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Aboriginal and Inuit Mining and Oil/Gas

Female Newsmaker of the year [Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence] – by Lenny Carpenter (Wawatay News – January 3, 2014)

Northern Ontario’s First Nations Voice: http://wawataynews.ca/

Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence’s national spotlight for her fight to remove the third party manager assigned to her First Nation and her decision to go on a hunger strike last month makes her Wawatay’s female newsmaker of the year.

Following the housing crisis in her community at the end of last year, Spence continued to oppose the third party manager imposed upon the community by the federal government.

In January, after Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development of Canada (AANDC) Minister John Duncan accused Spence and the leadership of Attawapiskat of withholding information so that the third party manager could release funds for essential services, Spence issued a reply indicating that the manager’s fees were billed to the First Nation at a rate of $20,000 a month.

“Why should my First Nation be paying $1,300 a day for some firm to issue payroll cheques for my First Nation with our already limited Band Support Funding?” Spence asked in her letter to Duncan. “We do not need a high priced manager to issue cheques, because we are capable of issuing cheques and managing our business affairs.”

After a federal court declined to remove the third party manager on a temporary basis in February, Spence said the decision did not affect the First Nation’s overall legal challenge. She had filed a court injunction against AANDC in December.

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When aboriginal conflicts aren’t stranger than fiction – by Christie Blatchford (National Post – January 4, 2013)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

I started to read Doug Bland’s novel Uprising in 2009, shortly after it was first published.

I didn’t finish only because I was then embroiled in my own non-fiction account of the native occupation in Caledonia, Ont., three years earlier. As always for me, this is a time of great writerly insecurity, and I was afraid both of distraction and of being intimidated unto paralysis by the excellence of someone else’s book.

I still haven’t quite made my way through Uprising’s almost 500 pages, despite an all-day effort, but reading it now is considerably creepy-crawlier than it was before, amid the widespread protests, hunger strikes, flash mobs and assorted other actions of the aboriginal Idle No More movement.

Lieutenant-Colonel (retired) Bland, until 2011 the Chair of Defence Management Studies at Queen’s in Kingston, was already a respected author when Uprising was released, but not of fiction.

In fact, he says, he wrote the first draft “as a typical academic book,” realized afterwards that the only people who would read it were other academics, and did it again as fiction.

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To understand how we got to Attawapiskat, go back to the 1905 James Bay Treaty – by Jonathan Kay (National Post – January 4, 2013)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Attawapiskat First Nation chief Teresa Spence is not engaged in “terrorism,” as one Postmedia writer notoriously suggested last week. Terrorists blow themselves up. Ms. Spence, by contrast, is sitting in a snow-covered teepee on Victoria Island in the Ottawa River. Let’s not play the game of using the T-word to describe everyone we simply don’t like.

On the other hand, Ms. Spence isn’t a true “hunger striker” either, since she reportedly is drinking fish broth and various herbal potions. We don’t know how many calories she’s taking in on a daily basis, so we can’t discount the possibility that she really will starve herself to death. But she is not a true Bobby Sands-style hunger striker. Terminology is important, whether you’re talking about death by Semtex, or starvation.

Finally, Ms. Spence is not an icon of “grass roots” native rage — as some suggest. She is a band chief, with an office and salary paid for by regular Canadian taxpayers. Attawapiskat may be tiny and poor, but it has its own development corporation, airport, local services and homegrown management scandals. The band takes in millions from a local diamond mine. True “grass roots” organizations can only dream of such resources.

But even if Ms. Spence is not a terrorist, nor a true hunger striker, nor a genuine grass roots activist, I would argue that we still need to pay attention: The very real plight of Attawapiskat First Nation encapsulates everything that has gone wrong with aboriginal policy for generations.

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Misguided hunger strike is manufacturing dissent – by Peter Foster (National Post – January 4, 2013)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

The aboriginal plight is the legacy of failed policies past, and of resistance from native leaders to changes in accountability, transparency, education and property rights that would inevitably undermine their own power

Nobody would deny the desperate conditions on many native reserves. Most Canadians are genuinely concerned and frustrated at how little improvement has been brought by the billions spent. However, to imagine that problems of poverty, ill health and poor education are best addressed — let alone solved — by histrionic threats, social-mediated mob scenes or blocked roads or rail lines is dangerous delusion.

Chief Theresa Spence, who was previously best known for declaring states of emergency — arguably rooted in her own mismanagement — at her Attawapiskat reserve, is suddenly being treated as some combination of Martin Luther King and Aung San Suu Kyi. Celebrity moths, bleeding hearts and clamberers up the greasy political pole have sought to invest her “hunger strike,” which is now into its fourth week, with noble purpose.

In fact, her initial threat to starve herself to death failing a meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Governor General David Johnston suggested either a bizarre degree of narcissism, or revealed her as a witless puppet. Perhaps both.

