| Friends of the Lubicon (Toronto) Address as of Dec 12, 2000: PO BOX 444 STN D, ETOBICOKE ON M9A 4X4 tel: (416) 763-7500 e-mail: fol (at) tao (dot) ca |
Land rights negotiations between the federal government and the Lubicon restarted in July 1998 and are ongoing. The most significant development in the latest round of talks concerns the issue of primary importance to the Lubicons: membership.
Both the federal government and the Lubicons agree that the Lubicons will determine their own membership for all purposes and that all Lubicons will have equal status. Such an agreement is intended to ensure that the Lubicons are treated the same as any other First Nation that signed Treaty 8.
The documents necessary to implement this membership agreement were completed after eight months at the table. Implementation of the membership agreement will be accomplished when federal cabinet passes an Order in Council re-establishing the Lubicon Band with its membership defined by the Lubicons according to agreed-upon criteria and with all members recognized as status Indians under the Indian Act. The three page draft OIC has been declared legally sound by the Department of Justice.
The Order in Council would be annexed to a final land rights settlement agreement and then recommended by the Minister of Indian Affairs to the federal Cabinet for signing. The success of the membership agreement is thus dependent upon reaching an overall land rights settlement. In the meantime, the Lubicons have received written assurance from the Minister of Indian Affairs that she will recommend approval of the Order in Council to Cabinet within seven days after the land rights agreement is signed.
When wording of the document to implement the agreement on membership was nearly worked out at the end of February, chief federal negotiator Brad Morse described to the press that "we made a lot of progress". Lubicon advisor Fred Lennarson was more cautious in his characterization saying that the work was "a significant piece of the puzzle. Hopefully it’s a breakthrough."
Lubicon views on this and other negotiation matters are grounded in an unsavoury history of government deceit.
In the case of the membership issue, at negotiations in 1988 the Lubicons and the federal government agreed to deal with the membership issue first. Senior federal justice department lawyer Ivan Whitehall proposed to register all Lubicons on the band’s membership list as status Indians under the Indian Act. On that basis negotiations proceeded.
Only recently Lubicons were told that Whitehall didn’t have the legal authority to make that agreement. Whitehall certainly didn’t tell that to the Lubicons. Nor would they have had any reason to suspect. Whitehall was a senior Department of Justice lawyer and the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff was expediting talks at the time. If such a high level federal negotiating contingent didn’t have the authority, who did?
So now we have an agreement on membership nailed down and again with approvals from high level officials. Hopefully with the membership agreement in writing this time the government will stick to its word.
Some work has also been done to begin addressing Lubicon environmental concerns. An environmental site assessment of the proposed reserve area conducted by Inuvialuit Environmental Inc. is entering Phase II. The focus is primarily on water and air quality. The long term goal is to ensure that there is a supply of clean water for the Lubicon Lake reserve.
Growing public awareness about the impact of energy industry contaminants on public health is encouraging to the Lubicons who have serious concerns about toxic emissions due to gas flaring at many of the hundreds of oil well sites in their traditional area and about contamination from the nearby Marathon sour gas plant (formerly owned by Unocal).
There has also been discussion on economic development, community construction and infrastructure. The Lubicon settlement proposals which are on the table include detailed plans for their future community. However basic issues like economic development and the provision of a number of key community facilities, as well as many other issues - including financial compensation for natural resources already extracted from unceded Lubicon land and Lubicon self-government - are not yet resolved.
We certainly believe the overwhelming imbalance of power outside of the negotiating table is a big factor in determining what happens at the table. It’s the Governments of Canada and Alberta vs the 500 member Lubicon Nation. Governments are profiting from the extraction of over a million dollars worth of oil daily from Lubicon land. Unless governments have an incentive to settle Lubicon land rights, their sixty year pattern of neglect, deceit and betrayal seems destined to continue.
In order to try and address some of the imbalance, a number of groups across Canada are working on a lobby campaign to educate every federal MP and enlist their support in encouraging the federal government to resolve this long-festering travesty of justice. We need you to help us out...(see "Lubicon Lobby Campaign") (The Lubicon Lobby Campaign in the form described above has been discontinued and information about the campaign removed from the web site.)