Peace River anxious to see Lubicon settlement

27 March, 2000
Grande Prairie Daily Herald-Tribune

Peace River anxious to see Lubicon settlement

DEB GUERETTE
Herald-Tribune staff

Decades after Lubicon Lake Indian Nation representatives first trekked from their home community to make the overlooked band known to government treaty-makers, a federal delegation visited the isolated settlement and promised its people a reserve in 1939.

Sixty-one years later, concerned citizens at home and abroad wonder when the North Peace band of about 500 will realize its hopes to reclaim a self-sufficient homeland.

"It must be difficult to be in limbo so long," Peace River deputy mayor Rick Wesolowski said.

The town is the Lubicon's closest urban neighbour.

"There is a great deal of concern in town," for the Lubicon and the continuing lack of resolution to their claim, Wesolowski said.

"It is a reoccurring topic for council," he said.

"When we have had access to our MLA and MP, we make it abundantly clear that we would like to see the issue resolved."

"I'm not sure what it is that makes (government) forces drag their feet. It certainly seems there is no haste... (or) the motivation is not there" to conclude a settlement, Wesolowski said.

While Peace River would likely experience some economic spin-off if and when construction of a new community for the band at Lubicon Lake begins, economics isn't the only thing people think of.

"At this point I think it is more of an emotional issue - people empathize with them," he said.

Council hasn't been updated about negotiations since last summer but "would like to sit down with our neighbours and discuss the issues... and see if we can be of any assistance," the town councillor said.

Luke Hildebrand has sat in on several negotiation sessions at Little Buffalo, about 100 km east of Peace River, since talks resumed with a new federal negotiating team in the spring of 1998.

The Beaver Lumber store owner said the Lubicon "asked that we come out" to provide some advice on building plans.

"They welcomed me to come out. They like people to come out and see. They are very open about their plans," Hildebrand said.

Sitting in on negotiations, however, has left the local businessman less than impressed.

"There is so much political stuff... you'd want to pull your hair out. It is frustrating to see so much back and forth," he said.

Hildebrand said he sat in on one session where it was agreed some information would be collected and brought back to the next session a month later.

Come that next meeting, "the basic data that should have been collected was not done."

"If it was my business and I needed answers to questions - I'd be pretty upset," he said.

"There are accusations going both ways... (but) it doesn't seem there is enough proper preparation - particularly on the federal side."

Discussions did at least seem to inch forward and produce some agreements, on band membership and reserve size, until this fall, Hildebrand said. "They seem to have come to an impasse over a few things now," he said. The federal negotiation team could be aided by "someone with a clear point of view and authority," he said.

"It has gone on way too long... let's get this darn thing resolved," he said.

Having reviewed the Lubicon settlement requests Hildebrand said "the proposals seem OK - especially in light of a lot of other settlements." The Lubicon, led by Chief Bernard Ominayak, are just looking out for future generations in staunchly including economic development initiatives in settlement proposals, he said.

"Long-term benefit is what the issue is. They want to be self-sufficient. They don't want to be reliant on government welfare.

"The Lubicon are very patient - they still live in substandard conditions," he said.

Nancy Graham is co-ordinator of the eastern Canada based Lubicon Lobby Campaign.

The lobby effort, initiated by the decade old Friends of the Lubicon and the Aboriginal Rights Coalition, was launched in the winter of 1998, after the latest round of negotiations resumed.

"We wanted to help government understand there is widespread public support for a fair, just and equitable settlement to occur in a reasonable time frame," Graham said.

A network of supporters across Canada and "a huge network of international supporters" were contacted and asked to write to their MP or the minister of Indian Affairs.

"Some supporters felt so strongly they actually wrote to every member of parliament," Graham said.

About half of the MPs contacted by constituents wrote letters of inquiry or support for the Lubicon to the Indian Affairs minister and questions were raised in the House of Commons.

The lobby effort continues to reach out to new supporters and "a very strong core group of supporters remains poised to do whatever needs to be done," to further the call for a successful Lubicon settlement.

'APPALLED'

Many supporters are "simply appalled by what's going on," Graham said. "People are just blown away.... (They don't know) what is it that is preventing government from settling this.

"What the Lubicon are asking for is so minuscule in comparison to the natural resources already extracted from their land.

"Some sort of complicity has to be occurring between (resource industry) multi-nationals and government in order for them not to settle. "There has to be a reason," Graham said.

A new all-weather road brought major oil and gas exploration and extraction activities to Lubicon territory in 1979.

By 1982 over 400 wells were drilled within a 20-mile radius of Little Buffalo Lake. Resource revenues from traditional Lubicon territory were pumping an estimated $500 million a year into corporate coffers.

Wildlife fled the area evaded by development, devastating the Lubicon's hunting, trapping subsistence economy.

The number of band members in need of social assistance soared from 10 to 95 per cent between 1979 and 1982.

Alcoholism, birth defects, suicides, a tuberculosis epidemic and other social ills followed.

Recent environmental assessments show over 1,000 oil and gas well sites now lay within a 20-kilometre radius of Lubicon Lake, where the band has long proposed to build a home community.

As well, forest industry companies hold forest management agreements with the province for lands that entirely blanket claimed Lubicon territory. Resource revenue earned by industry over the past 20 years is estimated at $10 billion.

United Nations and World Council of Churches commissions and reports have condemned the provincial and federal governments for their treatment of the Lubicon people.

When a government agent stepped off a float plane on the western shore of Lubicon Lake in 1939, he found an isolated, but thriving settlement.

"I was very much interested in this band, and found them clean, well dressed, healthy, bright and intelligent; in other words, people who wanted to live and do well," federal inspector Pat Schmidt wrote back to Ottawa. Today, the Lubicon community still lacks running water. The Lubicon people are largely unemployed and live in crowded, substandard housing.

After a contentious four-month interruption to an 18-month long schedule of almost monthly negotiations sessions that began in June of 1998, talks between federal negotiators and the Lubicon are set to reconvene in Little Buffalo the end of March or early April.