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Male Newsmaker of the Year [Neskantaga Chief Peter Moonias]- by Shawn Bell (Wawatay News – January 3, 2013)

Northern Ontario’s First Nations Voice: http://wawataynews.ca/

Neskantaga Chief Peter Moonias burst into the national media’s attention in the spring when he announced to the world that he would stop a bridge to the Ring of Fire from being built over the Attawapiskat River, by any means possible.

“They’re going to have to cross that river, and I told them if they want to cross that river, they’re going to have to kill me first. That’s how strongly I feel about my people’s rights here,” Moonias said in May.

Since then Neskantaga has become a thorn in the side of Cliffs Natural Resources, the mining giant that Moonias has pegged an “American mining bully.” Moonias’ efforts have brought international attention to the First Nations fight to be consulted and accommodated on what may be the biggest development ever in northern Ontario.

For those efforts he has earned Wawatay’s male newsmaker of the year. The First Nation is making true its claim to use any means possible to oppose the Ring of Fire until proper consultation gets completed.

In May the chief sent a series of letters to the Ontario government, demanding consultation and expressing his concerns over Cliffs’ announcement that it was going ahead with its Ring of Fire chromite mine, along with a north-south highway and a smelter in Sudbury.

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Environmental story of the year – by Shawn Bell (Wawatay News – January 3, 2013)

Northern Ontario’s First Nations Voice: http://wawataynews.ca/

The Ontario Geologic Survey (OGS) claimed its aerial surveying of one of Ontario’s last pristine wildernesses was done with the best of intentions. The OGS wanted to update geologic records that were decades old, it said, and help First Nations in the area create land use plans based on geologic information.

And if the aerial surveying around Weenusk First Nation along the Hudson Bay coast resulted in a big increase of mineral exploration in the area, well, no one would be surprised. The only problem was that the First Nation did not even know the aerial surveying took place.

And when it did find out just weeks before the results were to be published on the internet for prospectors everywhere to see, it turned out the people Weenusk were not that interested in having their geologic information exposed to the world.

“Once you allow these processes to begin, our schedules and our land use plans don’t mean a thing,” said George Hunter, a community member and former chief of Weenusk. “We don’t want to allow the province to issue licenses for staking to take place, and the only advantage we have now is that nobody has access to the land.”

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Thunder Bay and the challenge of seniority – by Joe Friesen (Globe and Mail – December 26, 2012)

Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

THUNDER BAY, ONT. — The history of Canadian wealth is written on the land here north of Lake Superior: the fur trade post that supplied Europe’s beaver pelts, the forest that yielded billions in lumber, the towering grain elevators, the smoking pulp mill, the railway that opened the West.

Fortunes have been made and lost in Thunder Bay through periods of boom and bust. In 2013, another challenge looms, one that it shares with the rest of the country: Thunder Bay is aging, and it may get old before it can get rich again.

With 7 per cent of its population aged 60 to 64, Thunder Bay has a greater proportion of people nearing the traditional retirement age than almost any other Canadian city. Rebecca Johnson, a local councillor who led the push to make Thunder Bay officially Age Friendly, has seen so many retirement parties she swears she won’t attend another.

But as the first wave of the baby-boom generation nears retirement, Thunder Bay is also on the cusp of a potential economic boom. There are 13 mines planned in the next six years for the region north of here, many in the area known as the Ring of Fire. Thunder Bay will be the hub for all that development, which includes building roads, camps, mines, as well as services for the influx of workers. An economic-impact study estimates that 16,000 new jobs will be created through the first nine mine projects.

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Aboriginal Ring of Fire director Michael Fox sees opportunity in mining – by Lindsay Jolivet (Yahoo News Canada – January 1, 2013)

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/

A mineral deposit in Ontario’s far north is a source of excitement and controversy for the province’s mining industry. Named the Ring of Fire — after the Johnny Cash song — the area contains a Nickel deposit and the largest deposit of chromite ever discovered in North America. Chromite is a key ingredient in stainless steel. Two companies, Cliffs Natural Resources and Noront, are in talks to mine the region.

Dalton McGuinty has suggested the Ring of Fire could rival Alberta’s oil sands, creating thousands of jobs near reserves that are plagued by unemployment. But its economic potential is matched only by its hurdles and risks. Environmental damage, sustainable infrastructure, and the well-being of nearby aboriginal communities are at stake.

Michael Fox is the Ring of Fire senior director for Webequie First Nation, a fly-in community 540 kilometres north of Thunder Bay. He’s a liaison between the community and those seeking to exploit its resources. Fox spoke with Yahoo! Canada News about the complex process of developing a remote region and the challenges of ensuring that Webequie benefits from the Ring of Fire as much as the companies planning to mine it. This is a condensed version of that discussion.

Yahoo! Canada News: What are your biggest challenges as a liaison between the community, the companies, and the government? It sounds like a big job.

