by KEN HECHTMAN

Looking at dead forests is like looking at dead people. Photographs just don't have the same impact as the real thing. There are dozens of clearcuts in the treaty lands around the northern Ontario Ojibway community of Grassy Narrows, but there's one they call "the clearcut." It's 166 square kilometres of moonscape, bigger than all of downtown Montreal and pockmarked with burn sites.

Native activist Lucille McKenzie explains what those are. "After the loggers finish cutting, they won't let us pick up the scrap wood to heat our houses, not unless we buy it from Abitibi-Consolidated. We won't pay Abitibi for our own wood so they burn it all here on the site."

As bad as the land looks, Abitibi isn't finished here yet. Trapper Don Billard explains what comes next. "The year after they cut, they come back and plough the land up, getting rid of all the other plants. The year after, they spray Vision (Monsanto's new trade name for glyphosate, formerly known as Roundup) from the air to make sure nothing ever grows back." (This is done to ensure a monoculture of trees they can later harvest.)

The natives can thank Abitibi for small favours. Until a few years ago, Abitibi's herbicide of choice was 2,4-D, known in Vietnam as Agent White. Monsanto's main selling point for glyphosate is that it's biodegradable, which it is, except that the breakdown rate is temperature-dependent. According to the Journal of Pesticide Reform, it has a half-life of three days in the Texas desert, four months in the Midwest and over a year in northern Ontario. That's long enough to get carried into the rivers by the spring run-off and spread through the whole water table.

Latest in a long list

Abitibi's clearcuts aren't the first disaster to hit Grassy Narrows, or the second or the third. In 1962, the federal government discovered gold on the original reserve. How our gold got buried under their land remains unsolved. The entire community was moved that year to their current reserve where they started a salmon fishery with the compensation money. Eight years later, a Dryden pulp mill - then called the Reed Paper Company, but it changes names every few years - dumped 50 tons of mercury into the English and Wabigoon rivers. The fishery was wiped out and, as of last year, 86 per cent of the community show one or more symptoms of mercury poisoning according to a study by Dr. Masazumi Haroda, who has been following the Grassy Narrows community for over 30 years. Next they tried growing wild rice, until Ontario Hydro built a dam and raised water levels throughout the area, costing them 90 per cent of their harvest.

"The population of Grassy Narrows is 800 people, three quarters of them are under the age of 17 and it's not because they have a particularly high birth rate," says Thunder Bay Indymedia editor Dave Clement. "It's because most of the older people are dead."

Environmental diseases are the leading cause of death. A 10th of the community have Lou Gehrig's Disease, caused by mercury poisoning, and an eighth have cancer - the depleted-uranium affected areas of Iraq aren't this bad. Other causes include alcohol, gas-sniffing, suicide and murder.

"Nothing you've seen in any Afghan refugee camp will prepare you for Grassy Narrows," says Concordia anthropology graduate student Tiffany Ryan. "The place is notorious in the profession. Anthropologists go there to study the problems and turn into aid workers because they have no choice."

Youth of today

Driving for 45 minutes across the clearcut also proves that the map is not the territory. Abitibi-Consolidated and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources produce a colour-coded map of past, present and planned cuts. This clearcut appears on the map as over 10 square kilometres, about a 16th its actual size. Ontario forestry law limits clearcuts to 2.6 square kilometres "in all but exceptional circumstances."

This clearcut and others like it might have been bigger still if the residents of Grassy Narrows hadn't set up a blockade early last December. On Dec. 3, students of the high school downed a tree over the logging road. Today, the blockade camp includes a traditional roundhouse - much like a traditional Mohawk longhouse, but round - trailers, tents and a teepee. Expansion plans include cabins to be built with reclaimed logs abandoned by Abitibi, more trailers and at least one private home.

