VIEWS FROM FIRST NATIONS
CHIEF BECOMES A SUPPORTER
This is one of the more surprising developments of the last few weeks. Allan Adam, chief of Alberta’s Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, has spent years as the world’s most visible opponent of oilsands development. From Neil Young to Leonardo DiCaprio to Jane Fonda, if a celebrity is in Fort McMurray to badmouth the oilsands, chances are they came on the invitation of Chief Adam. Then, last week, Adam expressed his support for any pipeline that could be built with an Indigenous ownership stake. “Let’s move on and let’s start building a pipeline and start moving the oil that’s here already,” he told CBC.
PIPELINE IS GOOD, SO IS PROTEST
Joe Dion is the head of the Frog Lake Energy Resources Corporation, an oil and gas exploration firm wholly owned by the people of Alberta’s Frog Lake First Nation. He’s very pro-pipeline and is actively working to get more oil infrastructure in First Nations portfolios. But in a 2016 interview with the BBC, he expressed his support for the ongoing anti-pipeline protests at the United States’ Standing Rock Indian Reservation, saying he understood Sioux concerns that the project could threaten the Missouri River. “Water is life. Without water we can’t live. I stand with them,” said Dion. Anyways, the preceding two points should make it pretty clear by now that there is no universal “Indigenous opinion” on oil and gas projects.
33 B.C. FIRST NATIONS SUPPORT THE PIPELINE
Over the past six years, Kinder Morgan has approached 133 First Nations and Indigenous groups in both B.C. and Alberta. The company would not have been seeking consent or partnerships with all 133, some of which are well beyond the pipeline route and the route of all future tankers. Nevertheless, only 43 have inked mutual benefit agreements with the company, 33 of which are in B.C. As a rule, Trans Mountain does not reveal the names of the First Nations with whom they’ve signed deals. However, it’s possible to get a sense of who the 33 might be by looking at a list of 26 B.C. Indigenous groups who sent letters to the National Energy Board supporting the project. Of that list, the majority are quite small (usually with 100 to 200 members) and they represent a roughly 50-50 mix of inland and coastal territory. Among the most significant backers is the Kamloops-area Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc. Notably, however, Kinder Morgan was not able to get the backing of many of the B.C.’s major Indigenous power players, particularly the Lower Mainland nations of Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh, who are now actively leading campaigns against the project.
SUPPORT OF THOSE WITH ADJACENT LAND SOUGHT
The specific language used by Trans Mountain is that where the project will cross First Nations reserve lands, “we have received their expressed consent.” Of course, this only covers reserve lands, not traditional territory that might form part of a future treaty (with large swaths of B.C. on untreatied land, most nations do not have a final agreement with the Crown). However, the company has claimed that they’ve obtained support from 80 per cent of First Nations “within proximity” to the pipeline right-of-way. The company’s mutual benefit agreements are confidential, but the details can be revealed by a First Nation if they wish. This was the case with the Whispering Pines First Nation, a band with about 100 members near Clinton, B.C. In 2015, then-chief Mike Lebourdais told local media that their agreement was worth between $10 and $20 million over 20 years.
PIPELINE HAS DIVIDED FIRST NATIONS
Alberta and B.C. are currently toe-to-toe in one of the messiest regional standoffs in the history of Confederation. Miniature versions of the Pipeline War have been playing out among First Nations for years. In 2016, Haida clans stripped three hereditary chiefs of their titles for allegedly having approached Northern Gateway as rogue representatives of the community. Pipelines were the central issue at the 2016 annual gathering of the Assembly of First Nations in Gatineau, Que. In front of a room packed with some of the most antipipeline political leaders in the country, Jim Boucher, chief of the Northern Alberta Fort McKay First Nation, said “we’re pro-oilsands; if it weren’t for the oil my people would be in poverty right now.” In B.C.’s tiny Peters First Nation, a potential windfall of pipeline money opened up decades worth of familial divisions. Controversy over whether or not to back the pipeline can also be seen in several close community votes on whether to accept an agreement with Kinder Morgan. The nine bands within the Chilliwack-area Ts’elxwéyeqw Tribe rejected their agreement by 55.5 per cent to 44.5 per cent, with just 301 members of the bands turning out to vote. The Lower Nicola Indian Band approved an agreement, but the ‘yes’ side only came in at 59 per cent of the vote.
