Friends of the Lubicon
PO Box 444 Stn D,
Etobicoke ON M9A 4X4
Tel: (416) 763-7500
Email: fol (at) tao (dot) ca
www.lubicon.ca
November 27, 2006
Attached are copies of a couple Edmonton Sun stories on the lack of clean drinking water in the Lubicon Nation community of Little Buffalo. It’s a national disgrace that the people whose lands have provided billions of dollars of oil and gas profits to outsiders still have no running water in their homes. Letters to that effect should be flooding the Minister’s office.
A water treatment plant and water and sewer service for Lubicon homes is in fact a key element to be provided by a settlement of Lubicon land rights -- a settlement that remains outstanding because of the continued refusal of the federal government to negotiate key settlement items with the Lubicons.
Even while an overall settlement remains outstanding, however, Lubicon leaders have been trying to develop water and sewage service for elders’ homes in their community so that at very least the oldest Lubicon members will have better home care. Even that simple proposal has been hampered by ongoing political maneuverings in Indian Affairs.
The "Once there was clean water" article attached below says the water in the Northlands School water cistern in Little Buffalo "is trucked in from a water facility developed from a nearby oil plant". The reporter is confusing earlier talk about using a Shell pipeline originally built by Shell years ago to transport water for the Shell in-situ oil sands plant located outside of Peace River from a lake some 10 miles to the west of Little Buffalo called Cadotte Lake.
The old Shell pipeline was abandoned by Shell over 25 years ago because it drained so much water from Cadotte Lake in a few months that the lake froze solid and killed all the fish. Shell then built another pipeline to the Peace River and 25 years later was trying to peddle the old pipeline to the provincial jurisdiction of Sunrise Country as a way to provide water to the Lubicons and the nearby Woodland Cree band. This old Shell pipeline proposal was eventually dropped, reportedly because on closer inspection the old Shell pipeline was found to be corroded and to contain toxic chemicals, but more recently the feds and the province latched onto the idea that a pipeline from the Peace River, subsidized by both the feds and the province but owned and operated by Sunrise County, would be a fine way to assert provincial government jurisdiction over unceded Lubicon lands and subvert Lubicon land rights.
The water for the Northlands water cistern in Little Buffalo is in fact trucked from a water pumping station built in Cadotte Lake for the Woodland Cree as a part of the Woodland settlement agreement -- but which has never produced water considered drinkable.
The other attached article says the Lubicons "have spent the last two years trying to negotiate with the federal government to provide plumbing to 10 elders, some of whom are in their 80s". It says "The (Lubicon) initial proposal...carries a $1.4 million dollar price tag". It says "So far the feds offer is worth about $250,000". And it quotes an Indian Affairs official as saying "Ottawa is still negotiating with the Lubicons on the rest of the proposal".
In fact the Lubicons have been talking to the federal government for over three years starting when then-Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault instructed his Alberta Regional Office officials to start providing the Lubicons with basic services received by all other recognized Indian Bands in Alberta even while Lubicon land negotiations were proceeding. The current proposal is the latest of a series of proposals subsequently discussed by the Lubicons and Regional Office officials.
The current proposal was agreed in June of 2005 but was then blocked by senior Regional Office officials "due to the outstanding claims issue". (Regional Office officials decline to specify what "outstanding claims issues" caused them to preemptorily and without explanation end earlier discussions regarding provision of water and sewer services to Lubicon Elders but lack of concurrent progress on the Sunrise County proposal was undoubtedly part of it.)
The June 2005 proposal has a price tag of either $1.2 million or $2.4 million depending upon which of two possible local sources of water technically proves most suitable. The numbers are big because they involve providing local water treatment and sewage disposal facilities, plus related infrastructure and equipment. However trucking in the water from outside and trucking out the sewage for disposal would cost more in one year than it would cost to build a small local water treatment facility and to expand an existing sewage lagoon currently serving the white teachers in Little Buffalo Lake. Other costs such as indoor plumbing and water and sewer tanks would remain the same in either case.
At the end of August, 2006, Regional Office officials informed the Lubicons that they would provide $250,000 to provide water and sewage systems for elders’ homes.
It is not accurate to say, as the article quotes Indian Affairs spokesperson Kelly Payn as saying, that "Ottawa is still negotiating with the Lubicon on the rest of the proposal". What the federal government has in fact proposed is to provide $250,000 towards the projected total of $1.2 or $2.4 million -- which wouldn't even pay for sinks, toilets and water and sewer tanks -- and then a verbal commitment to try and come up with another $160,000 required to actually cover the cost of sinks, toilets, water and sewer tanks and upgrading of driveways (necessary to allow access for heavy trucks to deliver water and haul out sewage). None of that would of course actually provide water service or sewage disposal.
