COTR Adventure Training campus set in a great town, Fernie, B.C.

Picture of Joe giving the thumbs up with his dad and friends from Kwadacha

More than a few First Nation youth are taking steps into the world of education to find their way onto bigger things. Joseph Syme, age 19, from Prince George, B.C., is a descendant of the Secwepmec Nation; Joe's mother is a member of the Canim Lake Indian Band.

Joe Syme spent this academic year at the College of the Rockies Fernie Campus in their nine month program toward the Adventure Tourism Degree. He took this interesting diversion after a year at University of Northern B.C. in the Environmental Planning department.

Fernie, "was amazing," said Syme, "Pretty much the best year of my life. It was nine months of extreme activity," and he listed off rock climbing, skiing, rafting, and other activities. "It was all-season, started in September with wilderness travel, hiking, and mountaineering." He said the winter portion included ski-touring, walking uphill on skis then skiing downhill, "It's all worth the effort to get some unbelievable downhill turns."

Syme was immersed in a program involving a lot of intense physical challenges, "rock-climbing is where you tackle a rock face, and mountain climbing is part of a package that includes ice climbing. Mountaineering is taking you to the top of the mountain. You go for the peaks."

The COTR program at Fernie is about training people to manage outdoor adventures. "In-class stuff was based on first aid and risk management," said Syme, "liability waivers, and so forth from the legal point of view," sessions conducted by lawyers.

The business end of Adventure Tourism classroom study included computer time on different applications on Windows in Excel and Word in particular, said Syme, "Another class on entrepreneurship included business people from Fernie. A lot of the times in adventure tourism the companies are pretty small, and we learned about a rafting company in Fernie, and a mountain bike touring company."

Mountain biking was not part of the course, "Next year they are integrating a portion about mountain biking. The certifications that I got help get jobs in the industry. First aid and ski-instructing, swift-water rescue, and life guard training," these are valuable certificates in seeking employment.

"We did a couple of hiking trips; most of it was oriented toward winter avalanche skills training and there was a deadly snowpack this year, kind of dangerous, people died." He also engaged in winter camping, staying in tents: "We hiked in our own tents and a couple of other trips were done where we stayed in huts.

"We did winter survival and dug snow caves and stayed in those. We burrowed out a cave and it was really warm. You can also trench-dig a shelter in the snow and it is faster but not as warm a shelter. Digging the snow cave takes about an hour and it might not be the best choice in a real blizzard."

They learned how to start fires the fastest and most efficient way. "We learned a technique called the bundle technique, bundle branches and break them off in a particular way and it is guaranteed to start a fire with one match. You pick the wood off the surrounding trees so it's not practical in alpine conditions."

In-class assignments included written tests, "For certification there was rigorous testing, especially in First Aid. The outdoor trips were tested by instructor observation with feedback sheets and group debriefing," and this composed part of the marks.

"My marks were pretty good," said Syme. "They talked to us individually to discuss the weaknesses. If we were doing our written assignments we were able to engage the instructors in the outdoors. And you had to have a certain percent on the tests like 80 percent on First Aid. A few students fell off in the marks in these areas," said Syme.

Numas Warrior a powerful ship-berthing tugboat for the Orca Quarry Marine Terminal

The Orca Quarry located on the east coast of northern Vancouver Island, 3.8 km west of Port McNeill, B.C., is permitted to produce 6.6 million tons of sand and gravel per year. Production began in Feb. 2007 including a dedicated ship-loading facility in Port McNeill for handling vessels up to 80,000 tons.

This harbour activity is now enhanced by the delivery of the Numas Warrior to Port McNeill, “a powerful and modern ship-berthing tugboat now in service assisting 80,000 ton capacity Panamax class freighters in and out of the Orca Quarry marine terminal,” said Mike Westerlund, Communications Manager, Polaris Minerals Corporation.

Polaris owns 88% of Orca Quarry, with the remaining 12% interest held by Namgis First Nation, said Westerlund, “The tugboat ownership group, consisting of Polaris Minerals Corporation of Vancouver, the Sea Legend Group of Port Hardy and Island Tug and Barge of Vancouver, were pleased to press the Numas Warrior into service in December.”

