Harvey Yesno doesn’t want to speak to bureaucrats.
As the newly elected Grand Chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, he isn’t interested in phone calls, emails or memos from government officials either.
Instead, Yesno wants to speak with the decision makers from both levels of government to start serious discussions about economic development on the Ring of Fire. The key issues are land, the resources under them and the treaty relationship both sides have.
“That’s certainly going to be paramount in my work,” Yesno said Wednesday morning during his first news conference as grand chief.
It’s part of a larger process of change at NAN.
Another change will be how the organizations’ 49 communities deal with development in their own backyard. Yesno said if consent for development isn’t given, those communities will do what it takes to protect the land.
But the time for protests is over.
Yesno said you can’t protest what’s in your own backyard but you can protect it.
“We’re not going to be protesting over our lands anymore,” he said.
