FIRST NATION PROVIDES HORGAN POLITICAL COVER
Premier John Horgan gained some leverage this week over an old-growth logging protest that has been festering for months in his political backyard.
The battleground is Fairy Creek, a heavily forested watershed near Port Renfrew in the premier's Langford-juan de Fuca riding.
The Teal-jones logging group has been prevented from exercising its timber-cutting rights in the area since protesters set up a blockade in August. They have refused to budge, despite a recent court injunction.
But this week came an open letter from the Pacheedaht First Nation, whose traditional territory includes Fairy Creek.
“We do not welcome or support unsolicited involvement or interference by others in our territory, including third-party activism,” said the statement. “Our rightful ownership and management of forest resources within our territory need to be acknowledged.”
The letter expressed concern “about the increasing polarization” over forestry activities within the First Nation territory.
“Pacheedaht needs to be left in peace to engage in our community-led stewardship process, so that we can determine our own way forward as a strong and independent Nation.”
In the interim, the First Nation has secured agreements with Teal-jones “to suspend and defer third party forestry activities within specific areas in the territory. Our constitutional right to make decisions about forestry resources in our territory, as governing authority in our territory, must be respected.”
The open letter, released Monday, was signed by Pacheedaht hereditary chief Frank Queesto Jones and elected chief councillor Jeff Jones.
Next day Horgan seized the opening to issue a butt-out message of his own to the protesters.
“I was grateful to see both Hereditary Chief Frank Queesto Jones and elected Chief Jeff Jones speak quite forcefully to people who are creating dissent within their community, saying that they would prefer that they be left alone to manage these issues in the interests of the people of the territory,” the premier told reporters during his weekly media availability Tuesday.
“I think that's an appropriate request by the people who have rights and title.”
He took a swipe at protesters who claim to be standing up for the rights of Indigenous people:
“They're certainly not doing that if they're disregarding the requests of not just the elected, but the hereditary leadership as well.”
He took a further swipe at the activists for using the protest as a tool to raise almost $300,000 on the Gofundme site on the internet.
“If it disrupts their fundraising, I will not apologize for that,” said the premier. “If fundraising is more important than the rights and titles of Indigenous people, then that's for those individuals to explain on their Gofundme pages.”
The Horgan government has been under fire in the legislature over the Fairy Creek standoff. The Greens are calling for preservation of “the last intact old-growth valley” in the southern part of Vancouver Island.
“The last one,” Green Leader Sonia Furstenau charged one day last month. “So 30 years from now, will we have to look at our grandchildren and say: `Hey, we let it go because it didn't matter.'”
Firing back was Forests Minister Katrine Conroy.
“I also have grandchildren,” she said. She wants them to have the ability to walk in an old growth forest, of which there are more than 100 preserved square kilometres already in B.C., according to Conroy. But the minister also wants her grandchildren, when and if they are ready, to be able “to work in a well-managed forest industry.”
Both Horgan and Conroy dispute that Fairy Creek is the last untouched watershed in the region south of Clayoquot Sound.
“It's not true,” said Horgan. “The NDP government of the 1990s preserved vast swatches of land from the Pacific Rim National Park right through the Walbran, Carmanah, and a host of others.”
The statement from the Pacheedaht leadership strengthened Horgan's hand in pushing back against the Greens. But so far it has not helped to lift the blockade.
On the day after the statement, another member of the First Nation disputed the claim that the signatories spoke for the Pacheedaht.
Bill Jones, an elder who has supported the protest since it began, disputed Frank Queesto Jones' use of the title of hereditary chief: “He is not eligible to make the claim for the Jones family line, and is not informed by the hereditary system amongst our peoples.”
With that, Bill Jones vowed to fight on: “I feel like an oldgrowth tree is worth the same as my life. I implore people to continue to stand with me to protect our forests from destruction and colonialism because we need allies on the ground to stop old growth logging in my home territory, and for my future generations and relatives.”
Not uncommon for there to be differing views in a First Nation, same as any other community in this disputatious province.
But in this case it leaves the standoff about where it stood at the beginning of April, when B.C. Supreme Court Justice Frits Verhoeven granted Teal-jones group the injunction.
Given the dug-in nature of the protest, the judge indicated that “there appears to be little or no likelihood that the injunction order will be respected” without police enforcement.
While the Pacheedaht leaders provided Horgan with some cover in political terms, they haven't spared him the likelihood of a showdown between police and protesters in the Fairy Creek corner of his riding.
(Premier John Horgan) took a swipe at protesters who claim to be standing up for the rights of Indigenous people.