The following paper will reveal the complexities behind the Aboriginal protests and blockages of the oil and gas pipelines attempting to force entry through the ancestral lands of Native Americans. It will be shown that the various levels of Canadian government involved in the disputes between private development and Aboriginal land claims have conducted their actions based on historical colonial relations that have shaped the narrative surrounding Aboriginal land claims in favour of the Crown. The more recent shift to a multicultural society in Canada will be revealed to show that this cultural development has actually helped to erase the structure of dominance set about by colonists that has resulted in helping to establish their unquestioned sovereignty over other groups residing in Canada.
For several years now an assortment of petroleum and gas companies have been attempting to build pipelines to connect the oil and gas productions of Alberta with the shipping ports of western BC. Many Aboriginal groups, including the Unist’ot’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, have protested the development of their ancestral lands for the creation of petroleum pipelines, however their attempts to defend their land have been hindered by the various levels of Canadian government that as of yet do not fully recognize their claims to the land and have been attempting instead to facilitate industry partners to push through with their projects while, despite the resistance put forward by the Aboriginal groups.
To understand the rationale behind the Canadian Government in their responses to Aboriginal land claims in the petroleum pipeline protests, it is important to see how their view has developed and been shaped by historical narratives established during the period when Europeans first began to habituate Canadian lands.
During the Enlightenment period, Europeans formulated theories of their racial superiority and the inferiority of others based upon skin color and geographic location (Egan, 2011). These theories were based on their travels and experiences with what they viewed to be less advanced cultures (Egan, 2011). Out of these theories came two racist conceptions that would be used by Europeans to guide their colonial conquests and justify their treatment of those they subjugated in their settlement of colonized land (Egan, 2011). One of the theories was based upon the simple idea that due to their superior genes, Europeans were biologically blessed with superiority over all other human races (Egan, 2011). This idea was called the naturalist theory (Egan, 2011). The second theory, called historicist, was grounded in the presumption that Europeans were superior culturally as they had progressed further in the development of their civilizations compared with what they viewed as savage and backward behavior along with social and material structures that resembled the Europeans’ earlier states of civilization (Egan, 2011). Most Europeans looked at and justified their actions towards the colonization of peoples due to the thought that these perceived primitive peoples were in need of their progressive ways so that they could transcend their savage lifestyles - whether or not they actually believed what they were doing was to benefit the Aboriginals, they at least proposed that it was (Egan, 2011).
When Europeans first arrived in Canada they simply traded goods with the Aboriginals, but over time they established small colonies, which soon led to the Crown deciding to make the land theirs; these new lands would need to be made into habitable spaces for further colonists to settle in efforts to grow their European population in these territories ‘discovered’ in British Columbia (Egan, 2011). The European ‘discovery’ of British Columbia was part of a social construct used to provide comfort and stability for the European inheritors of this fictionalized landscape, that would come as settlers to colonize the space after discovery of the lands were sent back to Europe, beckoning others to follow (Egan, 2011). A narrative was created by way of maps and descriptions of the land that held that the spaces were empty and pristine and that there was no opposition to their being taken for the European settlements (Egan, 2011). They had to portray the land as unused and ungoverned to be able to easily assert their own claim upon it (Egan, 2011). It seems possible that the English Crown wanted to establish a case in the event that their claim to this ‘empty’ land was ever questioned by other leading countries that might have pity for the Aboriginals and any legal challenge they might try to pose against this taking of their land.
At first, land was formally traded in treaties with village leaders, such as when Vancouver Island was signed over to the English Crown in exchange for goods and currency (Egan, 2011). A few of these treaties were carried out, and this provided a record that showed that Europeans recognized land rights of Aboriginals (Egan, 2011). It has been brought to light by some scholars that Aboriginal leaders did not know what exactly they were signing, and have argued that Aboriginal leaders thought they were “peace and friendship agreements” (Egan, 2011: 218). After a few years of purchasing land from Aboriginal groups, James Douglas, the chief Crown official at the time, decided it would probably be easier to just create Native Reserves selected by the Aboriginal peoples, and then all the rest of the land would just by default become the property of the English Crown (Egan, 2011). At first Douglas agreed to quite large reserves of land selected by the Aboriginals to be set aside for their exclusive use (Egan, 2011). However, this land allotment was altered a few years later when Douglas retired and the officials selected to take his place decided to greatly reduce the size of the reserves as they did not have the same understanding and respect that Douglas had come to acquire for the areas of land that the Aboriginals actually used for their livelihoods and henceforth why they had selected it (Egan, 2011).
