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	Xcel Energy says hydroelectric power is clean and reliable. For the Pimicikamak Cree Nation, it constitutes an ecological, social, and moral catastrophe.

PHOTOS BY MICHELLE GUNDERSON

By Mike Mosedale

In Northern Manitoba, late June is notable for two things: The daylight lingers until midnight; and there are an astonishing number of horseflies. On this day, in the midst of a vast wilderness of rivers, lakes, and forest, the noon sun is beating down with full force, a hot wind is blowing, and the horseflies are everywhere. But Charlie Osborne and Gideon McKay are indifferent to the attacking pests. Like their Cree Indian forebears, they have spent much of their lives fishing, hunting, and trapping (Osborne is 79 years old, McKay 75). So there's a chance that all that time in the bush imbued them with some special ability to disregard insects. It's a better guess, though, that they simply have bigger things on their mind. After all, they have just arrived at a place that has come to symbolize the harm that's befallen their people and their homeland in the last half of the 20th Century. What's a fly compared to that?

The two men are standing on the side of a gravel road just outside the Jenpeg Generating Station, one of five major hydroelectric power plants that are owned by the Manitoba province and sit along its largest river, the Nelson. The spot is 400 miles north of the Manitoba-Minnesota border and a 45-minute car ride from the nearest community, Cross Lake--where Osborne, McKay, and most of the other 5,876 members of the Pimicikamak Cree Nation live. While few residents of Cross Lake have cause to visit Jenpeg regularly, this place has loomed large over the Pimicikamak people--environmentally, politically, economically, and spiritually.

Osborne and McKay are among the shrinking number of Pimicikamak Cree old enough to remember clearly what this stretch of the Nelson River looked like before Jenpeg. Which is why they have come to this spot today: to tell.

Pulling down the visor on his "Indian and Treaty Days" baseball cap, Osborne peers through his thick eyeglasses and points to the big reservoir at the head of the Jenpeg dam. Before the construction of Jenpeg in the mid-Seventies, he explains in his native Cree, the river was much narrower at this spot--full of islands, rapids, and fish. You could catch an 80-pound sturgeon, enough to feed your family for a week, or net loads of whitefish. When the dam went up, everything changed: the rapids vanished; the rising water washed away islands; miles of shoreline were eroded; methyl mercury from the soil found its way into the river and, ultimately, the food chain.

Then there are the trees. More than two decades after Jenpeg's completion, huge piles of sun-bleached, half-rotted timber are still scattered throughout the river system, and there are countless "spiders" (the root systems from flooded-out trees) floating in the waters--all of which create hazards and headaches for Cree fishermen. Flood debris fouls their nets. Spiders cause damage to their boats and motors. Even worse, Osborne complains, is what has become of the fish themselves. The taste has changed, making him worry that the whitefish have lost the medicinal quality that has long made the species valuable to the Cree. "Before the project," Osborne says, using the term everyone in these parts uses to describe Jenpeg, "our way of life was beautiful. The project destroyed it. But the government doesn't want to believe what they've done to us."

Nine of us have made this trip from Cross Lake to Jenpeg: McKay, Osborne, a translator, and a fact-finding delegation from Minnesota led by Ken Bradley. Bradley, a 37-year-old activist (and former standup comedian), was hired in February by the St. Paul-based nonprofit Minnesotans for an Energy Efficient Economy (ME3), to draw attention to both the plight of the Pimicikamak and the problems posed by large-scale hydro projects.

Bradley knows that most Minnesotans have never heard of the Pimicikamak Cree Nation or Manitoba Hydro, the province-owned utility that operates Jenpeg. But he believes it's high time that changed. About 42 percent of the power generated by Hydro is exported to the U.S., chiefly to the Minneapolis-based utility Xcel Energy. According to an Xcel spokesperson, electricity from Manitoba Hydro constitutes about 12 percent of the company's sales in the Upper Midwest.