Federal officials then proposed to "contract out water delivery and sewage disposal until the proposed Sunrise County pipeline is completed" and/or -- and this is not actually part of the formal federal offer but a verbal aside made by federal officials when pressed on the relationship of the regional water system proposal to agreement in settlement negotiations regarding on-reserve water treatment and sewage disposal -- until there is a settlement of Lubicon land rights providing for on-reserve water treatment and sewage disposal.
Federal officials say they are optimistic that they will be able to find the additional $160,000 required to actually cover the cost of sinks, toilets, water and sewer tanks and upgrading of driveways somewhere but they don't respond at all to questions about where the money will come from to "contract out water delivery and sewage disposal until the proposed Sunrise County pipeline is completed". When specifically asked they simply stare blankly and don't say anything. They of course know the numbers if only because they are included in the June 2005 proposal. They just don't want to talk about the numbers because they know the numbers make their proposed approach financially nonsensical as a way of providing water and sewer services and they don't want to acknowledge their real agenda.
The total estimated tab for building a local water treatment facility and expanding the existing sewage lagoon, employing Lubicon people and operating under the duly elected Lubicon government, is $350,000. The cost of hauling in the water and hauling out the sewage for one year only is estimated at between $410,000 and $460,000, depending upon whether one trucks in the water 65 miles from Peace River or 30 miles from Red Earth -- both of which would be cheaper than the $300,000 annual cost of trucking in the undrinkable Woodland water from ten miles away quoted in the article.
Plus there's of course the undoubtedly significant additional cost of the proposed 65 mile long Sunrise County pipeline from the Peace River.
Asked how long it would take to build the proposed 65 mile long Sunrise County pipeline, one federal official said "I don't know -- years". A second federal official later said "4 to 5 years anyway".
While unprepared to discuss how much all of this is going to cost and where the money to pay for it is going to come from, the costs of using the proposed Sunrise County pipeline to provide the Lubicons with potable water would clearly be far greater than the proposal negotiated and agreed between the Lubicons and federal officials in June of 2005 -- and the timetable for actually providing water and sewer service to Lubicon Elders would be far less certain -- but the Sunrise County pipeline proposal has the advantage of leading in the direction of Lubicon acceptance of provincial jurisidiction over unceded Lubicon lands and subversion of Lubicon land rights, while the June 2005 proposal is consistent with settlement of Lubicon land rights, would employ Lubicon people in providing their own services under the duly elected Lubicon government, and would provide equipment and infrastructure necessary to provide water and sewer service to the western end of the proposed Lubicon reserve contemplated in Lubicon settlement negotiations.
Neither level of Canadian government has of course ever been reluctant to spend tons of money to undermine and subvert Lubicon land rights.
The federal spokesperson is quoted in article as saying that the feds are "always looking at ways to get back at the negotiating table". In fact Chief Ominayak has written Indian Affairs Minister Prentice a number of letters proposing to return to the negotiating table to negotiate all outstanding settlement issues but Minister Prentice has declined to negotiate such key and long outstanding settlement issues as financial compensation and self-government -- offering only to "talk about self-government post-settlement of Lubicon land rights. (The Indian Affairs spokesperson quoted in the article says that the position of the federal government is that Lubicon land rights and the continuing Lubicon right to be self-governing are somehow "separate issues and must be negotiated separately" -- self-government only after the Lubicons have already ceded rights to valuable Lubicon lands and resources from which the continuing Lubicon right to be self-governing clearly flows, and upon which the continuing Lubicon right to be self-governing clearly depends.)
Lastly the "Stewardship" article quotes Fred Lennarson as saying that average income from trapping plummeted from about $5,000 a year to a mere $200 in just a couple of years as the result of massive gas and oil exploitation in the unceded Lubicon Territory. The correct numbers are a little over an average of $5,000 a year to only $400 for the best Lubicon trappers.
By Andrew Hanon, Edmonton Sun
Little Buffalo -- It has been a little over a year since the evacuation of 1,000 people from a remote northern Ontario native community because of contaminated water. The incident brought national attention to the appalling living conditions on some reserves.
In March, Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice announced that Ottawa would set national standards for water quality in aboriginal communities, and vowed to immediately start improving the situation for the worst-off native bands.
