In the international Year for Indigenous People, the Dutch government is in conflict with the Innu people of Canada. GINA ROGERS reports from The Hague.
Since 1986, the Royal Netherlands Airforce has performed more than 10,000 low-level flights over the Innu's traditional land. This conduct has angered the Innu into six years of protests.
On February 5, representatives of the Innu joined with concerned Dutch people in a symposium to expose, condemn and plan future action against low-level flying. The symposium, at Limburg University in Maastricht, was addressed by Innu spokespeople, a former director of the Human Rights Commission and environmental and human rights academics.
For thousands of years prior to white invasion, the Innu lived nomadically as hunters and fishers on an area of around 5000 square kilometres in the north-east of Canada. Now the land is owned by the government but has been "lent back" to the 10,000 Innu so that they can return to their traditional existence.
For Daniel Ashini, chief land rights negotiator of the Innu Nation, this is an essential step for the survival of the Innu. "We escape the terrible problems of alcohol abuse, family violence and attempted suicides that are making our lives in the village utter and complete hell", he stated in reading material for the symposium.
But the cynical move by the Canadian government to contract with Britain, Germany and the Netherlands to use the airspace above their land for military exercises has destroyed the peace of mind of the Innu, scared away many of their animals, polluted the waterways and consequently threatened this last attempt to save Innu culture from destruction.
"Like indigenous peoples all over the world, our distinct culture and economy are being crushed by an incredibly greedy and environmentally irresponsible industrial order", says Ashini.
The F16 jets used by the Netherlands fly only 30 metres above ground level and travel at speeds exceeding sound. Some mediators have tried to resolve this conflict by proposing that the Dutch fly only above certain areas of Innu territory while the Innu are not using it.
However, the main areas over which the F16s fly are riverways which are the most important hunting regions for the Innu. Peter
Armitage, a Canadian anthropologist, showed a map at the symposium demonstrating that with all the places the Innu move in the course of a year, this sort of avoidance tactic is impossible. The Innu believe they have made enough compromises and want an end to the invasion of this space.
Govert de Groot from the Foundation Innu Support Group in the Netherlands told Green Left that the Innu see this as a question of land rights. "The title of the symposium, 'How can one own the sky?', is a quote from a well-known 19th century Indian chief who put the question to the white colonialists who were trying to take their land. It was a basic cultural difference — the Indian cultures had no concept of ownership of land, water and sky."
Since the 1940s, this area of Canada has been used for military exercises — it was a strategic refuelling point in the second world war, was of major significance in the Cold War and was used to train pilots for the Gulf War.
Professor Van Boven, former director of the UN Human Rights Commission, questioned whether the land and the sky have any future military significance for Canada and the countries in contact with it, given the end of the Cold War. But the counties involved want to renew their contracts in 1996, citing European regional conflicts as a justification.
The Dutch military have shown little concern for the environmental consequences of low-level flying. An environmental impact statement (EIS) carried out by the Canadian Department for National Defence (DND) took three years to complete and was so biased it was condemned by 30 environmental scientists.
A so-called "independent" Environmental Assessment Panel rejected the EIS but gave the DND until 1994 to complete a new one. The EIS will then have taken almost as long to complete as the contracted period for the flights. Because of this, Innu supporters have called for a moratorium on flying until the environmental impact is understood, a request that has been ignored by the Dutch military.
The Innu don't have any faith in the EIS. They have seen with their own eyes the damage the F16s inflict on the water, flora and fauna. The low-flying jets create fumes which mix with the water; the Innu have reported large numbers of floating, dead fish.
Caribou, the Innu's most hunted animal, have been among the most affected by the flights, with the noise startling them to such an extent that pregnant does often spontaneously abort and the animals have changed their migratory routes. Endangered species,
including water fowl and some birds of prey that are unique to this fragile arctic terrain, are also affected badly by the flights, particularly during the breeding season.
Aside from the effects of pollution on plants and water life and sound on animals, up to 1000 square kilometres are being completely destroyed as a bombing range.
Because so little data has been collected on the effect of low-
level flights on the environment, the symposium decided it was necessary to send a fact-finding mission, completely independent of the "official" EIS, to bring back new data.
The symposium agreed that a lawsuit could be brought against the Dutch government on the basis of new environmental information and a careful assessment of Dutch and international law. Van Boven and Kees Flinterman, both professors of international law at Limburg University, indicated that until now, international law has largely excluded indigenous peoples and has been tested on colonial treaties that are out of date.
Flinterman, who is the Dutch chairperson of the UN Human Rights Commission, has been involved in the drawing up of new recommendations for the Dutch government on indigenous people with the aim of securing them more legal rights.
Until this is complete, Van Boven says it is the responsibility of the Dutch to apply the same laws to the Innu that they apply to themselves. "We here in the Netherlands know we would never accept these low-level flying exercises."
The Innu and their supporters are going to continue an activist struggle — especially focusing on an international day of action on April 3. They will be joined by the International Peace Bureau, Canadian Voice of Women, ACT for Disarmament and supporters in Holland to occupy military airstrips here and in Goose Bay, the base near their land.