Michael Fox: There are two visions of the two distinct mines that the two companies have. Noront has a nickel deposit that is going to be an underground mine. And their project description has an east-west road. The Cliffs project is an open pit mine, it has a north-south road.

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The way to break the Northern Gateway logjam: aboriginal equity – by Brian Lee Crowley and Ken Coates (Globe and Mail – January 3, 2013)

Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Brian Lee Crowley and Ken Coates are co-leaders of the Aboriginal Canada and the Natural Resource Economy project at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa-based public policy think tank.

The bitter debate over the Northern Gateway oil pipeline project shows Canadian policy-making at its worst.

A piece of nationally significant infrastructure, the project is currently mired in a toxic mess, assailed by environmentalists, targeted by vote-hungry B.C. politicians and publicly challenged by many first nations. You could be forgiven for feeling a dreadful sense of déjà vu.

In the 1970s, an ambitious plan was mooted for a natural gas pipeline down the Mackenzie Valley. Aboriginal people and environmentalists protested. Justice Thomas Berger was named to head an inquiry that galvanized opposition to the pipeline, recommending that it be delayed until aboriginal people were ready to participate fully.

Eventually, companies created new aboriginal partnership models. Aboriginal communities and governments grew more familiar with the project and innovated by becoming equity partners. While some opposition remained, most in the region supported a pipeline that promised jobs for the North and revenue for aboriginal governments.

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Simplistic arguments from Theresa Spence, Idle No More could have tragic consequences for natives – by John Ivison (National Post – January 3, 2013)

 The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

“De Beers is investing $1-billion in the Victor mine near Attawapiskat. It agreed to pay
the band about $30-million over the 12-year life span of the mine. A further $325-million
in contracts has been funnelled through companies owned by the band, to supply catering,
helicopters, dynamite and the like. One wonders how Attawapiskat Resources Inc. has only
made profits of $100,000 on that level of revenue, but that’s for another day.” (John Ivison)

I made the observation on Twitter the other day that certain native leaders seem intent on conflict, and that they want the “hapless” Theresa Spence, the hunger-striking Attawapiskat First Nation chief, to become a martyr.

The reaction was venomous. One of the more considered respondents, Gerald Taiaiake Alfred, called me a “racist p—k” and threatened to kick my “immigrant ass” back to Scotland. And he’s a political science professor at the University of Victoria.

It brought home the power of what psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls “the righteous mind” — the righteous certainty that those who see things differently are wrong, while being completely blind to our own biases.

The prospect of rational debate on this subject is slipping away — and may be lost entirely if Ms. Spence dies. Canada is facing a tumultuous moment in its history with its native people, such as we haven’t seen since the Oka crisis.

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Idle No More protests beyond control of chiefs – by James Bradshaw and Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – January 2, 2013)

Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

TORONTO and OTTAWA – The Idle No More movement is broadening into a call to shake off apathy, absorbing a range of issues from aboriginal rights and environmental safeguards to the democratic process. And as it swells, organizers are warning first nations leaders that the movement will not be corralled by aboriginal politicians even as the country’s chiefs look to use the protests’ momentum to press Ottawa on treaty rights and improved living standards.

Hundreds of people gathered Tuesday afternoon in Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square, many of aboriginal heritage but nearly as many not, joining hands in round dances and lighting candles to honour Chief Theresa Spence, who was on day 22 of her hunger strike demanding Prime Minister Stephen Harper meet with aboriginal leaders.

The gathering attracted aboriginal peoples calling for greater consultation on changes to reservation land management and the Indian Act, but also environmentalists and government critics charging that the federal omnibus budget bill is bypassing vital public debate.

Started by four Saskatchewan women, the grassroots Idle No More movement has gone viral, with supporters across Canada and internationally holding protests, blocking rail lines and launching hunger strikes. While national chiefs support the effort, organizers are resisting any effort to hand over leadership to their elected representatives.

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Aboriginal prosperity must be earned – by Brian Lee Crowley and Ken Coates (Troy Media – December 28, 2012)

http://www.troymedia.com/

Brian Lee Crowley (twitter.com/brianleecrowley) is the Managing Director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an independent non-partisan public policy think tank in Ottawa (http://www.macdonaldlaurier.ca). Ken Coates is the Canada Research Chair in Regional Innovation at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Saskatchewan.

OTTAWA, ON, Dec. 28, 2012/ Troy Media/ – Recent protests organized by the Idle No More movement and angry statements by some Western Canadian Aboriginal leaders reflect real frustration among Indigenous Canadians.

At the same time, several impressive agreements between Aboriginal groups and businesses reveal a burst of job creation, joint ventures and revenue sharing the likes of which Canada has rarely seen.

Which model – anger or cooperation – provides the best window on the future of Indigenous relations with other Canadians?

