Change the World

“Sifting Through the Sand: A Comparative Case Study of Resource Extraction vis-à-vis Indigenous Peoples”

For our second draft paper, see: Scott Goosenberg, "Shifting Through the Sand"

Scott Goosenberg, "Drawing a Line in the Sand: A Comparative Case Study of Resource Extraction vis-à-vis Indigenous Group Rights" (Project Outline)

Introduction

• The Beaver Lake Cree Nation’s (hereafter BLCN) society of 900 faces systematic threats against their way of life, by virtue of an economically fueled—and in part governmentally countenanced—onslaught to their way of life. Hailing from the southern tip of the Athabasca tar sands, the BLCN are placed in an impossible position of sustaining their lifestyle in a region possessing the largest deposit of non-conventional oil resources in the world. Economic benefits, juxtaposed with the potentiality of circumventing the necessity of oil procurement from comparatively unfriendly Eastern nations, have drastically minimized attention to the ecologically and socio-economically detrimental extraction methods employed on the Alberta tar sands vis-à-vis the BCLN. A steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) process to extract bitumen, as well as strip mining and other methods, create a messy process that, along with impeding the BLCN’s capacity to hunt caribou and other animals, contaminates soil and ground water. Despite their size, this small group is seen by some environmentalists to be “one of the last and best hopes” to stop new tar sands projects. However, if the status quo prevails, there could be global ramifications involving exogenous air and water pollution, the specter of the boreal forest’s evisceration, disruption of the region’s animals, and the exacerbation of carbon emissions roughly three times higher than those of standard oil extraction. 

Rights or Wrongs? Canada and International Human Rights

 

 

A Public Workshop with UBC Graduate Students

Gulf Islands Secondary School, Multipurpose Room, January 8 & 9, 2011 

Saturday, January 8:

2:30-2:45 PM Introduction and Welcomes

Scott Goosenberg: “How to Avoid Snake Oil: A Case Study of Indigenous Tribes vs. International Greed”

Project Outline

• Introduction

• The Beaver Lake Cree Nation of 900 is located at the southern tip of the Athabasca tar sands and face the disintegration of their cherished way of life through the steam assisted gravity drainage process to extract bitumen, as well as strip mining, and oil prospection as well as its drilling. This messy process, aside from impeding the BLCN’s capacity to hunt caribou and other animals, contaminates soil and ground water. Despite their size, this small group is seen by some environmentalists to be “one of the last and best hopes” to stop new tar sands projects. Moreover, the issue of tar sands reverberates worldwide, given that the process emits three times more carbon than non-SAGD extraction processes, on top of the humanitarian issue of maintaining the sustainability of the BLCN’s means of sustenance. 

• Thesis Question:

• How can the fairly analogous predicaments faced by other indigenous groups, both within Canada and worldwide, and the means through which they defended their rights, help to buttress the Beaver Lake Cree Nations’ efforts to achieve an optimal outcome in their own legal battle? 

Scott Goosenberg: Beaver Lake Cree (Abstract and group goals)

ABSTRACT:

In order to facilitate the Beaver Lake Cree people’s legal defence, this analysis will draw upon related Canadian and international case studies in order to discern what efforts were successful or futile in the past with regard to similarly intrusive and destructive measures to build pipelines in various contexts and environments. By utilizing a comparative-historical analysis format, a substantive, legal framework will be attained in order to expedite and improve upon the BLC Nation’s case in order to preserve their way of life. This deconstruction of analogous circumstances surrounding previous projects ex-ante and ex-post will aid in deducing the most efficacious manner through which the BLC can protect their rights. While cases will be synthesized with locales as disparate Alberta, Canada and Kirkuk, Iraq, there will be an emphasis on tactics that will publicise the plight of the BLC Nation towards the larger strategic end of winning their case. 

Forrest, Scott & Marc: Baker Lake Cree -- Action proposal

Background

The Beaver Lake Cree nation filed suit against the Government of Canada on May 14, 2008, alleging tribal rights guaranteed under Treaty No. 6 were being violated by Tar Sand extraction and processing. Specifically, the vitiated rights include a number of game and range use guarantees the Cree were granted in exchange for giving up property rights.1  Simultaneously, the Tribe released the Kétuskéno Declaration, which notes that potentially harmful activities can only be undertaken on tribal land if extensive consultation takes place beforehand. A similar case, Tsilhqot’in First Nation v. British Columbia, returned a result favourable to the plaintiff in 2007. Essentially, “The Tsilhqot'in Nation was declared to have hunting and trapping rights, the right to capture wild horses, and the right to trade skins and pelts as required to secure a moderate livelihood; those rights were declared to have been unjustifiably infringed by the provincial forestry and land use planning regimes.”2 The case has since garnered media attention at home and abroad, and financial support from such agencies as the UK’s Co-operative Bank. The efforts of this small Native community are effectively becoming an international vehicle to challenge the oil sands project and its planned expansion through the controversial Northern Gateway Pipeline.

Scott Goosenberg: Beaver Lake Cree vs Tar Sands – Let’s take it international!

BACKGROUND

    History is not linear. Many pipelines have been built with negative consequences for adjacent communities, but an obvious answer for why these downtrodden aboriginal groups’ rights continue to be trampled upon by the powers that be remains elusive. When analyzing the threats faced by the Beaver Lake Cree nation, an historical foundation is integral; without the benefit of case studies, discerning the optimal methods that must be employed in order to obviate the predicament faced by the BLC nation, or at least seek to mitigate the ecological, psychological, and logistical problems that the Tar Sands projects have caused, would be an impossible feat. Unfortunately, there have been a series of developments over time that mirror many of the elements of this case, and many without the beneficial outcome of the Tsilhqot’in First Nation v. British Columbia case in 2007—the existence of Treaty No. 6 and the ostensible protection that these groups should derive from it notwithstanding.