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By Chief Raymond Powder
Main Fort McKay First Nation is the best honour and best dedication of my life. That is my dwelling, a small, dynamic group on the banks of the Athabasca River, 60 kilometres north of Fort McMurray. We’re enterprise innovators and environmental stewards. For a few years, we’ve been leaders in combining look after our lands with alternative and enterprise. Certainly, FMFN has, via a lot onerous work, dedication and plenty of classes realized, solid a mannequin for a brand new means ahead – one from which Alberta and Canada can even profit.
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Because the Indian Act turned the legislation in Canada in 1876, the First Nations of this nation have lived beneath a system that denied us the prosperity that ought to have flowed from our land and our rights. That’s now altering, in the end, and we’re those altering it. That is how we outline reconciliation.
That mannequin will now be put to the check, as we work in the direction of the event of a useful resource on our lands, per guarantees and commitments made to us a era in the past. It’s a mission that, if achieved as we intend, will likely be an exemplar for remaining tasks within the oil sands, as Alberta and Canada transition in the direction of renewable vitality and a net-zero future.
Crucial truth in our story is that this: The property which we suggest to develop can not, in keeping with the Treaty Land Entitlement Settlement between Canada and Fort McKay, be used for any function apart from oilsands improvement or associated industrial actions. It’s surrounded by present tasks. We should both use it or lose it, because the window of alternative to develop fossil gas sources progressively closes.
Can we do that in a means that displays our shared values of environmental stewardship and management? The reply is, categorically and completely, sure.
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For starters, as folks of the Athabasca watershed, we dwell day by day with the urgency of discovering an answer to the varied impacts of improvement on our lands. The issue of tailings ponds is a cumulative impression and of utmost significance. We’ve been working onerous on this for a number of years. We consider we’re making progress. And we’re assured we’ll discover an economically viable approach to deal with tailings and reclaim the land. We’re compelled to do that. Our folks will settle for nothing much less. We have to proceed to be on the desk to do that work.
Second, we’re deeply engaged in working towards a net-zero emissions barrel of oil, together with via the landmark carbon-offset mission on our lands at Moose Lake, and detailed mission analyses designed to offset mine emissions at each stage. We’re additionally planning to affix the Pathways Alliance, as we work to offset emissions from our mission operations. The Pathways’ dedication to net-zero emissions by 2050 is, we consider, an vital first step. We will make even larger progress, and we’ll.
Some will keep there must be no additional improvement within the oilsands. The truth is that non-Indigenous-owned oilsands improvement is projected to proceed for many years. To our information, Ours is the one Indigenous-owned oilsands mission presently proposed in Alberta. So, in impact, the selection is just not whether or not to develop; it’s whether or not First Nations can have a share of the advantages. We didn’t create the circumstances that established mining within the oilpatch. Nor did Indigenous folks create local weather change.
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What Fort McKay First Nation has achieved, quite the opposite, is figure onerous as a collaborative, dependable associate, figuring out that our folks require jobs, a secure place to name dwelling, and a future. That’s the reason we’re working with trade to ascertain relationships. We consider our distinctive vantage level as First Nations enterprise leaders, and environmental champions, makes us ideally positioned to guide.
In session with regional neighbours and companions, we intend to exhibit what financial reconciliation really appears to be like like in apply: creating alternative for our folks and prosperity for Albertans and Canadians alike. Within the course of, we are able to prepared the ground find options to essentially the most urgent environmental issues we face.
It has been clear for a few years that financial improvement is key to the pure proper of Indigenous peoples to attain our full potential and an equal seat on the desk. First Nations in Canada are nonetheless ready for that seat on the desk. However there are indicators this will lastly be altering. We see concepts just like the Indigenous Mortgage Assure program, which we help, adopted in final fall’s federal financial assertion. And we see proposals just like the First Nations Useful resource Cost, initiated by the First Nations Tax Fee and now taken up by politicians in Ottawa. These concepts are supposed to lastly give our folks extra of the advantages of improvement on our land. It’s a welcome shift and one that’s lengthy overdue.
Indigenous peoples mustn’t — the truth is, can not — wait any longer to form the longer term all of us want. We’re trailblazers charting a brand new path immediately, based mostly on our enterprise acumen and the progressive vitality of our folks. We ask the folks of Alberta and Canada to affix us.
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