Chief George Neepin of the Fox Lake Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba recently initiated legal action against the provincially-owned electric utility "when Manitoba Hydro crews desecrated a marked community burial ground near Gillam."

Chief Neepin addressed a 4 May 2007 Winnipeg press conference, reported by First Perspectives and The Drum: Aboriginal, First Nations and Native News in Canada

Fox Lake Cree Nation is located on the lower Nelson River, and many of its members live and work in the historically-named town of Gillam, about 700 kilometers north of Winnipeg.

Contrite Manitoba Hydro President and CEO Bob Brennan addressed outraged community members after the sad disturbance.

At press time, I reviewed the Fox Lake Cree Nation video of Brennan’s remarks.

I did not distinctly hear Mr. Brennan describe the misdeed he was seeking to reconcile. Instead, Brennan offered money and only money to the Fox Lake Cree Nation.

In Winnipeg, Neepin displayed photographs reportedly depicting a clearly marked burial site beneath a certain electricity transmission line. The offending ‘vegetation clearance’ crews desecrated the cemetery, stripped it clean and mulched the grounds, removed grave markers and destroyed wooden crosses. These insensitive employees then reportedly “cordoned off” the burial ground with a Manitoba Hydro logo.

Neepin said he has provided a pre-incident cemetery photograph to the utility.

Neepin quoted community Elder Zack Mayham: “Manitoba Hydro destroys everything. They destroyed our homes, they destroyed our land. All we have left is our burial sites and now they’re destroying those.”

Manitoba Hydro’s website recalls: “the historical relationship between Manitoba Hydro and Fox Lake Cree Nation has been complex and has not always been easy and has had many challenges." Nonetheless, the utility found it necessary to assign Fox Lake Cree Nation “a unique, significant and leading role regarding the proposed Conawapa project.”

Manoitoba Hydro expects the Conawapa project to generate electricity “at a site on the lower Nelson River 90 kilometers downstream of Gillam” within a decade.

The utility would transmit this energy to markets across long-distance powerlines inevitably traversing traditional Fox Lake Cree territory.

Chief Neepin valued on 4 May Fox Lake’s previous negotiation with Manitoba Hydro on Conawapa development “in Fox Lake’s Resource Management Area and Traditional Territory.”

By all accounts, therefore, the intended Conawapa project footprint includes the desecrated Fox Lake Cree Nation cemetery.

“This desecration raises serious questions,” warned Chief Neepin. “Removal of grave markers and destruction of the vegetation will seriously complicate the proposed program.”

WHY CONAWAPA?

I discussed Manitoba Hydro’s long-proposed Conawapa hydroelectric generation and transmission megaproject on 11 March 2007 in Activist magazine.

Government of Manitoba and its electric utility Manitoba Hydro curiously chose the loaded name “Conawapa” for a $6 billion or more hydroelectric generation and transmission venture, the largest ever in Northern Manitoba.

“Conawapa Generating Station” would export significant quantities of electricity to Minnesota, and to south-central Ontario. Winnipeg has long promoted the biprovincial connection within an unconvincing East-West Canadian electricity grid, sharply criticized by tough-minded Tom Adams, Executive Director of Energy Probe.

Adams said Ontario load centers can economically import hydroelectric power "across shorter distances from eastern Canada."

Manitoba Archives reveal that the historical Conawapa was a “homeguard Indian” pressed or cajoled into service by Hudson’s Bay Company in 1754 to thwart HBC’s French rivals and facilitate the colonialist "inland" fur trade and minerals exploration, in the same year London-based HBC abandoned the Company’s doomed quest for the "Northwest Passage," a sea route through Canada’s ice-ridden Arctic Archipelago.

English King Charles Second chartered Hudson’s Bay Company in May 1670.

WHY GILLAM?

The triumphal Doctrine of Discovery logic of “Conawapa” expropriation impelled Government of Manitoba to memorialize in a Northern Manitoba town-name Hudson’s Bay Company captain Zachariah Gillam, skipper of HBC’s supply frigate "Prince Rupert."

The marauding Gillam helped to lead the Company’s aggressive exploration of James Bay and its tidewater estuaries in bitter rivalry with French colonialists.

Harold Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada (University of Toronto Press, reprinted 2001) page 122, and Peter C. Newman , Company of Adventurers: How the Hudson’s Bay Empire Determined the Destiny of a Continent (Toronto: Penguin Canada Inc., 1987) page 81.

Decades of habitual use render impractical a Gillam name change, but at press time, the name "Conawapa" does not appear on any official Government of Manitoba map.