From GlobalNews.ca

Harper's need for speed in resource development meets First Nations reality

Heather Scoffield, December 23, 2012

Lizzie Wapoose, who suffers from heart and liver problems, watches her 11-month-old niece, Cleo, Tuesday, December 18, 2012, on the Fort Hope First Nation, Ont. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

FORT HOPE FIRST NATION, Ont. - The people at Cliffs Natural Resources have been around, and know the challenges of mining in difficult conditions.

But this is a first: the multinational has had to extend deadlines on its environmental assessment process in northern Ontario's Ring of Fire because of a suicide crisis.

Another young man took his life a couple of weeks ago, prompting a spiral of despair in Neskantaga First Nation. Twenty young people in the small community of about 300 were put on suicide watch. The chief and council went to ground.

And the chances of them completing their feedback on time for Cliff's environmental assessment terms of reference faded to zero.

"Neskantaga asked for some extra time on that, and given the circumstances, we figured that was right to do," Bill Boor, Cliffs' senior vice-president of global ferroalloys, said in a telephone interview.

"We've been clear with people that we're going to be the operator of this project long-term, assuming it goes forward. We plan to be there for a long, long time."

"We kind of balance our interest in holding to a schedule with a very high level of interest in making sure we're doing it right. And it's not to our benefit to be solely schedule driven."

It's a small delay, but it comes at a time when Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made it a priority to ramp up the pace of mining and energy extraction.

Since the last federal budget, thousands of civil servants in a wide array of departments have been consumed with Harper's "responsible resource development" principle. The bureaucrats have taken to calling it "R2D" for short, the confluence of big money and political power.

The policy aims to attract $650 billion in investment to quickly open up Canada's oilsands, gas reserves and mining sectors to the world, making it easier for corporations to extract natural resources as long as they do it responsibly.

The policy dedicates some extra funding toward consultation with First Nations. But it doesn't anticipate suicide crises.

In the sparsely populated Ring of Fire, where Cliffs and other companies are hoping to set up world-class mining operations that would create thousands of jobs over decades, suicide rates are among the highest in Canada. They're the most tragic sign of the poverty, lack of employment and sexual abuse that First Nations face in the area on a daily basis.

"We have layers and layers of trauma," says Liz Atlookan, the health director in Fort Hope, the largest community in the Ring of Fire area. "Just years and years of grief, conflict situations, deaths, suicides."

Fort Hope, she says, is coming out the other side, slowly.

The Ojibway community of 1,400 built along the Albany River declared a state of emergency in 2010 because of the widespread addiction to prescription painkillers such as OxyContin.

Food disappeared from the cupboards of families' homes as addicts spent hundreds of dollars for just one pill to crush and inject.

But health workers were able to set up a local treatment program and have been permitted to administer suboxone, a replacement drug that helps addicts wean themselves off oxy over the course of many months.

The treatment is accompanied by life-skills training and job placements, with the goal of replacing the emptiness with productive work.

"A lot of them are working, and they feel good. They have a more meaningful life, and they're busy," says Atlookan.

Still, progress is incremental and not as quick as she had hoped.

"We're hoping we've had a turnaround."

In nearby Marten Falls, the health director has none of the optimism of Fort Hope. When asked if the local adults would be ready to start taking jobs associated with mining activity, the usually taciturn Evelyn Baxter explodes: "What planet are you from?"

Almost everyone on her reserve from teenagers on up is addicted to prescription painkillers, she says, and she has seen addicts as young as eight or nine.

The youngsters who are not addicted are rebelling, she said.

"You see the retaliation of the younger generation. The behaviour is out of control at times. They know what's going on."

Despite having no formal healthcare training, Baxter is a key member of Marten Falls' first-response team and spends many a night rushing to her neighbours' houses to deal with overdoses, suicide threats and addicts struggling with withdrawal. By day, she is engaged in the unrewarding experience of prodding sleepy, forgetful recovering addicts into learning life skills and attempting to work nine-to-five.

