Art SterrittJeff Vinnick
Possible Canadas is a project created by Reos Partners, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and a diverse coalition of philanthropic and community organizations. For longer versions of these interviews, or to join the conversation, visit possiblecanadas.ca
In a six-week series of interviews, Canadians with a variety of experiences discuss the major challenges our country is facing and how best to address them. This installment deals with our use of natural resources.
Art Sterritt, Executive Director of the Coastal First Nations Great Bear Initiative, was interviewed on Oct. 7 by Monica Pohlmann, a consultant with Reos Partners.
Pohlmann: What about your background shapes your perspective?
Sterritt: I grew up in a very rich area in the upper Skeena at a time when most of the logging in the area was done by First Nations. My grandfather and uncle had a sawmill, as did other First Nations people. First Nations basically ran all of the industry in the area and there was no unemployment. There were strict rules about what we were to take from the natural environment. My father and his cousins and most of his friends had licences for logging that were called "limits" – they were limited as to how much they could take. After the large corporations moved in with tree-farm licences assigned to them by the provincial government, I remember going to a clear-cut area, and I was horrified by what I saw. Trees that were maybe a foot around were lying on the ground rotting; they had been cut down just because they were in the way of the logging. When trees were gone from the area, the companies then shut down the sawmills.
The same thing happened on the coast of British Columbia. When I arrived on the coast 47 years ago, First Nations were running all of the fisheries. First Nations were operating seiners, gillnetters, trollers, packers, the shellfish industries and the halibut fishery, including black cod. Forty-seven years ago all of the fisheries were sustainable. Then, the corporations began to rationalize these fisheries and push the First Nations aside. As they did this, the natural capital that sustained us for millennia were beginning to be wiped out.
There was no unemployment. Our social safety network was our place! If anybody needed a job or food, it was there for them. But over the last 30 years, the corporatization of the coastal economy has eroded our place. Today, people often look at First Nations people as some kind of impoverished race. Don't ever make the mistake of looking down your nose at us! We have lived well and have sustained ourselves forever. We know it is possible for us to return to the great riches we once enjoyed.
Pohlmann: What concerns you about Canada these days?
Sterritt: Our dependence on sending oil to Asia is a false economy. There's nothing wrong with selling oil and gas to other countries, but what happens to us when all of that energy is gone? We don't have an energy plan, and we don't know what we want our economy to look like. If we let corporations dictate, we will continue to have an economy that is designed to enrich corporations and not the public.
Pohlmann: What lessons do we need to learn from our past failures?
Sterritt: Some companies are saying we don't have enough people to do what we need to do, so we've got to bring them in from other countries. Why do we need to take more than we have people to do it with? The only purpose for that is to enrich corporations. If we have enough people to sustainably catch 300,000 fish a year, we could do that forever. But corporations say: Let's double our work force so we can take twice as much. But that will only be sustainable for the next 30 years. People who live in these regions don't necessarily want to keep taking and taking. They're looking for sustainability and for a good quality of life.
We've had about three decades of corporations taking control and drawing down our natural capital. It's time for people to begin to control what we do in this country again. It doesn't take a great deal of intelligence to know the difference between right and wrong, but it does take a lot of courage to choose between doing right and doing wrong.