Since then the Warrior has been on hand to move each freighter loaded at the quarry and assists with the loading of barges dispatched for Vancouver. The tugboat operates powerful engines with rotating drives, “on a beamy, flat-bottomed hull design. The boat is about 60 feet long, 30 feet wide and has a relatively flat bottom,” said  Westerlund, “When combined with its twin 1,200 hp diesel engines and 360 degree rotating Z drives, this boat can move sideways almost as fast as it can move forwards.”

He said these attributes make it ideal for controlling the movements of large vessels, and “the new boat has won the admiration of all who have worked with her, including the BC Coast Pilots.” The twin MTU diesels meet Tier II emission standards, an advanced standard for clean burning diesel engines.

Talking Stick, Vancouver Island, Indigenous Art, by artist unknown

 

Canadian wood fuel is powering European cities

The time is now for things to change in forestry in B.C. and across Canada, said John Swaan, Wood Pellet Association of Canada's executive director. The industry faces many challenges, and among them an excess of deteriorating wood fibre that is growing in value, depending on the outcome of research and development in the use of bio-mass for energy.

"Access to sawmill residue is hard to find," said John. "The sawmill residue is being totally utilized. Meanwhile non-commercial grade fibre is abundant in the B.C. forests and elsewhere," due to existing forestry practices. The problem for wood pellet manufacture is that to harvest debris would cause a five-fold increase in the cost of fibre used in wood pellet manufacture because sawmill residue has been the cost-efficient commodity to make wood pellets to this date.

Nevertheless, "The forest floor holds the future of economic development," said John. In terms of bio-energy, untold mega-watts of electricity are being slashed and piled and burnt in North America's forests, a situation that becomes practically macabre when the deterioration of mountain pine beetle factors into the equation. In that disaster lies an opportunity, and the members of the association are poised to develop a new economic sector.

 People like John Swaan are impacted by the current state of B.C. forests because they are close witnesses to the situation. "I have made many trips through the B.C. Interior looking at forests that I was involved doing the replanting of lodgepole pine, and those trees of 30 years ago are dead." John doesn't mind saying the Ministry of Forests in B.C. remains bent on placating licensees and that is a perpetual reality in North American forestry, companies rule the forests. Things may be changing, however, and Swaan said First Nations are major partners in accessing volume of fibre required to the bio-mass/energy production equation, whatever form it ends up taking.

"We need to reclaim and remediate forests and First Nations are front-line advocates of the process. We have to deal with big changes in forests because of 50 years of fire suppression in forestry management." Fire is an ecological player that has played a reduced role, and it is a major part of the way forests have evolved. Meanwhile, the market for wood-generated energy is expanding, "Wood is displacing coal in Europe," said John. "In one Belgian city one of our members started shipping 120,000 tonnes of wood pellet annually to replace 80,000 tonnes of coal." Cities in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the UK are switching from coal fuel to wood. Canada is the source of their wood-energy.

The wood pellet industry runs on a shoe string, according to Len Fox, General Manager, Premium Pellet, in Vanderhoof, B.C., "It's difficult to make money. Our fibre costs are high and our profit margins are tight." Even so, Premium Pellet is filling orders as usual in Europe, and increasingly more often in North America. The area of operation for Premium Pellet is northern B.C., which puts Premium Pellet in close liaison with First Nations throughout the territory and they work exceptionally closely with Saikuz First Nation.

"Six of our 15 employees are First Nation and one of them is about to become certified as a millwright," said Len who grew up in Telkwa, B.C., a historical village of 1,400 located on the Bulkley and Telkwa Rivers. This is a completely integrated community of Babine First Nation people living with those of non-Native descent.

The business is export-driven and viability depends on watching costs, "We're the tail wagging the dog at this end of the industry. We are affected whenever CN Rail puts up their rates or truckers put up their rates. On the other hand we're pretty comfortable in our operations right now. We have an affordable supply of fibre and good relations all around."

 The Premium Pellet is a subsidiary of L&M Lumber Ltd. and Nechako Lumber Co Ltd. "L&M has agreements to employ Saik'uz First Nation (Stoney Creek) people in their harvest and other operations," said Len. Saik'uz is located 9km south-east of Vanderhoof on Kenney Dam road.

