Indigenous nations have protected the earth on their territories for thousands of years. With the government of Canada ignoring their sovereignty, nations not only see massive theft of resources that could help alleviate social problems, but their exacerbation through their further alienation from their own lands, often accompanying being overrun by development and southern workers, while having no self-determination during this process. In the south of Canada industrial farming displaced many nations with often genocidal results. In the north, a modern equivalent of that fate is only just beginning, wrought on by industrial oil and gas drilling schemes (among many industrial plans) that are condemning entire societies, languages and cultures to a precarious future, becoming minorities in their lands for the first time.
The people of Hartley Bay feel a bit more uneasy today
Jack Knox, canwest news services
Published: Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Six metres of snow in Hartley Bay so far this winter.
Usually it snows, then melts, then rains in a pattern that repeats all season long, but this year it just kept snowing and snowing until it piled high above the raised boardwalks that take the place of roads in the tiny coastal settlement.
Bateman smears famous work to protest pipeline
Video (at link at bottom): Bateman paints over painting in protest
Symbolic smearing meant to demonstrate hazards of spills
Mar 21, 2008 04:30 AM
Petti Fong
Western Canada Bureau Chief
VANCOUVER–Paintbrush in hand, poised over the canvas of orcas swimming in the ocean, wildlife artist Robert Bateman had a momentary feeling of uncertainty.
But when the black paint touched a $2,000 print of his famous painting, Orca Procession, Bateman knew defacing one of his most beloved images was the right thing to do.
Anthony Kovats // CAF
Tuesday March 11, 2008
The ritual is as old as the giant and enveloping forest itself.
Every spring, the shores of Lesser Slave, Peerless and North and South Wabasca Lakes explode with colour and sound as North America’s migratory songbirds return to the continent’s vast northern forest.
American robins with their robust red breasts join the cacophony of sounds generated by Tennessee, Connecticut and Canada warblers as they gorge on caterpillars and insects in the budding branches.
This is the boreal forest.
Aboriginal chiefs want oilsands moratorium
Renata D'Aliesio, Calgary Herald
Published: Monday, February 25, 2008
EDMONTON - Alberta's aboriginal chiefs are calling for a moratorium on new oilsands development until they've completed plans to manage water and resource development in the region.
Speaker says nuclear power about economics
New and unexplored issues surrounding nuclear power were discussed by activist Jim Harding last Thursday evening with his presentation at the Blue Ridge Community Centre.
Whitecourt Star
Gina Racine // Wednesday March 05, 2008
With the numerous presentations made throughout the local area in the past few months, Whitecourt and area residents have had the opportunity to learn about a number of topics surrounding the nuclear debate, on both the pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear sides.
Are the Sacred Headwaters being sacrificed for the Tar Sands?
The Athabasca Oil Sands are the largest single source of greenhouse
gases in Canada. They are also one of the largest users of methane, also
known as natural gas.
Bitumen extraction is an energy intensive process that requires between
700 and 1200 cubic feet of natural gas to produce one barrel of bitumen.
The natural gas is used to heat water, which is mixed with tar sands to
separate the crude bitumen (a semi-solid form of crude oil), from
silica, clay and other minerals.
Note: Fort Chip is not a reserve, but a hamlet.
--M
Reserve holds cancer rally
By SHANNON MONTGOMERY The Canadian Press
Sun. Mar 2 - 4:46 AM
EDMONTON — Janelle Vermillion owns a house in the tiny northern Alberta community of Fort Chipewyan. Her family, including her brother, still lives there. She considers it home.
But the 27-year-old woman says she will never again feel safe living there.
"I just want to move back home," she said, fighting back tears as she gestured to the pink-clad six-month-old baby in the stroller in front of her.
Finally Canada's establishment newspaper gets it right! The proposed partial moratorium is indeed a PR greenwash smokescreen:
Offshore oil a no-go for B.C. despite the value
Barbara Yaffe
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Early this month Ottawa invited bids from oil companies for further exploration of the environmentally sensitive Beaufort Sea in the Arctic.
And, of course, everyone knows development of Alberta's oilsands is going gangbusters. This, despite the fact environmental groups are sounding serious alarm bells about the devastation the project north of Edmonton is generating in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, use of valuable natural gas and water pollution.
Oil patch split over proposal for partial moratorium
NORVAL SCOTT
February 25, 2008
CALGARY -- A business-led lobbying effort to create a partial moratorium on oil sands development in order to free up conservation land has divided Canada's major energy companies, while a government decision on the issue will likely be delayed until after next Monday's provincial election.
Major oil producers - led by Petro-Canada Corp., Suncor Inc., Husky Energy Ltd., Shell Canada and Imperial Oil - have for the first time called on Alberta to slow development in the Athabasca region.
