Natives Aren’t Buying Northern Gateway Pipeline
_By Barbara Yaffe_
There’s nothing like raw cash to win over a negotiating partner. But this principle is not holding in the case of Enbridge Northern Gateway, whose representatives are now trying to sweet talk aboriginal groups into accepting a pipeline that would carry oil sands product from Fort McMurray to coastal B.C. for shipment from Kitimat.
The company is offering those aboriginal groups to be impacted by the pipeline construction a whack of plummy industrial benefits from the project, a 10 per cent equity share and a potentially lucrative community trust fund.
The development, which will traverse a huge part of B.C., has become highly controversial and attracted opposition not just from native people but from opposition politicians in Ottawa. With the cash now being put on the table, it is bound to become even more controversial.
On Tuesday evening at a public meeting in Prince George, the five nations of the Yinka Dene Alliance turned thumbs down on the pipeline project. This is significant because these folks have traditional territories covering one quarter of the pipeline route. They further assert that aboriginal territory reflecting half the pipeline and tanker route is held by native peoples who don’t want the project to go ahead.
“This project is not going to happen and we’ll use all the means we have under our laws to fight it,” declared Chief Larry Nooski of Nadleh Whut’en.
“Our Nations will not be turned,” says Chief Jackie Thomas of Saik’uz.” We won’t trade the safety of our rivers, lands and fish that our our lifeblood.”
Of course there are bound to be other aboriginal groups that will consider the financial benefits and opt to support the pipeline.
And this pipeline also has important strategic benefit for Canada given that it would enable the country to diversify the market for oilsands product away from an exclusive U.S. buyer to fast-growing Asian countries.
With so much riding on stopping the pipeline and so much riding on proceeding with it, the tussle over it is going to get a whole lot uglier as time goes by.