A battle against time
By Ella C. Land

The Lubicon Cree is a small indigenous Nation, of approximately 500 people, in northern Alberta. They live in an area that once teemed with wildlife, supporting an active hunting and trapping industry. Now the area teems with controversy.

In 1899, Treaty #8 was signed between the Canadian government and Indian and Métis peoples, ceding to the government most of today's northern half of Alberta, a quarter of British Columbia, and parts of Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories. The Treaty governed what was at the time the largest land settlement ever in Canada.

The Lubicon Cree lived squarely inside the territory covered by the treaty, but were not included in the settlement negotiations or in compensation benefits. And since that day, the incremental loss of their traditional lands has seemed unstoppable.

After approaching the governments of Alberta and Canada, seeking to be acknowledged as a separate nation with a defined reserve, the Lubicon were promised a reserve in 1939. For decades, nothing was delivered.

In the early 1970s, an aggressive plan of oil and gas exploration led to the discovery that the proposed Lubicon land-base was rich in natural resources. In short order, seismic lines bisected the forests and noisy activity disrupted the wildlife essential to the subsistence economy of the Lubicon people.

Further, in 1989 the Alberta government gave a subsidiary of Daishowa Paper Manufacturing Company logging rights in the proposed Lubicon reserve. Today, resource extraction and exploration activity spans the entire 10,000 square km. territory claimed by the Lubicon.

For the Lubicon, the disruption and eventual collapse of their indigenous economy has seen welfare rates skyrocket to 90%. They live in crowded homes, deal with high levels of illness including tuberculosis and birth abnormalities, and fight alcoholism. They truck in potable water, to avoid oil-contaminated local water. They have no sewer system, and little community or economic development. It may not be an overstatement that the Lubicon struggle to exist, while the riches of their lands are taken away.

Side-by-side

The Lubicon are not without support. In 1984, E. Davie Fulton, former Supreme court Justice, looked into the dispute on the behalf of the federal government. He concluded:

"Starting in the late 1970's they [the Lubicon] saw not only their traditional hunting area but the very area that they had been promised as their Reserve—their homeland—subjected to intensive exploration and development against their wishes and with disastrous consequences to them. Substantial revenues accrued from the Reserve, but not to their benefit, and still no action was taken on their behalf."

In 1990, the United Nations Human Rights Commission stated that historical inequities and more recent developments have endangered the way of life and culture of the Lubicon Cree. It found Canada in violation of article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and asked that Canada take immediate action to avoid irreparable damage. This Commission again called for action in 2005.

Amnesty International issued a report asking that the Canadian Government respect the land rights of the Lubicon.

In 1993, Prime Minister Jean Chretien demanded that there be a swift resolution to the situation. Former Alberta Premier Don Getty in 2007 called on Ottawa to finally resolve the land claim and stated that the treatment of the Lubicon was deplorable.

The land claim remains unresolved, the promised reserve undelivered.

Meanwhile, the promised land itself seethes with controversy. In 1994, U.S.-based Unocal Corporation received permission to build a sour gas plant that removes lethal hydrogen sulphide from natural gas near the lake which was to be near a proposed settlement site for the Lubicon. The plant is 4 km upstream and upwind from the new community. The plant was built without consultation of the Lubicon, and before a regulatory hearing was held.

More recently, in May of 2008, the Lubicon were denied participation in an Alberta Utilities Commission hearing on the building of a gas pipeline across land promised to the Lubicon.

In the absence of a voice at these tables the Lubicon can only watch further degradation of the land. They are dropping in numbers, as people leave to join other bands or simply disappear into the general population. Younger families seek to find a place to live where they can try to find new dreams for their children in places, where there is clean drinking water, adequate living space, and educational opportunity.

One could understand that those who are left behind may despair—as they see gas plants all around and breathe sour gas fumes, they may be wondering: will we die without seeing resolution, as our parents and their parents died?

"I hope people will understand we're trying to survive from day to day and need all the help we can get from the general public. It's a battle against time."
—Lubicon Chief Bernard Ominayak, quoted by Amnesty International Canada

The CCG has many resources on Aboriginal Truth and Reconciliation; notice that much of CCG's mobilization and prayer materials from our peacekeeping work resonate with Aboriginal Justice, our other core justice issue.