As a child, Harry Deneron remembers his parents burying his grandmother at the north shore of the Maxhamish Lake in British Columbia.
Except as a member of the Acho Dene Koe (ADK) First Nations peoples, Maxhamish Lake was only known as Sandy Lake to Deneron and his family, as a part of their people’s territory. He was taught to see their land as one whole area— not broken up by three colonial boundaries. The ADK territory now spans across the Yukon, Northwest Territories and B.C.
ADK land on the B.C side, where Deneron and 200 other ADK peoples live, may be of interest to Suncor Energy and the B.C government, according to documents obtained via a freedom of information request.
The documents, in the form of a briefing note to Aboriginal Relations Minister John Rustad, state that the Horn River Basin — where ADK live — is where oil and gas company Suncor has retained oil sand extraction rights.
But the ADK won’t be able to benefit from oil and gas development in the area as the province continues to shut them out of treaty negotiations to affirm their claim to the land they have resided on for centuries, said Deneron, chief of the ADK.
“That’s the rights that need to be settled. And that should happen soon,” he said. “We’re tired of being ignored.”
Deneron and the ADK have been looking to re-negotiate their treaty with provincial governments in all three provinces their territory crosses, as well as with the federal government.
The ADK previously signed Treaty 11 in the early 1920s, but it does not extend into B.C. In 2002 the ADK began the process of negotiating a new one within each province and territory they had claim to, with B.C’s Treaty Commission accepting the claim at the time.
Today, B.C is the only party that has not come to negotiations for a new treaty, with the Yukon, Northwest Territories and the federal government all at the table, said Bob Reiter, lawyer for the ADK.
“This isn’t a matter of asking for a huge share of anything here. It’s just they were on record as wanting to negotiate, and now they’ve been avoiding my clients since 2002,” said Reiter.
But without B.C’s involvement in the negotiations, the ADK residing in the province will live in uncertainty to whether they have official rights to the land, said Reiter.
Reiter and the ADK are prepared to go to court over the land claims, but it’s an expensive process that could take years, he said.
“This is not a legal issue. It’s pretty straightforward, they have to negotiate. It’s a political issue that I think is front and centre with respect to oil and gas,” said Reiter. “The stakes are so great.”
The Horn Plateau area is exclusively occupied by the ADK, he added.“They have cabins there, they have villages there,” he said.
Scott Fraser, the NDP critic for the Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation said he has questioned Minister Rustad about the ADK many times over the last few years.
Earlier this month he met with Rustad to discuss the ADK again, in which the Minister declined to visit the ADK’s B.C territory, said Fraser.
“He’s dismissing an entire group of people in a very colonial way, I’d suggest,” he said.
Suncor could use their claims to oil sands in the area as an opportunity to work with the ADK, which the province has failed to, he said.
“Maybe they can show the government and this Minister how it should be done,” he said. “This could be the push necessary for companies working on the land to adhere to the spirit of the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples.”
Government of Canada Access Request
City of Vancouver Request
Government of British Columbia Request
Questions:
What is the information?
The information in these documents contains briefing notes to Minister John Rustad of the Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation. The purpose of the notes are to brief Minister Rustad on an upcoming meeting with Suncor Energy in October 2014.
From which department did the pages come from?
These pages came from the Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation.
Why was this information helpful?
The information was helpful as it gave me insight into what the Minister was told prior to the meeting with Suncor. Information about where Suncor’s tenures are was important because where Suncor has holdings became the main part of the story. I would not have known about the ADK people without first knowing where Suncor has oil sands.