At the time, 76 of Canada's 615 first nations, more than 12%, were under boil-water advisories. As of Nov. 10, that number had climbed to 86, including 11 in Alberta and 36 in Ontario.
The issue has been around for years. In 2001, Indian Affairs found that about 75% of all native communities had a significant risk to the quality and safety of their drinking water.
Access to clean, drinkable water is one of the clearest indicators of a society's living conditions, and it's something most Canadians take for granted. This month the Sun went to three northern Alberta native communities to see what the situation is like for them.
In a five-day series that begins today, we look at the Lubicon, who have no safe supply of their own and must buy water from other communities, the Woodland Cree, who are fighting to save their water supply, and the Driftpile First Nation, whose members are learning to trust their tap water, which for the first time in more than a decade is safe.
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Dwight Gladue walks gingerly through the cemetery, as if trying not to disturb those at rest.
A stinging wind bites into exposed flesh, but he seems unfazed by the frigid air. After all, Gladue has lived his entire life in the boreal forest of north-central Alberta, and long, cold winters come with the territory.
DISTURBING
"See? Here's another one,'' he says, pointing to a tiny marker. It has only a single year on it, indicating a stillbirth. There is a disturbing number of graves for newborns; in one horrific 18-month period in 1985-86 it's reported that only two of 21 pregnancies ended in live births.
"If people tell you it's not true, that we're exaggerating things, you tell them that you've seen the graves.''
There are two small cemeteries in Little Buffalo, a tiny community 450 km north of Edmonton that is home to the Lubicon Cree. Both are extremely well tended, with every grave lovingly cared for by the families of the buried.
In fact, the cemeteries, one of the Lubicons' few remaining links to its much-happier past, are in better shape than most of the homes.
The houses are mostly 24-foot by 36-foot, three bedroom bungalows with no basement. None have running water or sewer systems, and are often packed with three and four generations. Gladue, a member of the Lubicon Cree's band council, shares his tiny home with eight other family members.
Little Buffalo's 400 residents are probably the most impoverished in Alberta, even though they are virtually beseiged by wealth and economic activity in the forest all around the community. In fact, the community blames the frantic pace of industry, mostly logging and oil production, for its desperate situation.
Gladue remembers the beginning of the end as if it was yesterday.
On July 1, 1979, he and a friend were hunting in an area that his family had known for centuries when they stumbled upon a shocking sight.
A construction crew was ripping up the wilderness to make way for Highway 986, a broad ribbon of pavement that would slash straight through the area that the Lubicon claimed as their traditional territory.
Soon the entire region would be humming with heavy trucks, construction teams and work crews as industry moved in and began cutting service roads through the bush.
ISOLATION
Up to that moment, the Lubicon had lived in virtual isolation. The only route into their community was a rutted wagon track. The journey into the nearest town, Peace River, nearly 100 km to the west, took two to three days.
Gladue says the Lubicon were perfectly happy to be ignored by greater society. They had been overlooked when federal treaty negotiators went through the area in the 1890s and have never ceded their traditional territory to Ottawa. As a consequence, however, they have no reserve of their own and the million hectares they claim is traditional land is considered by the province and the feds to be Crown land.
Prior to the new highway, the Lubicon still led rustic lives, spending summers in teepees and winters in log houses and using horse-drawn carts for transportation. They subsisted mostly on moose and deer caught in the forest and earned enough income for other necessities by operating family trap lines.
He says the people had little use for modern conveniences because the land provided for all their needs.
"We had lots of traditional water sources - (Lubicon) Lake, springs and the muskeg were all clean. In the winter all we had to do was fill a pot with snow and melt it. It was all good,'' he says.
"But within a few years of the road coming through, it was all contaminated. We haven't had our own water source since the 1980s.''
Nowadays, the Lubicon are served by a community cistern, or water tank. Gladue says it is trucked in from a water facility developed for a nearby oil plant, at a cost of about $300,000 per year, but isn't considered drinkable.
The people fill large barrels and take them home for bathing, laundry etc. Without any plumbing in the houses, clothes must be washed by hand and bathwater is heated by the bucketful and poured into a tub.
TOO POOR
Many people buy bottled drinking water in Peace River, but Gladue says there are plenty of families that are too poor, so they drink the cistern water.
While no scientific studies have been conducted, the Lubicon leadership are convinced poor water quality is a huge contributor to high rates of skin and stomach ailments, disease and miscarriages.
