elder in camp Photo: Lubicon Nation
Soon the protest spread to Calgary and Edmonton, and by midwinter demonstrations were taking place outside Canadian missions in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, England, Belgium and Australia.
Opposition to logging in north-central Alberta centres on concern for the Lubicon Lake Cree, an aboriginal community of 500 people now facing annihilation. Until 1979, the Lubicon lived mostly by hunting and trapping. Then oil development began. Without a single environmental or social impact study, more than 100 petroleum companies entered the previously isolated territory, converting it into the most active exploration and drilling field in the country.
Over the next five years, crews drilled more than 400 wells within a 15-mile radius of the community. Wagon routes became roads for tractor-trailer units. "No Trespassing" signs went up. Bulldozers buried traps and blocked animal trails. Fires raged out of control: in 1980 alone, fire destroyed as much of the Lubicon hunting area as it had in the previous 20 years. Animal numbers plummeted. Soon, the oil companies were producing revenues of $500 million a year, while the Lubicon's traditional economy was, for all practical purposes, destroyed.
"The cutting lease of 12,000 square miles was to include the entire Lubicon hunting and trapping areas to the east: 4,000 square miles of disputed land."
Then Daishowa entered the scene. In 1988, the Alberta government authorized the company to build Canada's largest hardwood pulp mill on the Peace River in northern Alberta at a cost of $580 million. The mill was to turn out 1,000 tonnes of pulp a day, consuming wood at a rate of more than four million trees a year. The cutting lease of 12,000 square miles was to include the entire Lubicon hunting and trapping areas to the east: 4,000 square miles of disputed land.
Chief Bernard Ominayak Photo: Lubicon nation
In response, Lubicon Chief Bernard Ominayak told Daishowa executives in Vancouver that his community would not allow trees to be taken from Lubicon territory until a land-rights settlement was signed with the federal government and the Lubicon secured a forest reserve. The Daishowa people promised not to enter the territory without consulting the Lubicon people first. But when no settlement was reached by the time the pulp mill opened in September 1990, the company invited subcontractors to start cutting anyway.
Ominayak served notice that the Lubicon people were determined "to defend ourselves as best we can." Anybody wishing to exploit natural resources on any kind of unceded Lubicon lands would have to apply for operating permits, pay the Lubicon people royalties, and abide by Lubicon environmental protection laws, the chief said. Unauthorized projects would be "subject to removal at any time."
Daishowa subcontractors ignored the warning. They entered the territory and started work; but not for long. On the evening of November 24,1990, a surprise raid ended with one logging camp on fire. Equipment estimated variously to be worth $20,000 to $50,000 was destroyed. Thirteen Lubicon men were arrested (Ominayak was not one of them), and charged with arson. Without admitting involvement in the raid, the men have indicated that they will respond at trial by saying that the courts have no jurisdiction over unceded Lubicon land.
No further logging took place in the area during the winter of 1990-91, but company officials were growing anxious. "Daishowa cannot indefinitely postpone the timber harvest to which it is entitled," said James Morrison, general manager of the Edmonton office. "Daishowa's $580 million investment in the Peace River mill was premised on having that secure wood supply."
Upping the ante, Ominayak travelled to Japan. In September, 1991, he appeared at meetings and demonstrations in Tokyo and elsewhere, inspiring the Friends of the Lubicon group in Toronto to initiate the boycott.
"Soon, the oil companies were producing revenues of $500 million a year while the Lubicon's traditional economy was, for all practical reasons, destroyed."
My home Photo: Lubicon Nation
When the protest spread internationally, Daishowa suddenly paid more attention to Lubicon concerns. Executives said the company would not log in Lubicon territory during the 1991-92 cutting season. But for the Lubicon and their supporters, the commitment was not good enough. They demanded written assurances that Daishowa would stay out until a land-rights agreement was signed, and until the company negotiated a separate environmental accord with the community. Vice-President Hamaoka refused, but sounded increasingly desperate. "My first priority is to really have this Lubicon matter resolved before we consider any future investments in North America," he said.
Hamaoka was facing other problems as well. A study by scientists at Environment Canada had found that effluent from pulp mills using chlorine bleach, as Daishowa's mill does, is toxic even when dioxins are removed. Such effluent is a potential threat to human health, the study also concluded, a point that environmentalists have been making for years.
In Japan, newspapers reported that Daishowa is in financial trouble and wants to unload the Peace River mill. "Daishowa has accumulated heavy debts in recent years through aggressive expansion of production facilities which analysts say has contributed to the industry's "overcapacity," Nikkei Weekly, an English language paper, reported. "[The company's] latest restructuring plan centres on the sale of a hardwood kraft pulp mill in Peace River, Canada."
Publicly, Hamaoka often portrays the company as an "innocent third party" in a dispute between the Lubicon people and the federal government. But privately, he has been pressing federal authorities to reopen talks with the community, and warning of a flight of all foreign investment from Alberta if the land dispute is not soon settled.
Anybody wishing to write to Mr. Hamaoka about clear-cutting in Lubicon territory can write to:
Tom Hamaoka
Daishowa Canada Company, Ltd.
3500 Park Place, 666 Burrard Street
Vancouver, BC
V6C 2X8
[fax: (604) 689-2853]
Copies can be sent to:
The Lubicon Lake Nation
3536 - 106 St.
Edmonton Alberta
T6J 1A4
John Goddard is the author of the best-selling "Last Stand of the Lubicon Cree", recently published by Douglas and McIntyre.
