Lubicon Lake Indian Nation
P.O. Box 6731
Peace River, AB T8S 1S5
Phone: (403) 629-3945
Fax: (403) 629-3939
September 15, 2008
Michelle Huley
Editor
Peace River Record Gazette
10009 - 100 Avenue
Peace River, AB T8S 1S6
Fax: 780-624-8600
Email: news@prrecordgazette.com
The three part series on living conditions in Cadotte and Little Buffalo Lake that appeared in the Record Gazette starting on August 26th is more about undermining Lubicon land rights than it is about Lubicon living conditions. Moreover it is not based on readily available facts known to people across the country and around the world but on long-since discredited, deliberately deceitful Canadian government propaganda.
The false allegation that the Lubicons are merely squatters on provincial Crown land goes back to the late 1930s, before it was investigated and rejected in writing by the first official government delegation to visit Lubicon Territory in 1939. It was then revived by the Alberta government in the early 1980s, before it was again examined and discredited in 1986 by prominent Canadian jurist and Conservative statesman E. Davie Fulton after an 18-month long inquiry commissioned by then federal Indian Affairs Minister David Crombie.
The false allegation that the Lubicons are merely squatters on provincial Crown land was examined and discredited again by the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations in 1990, after a 6-year review of the facts and numerous submissions from both sides. It has since been revisited by two different UN Human Rights Committees, both of whom concluded that Canada should return to the negotiating table to negotiate a settlement of Lubicon land rights that respects Lubicon rights under two different international human rights covenants, and in the meantime, should "conduct effective consultation with the Band prior to the grant of licenses for economic purposes in the disputed land, and to ensure that such activities do not jeopardize Lubicon rights recognized under (those two international human rights covenants)".
The Lubicon people are not squatters on land we have occupied since before the arrival of Europeans in our area. A highly qualified independent ethnologist found that the archaeological evidence indicates that our ancestors occupied Lubicon Territory since at least 1400 and we can document our occupation of Lubicon Territory going back to 1750 -- well before Canada was created as a so-called "self-governing colony of the British Empire" in 1867; well before Alberta was created as a second-class province of Canada without land and resource rights in 1905; and well before the predecessor of Sunrise County -- Municipal District No. 131 -- was created as a provincial municipality in 1968.
Sunrise County claims to have obtained rights to our area from Municipal District No. 131 in 2002. Municipal District 131 claimed to have obtained the land rights it supposedly transferred to Sunrise County from the Alberta government under the Municipal Government Act of 1968.
The Alberta government claims to have obtained the rights it assigned to Municipal District 131 from the Canadian government under the Federal/Provincial Land Transfer Agreement of 1930. The Canadian government in turn claims to have obtained the rights it supposedly transferred to Alberta under the 1930 Land Transfer Agreement from the original aboriginal owners of the land through negotiation of Treaty 8 in 1899.
However the Lubicon people are the original aboriginal owners of Lubicon Territory. We are not signatories to Treaty 8 and we have not ceded our rights to Lubicon Territory to anybody through treaty or in any other historically or legally recognized way. In point of fact the existence of Lubicon land rights has been acknowledged by both levels of Canadian government since 1939 and have been the subject of on-again off again negotiations with both levels of Canadian since 1985. (Canada and Alberta take the position that we only have outstanding treaty land entitlement rights under a treaty they acknowledge we didn’t sign but insist, tellingly, that we sign an adhesion to Treaty 8 -- officially joining Treaty 8 and ceding our unceded rights to Lubicon Territory -- as part of any settlement of Lubicon land rights.)
In 1980 -- in another well-documented effort to assert provincial jurisdiction over unceded Lubicon land and to subvert Lubicon land rights -- the Alberta government declared our traditional community of Little Buffalo Lake to be a provincial hamlet. They lied to our people about the forms they were asking us to sign, and forged our signatures when people realized what government agents were doing and refused to sign the forms. They were caught at it and their actions publicly exposed, both in the provincial legislature and in the media. An appalled provincial Opposition Leader Grant Notley at the time asked "Are there no lengths to which this provincial government is not prepared to go?" Provincial officials proceeded to declare Little Buffalo a provincial hamlet anyway but that doesn’t make Little Buffalo a legitimate provincial hamlet under the jurisdiction of Sunrise County when the province doesn’t have proper jurisdiction over unceded Lubicon land.
