Mistissini is seeking support from other Cree communities and regional leaders to stop a new forestry camp planned in the heart of the band’s territory.

Mistissini learned of the proposed new camp last April, but has yet to get any details about it or an expansion of logging roads proposed by Chantiers Chibougamau.

At a meeting with Mistissini representatives on Sept. 5, the company insisted that all its plans are legal under Quebec law and said Cree concerns are less important than keeping the timber flowing to its 400-employee mill in Chibougamau.

“We don’t know the size of the camp, how many people are going to be housed there, how close it will be to areas sensitive to the Crees, or what impacts it will have on them,” said Sam Etapp, who was at the meeting with the company.

“How much traffic will it create? What if it affects the water system? What if they start pumping waste into the rivers, as Hydro-Quebec has done in the past?”

Mistissini traplines have witnessed a great expansion in logging operations as forests in Quebec’s south have been depleted. Two companies, Chantiers Chibougamau and Barrette-Chapais, hold the timber licenses to cut in Mistissini lands.

Said Etapp, “All of the southern traplines will be affected as far as the Rupert River Basin, Coldwater Lake and the headwaters of the Temiscamie River. It will be the same level of activity as in Waswanipi and Ouje-Bougoumou. Nemaska will also be affected.”

The new logging camp is planned for somewhere in the area to the east of the community. A 120-km logging road already exists that branches off from Route 167, the road from Chibougamau north-east to Lac Albanel. Etapp said the company wants to extend the existing logging road southwards. Soon it will hook up with logging roads snaking northward from Lac St. Jean. “That’s going to really open up the territory. For non-Native hunters, that’s ideal for them,” said Etapp, whose own family’s trapline is in the heart of the affected territory.

No environmental hearings are planned to examine the projects. Quebec does not require hearings on most forestry projects in the North, arguing that the James Bay Agreement exempts forestry from such hearings. Hearings are required in the south. Crees have long opposed this policy.

Etapp said Quebec should be taken to court and forced to hold hearings because forestry is devastating the Cree traditional way of life, which is protected by the James Bay Agreement and the Constitution.

“It’s an environmental crime,” he said. “Cree lands are becoming barren wastelands. It’s becoming very difficult to pursue a decent way of life based on subsistence. If there is no land base to teach our children traditional knowledge, it comes down to cultural genocide that’s taking place,” said Etapp.

“There is no respect for burial grounds, or culturally and historically significant areas. Traditional tallymen talk these days about the state of land they will have to pass on to someone in their families. What kind of land am I turning over to my children? Will they be able to make a decent living off it, as I have?”

Chantiers Chibougamau did not return our phone calls.