Category: Action Reports

This past June, the Tobique First Nation set up a road­block on the high­way lead­ing to the Mac­taquac hydro dam in south cen­tral New Brunswick., reviv­ing a strug­gle for power–hydro pow­er– that goes back to the mid 1800s. The New­ly-found­ed N.B. Media Co-op reports.

“Pack Up and Get Out”

Why the Tobique First Nation took con­trol of their territory’s hydro dam

TOBIQUE FIRST NATION – On the morn­ing of Mon­day, June 8, 2009, a group of Maliseet com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers walked peace­ful­ly into the hydro sta­tion. Stephen (Red Feath­er) Per­ley approached the New Brunswick Pow­er Cor­po­ra­tion (NB Pow­er) employ­ees and said, “You guys have fif­teen min­utes to pack up and get out.” The employ­ees left, the com­mu­ni­ty wrapped a chain around the gate and locked it. The dam was now the prop­er­ty of the Tobique First Nation.

Tobique, the largest Maliseet reserve in the province, first reject­ed a developer’s bid to build a hydro dam on their ter­ri­to­ry in 1844. They reject­ed anoth­er bid in 1895. At that time, the Tobique Riv­er was “part of what may well have been the great­est salmon riv­er sys­tem in the world,” (along with the St John Riv­er and its oth­er trib­u­taries) with hun­dreds of thou­sands of fish swim­ming upstream to spawn each year. The abun­dant salmon defined the community’s way of life, pro­vid­ing food and employ­ment – many worked as guides in the sum­mer months.

By 1945, indi­vid­ual devel­op­ers had giv­en way to provin­cial and fed­er­al agen­cies and in 1950 New Brunswick’s Pre­mier approved con­struc­tion of a dam at Tobique with­out con­sult­ing the land’s own­ers. By the end of the year, con­struc­tion had begun.

When Tobique’s chief learned of the plan, he wrote to Indi­an Affairs, demand­ing “suit­able action to pro­tect our rights. If the build­ing can­not be stopped,” he wrote, “we demand com­pen­sa­tion.” For this, he sug­gest­ed “free elec­tric­i­ty for all domes­tic uses busi­ness on the reser­va­tion.” This was nev­er hon­oured – as soon as the com­mu­ni­ty had pow­er lines, they received pow­er bills. The Band Coun­cil paid these bills for Elders and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers on social assis­tance.

Today, bare­ly any wild salmon still make their way up the Tobique riv­er. Tobique res­i­dents blame the high rates of can­cer on the pow­er lines over their reserve and the tox­ic chem­i­cals dumped and sprayed on their land by NB Pow­er. The dam has erod­ed the reserve’s river­banks, lead­ing to “trees being washed away and homes in dan­ger of falling into the riv­er”. Many of the edi­ble and med­i­c­i­nal plants are gone – the islands they grew on are under­wa­ter. And iron­i­cal­ly, Tobique res­i­dents are charged among the high­est elec­tric­i­ty rates in the province.

In the spring of 2008, Canada’s Depart­ment of Indi­an and North­ern Affairs put Tobique’s finances under third par­ty man­age­ment; the Band Coun­cil was now around $20 mil­lion in debt. The new man­ag­er stopped pay­ing the pow­er bills of Elders and mem­bers on social assis­tance, and in April of 2008 these house­holds began receiv­ing bills for thou­sands of dol­lars.

Despite all of its trou­bles, Tobique remains a lush, pic­turesque locale, with many proud res­i­dents deeply devot­ed to their land and to each oth­er. When NB Pow­er threat­ened to cut off an Elder’s elec­tric­i­ty, the com­mu­ni­ty stepped in.

In May of 2008, a group of Tobique activists set up a block­ade by the road into the reserve and denied NB Pow­er access, first to the reserve and soon after that to the dam as well. Almost all band mem­bers stopped pay­ing their pow­er bills pend­ing a nego­ti­at­ed agree­ment.

In July of 2008, the com­mu­ni­ty began allow­ing NB Pow­er access to the dam to do repairs and main­te­nance on the con­di­tion that NB Pow­er employ­ees check in with them first and that a band mem­ber escorts the employ­ees into the dam or com­mu­ni­ty.

That month, NB Pow­er for­gave over $200,000 worth of hydro bills, but they were not will­ing to nego­ti­ate a long-term arrange­ment to the community’s sat­is­fac­tion. The women sat at the block­ade every day until Novem­ber, when New Brunswick’s no-dis­con­nect pol­i­cy comes into effect. The pol­i­cy pre­vents NB Pow­er from cut­ting off anyone’s elec­tric­i­ty, which is all the more poignant since the 2008 death of Paul Durelle, a man in Baie-Ste-Anne, NB whose pow­er was cut off by NB Pow­er when he couldn’t pay his bills over the win­ter.

This spring, the strug­gle began again. In May of 2009, an NB Pow­er employ­ee was found on to the reserve read­ing meters. The com­mu­ni­ty gath­ered and, on June 8th, took over the gen­er­at­ing sta­tion. The block­ade went back up, this time by the high­way in front of the dam.

Ten­sions esca­lat­ed on June 26, 2009, when a truck rolled by the block­ade and into the sta­tion. When the block­aders caught up with it, the dri­ver was talk­ing on his cell phone. Stephen Per­ley told him to hang up. “You’re tres­pass­ing,” Per­ley said, “On behalf of Tobique First Nation, I’m seiz­ing the truck.”