In addition to the high school students, who occasionally take classes in traditional woodland skills by the barricade, the blockade is manned by half-a-dozen residents at any time. At the moment, tensions are not high. The last confrontation with loggers and police was on Feb. 6 and, for the moment, the blockade isn't a test of strength, it's a test of endurance. The natives say their survival is at stake and they're not about to pack up and go home - they are home.

Against that, Abitibi-Consolidated has the resources of a $5-billion-a-year corporation, among whose customers are many of the major newspapers in North America.

Layered defence and war stories

The first line of defence is five happy young Christians from a Winnipeg Christian Peacemaker Team [CPT]. Better known for their human shield work in Palestine, Colombia and other war zones, the CPTs have been involved in native conflicts here in Canada for the last couple of years. Their Christian pacifism has defused several flare-ups between loggers and the natives.

The second line of defence is the Okijita, the Ojibway Warrior Society. A squad from nearby Shoal Lake has been here since the first day. Marcel, dressed in grey and white winter cammos, is an old road warrior at the age of 33. For the last two years, he's lived out of his backpack in one conflict zone or another.

"When my commander gets a call, he never asks, 'How long will you need us?' We'll be there as long as it takes," he says. Among the places he was sent are Burnt Church, New Brunswick, where he helped defend Micmac lobster traps against the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and Tyendanega Six Nations, where natives confronted the Ontario Provincial Police for circulating autopsy photos of Mohawk women.

Another warrior, Charlie, 48, has a soft and slow voice that can be difficult to follow, but his stories are worth the effort. He was put in residential school at the age of seven and escaped several times, each time getting sent to a school further from home. Four years and six escapes later, he was in a school near Sault Ste-Marie, where the nuns beat him unconscious with hockey sticks. He still has the scars.

"I knew that if I stayed, they'd kill me, so I escaped again. I made it to Winnipeg [1,450 kilometres away] on foot through the bush, living off the land, fooling the police dogs in the woods. They didn't catch me that time until I was 21," he says. The other men his age have similar residential school stories. Nothing can happen to them in jail or in a gunfight that's worse than what already has.

Charlie's also the camp practical joker. His favourite is to take the city slickers out to see the Northern Lights. "They're hard to see," he'll say, "because of all the lights at the camp. If you take off your jacket and look up the sleeve like a telescope, you'll see them better." Anyone foolish enough to actually do it gets a cup of water poured down the sleeve into his face.

The three Palestinians in their keffiyas look out of place against the snowdrifts and wind-burned pines, as does the four-colour Palestinian flag flying from a birch pole near the teepee, but they're not. They're here as part of a mutual assistance agreement. There'll be more of this kind of co-operation in the coming months. One more thing - Abitibi's head office is at 1155 Metcalfe, just a few blocks from Concordestine. Make that a lot more co-operation.

Politics and pesticides

There are two distinct political stances visible at the blockade. During the Oka crisis in 1990, native sovereignty was the extreme position. Now it's the moderate one. Blockade spokesman Joe Fobister gives the official line on the blockade: "We are implementing Treaty 3 as we understand it." While the official band council doesn't openly support the barricade, there is some level of cooperation between the two.

Like most treaties, the 1873 agreement distinguishes between reserve land (full native control, but limited to the built-up area of the village) and treaty land (6,470 square kilometres on which the natives are guaranteed use rights). Fobister's understanding is that use rights have to include the right to keep the land usable. Otherwise, after the clearcutting is done, he has the right to hunt deer that aren't there, catch fish that have cancerous tumors and pick blueberries sprayed with Vision. The phrase that keeps coming up is, "They want us to trade our wealth for the right to administer our own poverty."

The hardline position is symbolized by the Turtle Island flag flying over the barricade. The name Turtle Island is taken from the Mohawk creation myth. Geographically, it refers to the North American continent. Politically, it signals an absolute rejectionist position - the Ghost Dance of the 21st century. "We reject all band councils, all reserves and all treaties," says Native Youth Movement activist Kahedio from Kahnawake. "It's all ours and we're taking it all back." :