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dam-l [harmful-hydro] CBC Radio Transcript on Hydro - PCN



T R A N S C R I P T

CBC RADIO - Winnipeg

APRIL, 18 2000

ANNOUNCER: The Pimicikamak Cree Nation in Manitoba has found an 
audience south of the border. The First Nation which used to be known 
as Cross Lake is winning over American environmentalists with stories 
of how flooding by Hydro twenty years ago destroyed their land, their 
culture and their lives. It's part of a campaign using some of
the 
same tactics and the same consultants employed by the James Bay Cree 
from Quebec to stop hydro development in northern Quebec in the
80's 
and 90's. 

But as CBC radio's Curt Petrovich found out some of those 
environmental allies are more interested in their own agenda than the 
plight of the people in Cross Lake. 

CURT PETROVICH: An audience of 200 people gathered in a lecture room 
at a Minneapolis University, most of them are Americans, most of them 
are environmental activitists. They are waiting for a tall barrell-
chested man to move in front of the podium microphone. His black hair 
gathered into a ponytail tail down the back of his suit jacket. chief 
John Miswagon has flown 1,000 kilometers to be here. He's Chief
of 
the Pimicikamak Cree Nation at Cross Lake Manitoba. His job is to 
represent the 5,500 band members.

CHIEF JOHN MISWAGON: It is also my duty to attend every funeral, and 
it is also my duty to go and identify bodies that are hanging from 
trees, from houses.

CURT PETROVICH: Pained looks pass over the faces of some people in 
the audience, then looks of anger or disgust as Miswagon blames 
Manitoba Hydro for the seven suicides last year and the 140 attempts 
since the fall.

JOHN MISWAGON: A society that allows a race of people to go on living 
in these conditions, I don't understand. I really
don't…Pardon me…

CURT PETROVICH: It's a story that has captured the attention of 
people such as George Kroeker. He's known as an activitist's 
activitist. Kroeker heads the North American Water Office, an 
environmental lobby group.

GEORGE KROEKER: You really couldn't expect Canadian consumers to 
purchase products that were made in the course of slavery. I mean, 
you just wouldn't, it's not even conceivable.

CURT PETROVICH: Kroeker agrees that that's an exaggeration, but 
justifiable if it forces the Minnesota regulators to question the 
recent 10-year deal won by Manitoba Hydro to sell 500 megawatts to 
Minnesota's Northern States Power, which is Hydro's largest
US 
customer.

GEORGE KROEKER: How we deal with the Aboriginal peoples of the Boreal 
Forrest is now an issue in the contract negotiations between Northern 
State Power Company and Manitoba Hydro. That's good, we're
starting 
to shed a little light on it. 

CURT PETROVICH: But that light isn't always purer. Literature put
out 
by the Sierra Club, for example, claims that Hydro earns a billion 
dollars a year from selling 5,000 megawatts to Minnesota, it's 
actually $300 million dollars for 500 megawatts. The group says Hydro 
is destroying 32 million acres of boreal forest. It's not,
it's 
actually 600 hundred thousand acres. Hydro has complained, but the 
facts remain unchanged in handouts at this conference. Anne Ostberg 
co-chairs the Sierra Club's Minnesota campaign against Hydro.

ANNE OSTBERG: Our ultimate goal would be to stop the import, to stop 
Northern States Power from purchasing hydro electricity from Manitoba 
Hydro.

CURT PETROVICH: And that's a goal the Manitoba Government is
taking 
seriously. Hydro is a Crown Corporation that will earn nearly $400 
million from its exports this year.

PREMIER GARY DOER: I think customers should know the truth.

CURT PETROVICH: Premier Gary Doer has already sent two native cabinet 
ministers to meet personally with US regulators and power companies. 
Doer is telling them that since forming the new government in 
September he's put Hydro critics on Hydro's board. He's
replaced the 
chairman and begun a dialogue with Cross Lake.

PREMIER GARY DOER: The change in government and the change in cabinet 
and the change in the board will allow us to make some changes in the 
community on behalf of the people and we want the chance to do that 
and we also want the chance and will take the chance to say it.

CURT PETROVICH: But the environmentalists are unmoved even by 
contradictory wishes of other Manitoba Cree. Norman Flett is Chief of 
the Split Lake Cree First Nation. Seventy-five percent of the 
flooding caused by Hydro occurred on Split Lake's traditional
land. 
But, Flett says his community now wants to work with Hydro to build a 
new smaller generating station to produce Hydro for export. The 
potential jobs and revenue will be lost if the Sierra Club is 
successful in killing Hydro's exports. So, Flett has flown to
this 
conference too. His message is that Cross Lake doesn't speak for
his 
community, and he wonders who the environmentalists think they are 
helping.

CHIEF NORMAN FLETT: Every time that First Nations were trying to make 
something of themselves, kind of create there own economy, we've 
always been regulated. I would say the non-native people in the 
world, whatever, whoever, are in the midst again of trying to deny us 
that economic base. I get really offended on that basis.

CURT PETROVICH: But for the Sierra Club, Chief Flett's view is 
ultimately irrelevant and Ostberg says Cross Lake got to them first.

ANNE OSTBERG: They wanted us to be involved and they wouldn't
have 
come to us to share with us their story.

REPORTER: And if another one steps forward and says we don't want
you 
to be involved who do you believe?

ANNE OSTBERG: We maintain our position that we do not support mega-
hydro projects.

REPORTER: Even if it's at their expense?

ANNE OSTBERG: I think that we have to focus on the environmental 
damage issue. I can't get in the middle of it.

CURT PETROVICH: But, the Sierra Club is in the middle of it. Its 
equated the very real suffering of people in Cross Lake with the 
valuable power that flows over the border, and the Cree have also 
been useful to environmentalists who figure them prominently in 
another campaign to stop a proposed hydro line in Minnesota and 
Wisconsin. Although it has nothing to do with Manitoba Hydro or 
Manitoba Cree, environmentalists argue it will carry power generated 
in Manitoba. In the decades old dispute between Hydro and the Cree of 
Cross Lake it's been hard to figure out just who is responsible
for 
what. Now that environmentalists have entered the fray with their own 
agenda it's become even more difficult. 

In Minneapolis, I'm Curt Petrovich.




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