Douglas’s historicist racial theory views had compelled him in what appeared to be paternal efforts towards Aboriginals, whereas the new Crown officials likely were guided by naturalist racial theory as they viewed the Aboriginals as “little better than primitive wanderers with little real connection to the land” (Egan, 2011: 219). With these views in mind these newly appointed Crown officials saw the Native Reserves to have a different purpose than envisioned by Douglas and “rather than serving, as Douglas saw them, as a temporary space of refuge for indigenous peoples while they made the difficult journey into becoming part of settler society, Indian Reserves under this new regime were to become spaces of confinement, places to house a dying culture.” (Egan, 2011: 219). The result of this change in attitudes of the Crown’s representatives saw the Native Reserves reduced in size so that they ended up comprising a much smaller share of the land at a mere 0.3% of the total land in BC (Egan, 2011).
Aboriginals tried for years (they’ve never stopped) to fight for their land rights, using the courts at first until the Crown government made a law against Aboriginals being able to use lawyers for such purposes in 1927, which was rescinded in 1951 (Egan, 2011). After years of battling with Aboriginals over the disputed lands throughout Canada, the position of the Government of Canada lost much of its strength after numerous court hearings had knocked down the myth of the European founding of barren land and established the acknowledgment of Aboriginal rights to the ancestral areas they once lived upon (Egan, 2011). In this weakened state, the federal government decided that the Aboriginal claims should be dealt so that efforts to develop the land could move forward without further disruptions (Egan, 2011). The federal government pushed the provincial government of BC to come to a resolution in regards to the treaty settlements over the protested land claim disputes with their Aboriginal neighbours (Egan, 2011). ‘Reconciliation’ was the term adopted to house these discussions and solutions that were to come out of these new relational arrangements between the two groups (Egan, 2011).
The Crown wanted to essentially make deals with the Aboriginal groups that would define specific areas that would be legally owned by the Aboriginals in exchange for (1) agreeing to settle for less land than they were claiming was theirs and (2) agreeing to ‘surrender’ and ‘extinguish’ all land claims, now or in the future (Egan, 2011). The government wanted to have specific legal boundaries for land ownership so that they could make their plans to develop their portions without future holdups from concerned groups (i.e. Aboriginal groups) that could pose as challenges, adding increased costs to projects (Egan, 2011). The Aboriginal groups viewed the land differently, and felt that they could not agree to relinquish any parts of their ancestral territory as they view their relationship with the land as integral to their wider identity as Indigenous peoples (Egan, 2011).
The proposed arrangement offered by the Crown including “about 5% of their traditional territory, approximately $40,000 each in cash, certain limited self-government powers, and assorted other benefits – is simply not enough to entice them to cede their claim and attachments to their larger territories, and to surrender, as Ed John put it, this integral part of their indigenous identities” (Egan, 2011: 224). This new arrangement offered by the Crown had been noted as differing little from the previous arrangement of Native Reserves in that Aboriginals are to live in separate spaces from the rest of Canadians, and still ruled over by a sovereign power unrecognized by the Aboriginal groups it has continued to be forced upon (Egan, 2011).
For Aboriginal groups, rather than distinct boundaries demarcating land titles, shared usage rights were instead sought after (Egan, 2011). The Aboriginal groups envisioned a relationship that would see their traditional lands shared and presided over by both their appointed leaders as well as government officials of the Crown (Egan, 2011). An open dialog between the Crown and Aboriginal groups was hoped for in an ongoing relationship that would explore and navigate the management and protection of the land as new obstacles presented themselves in the course of time (Egan, 2011). For Aboriginal groups reconciliation should be both coming to understand each other and learning from these experiences in efforts to live in the shared spaces they each hold dear (Egan, 2011). The Crown did not feel the same way about reconciliation as Aboriginal groups did and clearly wanted clarity and finality in treaty settlements, and in this way they appeared to view reconciliation as a divorce between parties rather than a marriage, as some have aptly put it (Egan, 2011).
This treaty process of reconciliation has resulted in the Crown’s ability to continue development while proceedings drag on slowly (Egan, 2011). As well, Aboriginal group members have been drawn into the Western resource economy through deals that have them as partners with profit-seeking corporations to develop portions of the disputed lands under review (Egan, 2011). So while Aboriginal groups proposed that shared ownership and management of the land would be foremost in their interest, it seems questionable if such an arrangement could actually work, given the increased temptations of Western cultural and economic indoctrination likely to come from the increased exposure between these two groups that would come about from such land sharing arrangements. Wouldn’t these two groups need to first overcome their clearly opposing views, beliefs and respect for the land and wildlife that inhabit it, before they were able to see eye to eye in the joint management and use of shared spaces?
