Posted on 04/17/2005 5:35:02 AM PDT by billorites
While Congress debates whether to allow oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a similar battle with much higher stakes is under way in northwest Canada.
The $6 billion Mackenzie Pipeline project would open the Canadian Arctic for natural gas drilling and send the gas 800 miles south down the Mackenzie River Valley to Alberta. There, much of this fuel would be used to throttle up production in a huge but hard-to-tap supply of petroleum dispersed in underground gravel formations. These so-called oil sands hold petroleum reserves that are second in size only to Saudi Arabia's, and analysts say they could supply a large portion of U.S. energy needs for decades to come.
But the project has sparked opposition from some native tribal groups, which call it a federal grab of their ancestral lands, and from environmentalists, who say it would churn out greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
It is a fight that is likely to forever set the course for Canada's vast and empty north. The project is full of continental superlatives -- North America's richest oil patch, its biggest construction project since the Alaska pipeline in the 1970s, its largest strip-mining operation.
"By far the most important thing for North America are those oil sands in Canada," said Robert Esser, director of oil and gas resources at Cambridge Energy Research Associates in New York. "It's nice we're going to have access to (the Alaska refuge), but there are a lot of unknown questions there. We have no idea whether there is oil or gas or how much. In the oil sands, we know the reserves are huge, much larger than in Alaska."
The Canadian government, which calls the project an economic necessity, is not required to seek approval from Parliament in Ottawa.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Well, which is it? We know or we don't know.
Give them a casino in Toronto f'goodness sake and be done with it.
When they see any possibility of losing what little they have remaining or destroying their subsistence culture; no promises matter. As long as they can hunt ducks in spring, put up salmon in summer, shoot caribou in fall, and have a little left for booze; pretty content, and good people.
Many villages are not located along salmon run and are completely dependent on caribou, or they starve and that's the truth. Can't expect them to take chances and believe promises from people with terrible track records.
THere is no economy in rural areas. If oil companies would work with local villages to create real jobs for natives that over time would develop work ethic, natives would be much more receptive; things would change for the better. I don't understand why oil companies can't see this?
There were 400 indians in my community 100 years back; now only 30 remain. They have lost about everything from disease, alcohol, and clash of our two cultures.
I guess govts would still rather treat indians the same way they did back in 1800's.
The key words here should be Mineral Rights. Plenty of tribes here in the US have them and Shares in others. Others have casinos and they ALL have their own laws.
I have a hard time feeling sorry for 'indians' since Everyone has had to move, migrate and fight for what they believe in no matter what the color or lack thereof.
The reservation indians complain of housing and land. So what. All of us would rather have something different about our homes and better land. Don't like it, MOVE!
YEP!
I never believed that people still lived off the land in 2005; but Indians in Yukon, Alaska, & NWT still do; and out of necessity prefer that subsistence lifestyle to store bought food. Natives in my village would rather eat porcupine than pizza that costs 40 bucks & has to be flown in. They eat salmon three times a day all summer until caribou show up on annual fall migration; and are sure glad for the change of pace. They snare rabbits all winter long to eat and if they see a fresh moose track; they get on it and trail it for days until they get it. They eat lynx & beaver too, from trapping. They will be eating ducks from spring flights soon enough then grayling once ice out occurs on the yukon. Then the cycle begins again waiting on salmon. They actually go hungry if something in nature screws up, no joke. Why they are so sensitive to oil development.
I guess its hard for most people to understand that there are people out there who don't have grocery stores or walmarts or jobs or money or the cultural social skills or location to attain these vehicles to the American Dream that we all take for granted. But that's reality here.
Not about feeling sorry for them rather seeing a long term solution.
Long term solution is: get up, get dressed, go to school, read books, buy a bus ticket, whatever, if you dont like how it is then change it for yourself!!!!! I moved away from home, so can others. Its called growing up and becoming a citizen, which I might add is a biblical word.
If the indians in canada don't want mineral rights then thats not only their problem but the rest of canada.
I have my opinion and I'm stickin to it and I feel absolutely fine in it.
What if someone does not want to become "a citizen" and a slave to the banks, corporations and government? Is this citizenship some type of modern servitude?
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