First Nation owned college feeling economy’s crunch

Haisla Nation in Kitimat, B.C., owns a Registered Private College in partnership with Alcan Aluminum and Roger Leclerc is the director of Kitimat Valley Institute (KVI). "We do several areas of programs," said Leclerc, "Aboriginal Education and Training, Technical and Industry programs, consulting work, special programs for management, pulp and paper technician program," and KVI has run a power engineering program in the past, "and still have the curriculum for that program." KVI has a conference centre for rent. (Story 2009)
 

At KVI, "Presently we are providing a 10 month employment training initiative that provides them with a Dogwood (high school diploma) certificate," said  Leclerc. "We are delivering academic and life skills programs, employment readiness, and work experience placements into jobs." The demands of a changing economy are creating new business opportunities in the region, and KVI runs a 12-day Aboriginal BEST Program, delivered on behalf of the Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, as run by Bruce Lacroix, "We've run it for the last two years," said  Leclerc. "It provides information and the ability to start a business," teaching the students business plans and marketing skills.
 
"With all these different industries coming into the region a local small business community will benefit," said Leclerc. KVI is using various delivery modes to put the education on-stream, "We deliver on-line programs and offer computer labs." Trades and equipment operation are offered, "KVI, Kitimaat Village (Haisla Nation's central community), and North West Community College are delivering a carpentry and housing maintenance program to produce residential housing workers."
 

Leclerc noted, "We struggle on delivering an essential job readiness program at KVI because it's a social program," and the education funds are hard to find. "We'll have 20 people register and 15 to 17 will complete it. This year we started with 10 and it's tough because we get no public funding. We've had industry and shareholders KVI's partners) fund the program in the past." The job readiness program delivers wider community benefits by building the capacity of the community for employment, "It has a September start date and we want to keep it alive. ALCAN is 110 percent behind what KVI is doing. We have anywhere between 500 and 1000 students and we operate 12 months a year." Leclerc said the ALCAN modernization program is moving ahead at a reduced pace in this 'down' economy, "and we are anticipating major expansions for industry, which works 12 months a year."

Meanwhile the school programs, industry related and dependent, have been reduced in scale to match the shrunken economic activity of a recession, "We've gone to job sharing ourselves, no layoffs, but KVI staff has been put on a three-day work week."

Dialogue on Aquaculture in First Nations Drum April 2009

 

Canadians for Reconciliation continue to meet with success

The Elders from Sto:lo, Stat'myx, Salish, and Nisga'a nations needed to be housed out of the elements during the Chinese New Year's Day Parade in Vancouver, B.C., as it happened to be a cold one on Jan. 27, 2009, "A very cold and wet event this year," said Bill Chu, who organized an assembly of First Nations in the parade on Main Street.

Bill Chu's guests, the wait for the march of the dragons and that doesn't normally happen. Bill has organized similar multi-cultural events over the past few years in Vancouver.

"It always seems to be raining on the New Year's Parade," said Bill, "but this year it was bitterly cold." Bill Chu is a driving force behind Canadians for Reconciliation, "a peaceful non-partisan grassroots movement committed to developing a new relationship with aboriginal people, one that signifies a deep apology for past injustice, a willingness to honor truth now, and a resolve to embrace each other in the new millennium."

There is some missing pieces too, that they would like to embrace. "A professor at UBC informed Bill that the 1881 census in B.C. revealed 20 percent of the non-Aboriginal population in the province was Chinese. "There were more Chinese than any other single immigrant group. There is no history books that explain this, and it paints the Chinese of British Columbia in the completely different light."

Chinese were indeed a populous group, but not exactly a uniform one because the in-migration was practically entirely men. Furthermore because of the misinformation in the history books, "Today we are seen as recent immigrants. Our history has been suppressed to benefit of the white guys. Aboriginal people and our people were treated similar ways. We suffered similar discrimination and all of it was written right out of the history books.

"In the 1800s when the government of B.C. would give away free tracts of land only two groups of people were excluded from this privilege: Chinese and Aboriginal. We were useful to work on building the railroad and working in the mines, but we were never welcome and they used us out of necessity. It was a cheap way to finish the railroad." As a result the years 1881 to 1885 compose a memorable chapter of labour exploitation of Chinese men.

