Quebec should go ahead and dam up the Great Whale River because it will create jobs for Crees, says Robert Kanatewat, former Chief of Chisasibi and commissioner of the Cree-Naskapi Commission.
“I sure as hell don’t like how the opposition is going (against Great Whale),” said Kanatewat in a phone interview. “We’re not only cutting employment for our own people but for all the people in Canada.”
Kanatewat’s controversial views recently got aired in an unflattering profile of Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come in the magazine L’Actualite.
“It’s not up to us to say if we need the power or not. We’re not in the power business and neither are the environmentalists.
If we want to save our country a bit better, let them build that (Great Whale) and then we can really fight NBR. There’s less effect of building Great Whale than NBR.
“I don’t have anything against the Great Whale people,” he emphasized.
“It’s a matter of being sensible. I’m not totally for damming the rivers but on the other hand what else do I have?”
Kanatewat, 60, was Chief of Chisasibi through most of the 1970s and Vice-Chief at the Grand Council in the late 1970s. Afterwards he moved into the business world and became president of a number of companies which could conceivably benefit from contracts should Great Whale go ahead. He is president—without pay, he emphasizes— of Kepa Transport, Besuum Petroleum, Air Wemindji and Eeyou Transport.
Kanatewat says his views on life were shaped by the extreme hardships he witnessed during the period of starvation in the 1930s and 1940s.
“This is where I get my ambition to not just sit around and wait for something to happen,” he said. “The active people are the ones who make things happen. You have to go out and create things. This is what makes the world go round.”
Kanatewat acknowledged that his views place him at odds with the mainstream of Cree society.
“They call for stopping developments in the territory and then in the same tone they are asking for jobs,” he said. “Yet they don’t want to seek jobs in the south. All they want is the jobs to come to them. And that doesn’t happen. The only way jobs are coming is from development.”
Still, Kanatewat insisted that he doesn’t want to see the land destroyed by developers. “If people think I’m for the destruction of the land, no sir. I don’t mind going out on the land. But what about my children? If they have children of their own, won’ttakethem out for sure.”
