North American natives seek voice in pipeline plan

by Jon Harding

03-10-06

Members of the Dene Tha' First Nation have set up a permanent hunting camp beside the proposed right-of-way for the Mackenzie gas project. They're hoping to draw attention to the community's legal fight to halt the pipeline project's regulatory hearings now taking place in the North.
About 50 members of the Aboriginal community, which consists of 2,500 people in a handful of small settlements scattered throughout the northwest corner of Alberta, helped set up the camp.

"It's no more a blockade than say you or I using our own yard. It's just that if someone tries to build a project in your yard, without talking to you first, you're not blockading your space by continuing to use it," said Robert Freedman, the Victoria-based lawyer who represents the Dene Tha'.
"We're all sort of sitting and waiting to see what the federal court judge does," he added.

The Dene Tha' have sought to be included by companies proposing the project -- led by Imperial Oil -- in consultations about the pipeline's environmental impacts. Mr Freedman argued the Dene Tha's case before a federal judge in June, with hopes to get a court order to a halt ongoing hearings by the Joint Review Panel and by the National Energy Board.
The group is angry that unlike First Nations communities along the pipeline's proposed route through the Northwest Territories, the Dene Tha' have never taken part in any consultations.

No ruling has been rendered yet and the JPP and NEB hearings have been underway for nine months, which has led to the frustration and is why as many as 50 people set up the camp, said Matt General, an advisor to the Dene Tha'.
"It's what the pipeline will bring in terms of future oil and gas development that concerns them the most," Mr General said from the Six Nations reserve in Ontario.
 

 

Source: Financial Post