Grassy Narrows First Nation will finally get their day in Ontario's Supreme Court Oct. 6 to stop logging on their traditional lands.
For a decade, the northwestern Ontario First Nation, located 80 kilometres north of Kenora, has challenged Ontario's right to permit industrial logging in the area claiming it interferes with their treaty rights. The First Nation is fightint to protect an 1873 treaty which gave the group hunting and trapping rights.
AbitibiBowater stopped logging in the Whiskey Jack Forest in June 2008, saying it could not wait for the Ontario government and the First Nation to work through a consultation process.
Since the 1950s, the issues of logging and hydro development that has destroyed wildlife and plant habitat, and closed down Aboriginal fishing on the Wabigoon-English River system due to mercury poisoning.
The case is expected to last more than two months.
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