[IPSM] (no subject)

[Macdonald Stainsby]

Hello from the road... Here's an incredibly important (and racist) article
that was printed in the SFGate: from one of the only lists I haven't set
to no mail...

talk to folk soon...


Macdonald
---

FUELING AMERICA   CANADIAN OIL SHOWDOWN
Frozen pipeline: Tribe's success at blocking natural gas delivery system
threatens
development of oil-sands mines -
Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer Monday, May 23, 2005


Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories -- This town on a bend in the
Mackenzie River
has a general store and little else besides endless forests and distant blue
mountains. Not an oil derrick is to be seen. But its angry Native tribe is
standing
in the way of what could be the biggest energy boom in North America's
history.


The tribe, the Deh Cho First Nation, is blocking an 800-mile pipeline that
would
pass through its lands carrying natural gas from the Arctic Ocean to the
booming
oil-sands mines of Alberta. The tribe says the money and development
brought by the
pipeline could destroy its culture while leaving little lasting economic
benefit.


"We have lived in these lands since time immemorial," said the Deh Cho
grand chief,
Herb Norwegian. "We are the rightful owners, and this pipeline should not
be pushed
in against our will."


The Deh Cho anti-pipeline stance is spreading through Native tribes in
northwest
Canada, putting at risk the development of Arctic natural gas in both
Canada and
Alaska as well as expansion of Canada's oil sands, which are widely
considered the
most promising source of foreign oil for the United States in the coming
decades.


The oil sands need natural gas to help steam-heat oil out of the sands.
With natural
gas reserves and production shrinking elsewhere in Alberta and North
America, a new
supply from the Mackenzie River is needed to fill the gap and keep the oil
sands
pumping ever-increasing amounts of petroleum south to the United States.


But as the Deh Cho have deftly used the Canadian courts and regulatory
process to
block the pipeline, their demands have had a domino effect among other
tribes that
own a one-third share in the project. Grassroots pressure has forced the
leaders of
those tribes -- the Inuvialuit, Gwich'in and Sahtu Dene -- to demand broad
taxation
powers and $40 million in additional payments from their partners in the
pipeline.


On April 29, the oil companies stopped all engineering work on the
pipeline and
threatened to call off the entire project. Michael Yeager, senior vice
president of
Shell, one of the pipeline partners, accused the Deh Cho and the other
tribes of
making excessive compensation demands for a pipeline right- of-way and
payments for
social benefits.


"We're talking about something here that is many, many fold from what we were
expecting, and into the hundreds of millions of dollars," Yeager said.


He said Shell and its partners in the consortium -- ExxonMobil, Conoco
Phillips and
Imperial Oil, a Canadian company in which ExxonMobil has a majority stake
-- had
already spent $300 million on preparatory work, yet were way behind
schedule and
could no longer cope with "more and more months of slippage."


The Deh Cho have held up environmental and planning approvals for the
pipeline
route, about 40 percent of which crosses Deh Cho lands, by filing
regulatory appeals
and public information requests. Yeager said his consortium has filed more
than
6,500 pages of documents in response to queries from the Deh Cho, the
other tribes
and the government, with thousands more pages expected to be necessary.


The center of the resistance is Fort Simpson, a longtime trading post that
functions
as the capital of the Deh Cho region. About 2,500 people live in the town,
about
two-thirds of them Natives. The pipeline route passes about 10 miles to
the east.


Fort Simpson boasts several streets lined with boxy prefabricated houses. The
general store sells everything from snowshoes to groceries; a tiny Pizza
Hut inside
is the town's only concession to 21st century commercialism. There are two
small
motels, two bars, a video store, several government offices, a Roman
Catholic church
and a community center. The highway to the outside world crosses the
nearby Liard
River -- a frozen ice traverse much of the year and a ferry ride during
the summer.


Many residents say they feel a special destiny to uphold the rights of
Canada's
indigenous minority, which has long been hobbled by poverty and social ills.
Visitors are eagerly shown the stage in Fort Simpson's riverfront park
where Pope
John Paul II celebrated Mass in 1987.


Norwegian, 53, was born in Fort Simpson but spent much of his youth "out
on the
land" with his father, hunting and trapping. He then became a heavy-
equipment
mechanic, working on construction and highway projects for many years,
until he
entered local politics in the early 1990s.


Since being elected grand chief in 2001, he has blocked progress on the
pipeline
while insisting that he is not against the project itself.


"Some people say that if this pipeline never gets built, Herb Norwegian is
to blame
for it," he said. "And I'm fine with that. But if it does get built, I
want my
people to get real benefits."


He acknowledges that his stand on the pipeline is tightly linked to his
tribe's
negotiations with the federal government over its historic land claims.
The Deh Cho
are the only tribe on the pipeline route that has not reached a
settlement, and "a
land settlement would sure help improve the atmosphere for the pipeline,"
he said.


The Deh Cho are seeking to establish a new autonomous government under
which all
residents could vote, but a five-year residency requirement would exclude
newly
arrived non-Natives.


