Maybe I can best illustrate the answer to your question this way. Just as an analogy, OPG approached us about five years ago. They said they were going to do a study on the Albany River for further development. There's development already at Lake St. Joseph. There's a dam there. The river is diverted west from there into the Wabigoon and English River system into Manitoba to the Winnipeg River.
They said they wanted to come and look at Cat River--that's a site 40 miles down from us--and Hat Island further down, to see if they could develop that potential. We said, “Okay, fine; go there and do your study.”
Then our people began to question us about it. They asked what we were doing and if we were planning to work with these people and put a dam there.
OPG offered us revenue-sharing from the system once it would be in place. Presumably that would bring capital, well-being, nice houses, and stuff like that, maybe even jobs for some people once we were to agree to that.
Then we began to question. Was it worth it to do that, destroy the river some more, stop the sturgeon from swimming? The sturgeon have done that for 300 million years. Do we have the right to do that, to further disturb that, just because we want to be comfortable? Just because we want a job and a nice house, do we have the right to do that? As aboriginal people, can we say we have the right to do that? We have certain principles that we follow with Mother Earth.
That same question applies to the development here.