First Nations build future in forestry: Joint venture deal provides Agoke group jobs, economic benefits to three communities.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: Forestry

A walk through the Nakina sawmill in early August got Mark Bell excited.

A decade after the operation had been shuttered, Buchanan Sawmills had reopened the mill in January and was back in business as staff painstakingly worked out the mechanical bugs at the northwestern Ontario sawmill and planer facility.

Of the 60 workers on shift, most were Aboriginal workers drawn from the nearby Aroland First Nation.

"It was great to see our community members are working and doing a good job," said Bell, president of the Agoke Development Corporation. "We have members at the mill who are doing greasing and they have aspirations to become electricians and millwrights."

Having a meaningful role within the forestry sector with burgeoning career opportunities was not always available to them.

That's why the signing of a joint venture agreement with Buchanan in late June with Agoke Lumber Limited Partnership (an arm of the development corporation) to supply the mill with fibre from the Ogoki Forest was regarded as "groundbreaking."

Bringing a relatively dormant Crown forest back into production creates the potential for 300 jobs in mill and woodland operations as the two parties set a target of developing a homegrown workforce that's 75 per cent Aboriginal.

Agoke Development Limited Partnership is comprised of the First Nation communities of Aroland, Eabametoong and Marten Falls.

The three communities teamed up in 2015 with a goal of obtaining a long-term forest licence for the Ogoki Forest, 400 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay, which sits within their traditional territories.

For many years, it's been an aspiration of the communities to obtain a sustainable forest licence (SFL) for the 10,900-square-kilometre forest, to be directly involved in its management and planning, and to put its people to work in harvesting, doing the log hauling, and supplying area mills with spruce, pine and fir.

In March, Agoke signed an historic two-year interim agreement with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNR), ending an impasse with the Crown and giving the First Nations the control to get the wood flowing.

It paves the way to start negotiations on a longer 20-year agreement that will begin in 2020.

"We're glad that we have a foot into being the stewards of the land and the landlord of the Ogoki Forest," said Jason Rasevych, a business advisor to Agoke.

"A few years ago we were told Nakina sawmill will never reopen again. The bureaucrats were saying...