[Witness speaks in Cree]
My name is Clayton Thomas-Muller. I'm the tar sands campaigner with the Indigenous Environmental Network.
IEN is a non-governmental indigenous organization formed in 1990 addressing indigenous rights and environmental and economic justice issues.
IEN has become a leading voice within Canada and the U.S. on climate and energy policy locally, nationally, and globally. IEN implements the Canadian indigenous tar sands campaign and is working with leadership of both first nations and Métis in the region affected by the Alberta tar sands development.
Aboriginal title encompasses large areas of land throughout Canada. It is a treaty and legal term that recognizes aboriginal interests in the land. First nations are not mere stakeholders or the public but are political and legal entities that have treaty rights with Canada.
Despite the concerns of first nations, the Governments of Alberta and Canada are not listening. The areas of concern are under aboriginal Treaties 6 and 8. These are treaties that ensure the lands of first nations should not be taken away from them by massive, uncontrolled development that threatens culture and the traditional way of life. The dewatering of rivers and streams to support the tar sands operation is a threat to the cultural survival of these communities, and the battle over tar sands extraction and concerns of who invests in this development comes down to the fundamental human rights of first nations to exist and to have a future with a safe, clean, healthy environment.
Fort Chipewyan is approximately 250 kilometres north or downstream of the Athabasca River from all tar sands projects. Fort Chipewyan, also known as Fort Chip, is a small settlement. It is the oldest continuously inhabited community in Alberta, Canada. Access to the community is by air and riverboat in the summer months. It is accessible in winter by driving over ice bridges. The Fort Chipewyan population is composed of about 1,200 people, primarily aboriginal. The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Mikisew Cree First Nation, and Métis all make up this beautiful community.
Fort Chip is situated in the Peace–Athabasca Delta on the boundaries of Wood Buffalo National Park, which is our largest park here in Canada and is a UNESCO-designated world heritage site.
The encroachment of tar sands development from the south and its impacts have surfaced in the community of Fort Chip. Spills of the tailings ponds onto the Athabasca River have alarmed Fort Chipewyan residents. Fort Chipewyan is downstream of the tar sands and the Athabasca River.
For about four decades the aboriginal people in this community have observed noticeable differences in the environment, water quantity, water quality, change in bird migrations, deformities, cancerous tumours, and blisters and mutations in the fish, a critical food resource, and, more recently, an increase in health conditions and a confirmed number of unusual and rare and aggressive cancers to the tune of 30%.
The tar sands are the biggest industrial development in the world and the second-fastest source of deforestation, next to the Amazon. Alberta's vast deposits of bitumen, an unconventional hydrocarbon trapped under the boreal forest, is a source of one of the world's most energy- and carbon-intensive fossil fuels, and it has made Canada the Saudi Arabia of the western world. Canada is one of the world's highest per capita greenhouse gas emitters.
The Alberta tar sands are an environmental justice issue affecting treaty rights and human rights of aboriginal first nations at Fort Chipewyan and other first nations communities in the region. As one tactic to halt the tar sands development, first nations are using a rights-based approach to participate in the formal application process of the multitude of billion-dollar project expansions taking place. First nations are demanding the capacity to conduct their own environmental assessments, looking at cumulative and cultural impacts. With their assertion of rights, first nations at Fort Chipewyan have raised the standard for the regulatory process, including the quality of the Athabasca River, compelling the Government of Alberta to develop a water management framework for the Athabasca River. Since 2006, first nations have demanded a moratorium on any new expansion of existing applications.
Tar sands infrastructure and transport routes. Shipping lanes are represented by half a dozen major pipelines: B.C.'s northern gateway, Keystone XL, and others, including two massive natural gas projects--the Alaska natural gas pipeline and the Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline. Dozens of refineries in the lower 48 are impacting Alaskan first nations and American Indian nations across the continent. These infrastructure projects represent the hard-wiring of the fossil fuel economy here in North America at a time when we should be transitioning away from fossil fuels to zero carbon energy technological forms.