In addition to demanding the right to levy taxes, regulate all development
and
operate their own police and courts, the Deh Cho want complete ownership of
subsurface mineral rights -- within their entire 81,000-square- mile
claim, about
the size of Nebraska.


Christopher Reid, the chief Deh Cho negotiator, said the tribe is asking
for a level
of autonomy "fundamentally different" from anything Canada has granted its
Native
population -- or even its white-dominated provinces.


"The Deh Cho have a clear vision of self-government, and they are not
willing to
settle for anything less than this," he said.


At first glance, this Native cause can seem a throwback to a long-lost
era. Economic
development of Native lands has won out almost everywhere else.


In Alaska, Native land claims were dissolved in the early 1970s, replaced by
profit-making corporations owned by Native citizens. In the Mackenzie
Valley, the
Inuvialuit, Gwich'in and Sahtu Dene leaderships approved the pipeline
three years
ago and formed a joint company, the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, that agreed
to borrow
$1 billion to buy a one-third share of the consortium that is developing
the gas
fields and building the pipeline.


"We have to adjust to progress; we have to stop dreaming about tradition
and living
off the land," said Doug Cardinal, a Deh Cho member who is a senior
executive of
Aboriginal Pipeline. "We can't turn back the clock."


But Native groups up and down the pipeline route appear to be swinging
behind the
Deh Cho. The federal treaties that the Inuvialuit, Gwich'in and Sahtu Dene
tribes
signed in the 1980s and 1990s provide that if a neighboring tribe wins
better terms,
their own treaties will automatically match those.


On Tuesday, an Alberta tribe, the 2,500-member Dene Tha, sued the federal
government
and Imperial Oil to stop the pipeline, claiming that the planning process
ignored
its concerns.


"The oil companies are miscalculating," said Stephen Kakfwi, a former
premier of the
Northwest Territories who is now chief negotiator for a Sahtu Dene faction
that has
joined the Deh Cho coalition.


"Unless we do something today," he said, "all the oil and gas will be gone
from our
land, and everybody will get rich except us."


Around Fort Simpson, opinions seem heavily weighted in favor of Norwegian.
At a
two-day public meeting the Deh Cho held in April to assess local opinion
about the
pipeline, dozens of townspeople railed against it and visiting government
and oil
company officials. No one spoke in favor.


"You're pulling the wool over our eyes," Nick Sibbeston, the owner of a
bed-and-breakfast inn and a member of the part-time appointed federal
Senate, told a
panel of oil executives, referring to their promises of jobs, business
contracts and
environmental protection. "There's been a credibility gap. We don't really
believe
you. We don't really trust you. You can't fudge it and hide it."


After the public meeting, people seemed more opposed than ever. In dozens of
interviews, both Deh Cho and non-Native residents said they feared the
effects of
easy money.


They noted that oil and mining booms elsewhere in northern Canada have
left legacies
of alcoholism, drug abuse and violence in Native communities and have
failed to
create long-term local jobs.


"We are worried about the pipeline, how it will bring in too much money
and destroy
our way of life," said Michael Cazon, a Deh Cho member who teaches youth
classes at
the tribal social center.


"Crystal meth just made it to Hay River," said Cazon's wife, Tonya, a
government
office worker, referring to a town 180 miles to the east. "That's not too
far. It's
just a matter of months before it will come here. We're trying to protect
our kids,"
said Tonya, who was born in the province of Ontario and describes her
background as
"pretty much mostly white."


The Cazons, however, also illustrate how the Deh Cho are already dependent on
Canada's generous welfare state. Like the Cazons, most Fort Simpson
residents are
government employees, beneficiaries of more than $8 million in annual
subsidies that
the federal and Northwest Territories governments grant to the tribe and Fort
Simpson.


"There is very little private business here, and economic dependency is a
real
problem," Norwegian said.


If the Mackenzie standoff is not resolved, growing Native resistance could
poison
chances for a second pipeline, a 2,600-mile, $20 billion project to carry
natural
gas from Alaska's North Slope along the Alaska-Canada highway through
Yukon and
British Columbia.


The Alaska pipeline, which is strongly supported by North Slope oil
producers and
Alaskan politicians, is expected to start construction in about 2009 and be
completed by about 2015.


"The oil companies should see the Mackenzie situation as a wake-up call,
but they
haven't," said Dave Porter, chief of the Kaska Dene First Nation and
negotiator for
a coalition of 10 tribal groups in British Columbia and Yukon whose lands
surround
the proposed Alaska pipeline right of way.


Three of these 10 tribes have unresolved historic land claims against the
federal
government, and all are demanding that any pipeline deal grant them the
same sort of
tax powers and social spending programs as the Mackenzie groups want.


Porter said that government has ignored tribal requests.


"This is absolutely the wrong approach, the wrong strategy," Porter added.
"They are
going to be susceptible, open to legal challenge, like what has happened
in the
Mackenzie Valley."


E-mail Robert Collier at rcollier at sfchronicle.com.



--
Macdonald Stainsby
http://independentmedia.ca/survivingcanada/
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope.
--Brecht.