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~ Page 2; News, Tuesday, August 13,1991 Greenpeace is scheduled to stop in Terrace Bay on August 27 as it tours nearly 40 U.S. and Canadian Great Lakes communities with its boat, the Moby Dick, and bus, the Terrapin. Greenpeace is conducting the tour to build support for banning persistent toxics in the Great Lakes basin. The first stop on the tour will be at the community of Akwesasne (near Comwall, Ontario), where Greenpeace will be welcomed to the Great Lakes by the Mohawk nation. The Zero Dis- charge tour culminates ten weeks later in Traverse City, Michigan at the Sixth Joint Commission (IJC). This meeting is an important bi-national Great Lakes forum to which environmentalists plan to bring the demand for Zero discharge of persistent toxic chemicals. "It's ridiculous to talk about cleaning up the lakes when' we still dump hun- dreds of tonnes of poisons into them every week," said Jack Weinberg, Great Lakes Project Coordinator for Green- peace. "No matter how many regula- tions there are, if you use or produce toxic chemicals, some amount will end up in the lake. Eliminating these chem- icals is what this tour is about." Greenpeace and more than 200 Great Lakes grassroots organizations, local Biennial meeting of the International . Greenpeace tour: A call for zero-discharge governments, and environmental orga- nizations have signed the Zero Dis- charge Statement of Principles, calling for an end to persistent toxic chemical production and use in the Great Lakes basin. Many of these groups and their members will join Greenpeace in Tra- verse City for the IJC meeting in late September. Greenpeace has identified three steps The Great Lakes: Clean-up and prevention The Great Lakes Action Plan: Three major programs The Great Lakes Basin contains 20% of the entire world supply of fresh water, is home to 35 million people (35% of the Canadian and 15% of the North American populations) and con- tains over 800 identified chemicals, only 300 of which scientists know about. In 1989, the federal government announced the Great Lakes Action The MV Moby Dick, a 25 meter converted fishing vessel, will tour Great Lakes com- munities to build support for banning persistent toxics in the Great Lakes basin. which can be taken immediately to reduce persistent toxic pollution in the Great Lakes: *Phase out chlorine and other chlo- rine compounds in the pulp and paper industry; *Ban new incinerators in or near the continued on page 11 Plan, an initiative to clean up and pre- vent future pollution of the Lakes as well as addressing existing and future health risks. Under the Plan the federal government has committed $125 mil- lion for Great Lakes cleanup and restoration to be funded over a period of five years. Three major programs would be the focus of the Plan. A total of $50 million was allocated for a Great Lakes Preservation Pro- gram. This program brings together the scientific and technological expertise of the federal departments of Environ- ment, Fisheries and Oceans, Agricul- ture, Transport and Public Works to address Great Lakes Pollution. The program includes research into the behavior of contaminants mixed in water sediments and how the impact plant and fish life; establishing a net- work with the United States Environ- mental Protection Agency to provide measurements of the amount of toxics falling into the Lakes, and developing methods to improve the ability to pre- vent and respond to spills from ship- ping accidents not only to protect human life by to protect wildlife and habitat. : One program funded under this ini- tiative is the Remedial Action Plan (RAP). A RAP is a clean up plan, designed to restore the water ecosystem to a healthy sustainable state at severely degraded sites around the Great Lakes. RAPs are a joint venture by the federal and provincial governments under the Canada - Ontario Agreement respecting Great Lakes Water Quality. continued on page 10 'Dawn woke Little Bear from a trou- bled sleep. All night he had been anx- ious about the approaching special day. He rolled up his sleeping blanket, tucked it into his corner of the family tent, then quickly joined his father, already waiting for him by the canoe, down at the beach. In silence, father and son paddled across the calm summer water and soon reached the Island of Visions. Little Bear had never been here before, but his brother had been brought here two summers before and had told Little Bear what to expect. He helped his father pull the canoe up on the sloped cobble beach, again without speaking, then walked towards the pit. Standing together over the shallow, oval-shaped pit, his father began to chant - a