"It's not just about wages," said Bill, "and we didn't get those every day of the year either. We were only paid nine months of the year. During winter there was no work and they stopped paying us. It trapped the people in place with no health care, inadequate constructions to survive to winter, and no way to save any money." Everything they saved was spent on surviving three wintery months with no income.

The Chinese began turning to the only alliances open due to the draconian systemic racism that was blossoming in the North American continent, with B.C. distinguished by particular complications related to the location on the Pacific Rim, namely, Pacific-based people. 

Bill said, "The Aboriginal story I like to tell is from a Chinese restaurant owner who was passing away, and he gathered his children around him, and he told them, 'You have to treat the Aboriginal people well.'

"'Why must we do this?' asked the restaurateur's children, 'Way back when I was a railroad worker who got injured I was left by the tracks to die because that is what they did for us. Nothing. A few agonizing days a group of Aboriginal people walked by and picked me up and took me home where they nursed me back to health. And I became a restaurant owner.'"

Bill noted, "That's just one insight. The fact is that in 1885 the white guys decided, 'We don't want the Chinese here anymore.' They started the head tax in 1885, slapped on the infamous head tax $50 to enter the country. Only the Chinese, nobody else, had to pay the head tax. At that time for $50 you could buy a house. It was a lot of money"

The Chinese already in the country for many years may have once intended to return to China but their chances of that had always been slim and now they were none. He said the era of the head tax put the Canadian Chinese in a big dilemma. Here they were, many of them since 1858, and suddenly it is was stick around in Vancouver enduring this horrendous discrimination and scraping for a living. That was the moment when some of them intermarried with Aboriginal population."

Bill Chu is hopeful that a wider body of research begins to develop in the history of Chinese in British Columbia because it precedes Canada and the Chinese should be acknowledged for their place in the foundations of an important nation in the world.

The way it’s got to be for mining in B.C.

The B.C. First Nations Mining Conference late last year in Prince George, B.C. contained intensive discussion at an open mike from representatives of First Nations across the province. The microphone was open to the First Nation leadership, and the mining industry in attendance listened to input throughout the conference.

“It was within the modern day treaty making process, the recommendations that came forward front and centre, that said you have to deal with each other with respect,” said one speaker from the Dease Lake area of Northern B.C.. 

“What does that really mean?" he asked. "Does that mean offering as little as possible, disrespecting our people by the offers on the table? I think that here we are trying to find solutions about how to get along with industry, and how to be partners, and how to find solutions together. I think that can be most effective if we clearly understand what that word respect means.”

He said, “We wouldn’t have to coerce government to change legislation or the regulations about how we conduct business with our people if we lived respecting people and others. If industry regarded that word and its full meaning, and some of them do, I don’t paint the brush broadly, because some come to us and say, ‘We want to work together,’ but the thing is that with the climate here and the unresolved issues we need to spread that message, even to our own people. To me it’s an important word.”

Another speaker from the Treaty Eight area (north-east B.C.) said, “We were in the process of negotiating mining agreements with companies in our area, and they told the government that they were talking with us.”

He explained, “After that little bit of information was exchanged they stopped talking to us. We’ve got mining happening all over our area, and they opened another mine to start producing coal, and there is not one person from our community working in it.”

He noted with some frustration, “They offered $700 for education in our community. Seven hundred dollars doesn’t even cover the cost of busing our kids to school in Chetwynd.”

A speaker from the Campbell River area, John Henderson, former chief of the Campbell River Indian Band, said, “Up and down the coast, isolated remote communities have felt the impact of the logging industry as well as the overfishing. They are now left with very little in those communities. So the challenge that we have regards mining a sustainable resource. If the answer is no, it isn’t sustainable, how do we insure that the First Nations and non-First Nation communities are sustainable after the mining resource is gone?”

“You know as First Nations it is very difficult to do business. We get the finger pointed at us and the non-Native community won’t talk to us. We’re going through a lot of that at home right now. If we’re going to be true partners then let’s have First Nations at the table. Let us develop a partnership. Let’s talk about business.” 