Since Canadian environmental regulations are less stringent than U.S. regulations, Bradley and other supporters of Pimicikamak argue, Xcel is exploiting an environmental loophole to import cheap hydro power. At the very least, they insist, Xcel should wield its considerable clout to prompt change.

A few months ago, Bradley kicked off a metro-wide advertising campaign, publicizing the phone number of Xcel CEO Wayne Brunetti and urging customers to call him to demand that the company rethink its reliance on Canadian hydro power. Bradley chuckles about the discomfort the ad reportedly caused in Xcel's corporate office, but he is serious about the message. "What really burns me about this is that Manitoba Hydro and Xcel represent this as green power," he says. Bradley likens Hydro to a sweatshop that uses child labor; the consequences of its production are not always evident to the consumers, he says. "[But] when consumers find out about it, I don't think they're going to be happy."

This is Bradley's first trip to northern Manitoba. The goal, he says, is simple. "It's one thing to tell people about the problem. It's another thing to say that you have actually seen it. To be able to say, 'I was there.' That gives us a lot more credibility."

 

Gideon McKay (left) and Charlie Osborne mourn the destruction of their home and people PHOTO BY MICHELLE GUNDERSON

After snapping photographs of the dam site, our group heads to the Jenpeg facility for an official tour. McKay and Osborne elect to stay in the van. They have no interest in seeing the workings of the power plant or hearing about the benefits of "clean" hydro power. (When province officials were first exploring plans to harness the Nelson River, Osborne and McKay worked as guides for the engineers. Both men insist they were misled about the nature, extent, and consequences of the massive public-works project. And they are bitter about the way they were treated by employers. "When the time came for easy work, we were all laid off, McKay explains. Says Osborne: "After I finished working for them, I felt like I was dumped in the garbage. I bet those guys are sitting around like kings. I bet they never think about me.")

Inside Jenpeg, we are greeted by a friendly manager and given the nickel tour. By Manitoba Hydro's standards, Jenpeg's 97 megawatt output is relatively modest--other hydroelectric plants on the Nelson have ten times the generating capacity. Aside from the roar of the Soviet-made turbines, the plant feels curiously empty. There are only about a dozen workers on hand; despite the imposing size of the place, Jenpeg has only 51 employees, most of whom fly in from the southern part of the province for eight-day shifts.

As it happens, the size and demographic makeup of the workforce is one of the sore points for the Pimicikamak, who say that Hydro--as the locals refer to the utility--never delivered on its promise of providing jobs. Glenn Schneider, a spokesperson for Manitoba Hydro, says that there are ten employees at Jenpeg from Cross Lake and Norway House, another nearby Cree community. Pimicikamak Cree Nation Chief John Miswagon counters that most of those jobs are "janitorial-type" positions.

After the tour, we return to the van and set out for Sipiwesk Lake.

When people from Cross Lake want to show outsiders the environmental damage wrought by Hydro, they invariably take them to Sipiwesk. With countless islands and 2,000 miles of undeveloped shoreline--featuring endless tracts of boreal forest and glaciated rock--Sipiwesk looks like a Boundary Waters lake. There are stark differences, however: The water in Sipiwesk is a deep, murky brown; nearly all the shorelines are severely eroded, as if they had been hacked with a massive cleaver; and dead trees are piled everywhere along the water's edge. One estimate, extrapolated from a consultant's report for Manitoba Hydro, postulates that two to four square miles of land are washed into the lake every year.

According to Nelson Miller, a member of the Pimicikamak Cree's executive council, as the shorelines have eroded, so have traditional burial grounds along Sipiwesk Lake. Miller, who meets our group at a boat landing, explains that he wants to take us to a site where a partially exposed skeleton was discovered protruding from an eroded bank.

We don't make it. At first we are slowed because one of the boat motors is sputtering. Then a squall comes up. Sipiwesk is a big lake, and the wind churns the waves in a hurry. We seek refuge on an uninhabited, unnamed island. As the rain starts to come down, we cobble together a pair of shelters, using some old tarps and dead wood from shore. After boiling water for tea, we sit and wait out the rain while Osborne and McKay reminisce about the old days on Sipiwesk. Looking out from under the tarp at the ruined shoreline and listening to Osborne and McKay, I find it painfully obvious that Manitoba's hydro projects have harmed the physical environment.

