I came here with Qwatisnas because he is a legendary warrior and a protector of the rights of his people and the future of the forest. His battles have been waged in the battlefield of conservation for over 40 years and although we are far from winning the war, his voice and his determination have won great victories for this corner of the planet, including the protection of the Great Bear Rainforest, where we are standing today.

Qwatsinas, with his gentle demeanor and easy-going personality, cannot quite hide the sadness he feels at what has already been lost.  He knows that we will never again see the thousands of ancient trees that have already been logged and taken out of this forest.  He tells me that the grizzly bears that have been poached and killed here for sport, were among the largest in the world, and that the forest, in the state of poverty it is today, would never be able to support bears growing to the massive sizes of yesterday ever again.  He knows that the salmon runs and other fisheries that used to be endlessly abundant when he was a child, have now almost disappeared because the rivers are silted. Those rivers, although still beautiful, will never be able to provide food security for the First Nations people in this valley in the same way.

Although some battles have been lost, Qwatsinas knows that the war is far from over.  Today, the coastline of British Columbia faces an even more frightening enemy: the massive hunger for fossil fuels that afflicts the world today, has now reached this enchanted coast.

As plans to build a pipeline that will carry the dirtiest oil on the planet from the Alberta Tar Sands to the coast of British Columbia, where it will then be transported in megatankers through some of the most delicate and fragile marine environments in the world, Qwatsinas prepares to wage one more battle.

“We must protect the forests for our children, grandchildren and children yet to be born. We must protect the forests for those who can’t speak for themselves such as the birds, animals, fish and trees”.

Qwatsinas  (Hereditary Chief Edward Moody), of the Nuxalk Nation sadly passed away in the Fall of 2010, a few weeks after this blog was written.

If you are Gitga’at, you probably live in a lovely and well-kept home and you probably spend a lot of time with family and neighbors.  Most homes have a view to the bay, where if you sit quietly at the window, you can see the comings and goings of all the boats that are leaving and arriving in Hartley Bat. The Gitga’at people are a coastal First Nation, and as such, their very existence is tied to the sea.

If you are Gitga’at you probably enjoy eating the foods that the ocean provides in abundance and at the right time of the year: halibut, either fried, baked or turned into a “wok”, that is dried or smoked. Salmon, in a number of varieties, is one of your favorite foods, since this is a clean, healthy, reliable source of food that comes back every year to all the creeks and streams that make up Gitga’at territory. The Gitga’at have been keeping a salmon hatchery in Hartley Bay for over 30 years.  In this hatchery they harvest, raise and release baby salmon, knowing that in time, those same salmon will return back to the streams to reproduce again, thus guaranteeing a permanent source of cheap and delicious protein.

If you are Gitga’at, you probably have enjoyed time at Kiel or Old Town, two important harvesting camps where the Gitga’at spend time each Spring and Fall fishing, gathering seaweed, berries and other foods, like cockles and lady slippers.  Every so often, the men will bring in a seal or a sea lion, a catch that is much revered and appreciated by all as it renders fat and meat to feed the community during the winter.

If you are Gitga’at, you grow up in a safe environment, where it is possible to play outside and run around with friends long after the sun has disappeared beyond the horizon.  You go to school with all your friends in Hartley Bay, and eventually you go to college or university in Prince Rupert, Vancouver or some of the other larger cities along the coast. Life is good and simple in Hartley Bay.

Gitga’at ladies love to knit and cook and play Bingo.  There is always a loaf of bread or pudding cooking in somebody’s house and a jar of jelly made from the local berries is always a special treat.

The Gitga’at people have been living and dying in Hartley Bay for many generations, and their entire existence is tied to a clean, healthy coastline where they can find the foods that sustain them both physically and spiritually.

Dance, drumming and a rich spiritual life are part of your life if you are a Gitga’at.  There are several dance troops in Hartley Bay and watching them perform will lift your spirit every time and will make you believe that windows into our common ancestry, when life was simpler and closer to the land, still exist in places like Hartley Bay.

