| Fort McKay First Nation councillor Cecilia Fitzpatrick remembers when she was a little girl and the only way to get to Fort McMurray from her community was by boat on the Athabasca River in the summer or by dogsled in the winter. The reserve was surrounded by pristine wilderness and people lived a traditional lifestyle of hunting and trapping.
Now Fort MacKay, located about half an hour’s drive north of Fort McMurray, feels like a bull’s-eye on a dartboard because it’s surrounded on all sides by oilsands development. The development is so close you can see one of Syncrude’s smokestacks towering above the boreal forest. Fort MacKay itself is located on oilsands. Just before you drive into the community, you can see a patch of black, tar-like oilsands in the ditch.
The proximity of the oilsands has brought opportunities for economic development but people are also concerned about the environmental impact and say the development is starting to threaten their traditional lifestyles.
Oilsands an economic boon
Companies owned by the First Nation, which do business with oilsands companies, made $35 million in revenue last year and paid out $3 million in wages to Fort McKay members. The First Nation is in discussions with a couple of oilsands companies about the possibility of building satellite communities for workers on First Nation land. Fort McKay is also in the early stages of planning its own oilsands development.
There are five First Nations and six Metis communities in the vicinity of oilsands development. In 2004, oilsands companies employed more than 1,200 aboriginal or Metis people and the companies paid out $250 million in contracts to Metis and aboriginal companies, according to statistics compiled by the Regional Issues Working Group.
Greg Stringham, vice-president of markets and fiscal policy for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, says oilsands development has created great job opportunities.
"Syncrude and Suncor have both been stellar examples of aboriginal employment in the country that we point to for other oil and gas players, but also forestry and other industries," says Stringham.
"It’s been a good partnership. It’s providing a great uptake for their young people, who used to not have a big, bright future, and now they can go into all kinds of areas and not just to work as employers."
The Northeastern Aboriginal Business Association, which represents aboriginal and Metis businesses in the Fort McMurray area, has 86 member businesses.
"I think in the long run our future looks bright. A lot of our community members, or most of them, are coming back or staying here," says Fitzpatrick. "Our unemployment is almost nil. Also, we have a lot of entrepreneurs in the community that are making it so we have positive role models for our kids."
On a tour of the community, Fitzpatrick points out a brand new housing subdivision that’s going up, and says there are plans to build a new long-term care centre. The community has also built a new elder’s centre and a beautiful new health and administration building.
Oilsands threatening traditional way of life
However, there are concerns about the oilsands development’s impact on the environment. Fitzpatrick says there are fewer animals around for hunters or trappers, and she thinks the Athabasca River flow is lower than it used to be – oilsands operations use vast quantities of water from the river, and that will only increase as more projects begin.
"Our great grandfathers chose this spot because of the river. It’s a big, big important part of our lives," says Fitzpatrick.
Fitzpatrick likes to pick blueberries and cranberries every year and she says there are fewer than there used to be.
"Part of it is probably pollution, but also the land has been overrun so much. I don’t think the berries can grow anymore. I don’t know," she says.
Cheryl Laurent is the owner of Fort MacKay Enterprises, which provides medical services to oilsands companies. She’s experiencing the economic development the oilsands has brought firsthand. She acknowledges there’s now more jobs and more money in the community, but says the negative impacts of oilsands development outweigh the benefits.
"We’re surrounded on all sides, but you can’t fight them. It’s a losing battle. There’s nothing we can do," she says. "It makes me feel encaged, just kind of hopeless. It’s not a good feeling."
Laurent says she’s noticed that more children in the community are developing asthma and she’s worried about the impacts of air pollution on her own children’s health.
"I say give me enough money and I’ll move. The pollution is not going to get any better. It’s only going to get worse," says Laurent. "I don’t know what it’s going to do to my kids."
Randall Barrett, an air quality expert with Alberta Environment, says there’s an air pollution monitoring station right in the community, which measures pollutants that are known to impact human health. He says, on average, pollution levels are well under Alberta Ambient Air Quality Guidelines.
Laurent says she’d like to see the First Nation receive compensation from companies for oilsands development, which is destroying land traditionally used by not only Fort MacKay, but also other First Nations in northern Alberta. Laurent grew up spending time in the bush with her parents, who were trappers, and still goes out into the bush with her husband to hunt.
