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Ron Plain
Ksenia Prints
If there are two things Ron Plain seems to have in abundance, it is words and motivation. When speaking of his community’s ongoing battle with toxic pollution and the need to protect the environment, he is relentless in his hope for resolution through global youth action.
“There are people across the world that see the potential that everything we’ve been taught is important. I look at it as the fundamental things: you need air, you need water, you need sustenance, and you need companionship. If you don’t have these four things, you don’t have a quality of life,” he says.
“I can’t save the water, but if everybody does their own thing… When I go see the Creator I can say, at least I did my part.”
“[Youth] are the stewards of the land.”
Plain hails from the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, a small community located in Sarnia, Ontario, about 120 kilometres west of London. What used to be home to a lush boreal forest area, Aamjiwnaang now sits within a forest of a different kind – it is surrounded by 62 petrochemical refineries.
“National Geographic staff called us the most polluted spot in North America,” he says. “We’re the worst case scenario.”
Aamjiwnaang has been through a series of toxic battles. In 2002 one of the area’s petrochemical refineries, Imperial Oil, had a catalyst release, a spill of different toxic products from the refinery onto neighbouring lands. Imperial attempted to clean-up the area and offered a financial settlement which many took.
Yet when another oil company, Sunoco, announced it was developing Canada’s largest ethanol plant right across the road from Aamjiwnaang’s heart, the community awoke.
“Until then, we were kind of blinded… We believed somewhere there was that government safety net watching after us,” he says. “[Now], we began to look at strategies that could stop this from happening.”
Plain is a strong believer in grassroots Aboriginal action. He co-founded the Aamjiwnaang Environmental Committee, an organization made up of community members spearheading the research and legal struggle in the area. The Aamjiwnaang First Nation began a long battle with oil companies, toxic waste and pollution, and the governments that fund all this. They blocked roads, hired experts, and led to financial losses measuring in the tens of thousands for the Petroleum industry.
Despite this, the 850 people of Aamjiwnaang are now in mortal danger due to high mercury levels in the community’s drinking water, a host of toxin-related cardiovascular problems, rare cancer clusters that are denied by Health Canada, and a dropping birthrate of boys (due to high endocrine disruptors in the area, there are now two girls being born for every boy).
Experts believe Aamjiwnaang is the first known case of a endocrine disrpution among humans, a practice so different from the norm it has many worried about the community’s cultural and ancestoral survival.
“We’re the opposite [of normal birth rates], and we’re the opposite to an extreme where known experts say we’re the first sign of extinction.”
When recalling his toxic ordeal, Plain does not falter. He speaks with conviction of the solution in community mobilization and traditional knowledge.
“[The role of the community] is paramount,” says Plain. “The community needs to be educated to what the problems are… Not talked down to, but educated.”
Motivated by his experience, Plain joined Environmental Defence in July 2007, and formed the Aboriginal Program of the organization. He provides counselling and assistance in finding resources to First Nations communities across North America who are battling environmental hazards. His unit is also working on a community-developed strategy for environmental protection.
Plain believes maintaining the Earth’s gifts may be our biggest mission. Spurred by his own loss of the Boreal forest, he encourages others to preserve it.
“In our community, we don’t have any Boreal forest left,” he says. “We’ve become a part of a city, like any subdivision of Winnipeg.”
“The tide of the Boreal is that that’s where you learn, you go in there and everything in there is waiting for you. Doesn’t matter whether you’ve been there once or a million times, it never looks the same.”
“I learned my love of the land because I got to see the differences between the Canadian shields and the desert in Nevada, we travelled everywhere… I take my kids into the bush, it develops a love for the land.”
“If you live in a city, you have to look all the harder to find these places… but they’re there.”
He believes youth can take local initiatives in their communities.
“In the development of community strategy there needs to be funding where we can bring some of [our] kids home and put them to work,” he says. “At home, you’re going to make some real difference, and you’re whole standard of life improves.”
“Your community then uses you as a bit of a moral or higher ground compass for the new kids.”