In addition to direct confrontation with Aboriginal groups through mediation procedures, the Government of Canada also used more subtle ways to undermine the Aboriginal threat to their hegemony and attempt to cover up their past transgressions as settlers in the ‘founding’ of the country.
The shift to a policy of multiculturalism in Canada beginning in the 1970s with its larger North American discourse of “we are all immigrants” tried to erase the colonial past of the first European settlers (Sharma, 2011). By proposing that European settlers were simply just another immigrant group that settled in Canada, multiculturalist discourses hid the privileged positions colonial powers had constructed for themselves in the rhetoric of a country founded, and still operated on, a system of meritocracy (Sharma, 2011).
The multiculturalist idea put forth by various white ruling-class spokesmen proposed that various ethnic groups inhabited Canada but had always existed in separation from each other and were best kept in isolation from each other (Sharma, 2011). Further, these ethnic groups, such as Native Americans, were understood as being rooted in the past and were not considered fully in their relational experiences with the colonial settlers when they had first “founded” Canada (Sharma, 2011). These ethnic groups have been continually regarded as best kept away from the rest of Canada, and this has likely contributed to the government’s views over reclamation with its desire for clearly distinct land ownership over ideas of shared rights put forward by Aboriginal groups.
With the historic colonial narrative now revealed, that has come to surround and underlie the views and decisions put forward by the governing powers of Canada towards the Aboriginal groups that protest its intrusion on their ancestral lands, this paper will now turn to address the environmental concerns of the disputed lands in question from the threat held against them by the petroleum industry in Alberta.
The proposed pipelines will have to cross multiple wetlands in their path to British Columbia’s coast. These wetlands are not only held dear by Aboriginal groups, but hold tremendous economic value as well for all of Canada as wetlands across the country have been valued at producing $5 to $10 billion a year in revenue (Johns, Sproule-Jones & Heinmiller, 2008). These valuable natural resources are endangered as over the past hundred years over 14% have disappeared from the Canadian landscape due to industry conversion to other uses, primarily agricultural (Johns et al., 2008). Scholars in the past have suggested that this valuable natural resource has been under threat from industry because of the poorly defined roles allocated to government in their stewardship over these landforms (Johns et al., 2008).
While the pipelines threaten many wetlands throughout British Columbia, many other sources of water are simultaneously threatened. Nearly a decade ago oil and gas production had already constituted tremendous water allocations, using 7% of Alberta’s total water allocations and 37% of groundwater allocations in 2004 (Johns et al., 2008). However, Aboriginal groups in Canada rely on water for more than just physical sustenance, as they have come to regard it as holding spiritual properties as well (Johns et al., 2008). The health of these aboriginal groups requires clean waterways as an integral part of their cultural belief system (Johns et al., 2008). Water is central to many spiritual practices performed by these groups, and furthermore waterways are often found adjacent to hallowed grounds for aboriginals (Johns et al., 2008).
Of all the petroleum production in Alberta, the development of the tar sands has attracted the most attention. To begin with, tar sands operations are only able to proceed with the consent of the Government of Alberta; 97% of the mineral rights to the tar sands were owned by the Alberta Crown (Carter, 2010). Tar sands encapsulated 140,200 square kilometers spread amongst three main deposits located in the Peace River, Cold Lake, and the Athabasca (Carter, 2010). By 2020 estimates have placed production at around 3 million barrels per day (Carter, 2010).
Tar sands operations diverted almost half a billion cubic meters of water yearly from the Athabasca River, which was more than double the amount of water used by the city of Calgary (Carter, 2010). With such extreme uses of water, grave concerns have been raised over whether or not basic in-stream flow can be preserved (Carter, 2010). Tar sands operations have left behind tailings “ponds” which were a potential threat to the local habitat as they contained highly toxic pollutants (Carter, 2010). These tailings “ponds” covered more than one hundred and seventy square kilometers, and leeched millions of liters of their toxic waste into the ground every day (Carter, 2010). Tar sands operations also emitted tremendous amounts of air pollution, and have become among Canada’s highest emitters of green house gases (GHG) (Carter, 2010). The tar sands industry has also now become the leader of new carbon emissions for all of Canada, with nearly half of all new emissions from all sources combined (Carter, 2010). In addition to carbon dioxide and GHGs, tar sands operations contributed tremendous amounts of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and volatile organic compounds (Carter, 2010). The combination of all these pollutants entering the atmosphere has resulted in endangering multiple animal species, including wolverine, fisher, lynx, caribou, and numerous species of bird (Carter, 2010).
