Alberta Tar Sands Illegal under Treaty 8, First Nations Charge

from YES! Magazine:


Alberta Tar Sands Illegal under Treaty 8, First Nations Charge
In 1899, First Nations in northern Alberta signed a treaty with Queen Victoria that enshrined their right to practice traditional lifeways. Today, it’s the basis for a legal challenge to Shell Oil’s mining of tar sands.

by Kristin Moe
posted Oct 17, 2012


Fort Chipewyan is a small indigenous community on the edge of vast Lake Athabasca in Alberta’s remote north, accessible only by plane in summer and by snow road in winter. The town is directly downstream from the Alberta tar sands—Canada’s wildly lucrative, hotly debated, and environmentally catastrophic energy project.

Residents say that tar sands mining is not only dangerous but illegal because it violates the rights laid out in Treaty 8, an agreement signed in 1899 by Queen Victoria and various First Nations. Their legal challenge to the tar sands project could have a powerful impact on the legal role of treaties with First Nations people.

It should come as no surprise that Fort Chip’s relationship to the tar sands industry is a contentious one. Being first in line downstream means that residents are the first to feel the effects of pollution: poisoned water, air, and animals. The deformed fish with bulbous tumors that residents pull from Lake Athabasca are legendary, as are the stories of Fort Chip’s abnormally frequent cases of rare forms of cancer.

The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN), many of whose members live in Fort Chip, responded on October 1 with a landmark constitutional challenge to Shell Canada’s expansion of its Jackpine tar sands mine. The challenge states that the expansion would be a further assault on their rights as First Nations people, which are federally protected under Treaty 8. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/alberta-tar-sands-illegal-treaty-8-first-nations-shell-oil