The answer is “both”. The collaborative arrangements are very real. The recent agreement between Pinehouse First Nation and uranium companies Cameco and Ariva are truly impressive. Cameco, a leader in engagement with First Nations and Metis communities, has a workforce that is 50 per cent Aboriginal and contracts 70 per cent of the supply work to Indigenous firms.

Comparable developments with Syncrude and Suncor in the oil sands have shown great promise. On an even larger scale, Inuit participation with the huge Baffinland (Mary River) mine is truly precedent setting.

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Absolutism in the Church of Green [Resource opposition] – by Gordon Gibson (Globe and Mail – December 31, 2012)

Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

We either responsibly exploit our natural resources or settle for less health care, 
education and lower pensions. A choice of automatic opposition to resource development
is one option, if that’s what we collectively want. But that choice should be understood
as a public policy question with consequences, not as a religious one of no cost.
(Gordon Gibson – December 31, 2012)

Society has “invented a new religion.” Thus spoke former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard recently. He described that as the belief that man is wrecking the planet and that the world should return to a more natural state.

Mr. Bouchard was speaking with some frustration of widespread and almost knee-jerk opposition to developing natural resources. Bingo! He’s on to something. The Church of Green?

Religions have certain characteristics. They consist of a body of belief based on faith (as, for example, in God). This faith is not to be challenged, distinguishing religions from other belief sets. Scientific theories, for a counterexample, must always be questioned. Not so with religion. Unwavering faith is the hallmark.

Religions of the sort decried by Mr. Bouchard have high priests who can speak ex cathedra and gain immediate belief. David Suzuki, Al Gore and Amory Lovins, among others, have this otherworldly gravitas. They have their religious orders. Just as there are Jesuits and Benedictines, there are Greenpeace and the Sierra Club.

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NEWS RELEASE: AURCREST CLOSES FIRST TRANCHE OF FINANCING INCLUDING INVESTMENT BY LAC SEUL FIRST NATION

DECEMBER 21, 2012

TSXV Symbol: AGO

AurCrest Gold Inc. (the “Company” or “AurCrest”) (TSX-V: AGO) is very pleased to announce that it has placed 3,100,000 working capital units of the Company at a price of $0.05 per unit for gross proceeds of $155,000.00. Each working capital unit (a “WC Unit”) consists of one (1) common share of the Company and one (1) share purchase warrant (a “WC Warrant”).

Each WC Warrant entitles the holder to acquire an additional common share at the price of $0.15 per share until December 21, 2013 and thereafter at the price of $0.25 per share until December 21, 2014. The securities are legended and restricted from trading until April 22, 2013. Lac Seul First Nation (“LSFN”) subscribed for 1,500,000 WC Units for $75,000. Insiders of AurCrest subscribed for 1,500,000 WC Units for $75,000 in this private placement.

Ian Brodie-Brown, President and CEO of AurCrest, commented, “The relationship that AurCrest Gold has established with the Lac Seul First Nation is unprecedented within the junior mining industry. We are very pleased that they have continued their support of the Company through this investment. We look forward to working closely with the Lac Seul First Nation and look forward to exploring for Gold assets in their Traditional territory, known to be one of Canada’s great gold camps, namely Red Lake and East Red Lake.”

Chief Clifford Bull of the Lac Seul First Nation stated, “The Band Council of Lac Seul First Nation is pleased to have acquired these shares with AurCrest. It reflects the mutual respect that has developed between us and we look forward to building a strong relationship to realize the benefits and opportunities from the mineral exploration industry in our territory. This modern Exploration Company model is a reflection of our community’s interest to work with industry.”

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Northern Ontario chromite mining has first nation worried for water safety- Heather Socffield (The Canadian Press/Globe and Mail – December 27, 2012)

Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

MARTEN FALLS, ONT. — The Canadian Press – Water has consumed the daily routine of Chief Eli Moonias, and it’s making him visibly agitated. His small, fly-in reserve in Northern Ontario has had a boil-water advisory for seven long years, and there is no end in sight.

Now he feels the long-term quality of the water that surrounds his reserve may well be at risk, too. Mining companies have flooded into the James Bay lowlands, into the area now dubbed the Ring of Fire. They’ve found an enormous expanse of chromite, enough nickel for a mine and other metals that may hold potential in future years.

The mining holds the promise of thousands of jobs over the next decade, if not longer – as long as the proposals can pass environmental muster and garner the support of the region’s first nations. But chromite also poses significant challenges to the environment that can be difficult to manage.

“We know we’re going to get some benefits once they start development. We know that in some ways, we’ll be involved as well. The issue is the environment,” says Mr. Moonias.

He looks at development in the oil sands and hears about the inedible fish and the poisoned Athabaska River. He vows never to let anything like that happen to the Albany and Ogoki rivers that flow through the muskeg and meet at Marten Falls.

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