BC Assembly of First Nations regional chief Terry Teegee foresees more partnerships between First Nations and small communities to keep forest industry healthy.
Terry Teegee can sympathize with the Mackenzie mayor Joan Atkinson when she watches truckloads of harvested trees bypassing her northern B.C. town and its shuttered mills.
“Maybe there is an opportunity to have local First Nations and communities to develop a partnership or a relationship to have some sort of manufacturing or use existing manufacturing in Mackenzie to utilize the timber locally and therefore the benefits stay in that community. That’s a huge challenge for some of the mayors in the small communities, but First Nations are neighbours and we’re not going anywhere.
“Some First Nations in smaller communities are completely dependent of one corporation that owns the tenure and they make decisions somewhere else,” he said. “Their interest is in the bottom line to shut it down. You see it in mining as well and there are repercussions. There’s hundreds of employees here in Prince George who are eventually going to lose their jobs because of the decisions that were made.
“British Columbia jumped in with two feet and there’s other provinces dead set against UNDRIP, but there are other provinces looking at what’s happening here,” Teegee said. “Nothing good comes easy and ultimately, we’re not going backwards and I think the change is for the positive.”
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