"We'll be working with the Deh Cho First Nations (DCFN) to have them consider filing a court injunction," he said late Tuesday. "We're mainly against the GNWT encouraging people to come into our traditional lands without proper consultation... We're not against development or Patterson Mills. Instead, the community's (Kakisa, Fort Providence and Enterprise) want to be consulted more fully."

And, Bonnetrouge said the GNWT decision has forced local First Nations to ask some tough questions of aboriginal leaders who hold high positions in the GNWT.

"We have to question them," he said. "We have to ask our own aboriginal leaders in the GNWT where they stand on aboriginal title and treaty rights. We have to question them."

On Monday, the deputy minister of the GNWT's Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development, Joe Handley, said his department is simply trying to benefit a long-time, private sector Northern employer in granting the permit.

"Let's be reasonable," he said. "Let's not take a sawmill (Patterson's) that's been operating since the 1960s and close them down...(The allocation will give the company wood for a summer) so he doesn't have to put people out of work next summer."

He also said that there are no operating sawmills in the communities that are angry about the decision.

As to suggestions, revealed in internal RWED documents obtained by the Drum, that the Patterson bid might damage the long- term sustainability of logging in the Cameron Hills, Handley disagreed.

"The current level of operating is higher," he said. "But, sustainability is a long term process."

By this, he said it would be possible to have high harvesting levels one year and then lower levels in other years, thus achieving a balance.

Handley also said that a forestry inventory analysis of the area will be under way over the next six months.