If you are Gitga’at, today you are worried; you whisper to neighbors, listen for news, and save your money to travel to the meetings and protests being organized to keep oil development from coming to your shore.  Enbridge a large company with offices in Calgary, many thousands of miles away from here, is planning on building an oil pipeline in your backyard and then the government of British Columbia will allow giant megatankers to travel through these very waters, ignoring something you know all too well: the whales will stop coming, the fish will disappear and the time for an oil spill will come and with it your existence and that of your children will change forever.

I would be proud to call myself a Gitga’at, but I have not earned that yet.  In the meantime, however, I stand with the Gitga’at and all the other First Nations along this beautiful coastline they call home.

No one should have the right to take that home away and forever change their futures.  As long as there are Gitga’at here, there is hope for a future with no oil tankers in northern BC.

What the dam will mean to the people who live along the river below the wall is a seasonal state of drought. The thousands of indigenous people and peasants who scratch a living out of the forest and the river will see their main source of drinking water and food dwindles. More dramatic, however, is the loss of their only means of transportation. There are no roads here and the only way to travel for the vast majority is by boat. Once the flow of river is blocked and the flow diminishes, people will become trapped in their communities. They have no other choice than to relocate. One can sense the fear and the frustration in their faces. The newspapers talk about the government’s plans to compensate, educate and facilitate relocation, but no one has come to these small villages to explain how that process will work.

For the people on the other side of the wall, the threat of seeing their homes under water has finally become a not-so-distant reality. They too will need to relocate somehow. The flood will reach all the way to the city of Altamira and no one is surprised to know that the most vulnerable people are also the poorest inhabitants of the city; the ones that live in the “favelas” or informal settlements along the river’s floodplain. Without any services —electricity, running water or sanitation – these people are used to rough conditions and to being marginalized. They too have heard the promises of compensation for their relocation, but so far no one has come here to ease their fears and certainly no one believes any promises the government is making. They have heard it all before and at this point the only thing that is certain is that they too have no idea of where they will go.

The indigenous people who live in the interior, some nearby and others hundreds of miles from the construction site, have long opposed the idea of the dam, as they too will be affected. Although some indigenous territories lie outside the area of direct influence of the dam, the thousands of workers that will come to the region to build the dam’s infrastructure will likely stay. They too will need services, food and opportunity to thrive. That means more Amazonian rain forest will need to be deforested to make way for more agriculture, homes, and infrastructure to feed, house and create new jobs for the newcomers.

For decades now, the indigenous people here have been fighting the avalanche of invasion to their lands from illegal logging, mining, cattle ranching and soybean plantations. As more people settle in the area, the pressure on the forest is only going to increase.

I have spent some time in remote villages in the Amazon and it has always surprised me how little they need not only to survive, but to thrive. A fishing line, some locally made bows and arrows and a machete are the only tools a head of household in an Indian village needs in order to provide food for his family. It is what they want but cannot have that makes them poor: they want more western clothing, television sets, more fancy foods like cookies and sugar. It is understandable for all people to want to improve their lot in life. Buying a mosquito net or seeds to grow vegetables is a legitimate need, especially in a place where diseases like malaria and malnutrition take a heavy toll on the population, but to threaten the very source of all nourishment, transportation and livelihood in exchange for a few bags of beans seems tragic.

There is no stopping this dam now. It has been approved by a government who insists this is the solution to the energy needs of the country. 70% of the energy produced by the dam will go to households hundreds of miles away from the Xingu while 30% will go to support the mining industry. There is one major blind spot in this scheme. This dam, which is being built on a river that runs almost dry a large part of the year, will be a very inefficient project –running at 10% of its capacity during the driest months. The energy produced will go to mines that extract resources that are then shipped to other countries, where “things” are manufactured. Brazil is squandering its future potential in “freshwater and carbon” trading and is shipping raw materials to create jobs elsewhere. Not a very smart strategy for a country that has so much potential. I suggest that international media starts paying attention to this damming scheme. We all know that this is an inefficient project – one that may be better than a coal or nuclear plant but far from ideal. If you dare follow the money you are likely to find the reason why projects that make no sense from a social or environmental standpoint go through anyway.

So here is my farewell to a wild river. This will be the beginning of the end of the Amazon region as we know it. One day we might look back at Brazil’s Amazonian legacy and wonder if they could have done things differently. Until then, the people of the Amazon, the people of Brazil and the people of the world will be left to deal with the environmental consequences.