low, guttural song deep from within. Little Bear had not heard this song before, but the words were reas- suring. The song spoke of animals in the woods, hunting, fishing, and the good luck that comes to hunters who respect the animals' gifts. Little Bear lay down in the shallow pit, listening to the song. The chant ended with Little Bear's eyes riveted to his father's. After a long silence, his father spoke. "I will return after four suns," he said. "Let not your hunger distract you from your quest. Only you will know when your spirit has arrived. Be ready, my son." : With one more silent gaze, he was gone. Little Bear heard the scrape of the canoe leaving the beach, then only the wind. He waited in the silence all day, then counted the stars as they appeared. As the stars went out, he fell asleep. Two days went by like that, with Little Bear only visiting the trees to relieve himself, or to dip his hand in the lake for water. The spirit came on the third day. An eagle appeared to Little Bear just as the stars came out. When Little Bear's father returned, he found the boy pick- ing rocks and placing them around a his life. The first was his naming cere- mony, at birth. This second event, the Wausssaeyaubindumowin, or "vision quest", happened during the twelfth or thirteenth summer of an adolescent boy's life. During the vision quest, held on this island not far from Cobinosh, a young boy found his guiding spirit - the entity that would provide his identity and protection for the rest of his life. It would be achieved through four days of fasting, alone in a shallow pit. The pit is still here, on a command- a circle NORTHERN r ing " "a rawn on centre of the the beach, eS 0 FE) beach. So are not far from by Larry Sanders se " ie the piles of the pit. stones, left The eyes of father and son met again as Little Bear straightened up. Some- how the boy seemed a little taller. Nei- ther spoke. The boy, now more man-like, eventu- ally broke the silence. "My name is now Eagle Feather," he said. "Little Bear has gone." * * * * What you have just read is fiction. I imagined this happening two thousand years ago, on a tiny island I recently visited, not far from Cobinosh Island, near Rossport. The archaeologists tell us that Little Bear and his father fished and traded on Cobinosh every summer along with about 200 other Anishan- abeg -- the ancestors of the modern Cree and Ojibway. The vision of Eagle Feather would be the second important ceremony in behind by generations of vision seekers. I previously visited this beach two years ago, and had been moved by its special spirituality. The vexing thing about our recent visit was our discovery that this special place had been disturbed. Someone, either a hungry bear or a disreputable human vandal drunk with beer, had dis- lodged and flipped over many of the stones from where they had been placed two thousand years,before. Many of the stones, long ago splattered with multi-coloured lichens, were flipped over indiscriminately, revealing their pinkish underbellies clean of lichens. At first, I was very sad to see this. Then, I got angry. Who, I screamed to the wind, would be so ignorant, and dis- turb a precious remnant of a vanished civilization? History in the rocks - look, don't touch I tried to calm myself with the thought that the perpetrator of this crime may not have been human. A starving bear, seeking ants, may very well have flipped over the stones. But if a bear is to blame, why did we not find any bear droppings, or evidence of overturned stones somewhere else on the cobble beach instead of just at the pit, and at the caims? Rather, evidence pointed to human vandals - a beer can tossed on a forest trail, a garbage bag beside a tree. Had I the tools of a real detective, I would have dusted this evi- dence for fingerprints, to discover if the fingerprints on the garbage matched any on the special stones. I have no magic solution to prevent future desecrations like this. I don't even want to name this island, for fear of attracting more goons to do more harm. The Ontario Ministry of Culture is responsible for sites like this. If they put up signs, would that make visitors more respectful? I'm not sure. Signs might make it worse. It also doesn't seem appropriate to put up a fence. Fences would only give a mindless van- dal a greater sense of challenge, some kind of sick additional thrill. My only recommendation is for greater understanding, through educa- tion. The local Rossportians who care so deeply about these special places on their local Islands should be given the resources to educate each other and a growing number of visitors about the significance of these special sites and continued on page 11