WINNIPEG — Plans to build a greenhouse and training centre on the reserve of the Misipawistik Cree Nation of Grand Rapids in northern Manitoba with the assistance of the Jewish National Fund will only be a “dream” unless $4 million in needed capital funding can be found, its chief says.

Ovide Mercredi [Rhonda Spivak photo]

Ovide Mercredi, the former national leader of the Assembly of First Nations who leads the approximately 1,400 Cree people of Grand Rapids, spoke to about 50 supporters of the Canadian Technion Society at Winnipeg’s Shaarey Zedek Synagogue last month.

Mercredi and a delegation from the Misipawistik Cree Nation of Grand Rapids visited Israel in 2007 as guests of the JNF to learn about greenhouse and water technology. The visit was part of a co-operative partnership agreement between Manitoba and Israel, facilitated by the JNF, to exchange technology in these areas.

As a result of that exchange, Mercredi, said the Misipawistik Cree Nation has developed a proposal to build a greenhouse using Israeli technology.

The project “will teach our people healthy living and a healthy diet” and also serve as “a commercial venture” to make “hard-needed cash” for the “underemployed people of the reserve,” he said.

The proposed JNF-backed greenhouse “is more than just a greenhouse,”he added. “It’s a training centre where other aboriginal people can be educated about greenhouse technology.”

Heidi Cook, project manager for the proposed greenhouse, said that originally, Grand Rapids was chosen as a desirable place to develop the greenhouse project because of a nearby “hydro dam [where the rapids are] and the water never freezes, so we thought we could harness the water as a heat source.”

But, she said, “it turns out the water can’t be used as a heat source” because although it doesn’t freeze, it’s too cold.

She added that in order to reduce costs, the province has suggested exploring combining hydro power with a “bio-mass source of heat.”

Cook said the sophisticated greenhouse design, championed by JNF scientist Avi Gafni, requires a lot of hydroelectric power, because “the growing process would be mechanized, and the feeding, and lighting is computerized, and it produces a consistently high-quality product.”

Mercredi said the province doesn’t want the band to use the more expensive Israeli design, but he said it’s better because it would be a training centre in addition to a greenhouse, and because it’s technically superior.

Cook said that according to a feasibility study that’s now being prepared, the greenhouse would employ about eight people, as well as 20 additional workers during harvest time. As well, the training centre could train 10 other people at a time.

Cook said that the feasibility study “will assess available markets in the north,” where vegetables “are more expensive and not very fresh.”

Mercredi said that if “[Manitoba] Hydro had a conscience, they would give us free electricity.”

According to Mercredi, historically, the Cree people in the area grew their own food by gardening, but in 1959, Manitoba Hydro built a dam at Grand Rapids, as if the people who lived there had “no existing rights.”

He said building the dam required the demolition of homes owned by non-status Indians, and it took up much of the best local growing land.

Manitoba Hydro spokesperson Glenn Schneider said that Mercredi “has never raised this issue about [non-status] Métis homes in Grand Rapids being demolished by Manitoba Hydro in the 1960s without compensation.”

He added that “Manitoba Hydro has entered into a number of settlement agreements with respect to the impacts associated with the development of the Grand Rapids Generating Station” and that it’s “providing technical advice and expertise related to the potential development by Misipawistik Cree Nation of the greenhouse that Chief Mercredi mentioned.”

Mercredi said that so far, only Ottawa has committed funds to project, but he will try to persuade the province to earmark funds to it as well.

“We are going to try to squeeze the current government until they give it,” he said.

He also noted that under the Indian Act, there must be a referendum to get “consent of our people to designate the [reserve] and [the greenhouse] for commercial use.”

He said he wanted the greenhouse training centre to serve as “the Technion of the North.”