Archive | Aboriginal and Inuit Mining and Oil/Gas

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First Nations will hear presentations on how they might take ownership of major energy projects, including the Trans Mountain pipeline

CALGARY — First Nations that produce oil and gas in Canada will tackle some of the most contentious issues facing the sector at the Indigenous Energy Summit on Wednesday, including potential ownership bids for, and protests about, pipelines.

One of the biggest issues in the Canadian energy sector is the ongoing fight between hereditary chiefs and elected chiefs over the the $6.2-billion Coastal GasLink pipeline in British Columbia, which has opened wounds for current and former northern B.C. chiefs.

Meanwhile, First Nations will hear presentations on how they might take ownership of major energy projects, including the Trans Mountain pipeline. Continue Reading →

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Pipeline owners say they have consent, but Wet’suwet’en leaders are divided

With members of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation blockading a pipeline project on their traditional lands, Na’moks was standing by a crackling campfire, next to an RCMP checkpoint, drawing in the snow with his right boot.

The hereditary chief of the Tsayu clan made a small circle to represent the authority of elected band councils within reserves. Outside that circle, he explained, is where Wet’suwet’en clans wield power over a vast territory. “We are hereditary chiefs,” he said, “and we have control of this land.”

The temporary checkpoint was set up earlier this week in a remote area of the B.C. Interior as things got tense, with RCMP officers arresting 14 protesters on Monday at a blockade erected last month along a logging road. Continue Reading →

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

“We want our people out of poverty,” Ms. Smith told me. “We are tired of managing poverty.”

When Crystal Smith considers the current pipeline dispute involving the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, she strains to hear the voices of those she believes matter most: the Wet’suwet’en people. It is true. As it so often is in standoffs of this nature.

We hear from politicians, hereditary chiefs, elected First Nations leaders, but we seldom hear from those in the community whose futures are affected most by decisions around resource development.

“They are the forgotten people in this situation,” Ms. Smith, the 39-year-old elected chief councillor of the Haisla First Nation, told me this week. “They are the only ones that can solve this dispute; not governments, not the courts. It’s the people in the community.” Continue Reading →

https://nationalpost.com/

As in the case of the LNG protests in B.C., how can you reach agreements with a community that can’t agree with itself?

It might not seem immediately evident, but it’s possible the confrontation that has been taking place in a remote northern area of British Columbia will prove to be an important moment in Canada’s long, difficult struggle to come to terms with First Nations bands.

The situation offers a distillation of the dilemma that often makes relations with natives seem insoluble. That is, how can you reach agreements with a community that can’t agree with itself?

The dispute between Coastal GasLink, a subsidiary of TransCanada Corp., and some elements of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, rests not with the gas company, the government, the police, the courts or any of the people doing their best to meet all required parameters for dealing fairly and equitably with First Nations. It’s an argument between one set of native leaders and another. Continue Reading →

https://nationalpost.com/

Blame those obstreperous Wet’suwet’en people all you like, but it was governments avoiding tough questions that caused this mess

There may be no right way to do fossil-fuel megaprojects at all anymore if we’re going to have a hope in hell of meeting our 2015 Paris climate accord commitments, but as far as the massive LNG Canada Kitimat plant and pipeline project goes — with the showdown this week on a remote British Columbia back road that immediately escalated into protests and marches and sit-ins across the country — the politics, promises and planning seem to have gotten just about everything wrong.

You could start with the way Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cheered LNG Canada’s announcement last October that the green light LNG got from B.C.’s NDP government meant full steam ahead for its long-planned $40-billion project, which is to include a new pipeline from Dawson Creek in the Peace River country to a liquefaction plant and export facility at Kitimat on the B.C. coast.

“Today’s announcement by LNG Canada represents the single largest private-sector investment project in Canadian history,” Trudeau said. “It is a vote of confidence in a country that recognizes the need to develop our energy in a way that takes the environment into account, and that works in meaningful partnership with Indigenous people.” Continue Reading →

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Protesters blocking access to the site of a proposed natural gas pipeline in the British Columbia Interior say they will comply with a court injunction by Thursday afternoon and give access to construction workers, days after the RCMP arrested 14 people.

“For now, there is a peaceful resolution,” Jeff Brown, one of the five hereditary clan chiefs within the Wet’suwet’​en Nation, said in an interview on Wednesday night. “The injunction said to grant access, so if we grant access, that should be good enough,” said Mr. Brown, who also goes by Madeek.

He cautioned that the timing of complying with the injunction will hinge on a meeting between the RCMP and Wet’suwet’en hereditary leaders on Thursday morning. Mr. Brown made the comments after hereditary leaders of the Wet’suwet’en announced the concession at a news conference near the site of the blockade. Continue Reading →