Fasting Forward
Chief RoseAnne Archibald takes on a pulp giant
by Laurence Steven HighGrader Magazine Sept./Oct. 2000

On Saturday July 15th Chief RoseAnne Archibald of the New Post First Nation near Cochrane finally had something to eat. It was day 19 of a fast she began on June 27th as part of combined protests staged by New Post and Wahgoshig First Nation (near Matheson) against the world's largest pulp and paper company - Abitibi Consolidated. By day 16 she was getting "very, very ill" and her supporters were becoming quite concerned.
"I thought to myself, so this is the beginning of dying," says Archibald. Though she was prepared to continue the fast, her New Post elders intervened.
"They told me I couldn't die now, that there was too much to do. We're facing big time consuming issues of hydro development and mining exploration in our traditional territories, as well as the Abitibi cutting. They were concerned that as Chief I needed to be involved in those negotiations. And as their elected official, if they tell me to stop, I stop."

I met RoseAnne Archibald in September of 1998 at Laurentian University in Sudbury, where she had enrolled in our Interdisciplinary Humanities M.A. in Interpretation and Values. I remember her sitting at our seminar table in a course called "The Crisis of Humanism."
She regularly made sure that the issues we discussed were also seen from a native perspective, and though she was very interested in, and thoughtful about, a wide range of issues from the Western humanist tradition, there was often the merest hint of a wry grin on her face, as though we confident non-native professors and students just didn't quite "get" a whole spiritual and cultural reality which she was rooted in.
RoseAnne also loves theatre, and did her M.A. practicum at the Sudbury Theatre Centre. I sensed from her that she found the M.A. class discussions and presentations to be stimulating performances, but that finally her non-performance reality was elsewhere.
This sense was borne out when I spoke to her recently.
"The best part of the M.A. for me was the development of a much deeper critical and analytical awareness than I had when I entered. This has helped me to understand my current opponents better; I can see where their Western thinking comes from-and I can also see more clearly where my thinking comes from."
The theatre experience also offered her something: "In theatre one of the main qualities is discipline- knowing how to focus. That transfers well into my current job. But there is a big difference. These negotiations, this protest-these are not acting, not performance: they're real."
The train of events that led RoseAnne Archibald to her began in March of this year when New Post was in negotiations with Abitibi in an attempt to develop a Cooperative Partnership Framework for conservation and resource management. New Post was looking for protection of areas of sacred or otherwise special concern, such as trap-lines and burial grounds. Archibald had already successfully negotiated a similar 20 year agreement with Tembec Industries Inc., and was hopeful about these meetings with Abitibi.
In late April, however, the Wahgoshig First Nation blockaded Abitibi's logging road to try to force the company to stop cutting in their sacred areas and to begin negotiating. Abitibi said they couldn't talk to Wahgoshig until they had settled with New Post.
Archibald withdrew from negotiations for fear that New Post would be used as a pawn in negotiations with Wahgoshig. Faced with the continuing Wahgoshig blockade, Abitibi then attempted to move into New Post territory to cut, claiming that circumstances were forcing their hand. New Post refused them.

On May 11th the parties met again, this time, the two First Nations, Abitibi, and representatives of the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources were all the table.
Though the bands removed the blockades as a gesture of goodwill, Abitibi didn't budge on the issue of cooperative resource management. Throughout the month it seemed to Archibald and Chief Paul Mackenzie of Wahgoshig that Abitibi was not negotiating seriously, but was simply trying to achieve a de-escalation of tension.
Consequently, the bands took their peaceful protests in other directions in an attempt to increase public awareness. On May 25th they began a series of rotating fasts, and undertook a Solidarity Caravan across the province from the Grassy Narrows First Nation in the west, to Abitibi's mill in Thunder Bay, then to Mike Harris' constituency office in North Bay, then on to Queen's Park in Toronto, to the legislature in Ottawa, and also to Abitibi's head office in Montreal by June 8th.
Throughout June, Chiefs Archibald and Mackenzie conducted numerous meetings with other First Nation leaders in the province. The Mushkegowuk Tribal Council, the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, the Chiefs of Ontario, and the Assembly of First Nations all threw their support behind the two northern Ontario communities.
And then, on June 27th, RoseAnne Archibald began her fast.
And she is adamant that it was a fast and not a hunger strike.
"Actually, it was not a political hunger strike but a spiritual fast. We saw it as a time of meditation and prayer. I gained a lot spiritually, both as a chief and as an individual person. I may do it again, though of course not for so long; it's a very spiritual process, but physically and mentally draining. I was essentially off work for three weeks after I stopped fasting, and I'm still recovering."
The spiritual dimension of the fast reinforced for Archibald her vision of the necessary for a new relationship between First Nations peoples and those non-natives who seek development in First Nation traditional territories.
"There is a value conflict taking place within native communities about our relationship with the land," Archibald says. "While a large part of us just wants to protect it, and leave it alone, another part of us recognizes that development is going to occur and that we have to be part of it, to share in it, if protection is going to be a real possibility. And one of the things I came to see through fasting," she continues, " was that that conflict, that struggle, is not just a native thing, but is universal. The need to balance development and conservation is a monumental issue."
That vision, though becoming more politically current at the end of the 20th century with incidents like Oka, Ipperwash, Burnt Church, as well as the Marshall and Delgamuukw decisions, is really not new according to Archibald.
"When my people signed Treaty 9 in 1905, we were entering into a relationship of sharing. It was not-could not be- about exchange of land or extinguishment of ownership in the European understanding of those things: the notion of ownership did not exist for us traditionally. My ancestors were happy to share the land. But in 95 years the sharing hasn't happened. All we're saying now with the idea of a new relationship is that we want a share."
When Archibald says "my people" or "my ancestors", she's not speaking figuratively. When Duncan Campbell Scott and the other Treaty 9 commissioners took their road-show (or, more accurately, canoe-show) up the Moose and Abitibi rivers from Moose Factory to New Post in August of 1905, they oversaw the election of the first chief of the New Post band: Esau Omakess. Esau's daughter became the first wife of RoseAnne Archibald's grandfather, who also was a New Post Chief. His son became chief as well, and now RoseAnne is Chief, currently in her second stint in the job, having been first elected 10 years ago when she was 23, surely one of the youngest Chiefs in the country.
Chief Archibald had three political objectives that she hoped her fasting would help New Post to achieve: 1) a meeting with Premier Mike Harris and Provincial Minister of Natural Resources John Snobelen. This has not happened. 2) a meeting with Federal Minister of Indian Affairs Bob Nault. This has happened. 3) a meeting with Abitibi Consolidated President John Weaver. This has happened.
"The meeting with John Weaver went well; though because he's American," laughs Archibald, "I spent a lot of the time educating him about the Canadian situation with First Nations peoples. He was very positive and says he wants the negotiations to conclude successfully to everyone's satisfaction, without further confrontations. I'm confident we will have an agreement with Abitibi. It won't be the same as the Tembec agreement, but the process will be similar."
The negotiating teams have been reorganized, and they have had meetings most recently on August 9th and 10th. Though hopeful, Archibald says it will take a long time.
"The MNR is having difficulty having this move forward. The reason is not clear to me, but I can speculate. With the Tembec 20 year agreement, the MNR went beyond the status quo in its dealings with First Nations, and now it's trying to back pedal. For Abitibi to sign a similar agreement would acknowledge that there has been a genuine change in the status quo. Though caught in a corner, the MNR won't yet acknowledge that. But it's only a matter of time."
At age 33, time is on Chief RoseAnne Archibald's side.

This article may be downloaded but any reprints require prior permission.

Back