Indigenous nations have protected the earth on their territories for thousands of years. With the government of Canada ignoring their sovereignty, nations not only see massive theft of resources that could help alleviate social problems, but their exacerbation through their further alienation from their own lands, often accompanying being overrun by development and southern workers, while having no self-determination during this process. In the south of Canada industrial farming displaced many nations with often genocidal results. In the north, a modern equivalent of that fate is only just beginning, wrought on by industrial oil and gas drilling schemes (among many industrial plans) that are condemning entire societies, languages and cultures to a precarious future, becoming minorities in their lands for the first time.
Unstable Mix: Politics and Liquefied Natural Gas
PM Harper: Opposes LNG shipments through New Brunswick waters.
Citing 'safety concerns,' feds fight LNG project back east -- but not along BC's coast.
By Rob Annandale
October 11, 2007
TheTyee.ca
Chuck Childress moved to "paradise" over 40 years ago. He enjoys nature, but this veteran of the mining, construction and pulp and paper industries is no enviro-fundamentalist.
ATCO Frontec and Fort MacKay First Nation to Build 500 Room Oilsands Lodge
CALGARY, ALBERTA--(Marketwire - Oct. 17, 2007) - ATCO Frontec and the Fort MacKay First Nation have entered into a partnership to build and operate a critically needed new 500-room lodge in the booming Alberta oilsands region north of Fort McMurray.
Phase one of the Creeburn Lake Lodge will open February 2008, offering important new accommodations for oilsands workers and an array of career opportunities for members of the Fort MacKay First Nation.
Video footage shot by oilsandstruth.org with the Dominionpaper.ca & Msguided.org over the course of the summer, huddled together into amateur documentary form (click on the story to view all five parts):
Part one:
Part two:
Oil Versus Water
Toxic water poses threat to Alberta's Indigenous communities
by Kim Petersen
The Dominion
Alberta is replete with precious oil. Recovery of that oil from the tar sands, however, is putting another precious resource at risk: water. Dene and Cree First Nations people live close to and in the midst of the largest tar sand deposit in the Athabasca River region and oil extraction is harming their water supply.
Published on 10 Oct 2007 by ASPO-USA / Energy Bulletin. Archived on 10 Oct 2007.
An oil & gas Shangri-la in the Arctic?
by Dave Cohen
Scientists say the Arctic contains 25% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas. Why not 100%?
— Stephen Colbert, from the Colbert Report
Road to Riches: Pipeline Through Paradise
News: The race to claim Arctic fuel reserves could revive the proposed Mackenzie River Valley pipeline.
By James Ridgeway
October 10, 2007
Ottawa and Alta First Nation sign agreement-in-principle on $300M land claim
Fri Oct 12, 5:42 PM
By The Canadian Press
WABASCA, Alta. - Alberta's Bigstone Cree have signed an agreement-in-principle with the provincial and federal governments that would entitle the First Nation to almost $300 million and almost 570 square kilometres of land.
The Bigstone are calling it the largest land-claim settlement in Alberta and one of the largest in Canada.
The agreement means all sides will work to finalize the settlement, which stems from a treaty signed in the late 1800s.
Everyone’s Downstream: Tar Sands Realities and Resistance
Conference to be held at:
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
November 24-25th, 2007
http://oilsandstruth.org
ENERGY REGULATOR
Nuclear watchdog too close to industry, report suggests
SUE BAILEY AND JIM BRONSKILL
The Canadian Press
October 9, 2007
OTTAWA -- Canada's nuclear safety watchdog appears to be too cozy with the industry it's supposed to monitor, suggests an independent report.
The study ordered by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission cites long-standing complaints that the regulator focuses far more on the companies it licenses than on concerned lobby groups or citizens.
The Globe and Mail
WONDER OF GEOGRAPHY
Don't sacrifice the Sacred Headwaters
WADE DAVIS
Explorer-in-residence, National Geographic Society
October 8, 2007
In a rugged knot of mountains, in the remote reaches of northern British Columbia, lies a stunningly beautiful valley known to the first nations as the Sacred Headwaters. There, on the southern edge of the Spatsizi Wilderness - the Serengeti of Canada - are born in remarkably close proximity three of Canada's most important salmon rivers: the Stikine, Skeena and Nass.