The aboriginal communities located near tar sands operations have been impacted greatly by these environmental pollutants (Carter, 2010). Located mainly downriver from these operations, aboriginals in these areas now faced health risks from the potential adverse effects on their food and water supply from the deadly chemicals leeched into the ground (Carter, 2010). Further, the river systems of this area were already prone to drought, and as such are placed at increased risk causing great difficulties for the aboriginal communities that rely on them for subsistence (Carter, 2010). Through airborne transport, the other pollutants in the form of GHGs were spread throughout the country and had made Canada’s climate change goals significantly more challenging to meet (Carter, 2010).
Environmental concerns over proposals to lease tar sands were conducted by the Crown Mineral Disposition Review Committee (CMDRC) (Carter, 2010). The CMDRC was hindered greatly from imposing any real regulations upon the firms bidding for usage rights due to several factors. The process used by the CMDRC was not formalized in any way, and further was undergone too rapidly to adequately assess the myriad of potential environmental concerns they are tasked to consider (Carter, 2010). Left out of their assessments were any cumulative effects brought upon the environment from the tar sands firms’ operations (Carter, 2010). Lastly, the CMDRC has had no real authority and merely acted in an advisory role to that of Alberta Energy who was in charge of granting land leases (Carter, 2010). Alberta Energy has had conflicting interests in this role, as it was also the main provincial department responsible for the promoting the development of Alberta’s tar sands (Carter, 2010).
Other departments created within the provincial government, such as Alberta Environment or the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act, provided further environmental assessments and information, but they were all overruled by departments higher up who hold ultimate approval and whose concerns were of the financial nature (Carter, 2010). When tar sands firms had broken contractual arrangements in regards to the environment, time and time again the government of Alberta has turned a blind eye to these activities (Carter, 2010). Even bringing to light these infractions made by firms has become increasingly difficult, as the staff tasked with monitoring tar sands firms’ operations have been continually reduced in number while the operations in the tar sands have continued to increase (Carter, 2010). In response to the GHG emissions from tar sands operations the government of Alberta has responded by saying that they expected further increases only until 2020, and by 2035 levels should come back down to those found in 2008 (Carter, 2010). To add insult to injury, these proposed reductions were based upon carbon storage technology that had yet to prove itself (Carter, 2010).
As to the water withdrawals made by the tar sands industry, the provincial government has admitted it did not know if current expansion of the industry would allow for sufficient flow to the communities and wildlife who rely on the Athabasca River for their sustenance during the winter months when droughts are common (Carter, 2010). It has already been projected that the limits set by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Alberta Environment (who together designed the Water Management Framework) would be breached by 2010 and would continue to increase until 2035 (Carter, 2010).
The process by which firms acquire leasing rights to tar sands lands were by and large conducted out of view of the public. Public hearings were only conducted if a private landowner or occupants of land could prove they would be negatively impacted from such development (Carter, 2010). Even when this happened, such hearings held little sway as they merely generated recommendations to government that had no legal binding to be carried out (Carter, 2010). Most problematic has been that the cumulative effects by these projects have not been studied by the regulatory agencies, and as such the severity of the environmental problems were not regarded properly in their assessments (Carter, 2010).
Alberta’s economy has become reliant on fossil fuels as this industry accounted for over half of all revenue by the late 2000s (Carter, 2010). Tar sands would replace the dwindling gas and oil productions and as such were championed as the future of Alberta’s energy production industry (Carter, 2010). With the royalties to Alberta’s Crown Corporation amounting to billions of dollars every year, the provincial government has overlooked the environmental concerns raised by the industry’s operations and instead has offered tax breaks and subsidies to the research and development of the industry (Carter, 2010). Multi-million dollar advertising campaigns have been launched since 2008 to counter the negative image garnered by Alberta and their tar sands environmental woes (Carter, 2010). On top of this, the provincial and federal governments of Canada have been active in multiple cover-ups, as they’ve attempted to withhold damaging environmental reports from reaching the media (Carter, 2010).