All of this brings us to the outrageous statements made in your articles about the Lubicon water situation. The articles say Sunrise County is building a 100 km long pipeline to carry water to the people of Little Buffalo Lake from a treatment plant located at the Peace River but the Lubicons are for some vague unstated political reason torpedoing it. In fact the purpose of the proposed Sunrise County pipeline is not to provide the Lubicon people with a source of safe drinking water but to again try to assert provincial jurisdiction over unceded Lubicon land and subvert Lubicon land rights -- this time using a questionable 30 year old oil company pipeline and tens of millions of taxpayers dollars.
In 1999 agreement was reached at the Lubicon land rights negotiating table regarding construction of an on-reserve Lubicon water treatment plant for the Lubicon people post settlement of Lubicon land rights. Engineers were hired. Test holes were drilled. Suitable local sources of water were identified. The cost of a professionally designed on-reserve water treatment plant, including an on-reserve water distribution system, was a little over $5 million. The cost of a related sewer disposal system was an additional $2.6 million.
In July of 2002 then federal Indian Affairs Minister Bob Nault instructed his officials to develop ways and means to start providing the Lubicon people with basic services even while Lubicon land negotiations were proceeding. We agreed in discussions with Indian Affairs officials to start providing the Lubicon people with basic services by providing water and sewer service to the families of ten Lubicon Elders who find lack of indoor plumbing particularly difficult, especially when all of our traditional sources of drinking water have been contaminated by resource activity and they have to go over 100 kms to buy bottled water.
A proposal was jointly developed with Indian Affairs officials to install a small water purification plant in the Lubicon area that would serve as a pilot project required as a step towards building a main on-reserve Lubicon water purification plant post settlement of Lubicon land rights, and, in the interim, would provide the families of ten Lubicon Elders with a local source of drinkable water.
In 2003 representatives of Sunrise County approached us and asked for us to authorize Indian Affairs to provide money on our behalf to help pay for a study to develop a regional water system based on an old pipeline built by Shell oil in 1978-79 to transport water from Cadotte Lake to the Shell in-situ plant. This old Shell oil pipeline only operated for a few months because it dropped the level of Cadotte Lake so much that the lake froze solid and killed all the fish. It has been sitting idle in the ground ever since and is reportedly in questionable condition.
We declined to authorize Indian Affairs to contribute money on our behalf to support what we frankly considered to be a half-baked scheme to pipe water over 100 km. in a 30 year old oil company pipeline. We indicated that we preferred to proceed with implementation of the professionally designed plans agreed at the negotiating table and in discussions with Indian Affairs officials. We didn’t learn until 2007 that Indian Affairs contributed money to Sunrise County’s regional water study anyway and participated in it behind our backs -- allegedly on our behalf.
In May of 2005 Indian Affairs officials asked us to prepare an updated version of the proposal to begin providing the Lubicon people with basic services starting with provision of water and sewer services to the families of ten Lubicon Elders. That 2005 Lubicon proposal spells out the equipment and related infrastructure required to provide water and sewer service to the families of ten Elders at a cost that is competitive with the cost of providing water and sewer service to people in surrounding northern Alberta communities, to provide infrastructure adequate to provide water and sewer service to a limited number of additional Lubicon families each subsequent year until there is a settlement of Lubicon land rights, and to do all of this in a way that is compatible with the water and sewer system agreed in Lubicon land negotiations.
Total estimated cost of the updated 2005 Lubicon water and sewer proposal was either $1.2 million or $2.5 million depending upon whether a known but untested local water source close to existing roads could be used, or if an already tested local water source requiring construction of a longer access road had to be used. Federal officials at the technical level confirmed the cost numbers and recommended the proposal but senior Indian Affairs officials, effectively countermanding Mr. Nault’s instructions, told the less senior officials with whom we were working "not to proceed due to the outstanding claims issue".