When asked about water quality in Little Buffalo, Fred Lennarson, a political advisor to the Lubicon, chuckles ruefully and says, "There's no problem with the local water, because there is no local water.''
Edmonton Sun
November 26, 2006
By Andrew Hanon, Edmonton Sun
Little Buffalo -- One member of the Lubicon community privately calls it the "white enclave,'' his voice dripping with resentment.
While the 400 or so members of the north-central Alberta native band live in abject poverty - without so much as running water or sewer in their overcrowded houses - a small group of non-natives living in their midst enjoys tidy manufactured homes with all the modern conveniences.
Little Buffalo school serves 124 children from kindergarten to Grade 12. The school and adjacent housing for its 10 teachers are the only buildings in the community with running water and flush toilets.
The housing is provided by the provincial government, which operates the school in the tiny community 450 km north of Edmonton.
In contrast, Lubicon Chief Bernard Ominayak and his council have spent the past two years trying to negotiate with the federal government to provide plumbing to the homes of 10 elders, some of whom are in their 80s.
"In the winter, some of them have to be carried through the snow to their outhouses," explains band Coun. Dwight Gladue.
"It would make life so much better for our old people.''
So far, the feds have agreed to fit the 10 homes with plumbing, but have not made any commitment on actually bringing the water into the homes.
"What's the point in that?'' asks Fred Lennarson, an advisor to the band.
The band's initial proposal, which includes installing plumbing in the homes and giving each elder's home a cistern and sewer facilities, carries a $1.4 million price tag.
So far the feds' offer is worth about $250,000.
STILL NEGOTIATING
Federal Indian and Northern Affairs spokesman Kelly Payn said Ottawa is still negotiating with the Lubicon on the rest of the proposal.
She said the government has a $295 million plan "to stabilize the housing situation on reserves" across the country.
"We're trying to see if we can access those funds," she says, adding, "no decisions have been made yet."
The teachers' water supply is a community cistern near the school. While it's piped into their homes, everyone else must go to the cistern with buckets. The only toilets the band members have are outhouses.
To many of the Lubicon, the disparity in living conditions between the band members and the non-native teachers living among them is a source of immense bitterness.
They realize that the teachers' houses are paid for by an entirely different level of government than the one they're dealing with, but Lennarson says, to them, it just drives home the point that they are not being treated fairly by the feds.
The beginnings of the Lubicons' grief goes back to 1899 when the treaty between First Nations in their part of Alberta was signed. Somehow, the government negotiators overlooked the Lubicon and they were never a party to the negotiations, nor did the band ever sign away their traditional land.
To this day, the band has no reserve of its own.
For the first four decades of the 20th Century, the Lubicon fought with federal and provincial authorities over their legitimacy as a native band and members as bona fide Indians.
LAND CLAIM
Since 1939 they've been fighting a land claim that encompasses one million hectares. Negotiations dragged on so long that twice in the last two decades the United Nations' human rights committee weighed in.
Last year the U.N.'s human rights committee decried the fact that the Lubicon lands continue to "be compromised" by oil and gas exploration and logging even though the dispute remains unsettled.
Talks broke off in November 2003. Payn said an impasse was hit because both sides can't come to terms on two main issues.
The first, she said, is financial compensation. Payn wouldn't reveal how much money the government has offered or how much the band is demanding.
The second is self-government. Payn said the band wants self-government to be part of the land claim, but government says they're two separate issues and must be negotiated separately.
The feds, she says, "are always looking at ways to get back to the table."
In terms of day-to-day living, for much of the 1940s to the 1970s, the Lubicon were left on their own to live a largely traditional lifestyle, hunting for food and trapping for modest incomes.
Then in the 1980s the provincial government started allowing logging and oil drilling in the area.
Not only were all the traditional water sources contaminated, says band councillor Dwight Gladue, but the heavy machinery and new roads cut through the bush nearly wiped out their trapping.
In just a couple of years, Lennarson says, the average annual income from trapping plummeted from about $5,000 year to a mere $200.
SCRAPING BY
Most band members now scrape by on social assistance and seasonal labour with the companies in the forest.
The Lubicons' ties to the land that they feel was stolen out from under them, with no compensation in sight, is spiritual, says Lennarson.
"You have to look at it this way," he says.
"They believe that the Creator put them on this specific piece of land, in the this specific part of the world, to be its stewards. The stewardship of their traditional land is a sacred trust. To them, it's more than a mere fight over land use and resources."
fol-request at masses.tao.ca