They escort­ed the flus­tered dri­ver up to the block­ade, where they gave him food and water. He phoned his employ­er to pick him up, but NB Pow­er refused. The RCMP drove him home.

At the time of writ­ing, nego­ti­a­tions con­tin­ue. Maliseet women sit at the block­ade every day play­ing cards and watch­ing for NB Pow­er trucks as the cars dri­ve by, many honk­ing in sup­port. The dam con­tin­ues to oper­ate, NB Pow­er con­tin­ues to prof­it off of Tobique’s land, and the block­aders con­tin­ue to allow work­ers in for main­te­nance and repairs.

The First Nation has made some gains: on June 30th, 2009, the provin­cial Min­is­ter of Abo­rig­i­nal Affairs com­mit­ted to fund­ing the restora­tion of erod­ed river­banks and the clean-up of tox­ic and oth­er wastes dumped at and around the dam.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Ottawa’s Depart­ment of Jus­tice recent­ly val­i­dat­ed Tobique’s spe­cif­ic land claim, which will like­ly be the largest in Atlantic Cana­da, and nego­ti­a­tions are under­way for com­pen­sa­tion.

How­ev­er, the dam and now a truck worth $170,000 are in the hands of the Tobique First Nation and they’re not giv­ing them back with­out an equi­table set­tle­ment. Key issues that must be addressed include com­pen­sa­tion for dam­ages and shar­ing ben­e­fits from the dam, includ­ing at least some amount of ongo­ing free elec­tric­i­ty. Such a solu­tion seems unlike­ly in the near future, and Tobique’s unpaid pow­er bills now total over $800,000.

In the weeks and months to come, any­one con­cerned with Indige­nous rights should keep a close eye on the province of New Brunswick.

There is some­what of a mys­tery sur­round­ing “the ash­es of Vedic village”—what remains of the upscale five star tourist resort near Kolkata, West Ben­gal, after it was set ablaze on August 23.

Most reports say an “irate mob” set the fire after a local soc­cer match between employ­ees of Vedic vil­lage and anoth­er resort. The two teams appar­ent­ly start­ed fight­ing each oth­er after the win­ner was declared.

The fight lit­er­al­ly turned into a war, with both teams shoot­ing guns and throw­ing “crude bombs” at each anoth­er.

Appar­ent­ly, the Vedic Vil­lage team sought refuge in the resort. Then, the mob set fire to it. “The entire 5,000 sqft club-house, includ­ing the recep­tion, the gam­ing room, library and two con­fer­ence halls… some farm­hous­es,” and dozens of sur­round­ing cot­tages were burned.

There is, how­ev­er, anoth­er side of this sto­ry that is get­ting almost no cov­er­age by the press.

It begins with a group of farm­ers being ter­ror­ized and forced into giv­ing up their land to a real­ty agency, Vedic Real­ty.

After they were dis­pos­sessed, some 30 years ago, the land was “tak­en back” by the gov­ern­ment. Appar­ent­ly, Vedic did not have legal “autho­riza­tion” to hold the land.

At this point, the gov­ern­ment should have redis­trib­uted to land to the farm­ers. How­ev­er, Vedic Real­ty took a bold step for­ward. They took the mat­ter to West Bengal’s high court. And then they won.

The gov­ern­ment quick­ly turned around and approached Vedic for an out-of-court set­tle­ment, offer­ing to sell them the land. They should have chal­lenged the rul­ing. Vedic was more than hap­py to accept the offer, after all, it meant they would have the land legal­ly from then on.

Over the years, Vedic Vil­lage made quite a name for itself. News agen­cies proud­ly inform us of its lux­u­ri­ous mar­vels, how it was “care­ful­ly designed for five-star ambi­ence, with­out com­pro­mis­ing the vil­lage ide­al;” how it pro­vides tourists and movie stars alike with all the won­ders of moder­ni­ty: “a bar, restau­rant, a lotus-shaped pool”. It even has games to enter­tain the kids while you play a nice round of golf. “It doesn’t get any bet­ter than this.”

How­ev­er, beneath the sur­face of Vedic Vil­lage, stood a seething mon­ster. It was “a den of crim­i­nal activ­i­ties rang­ing from pros­ti­tu­tion to bomb-mak­ing,” says Partho Sarathi Ray from the activist group, San­hati.

The last five years has been espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult for the vil­lagers, because they were now forced to bear wit­ness to con­stant, dis­rup­tive forces. All the while through, hold­ing on to the mem­o­ry of how their land was ripped away from them, “sto­ries of what the rich and famous did in their leisure time fil­tered into the vil­lage, pro­vok­ing won­der and then, dis­gust,” adds the Times of India.

Acknowl­edg­ing this lega­cy of suffering—that ranged from vio­lence and dis­pos­ses­sion to seg­re­ga­tion, aur­al abuse and the con­stant dis­rup­tion of their every­day lives—it is cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble that Vedic vil­lage was burnt to the ground because the law­ful own­ers of the land were final­ly com­pelled to take mat­ters into their own hands. What oth­er choice did they have?

If it is not the case well, then at least this sto­ry is final­ly out in the open. And maybe the vil­lagers will final­ly be able to live and sleep like they would before there land was tak­en. Peace­ful­ly.