PRESS RELEASE
Weyerhaeuser Feeling the Heat for Human Rights Abuses on Eve of Annual Shareholders Meeting
For Immediate Release: April 18, 2007
SEATTLE – This morning, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) activists scaled Quadrant Homes’ headquarters in Bellevue, Wash., and unfurled a gigantic banner reading: “Weyerhaeuser: Human Rights Abuser.” RAN accused Weyerhaeuser Corp. of human rights abuses this week after the lumber giant refused to stop sourcing wood from massive clear-cut logging operations within the ancestral homeland of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, a Native community in northwestern Ontario.
“Weyerhaeuser shareholders deserve to know that investing in Weyerhaeuser means investing in human rights abuses and forest destruction,” said Brant Olson, director of RAN’s Old Growth Campaign. “Weyerhaeuser must align itself with modern values that respect human rights and immediately stop sourcing from Grassy Narrows traditional territory.”
On Monday, Amnesty International began a 4-day fact-finding mission in the Grassy Narrows traditional territory to document the impact of logging and other industrial development on the community. The goal of the mission is to shed light on the plight of the community and convince all parties to respect the call by Grassy Narrows’ leaders for a moratorium on all industrial development on their land without prior consent.
Grassy Narrows leaders have repeatedly called on loggers Weyerhaeuser, Abitibi, and all levels of government to halt logging and procurement from their traditional lands. Weyerhaeuser’s use of wood clear-cut without consent from Grassy Narrows Territory drives the logging that is depriving the Grassy Narrows community of their fundamental human rights to culture, health and livelihood through the degradation of the forest landbase on which they depend to survive.
The people of Grassy Narrows depend on the land for hunting, fishing, spiritual ceremonies and other cultural activities, all of which have suffered due to rampant clear-cut logging on their land. Weyerhaeuser’s Kenora iLevel Timberstrand mill is the top consumer of wood from Grassy Narrows territory. The wood is used to produce homebuilding materials used throughout the U.S. by Weyerhaeuser’s homebuilding subsidiaries, including Quadrant Homes, Pardee Homes, Marquee Homebuilders and Winchester Homes. Years of opposition to the logging have been ignored by both the Canadian government and companies like Weyerhaeuser that continue to profit from logging on Grassy Narrows’ ancestral land.