JOINT FIRST NATIONS OWNERSHIP MISSING
According to numbers from Natural Resources Canada, Kinder Morgan has committed $300 million to Indigenous benefit agreements. One thing the company isn’t offering, however, is equity. This isn’t for lack of trying, according to Kinder Morgan Canada president Ian Anderson. “I worked for a long time quietly to try and assemble support for (Indigenous equity ownership) on this project and it didn’t come to fruition,” Anderson said last year in Calgary. But the now-cancelled Northern Gateway pipeline did devise a plan for Indigenous ownership by offering 10-per-cent equity stakes to First Nations along the proposed route — 60 per cent of whom took them up on the offer. Joint First Nations ownership is already a major factor in the forestry and mining sector, and is likely going to be critical in future oil and gas projects.
BOTH SIDES ACCUSED OF BEING COLONIALISTS
If you were a Brit reading the Guardian this week, you could have heard about how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is “prolonging an old colonial pillage” by backing the Trans Mountain pipeline. Squamish Chief Ian Campbell said last year that the whole project is nothing but a “colonial tactic” to loot resources. The c-word has also been fired at environmental activists. Ken Brown, a former chief of B.C.’s Klahoose First Nation, has accused environmentalists of “eco-colonialism” in their attempts to convince First Nations to shut down resource development. Ernie Crey is chief of the Cheam First Nation, which has signed a mutual benefit agreement with Kinder Morgan. This week he accused environmentalists of “redwashing” their agenda. “We have a vigorous environmental movement in B.C. and they have learned that they can use Aboriginal communities to advance their agenda,” he said.
SIGNING ON DOESN’T MEAN GUNG-HO SUPPORT
First Nations do not have a veto power over resource projects, even if it crosses their traditional territory. The Constitution guarantees that First Nations be consulted and accommodated — and projects have indeed been cancelled if a company were found to be phoning in that consultation. But if a company has done all their consulting due diligence, they can go forward on a project even if they don’t have universal First Nations consent. A sense of “they’re going to do it anyway” is why some First Nations were motivated to ink deals with Kinder Morgan despite not being tremendously excited about the pipeline. “We came to the determination, as a group, that (the project) was going to go ahead anyway … if we opposed it, we would have no way of addressing spills, because we would be disqualified from funding from Trans Mountain,” Robert Joseph, chief councillor of Vancouver Island’s Ditidaht First Nation, told the Times Colonist in 2016.
DEAL MAY ELUDE SOME SUPPORTERS
Consider the case of Martin Louie. When Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline was still on the table, Louie was one of the project’s most visible opponents. A hereditary chief of the Nadleh Whut’en First Nation in north-central British Columbia, he sent complaints to the United Nations, petitioned Parliament and announced that Enbridge was banned from the lands of the Yinka Dene Alliance, of which the Nadleh Whut’en was a part. As Louie told the Financial Post, he wasn’t anti-pipeline — he was mainly opposed to Enbridge’s “ridiculous” offer of $70,000 per year to his community. The Vancouverarea Musqueam First Nation also isn’t a signatory with Kinder Morgan. On Wednesday the Musqueam government issued a statement expressing support with those who had. “Musqueam maintains the right to speak on behalf of our territory and respects the views of other First Nations who are impacted by this proposal,” it read.
EAGLE SPIRIT MAY FOLLOW
It’s called the Eagle Spirit Energy Pipeline, it’s a $16-billion First Nations’ led oil and gas pipeline from Alberta to the coast and the project is being spearheaded by Calvin Helin, a Tsimshian businessman and activist for Indigenous self-reliance. If Trans Mountain joins Energy East and Northern Gateway in the graveyard of never-built Canadian pipelines, expect Eagle Spirit to start getting more press. Of course, even Indigenous championed pipeline scan run into roadblocks. In December, an ambitious plan to build a natural gas pipeline through the Northwest Territories fizzled out, despite being 33 per cent owned by local Indigenous peoples. The pipeline’s death knell was falling prices for natural gas.
LET’S MOVE ON AND LET’S START BUILDING A PIPELINE AND START MOVING THE OIL THAT’S HERE ALREADY, — ALLAN ADAM, CHIEF OF ALBERTA’S ATHABASCA CHIPEWYAN FIRST NATION, A FORMER VOCAL OPPONENT OF OILSANDS DEVELOPMENT.