The tar sands industry’s well-funded lobbyists have been busy voicing their concerns to government in their attempts to curb regulations that they say hindered the expansion of their operations (Carter, 2010). The oil and gas industry have succeeded in that calls for reductions in their operations’ emissions have been curtailed with only voluntary measures pushed forward by regulatory agencies (Carter, 2010). To stem the discontent of citizens, the lobbyists employed millions of dollars in building community projects such as performing arts centers and hospitals, as well as large donations to local universities and colleges (Carter, 2010).
In conclusion, we have now seen how the portrayal often given by the media as to the Aboriginal standoffs in land disputes and their protests to the pipeline developments are limited in their coverage and do not reveal the complex history that has developed over time to shape these issues. It is now clear that the actions put forth by the governments of Canada were deeply rooted in the past and had been built up and continually shaped by the colonial powers in their capitalist hunger for continued growth with themselves at the helm in privileged positions to reap the greatest gain from any and all economic developments. The actions taken by the Aboriginals can now properly be viewed as not the violent threats of an unruly group of anarchists, but rather as the admirable fight over a dominant aggressor for their own voices to be heard and acknowledged in the sovereignty of the land they have long resided over responsibly and productively.
In an ironic twist of fate, it has been the colonialist Europeans who turned out to be the godless heathens, morally depraved and irresponsible in their development of the land. The colonialists’ shortsighted governance over the development of the land is much more representative of a ‘savage’ culture they attributed to that of Aboriginals, a people guided by animal instincts rather than reason.
Despite boasting to have a superior, culturally-evolved, civilization, more capable of governing then the Aboriginals they encountered, the Government of Canada has shown that this was indeed not the case, as the current state of the Native Reserves clearly indicates (Stastna, 2014). The Native Reserves erected by the Government of Canada, along with the governing policies imbued in them, have clearly degraded the quality of life of the Aboriginals who are housed within them. Further, these Native Reserves have reduced Aboriginals’ skill sets and cultural capital through the corrupting influences that have been transmitted from their forced proximity to a capitalist culture of deprivation, inequality, and shortsighted material gains. The physical structures now face disrepair, and squalid conditions surround much of the landscapes contained within the Native Reserves we have essentially forced Aboriginals to live in (Stastna, 2014).
And while the state of Native Reserves is deplorable at best, even our governments’ actions over Aboriginals outside the Reserve confines have shown to be greatly wanting. The result has been that Aboriginals have become an overrepresented group in the homeless populations of urban centers (Gaetz, Donaldson, Richter & Gulliver, 2014), which clearly points to our failures in incorporating this group of people into our supposedly more ‘evolved’ society. It would appear that it is (and always was) time for our acknowledgement of this group’s position, and that we should place far greater effort to seek out and incorporate the input of the Aboriginal groups in the processes we design to aid their members in living however they wish to in this country we share. Clearly this group needs to be allowed the agency they deserve in guiding their own development and livelihoods as they see fit. The Government of Canada should aid them to do this, as this governing power is quite evidently indebted to this group for the destruction wrought by their unscrupulous misguided ancestors in the founding of the nation.
References
Carter, Angela (2010). Regulating the Environmental Impacts of Alberta’s Tar Sands. Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies Working Paper: Energy Series (Working Paper).
Egan, Brian (2011). Resolving “the Indian Land Question”? Racial Rule and Reconciliation in British Columbia. In Rethinking the Great White North: Race, Nature, and the Historical Geographies of Whiteness in Canada (Andrew Baldwin, Laura Cameron and Audrey Kobayashi, eds.). Vancouver: UBC Press. Pgs. 211- 232.
Gaetz, S., Donaldson, J., Richter, T., & Gulliver, T. (2013). The State of Homelessness in Canada. Homeless Pub Paper #4, Toronto: Canadian Homelessness Research Network Press. Retrieved March 22, 2014 from http://www.homelesshub.ca/ResourceFiles/SOHC2103.pdf
Johns, Carolyn; Mark Sproule-Jones; B. Timothy Heinmiller (2008). Water as a Multiple-Use Resource and Source of Political Conflict. In Canadian Water Politics: Conflicts and Institutions. McGill-Queen’s University Press: Montreal. Pgs. 19-57.
Sharma, Nandita (2011) Canadian multiculturalism and its nationalisms, in Home and Native Land: Unsettling Multiculturalism in Canada (May Chazan, Lisa Helps, Anna Stanley, Sonali Thakkar, eds.). Toronto: Between the Lines. Pgs. 85-101.
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