Edlanet'e. Good morning.
My name is Lisa King. I'm here with my co-worker, Larry Innes. My ancestral name is Deskelni, which means “keeper of the river”. I'm a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. We call ourselves the Denesuline people of the Dene nations in North America.
Most of our membership lives in Fort Chipewyan, a remote fly-in community 235 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, on the north shore of Lake Athabasca, where the Peace and the Athabasca rivers meet.
Our territory extends throughout the Alberta Athabasca oil sands region. It has been dramatically affected by the extensive exploration and development of the massive unconventional oil and bitumen reserves that have been under way for nearly 50 years.
Oil sands developments have been expanded dramatically over the past half decade, to over 1.7 million barrels per day. There are plans to more than double this production by 2021. This has significant implications for the habitat conservation in the region and for the aboriginal peoples who depend on the wildlife, fish, and medicines that this land provides, what we call the traditional resources.
Our first nation recognizes the importance of responsible development of these resources in our region, to Alberta and to Canada as a whole. But unlike government and corporate decision-makers in Calgary, Ottawa, Houston, Paris, and Beijing, our people are the ones who have to live with the consequences of rapid and reckless industrial expansion. ACFN members are the ones who directly experience those impacts.
For centuries, our ancestors thrived on the bountiful traditional resources of our land. Our territory, which is almost at the centre of the vast Mackenzie watershed, provided an abundance for our people. We harvested moose, caribou, and bison from massive herds. In the spring and fall we took what we needed from the delta, which even today supports one of the largest concentrations of migratory waterfowl in North America. We fished from the abundance of species in Lake Athabasca, traded with our neighbouring Dene and Cree nations, and more recently sold fur to the European fur trading companies. It is no accident that Fort Chipewyan became one of the most important posts in the North West Company's vast network and accounted for a significant portion of that company's fur business.
When Canada's commissioners for Treaty 8 came north to our territory, they observed the most extensive marshes and feeding grounds for game in all of Canada, far surpassing those in the east. Numerous surveys conducted by 20th century scientists have confirmed that our lands are, or were, among the most significant in North America in terms of quality of the wildlife habitat and the diversity of species it sustains.
It is also important to recognize that when our ancestors signed Treaty 8 over a century ago, it was at a time of massive change. The railroads had pushed west, bringing a wave of new settlers to our territory. Then, as now, government officials assured our people that our traditional livelihood would be protected, and that we would continue to live as our ancestors had always done, from the bounties of our land.
Both Canada and Alberta recognize the importance of our territory as wildlife habitat. Canada's largest national park, Wood Buffalo, was carved out of our lands in the 1920s. In the 1950s, the Government of Alberta declared much of our land to be a game preserve. These actions, even though they were intended to protect habitat, had impacts on our people. Our treaty rights were not respected, and many of our hunters were prosecuted by game officers while the hunters were trying to provide for their families.
Today we supposedly live in more enlightened times. We have a Constitution that guarantees that our aboriginal and treaty rights will be respected. Many of our young people are continuing to practise our traditions using the lands our ancestors had. We have always stewarded to nourishing not only the bodies but the spirits of our people. I am among those Denesuline who continue those same traditions throughout our lands. But in Canada and Alberta, our treaty partners are not honouring the promises that were made to our ancestors. They are failing to protect the wildlife and lands that sustain our livelihood.
I am here to tell you that all the things our people have experienced and endured—the closure of large parts of our territory to hunting, the establishment of a national park, the ongoing loss of productive hunting lands to settlement, the damming of the Peace River by the W.A.C. Bennett Dam, and the oil sands developments around Fort McMurray—have been nothing more than a prelude to the massive changes that industry and government have planned for our land.
My partner Larry will continue.