"All that land where we used to go was beautiful. It’s totally gone," she says. "Just being out in the bush, that’s our culture, tradition and way of life – living off the land. That’s something that you can’t get back."
Text Breaker: Boxed In
Laurent’s father, Andrew Boucher, an elder who’s been hunting and trapping since he was nine years old, has already lost one trapline because of oilsands development and he’s worried that he’ll lose his second trapline as well.
He says Fort MacKay is now "just a little dot" in the middle of oilsands development.
"It’s getting worse. Pretty soon we’ll be boxed in here," says Boucher. "Our way of life is all screwed up…. It makes me sick."
Boucher is trying to pass on traditional skills to his grandchildren by taking them into the bush, but says hunters and trappers now have to go further away from the community to find any animals.
"That’s our way of life, so we’d like to keep it," he says. "We don’t want to lose our way of life, but we’re losing it anyways."
It doesn’t look like Boucher and other First Nation members will get much help from the provincial government in preserving their traditional lifestyle. In a new draft document, called the Mineable Oil Sands Strategy (MOSS), the government says economic development will be the number one priority for an area of almost 2,600 kilometres –Fort MacKay is right in the middle of it. MOSS states, "Access to portions of the development zone for traditional uses may also be limited during mining and the availability of meat, fish, fur and plant materials will be reduced until the land is reclaimed."
The government is still seeking public input on the strategy and hasn’t adopted it yet.
Boucher’s wife Clara is adamant, like her daughter, that aboriginal people should be getting compensation because of the loss of traditional land and also the possible health threats from pollution.
"We’re not getting anything from the oil companies and they’re slowly killing us," she says. "Everything is no good. Not the way it used to be. We used to have fresh moose meat all the time. We used to live off the land. Now we don’t."
Clara points out that people in Fort MacKay have been advised to stop drinking the water or eating certain fish from the Athabasca River because of high levels of mercury – the river passes by several pulp mills as well as oilsands projects before flowing through the community.
"It used to be really clear and blue. Now it’s just brown and ugly. It’s getting lower and lower every year," says Andrew.
Despite the fact that Andrew and Clara are angry about oilsands development, they’re in a Catch-22 situation. They’ve been dependent for years on the oilsands industry for their livelihood, like so many other Fort MacKay members. Andrew has worked at Suncor as a millwright and now works at Syncrude as a heavy equipment operator.
Fitzpatrick says the First Nation has never had any real choice in development around it and so it has simply tried to benefit as much as it can.
"We have to work with industry because this is our future for our kids, because we’ll never go back to the traditional way of life because there’s no money in it," she says. "My father always emphasized we are going to get overrun and invaded, but we have to keep our pride and negotiate and compromise with industry and get the best of both worlds."
Mikisew Cree First Nation fears environmental fallout
Melody Lepine, director of the Mikisew Cree First Nation’s Industry Relations Corporation, says the health of the Athabasca River is her nation’s major concern.
Mikisew Cree First Nation is located in Fort Chipewyan, which is next to Lake Athabasca. The Athabasca River flows into the Peace-Athabasca Delta, south of the community, before flowing into Lake Athabasca. The delta, much of which is contained in Wood Buffalo National Park, is one of the world’s largest inland freshwater deltas and provides important habitat for birds, muskrat, beavers and buffalo. Lepine says the delta has already been damaged by the construction of the W.A.C. Bennett hydroelectric dam at the headwaters of the Peace River in British Columbia, which flows into the delta. With the construction of the dam in 1964, as well as climate change, there’s been less spring flooding, which results in less water spilling over into ponds in the delta – the delta is essentially drying up.
Lepine says her nation fears that if flows in the Athabasca River are lower because of extractions made by oilsands companies the delta will be further damaged. Lepine says First Nation members used to do a lot of hunting and trapping in the delta, but there’s already been a large reduction in muskrat and beavers and other animals.
"It will just be all dry and contaminated and we’ll be scratching our heads 60 years from now thinking we really should have thought about this. Maybe we shouldn’t have given away those 10 last water licences. Maybe we should’ve done more studies, more environmental baseline work research," says Lepine. "We don’t want to stop development, yet development should be occurring responsibly, weighing both the economic and environmental balance…. There definitely has to be a balance and currently it doesn’t look like there is." |
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