In August of 2006 federal officials offered us $250,000 towards implementation of the 2005 proposal and made a verbal commitment to try and come up with another $160,000. The federal offer would cover the cost of plumbing, water tanks, sewer tanks and upgrading driveways necessary to deliver water and sewer services to the families of ten Lubicon Elders. However it did not cover water or sewage disposal.
After a lot of hemming and hawing about where the water would come from and the sewage would go, federal officials proposed "to contract out water delivery and sewage disposal" until a proposed 100 km long Sunrise County pipeline, on which they had been secretly working behind our backs with Sunrise County and provincial officials, is completed into the Lubicon area. They told us the proposed Sunrise County pipeline would not be completed for at least 4 or 5 years. The tab for building the local Lubicon water treatment facility and providing local sewage disposal -- not including access roads and local water distribution (which will be required in any case) -- was $350,000. The cost of hauling in the water and hauling out the sewage for the families of ten Lubicon Elders ranged between $410,000 per year and $460,000 per year, depending upon whether the water came from Red Earth or Peace River -- multiplied of course by an indeterminate number of years until the proposed Sunrise County pipeline is completed. It was thus very clear that hauling in water and hauling out sewage, even on an interim basis, would be outrageously expensive and would cost more in three years than it would cost for the Lubicon people to build our own water treatment and sewage disposal facility, plus employ our own people and provide our own water and sewer service under our own duly elected government consistent with settlement of Lubicon land rights.
Next federal officials proposed to reduce the cost of hauling in the water and hauling out the sewage by buying trucks rather than contracting out the service, by trucking in the water from the existing Sunrise County water treatment plant in Cadotte Lake rather than going all the way to Red Earth or Peace River, and by depositing the sewage in a sewage lagoon belonging to the Woodland Cree Band rather than trucking it to Red Earth. As everybody knew, however, the water from the Cadotte Lake treatment plant is problematic; subject to health advisories that say it can’t be drunk even if it’s boiled, and can’t even safely be used for bathing because it causes skin rashes.
In addition, federal officials advised, they could only provide $37,500 a year to operate the proposed water and sewer trucks when actual annual truck operating costs, in the comparable neighboring Woodland Cree and Loon River Bands, is nearly three times that amount. In other words, the Lubicons were being offered water we can’t drink, delivered by trucks we can’t afford to operate, until some indeterminate point in the future when Sunrise County builds a new water treatment plant and re-lines a dicey hundred km long pipeline -- now estimated by Sunrise County officials to cost $46 million not including sewage disposal or local water distribution -- that would constitute effective provincial assertion of jurisdiction over our unceded Territory, and subversion of our unceded land rights, at a cost to the taxpayers over 16 times greater than our proposal to provide water and sewer service for the families of ten Lubicon Elders, and at a cost 5 times greater than the estimated cost of the Lubicon reserve water and sewer system agreed at the Lubicon land negotiating table -- not including the cost of sewage disposal and local water distribution system.
Most recently -- on August 14th -- federal officials told us that they are now prepared to truck in safe drinking water from Peace River, "irrespective of the cost", until the proposed Sunrise County pipeline can be built. "Irrespective of the cost" turned out to mean that they are now prepared to pay the difference in the cost of buying the water in Peace River instead of Cadotte Lake -- which is nominal -- but they are still not prepared to pay the cost of trucking the water from Peace River -- which remains prohibitive.
The bottom line in all of this is that it is not true that the Lubicons are blocking Sunrise County from providing our people with safe drinking water for some mysterious political reason. While it is true that we are concerned about ongoing efforts by the federal and provincial governments to subvert our land rights, and while we have made clear our position that we want to provide our own basic services employing our own people on a recognized Lubicon reserve under our own duly elected government, and while there is no question that provision of a local water source and sewage disposal capacity will be much cheaper than having the water piped over 100 kms from Peace River, and while we admittedly have real concerns about relying on these stumblebums to deliver essential drinking water to our people, the Sunrise County pipeline proposal has been bumbling along, behind our backs and without our knowledge or involvement, essentially independent of our ongoing efforts to provide our people with a local source of safe, economical drinking water.
Sincerely,
Original Signed by
Bernard Ominayak
Chief
Lubicon Lake Indian Nation