But, for the Pimicikamak Cree, what's been done to the land and water, while tangible, is just part of the picture. Manitoba Hydro's effect on the people themselves is as hard to quantify as it is to comprehend.

 

The devastated shoreline of Sipiwesk Lake PHOTO BY MICHELLE GUNDERSON

Cross Lake is as forlorn-looking as any town you will find on the continent. The houses are a mix of trailers and cheaply built modern homes. Most look like they were placed on the lots at random, as if dropped from the sky. Many are in obvious disrepair. Shattered windows are covered by the odd piece of plywood or a half-torn piece of plastic. Litter is strewn about the streets and yards. Graffiti are spray-painted on sheds and outbuildings, signifying allegiance to Kid Rock, Korn and other bits of pop-culture detritus that are beamed into the homes via satellite TV. There is only one paved road in Cross Lake--the one that leads in and out of town. There are no street signs or traffic lights. There is no hospital, no movie theater, no car dealership. In short, no business district.

The handful of basic commercial enterprises scattered about town somehow limp along. There is a general store/grocery, where a lawn mower sits on display above the produce shelf; a convenience store where you can buy a lot of Pepsi products but nary a bottle of juice; a construction company that provides 12 much-needed jobs; and a few modest family-run restaurants. There is one bar in town, which, like most of the businesses in Cross Lake, is owned by a non-Native--an absentee businessman from Winnipeg. Despite the bleak economy (or perhaps because of it), business at the Cross Lake Inn is always good. Too good. For the past few years, Pimicikamak leaders have lobbied the provincial liquor commission to have the bar's license revoked. So far, those efforts have failed.

As is the case with many of Canada's other reserves (and with Indian reservations in the United States), stark reminders of the messy, desperate lives led by many of Cross Lake's inhabitants can be discerned from the raw statistics. For generations, the unemployment rate has been high. Today it hovers around 85 percent. Most of the reserve's residents get by on welfare; on average, says Chief Miswagon, those payments amount to less than seven Canadian dollars a day. Alcohol and drug abuse is epidemic. Over the past 15 years, there have been two major waves of suicide: nine people in 1988, seven in 1999.

This death rate is particularly shocking since, before 1976, there had never been a recorded suicide in Cross Lake, according to Bob Brightnose, the community wellness coordinator. In an attempt to respond to the suicide crisis in 1999, community leaders installed a special hotline and expanded counseling services. To date, the hotline has received more than 17,000 calls. And while reports of suicide attempts are still inordinately high (there were 248 last year), the body count has dropped: In 2001, there was one successful suicide. Ironically, the hotline program was nearly a victim of its own success. Last year, deeming the crisis abated, Health Canada, the federal healthcare administration, withdrew its funding; now the program is operated out of the band's coffers.

Few people in Cross Lake attribute all their woes to Manitoba Hydro. But almost everyone, including Brightnose, believes that Jenpeg exacerbated and accelerated the community's downfall. "It's like a fire that's smoldering. We've had generations of abuse. Sexual abuse. Physical abuse. We've got people drinking hair spray and aftershave," he says. "But the common denominator seems to be cultural bankruptcy. Basically, people are just lost."

When Jenpeg went into operation in the mid-Seventies, Brightnose points out, the physical landscape was dramatically altered. Beauty was lost. The waterways upon which the Cree relied for both sustenance and transportation were suddenly unfamiliar. In the winter, fluctuating water levels made travel on the ice difficult; in the summer, debris rendered boating hazardous. In Cross Lake itself, the Jenpeg dam caused water levels to drop as much as 12 feet, drying up parts of the lake. In the Eighties, the commercial fishery collapsed and people drifted from the outdoor-centered activities that had been a hallmark of Cree life for centuries.

"Hydro was the straw that broke the camel's back," Brightnose concludes. "That's why we feel it's important that they're part of the solution."

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