POPLAR RIVER, Manitoba, Canada - The elders used to say that one should not make a sound when crossing the water here, lest one awaken the thunderbird who lives just up there, up there.

Up where?

Up there, says Victor Bruce, an elder of the Poplar River First Nation. He is pointing toward the trees in this boreal forest, where migrating songbirds sing.

Bruce says he believes in the thunderbird in the same way he believes that the river is alive and rocks can move, that trees cry when they are cut and the earth cannot be owned. And all the while the thunderbird watches, waiting to descend when it is disturbed, then swooping down, creating thunder and lightning in its wrath, troubling the waters.

For thousands of years, the Poplar River First Nation, an Ojibway Indian tribe in Manitoba, crossed this water quietly, paddles slipped into the water as if they were slicing clouds. Disturbing the thunderbird meant trouble for us all.

Bruce is wondering why others don't believe - that building a road into this forest opens the path to its destruction, that cutting down the trees to make pulp into toilet paper seems wasteful.

"It (the land) is our guardian, something that watches over you all the time," Bruce says.

From a muddy bank of a healing camp on an island on the tribe's traditional territory on the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg, Bruce, 72, looks out over the clean, quiet water. He is in the thick of this place, considered the last frontier of the wilderness in North America. It covers half of Canada's land.

The forest, named after Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind, is threatened by encroaching development. Scientists call the boreal one of the Earth's "lungs"; the other is the Amazon rain forest. Together they "breathe out" oxygen while absorbing millions of tons of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas thought to contribute to global warming.

The forest is coveted by those who want to cut trees, build hydropower dams, mine and develop it, seeking gas and oil.

The Poplar River First Nation, a community based about 400 miles north of Winnipeg, is trying to hold that development back. Not long ago, loggers came here with promises of building an all-weather road in a place that is now only accessible year-round by air. The road would open the door for others to come in. Poplar River elders said no. First Nation tribes have a significant voice in development projects in their traditional territories.

"The reason why we protect this land is, in other communities the forest is wiped out already. Now they have nothing," Bruce says.

The Pimicikamak Cree watched a utility come and build a dam for hydroelectricity but then, they say, shorelines washed away and forest was swallowed by rising water that polluted the lakes and rivers.

Sophia Rabliauskas, a member of the Poplar River First Nation, says elders remind the community that land is more important than money.

"Like other aboriginal communities, we struggle with poverty, we struggle with unemployment, we struggle with health issues we've never seen before," she says. "Sometimes, it's tempting. They (companies) will say there is money in it, economic development. But the elders say be careful."

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