Henderson noted, “We’ve got all kinds of boards and associations across this country where First Nations aren’t even a part of anymore. We need a voice, whatever that may be. If we’re going to be partners with a mining company or an oil and gas company then 50 percent of that organization should be First Nation. There is no question about that. So how do we get there?”

He said, “It’s up to council members to make sure they buy into the process. But if there is nothing on the table and the end of the day what is the point? We can’t just be pawns in the business world there. “The way it comes out, it is prejudice. And that is what the non-Native community is saying to us, ‘You want the door open. You want guaranteed employment. What about us? Where are our jobs?’”

“That’s on the other side of the table. That’s got to stop. There is nothing unions and all those things that are out there.”

Henderson concluded, “It’s a long story every time we talk about partnership with non-Native organizations. How do we fix it? Like I said, there should be First Nation involvement in the true sense of the word. Because there is no BS’n about it, that’s the way it's got to be. 

Fraser River Salmon Table Society meeting to devise new long-term strategies

The Fraser River Salmon Table Society is working toward consensus, said to Richard McGuigan, PhD, co-chair of the table (along with Marcel Shepert, Pacific Salmon Treaty) meeting in Prince George, BC, Sep 18 07, at the Prince George Native Friendship Centre.

 

Dr. McGuigan said, “Cooperative Decision Management is the way to achieve consensus,” for the fledgling table society.

 

By this emerging method interest-based negotiations are conducted through (three) stages and everybody abides by a final consensus. Cooperative Decision Management allows no veto to any party, and is not co-management, which, “has a negative reputation and gives regulators a lot of power,” said co-chair McGuigan.

 

The salmon table process must respect the ability of First Nations to represent their constituencies,, said Doug Kelly, Sto:lo Tribal Council, “especially regarding the inter-tribal treaty process.” The table is open as long as Aboriginal rights and title are respected.

 

David Moore has worked on table planning, “One goal of the salmon table is to create transparency in marketing, ultimately to resolve problems like selling caviar for as low as 11 cents per pound and finding out it fetches $15 a pound in the US food market.”

 

This transparency is the goal of a Siska First Nation demonstration project, to, “catch, process, and sell their fish harvested from a fish wheel,” with approval of CFIA, BC Food Safety Act, and BC Centre for Disease Control.

 

Salmon is a commodity from the wild realm, and salmon is still largely misunderstood in terms of behaviour and even physiology. Moore explained, “We have learned colour of the flesh is not determined by how far up the river the fish has gone,” a previous assumption, “rather, maturity is the determinant in quality and colour of the flesh.”

 

This is interesting because the old view was the farther up the river salmon were caught the less red and more dark the flesh would be (and dark is inedible). Now upstream fishers can join the mainstream market.

 

“The key is flexibility in marketing,” said Moore to the table society meeting. He said, “Micro-processing can be done profitably without over-capitalization.” A boondoggle may exist in the provincial management of food health via Regional Health Authorities in BC.

 

The BC government says on the internet, “This structure, introduced in December 2001, modernized a complicated, confusing and expensive health care system by merging the previous 52 health authorities into a streamlined governance and management model.”

 

Today, said Moore, “these regional health authorities are charged with supplying permits required for the catching processing and selling of fish.”

 

The commercialization of fresh caught salmon may be advanced through a new process, noted Moore, that now includes a specific container for storing a fish, a card-board, wax-coat that preserves ice and fish together for the few hours required to get a fish a proper larder.

 

The problem is, however, a lack of fish to market. Teresa Ryan works in Vancouver as a fish biologist on the Pacific Salmon Commission and a scientist representing coastal First Nations. They were all asking the same question: where have all the fish gone?

 

A report in the Prince George Free Press said low salmon returns found along the Fraser River this year show nets producing a tenth the expected catch. As a result people are not going fishing.

 

Obviously this is a major concern in Canada’s North West Pacific where often the First Nations are losing of a way of life. Traditional salmon harvests unite communities but this year nobody goes to the river.

 

These people are facing a disappearing cultural diet, a staple food for the poor, and a lack of control over problems associated with the loss.

Kiteboarding the Inside Passage in winter