"It's like trying to teach a little kid to eat and sleep and walk again," she said. Every day she starts from scratch because her employees have forgotten everything from the day before.

"The younger generation doesn't even know how to hunt. It's the side effect. They don't think," she said.

Despite the powerful push for speedy investment and development that flows from the federal government, in the Ring of Fire time may actually be on the First Nations' side.

Cliffs Natural Resources is not yet completely sure it can go ahead with the project. Its start date of 2016 is up in the air, mainly because the company still has a long way to go in the environmental assessment process, and because money is a big issue.

In order to finance the huge chromite development, the company needs cash flow from its other operations, namely iron ore. Prices are in the basement right now, however, and so Cliffs is in no rush to spend money it can't find.

"2016 is a challenging schedule. We think it's achievable, but it's subject to all kinds of milestones," said Boor.

In the First Nations communities, leaders say they see a growing albeit tentative willingness to confront the social challenges and at least take a taste of the modern economy.

Down the street from Atlookan's clinic in Fort Hope, Phillip Wapoose lives in a crumbling house with his ill wife Lizzie, his 13-year-old son Leroy and his 31-year-old daughter Liza. They've also taken in a baby, Cleo, from their extended family for a while.

Cleo is tied to a papoose, with Lizzie rocking her gently from her recline on the couch that shares the tiny living room with a giant wood stove and three large buckets of fresh pike, pickerel and muskie.

Around them, the signs of poverty are everywhere. Laundry is strung across the ceiling, the walls are pocked with holes of all sizes, most of the floor tiles are missing or peeling away, signs of mould lurk in the corners, a dirty diaper lies in a ball on the ground.

Wapoose wants his children to find a way out of the tough conditions and into the world of paid employment, and he sees a potential answer in the Ring of Fire.

"I just want them to hire the young people," he said.

Struggling First Nations can plead and protest about their social conditions as much as they like, but the federal government is never going to come up with enough funding to turn around communities like Fort Hope, says band councillor Charlie Okeese.

"So what do you do? We look to resource development."

The challenges are daunting but not insurmountable, adds fellow councillor Andy Yesno.

"We have a lot of social problems. For the idleness, for the lack of anything to do," he says.

"I don't think anyone is quite ready to go into a mine, but they have to learn. That's what we're working on."

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From huffingtonpost.ca

Fort Hope First Nation Looks To Natural Resources As Idle No More Protests March On

By Heather Scoffield, The Canadian Press 12/21/2012

FORT HOPE FIRST NATION, Ont. - Charlie Okeese says he has a better idea for First Nations than protesting in city streets with banners and drums.

Like the Idle No More protesters, the band councillor from this fly-in northern Ontario reserve wants a better deal for his people.

But the best way to get it, he says, is to have the federal and provincial governments get together with native leaders and determine, once and for all, how to divide the spoils of natural resources fairly.

"We have to come to that table and lock the doors behind us. Let's talk it out," he said in an early morning interview in the band office hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest city.

"Yes, we're frustrated as native people. But there are ways to get things done."

Indeed, the federal and provincial governments have expressed a willingness to have those very talks - at least as they pertain to the Ring of Fire near Fort Hope, Ont.

The Ring, 500 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, is rich in newly discovered resources. Mining companies have plans to extract chromite and nickel, and maybe other metals some day.

The muskeg that covers the sparsely populated area around Fort Hope contains world-class deposits that could bring huge investment, jobs, roads and hydro to one of the few forests in the world left untouched by industry.

The Ring is also rich in history. Remote First Nations signed treaties with the Crown more than 100 years ago that they say have left them destitute, reeling with daily crises tied to housing, education, addiction, rampant unemployment and suicide.

No one is ready to accept the status quo, each for his own reasons. Such conditions stand in the way of efficient resource development, if nothing else.

So now, both levels of governments have indicated they're willing to sit down and hash out exactly how those treaties signed so long ago should be interpreted in the modern age.

"We've got a chance now," Okeese says.

Ontario has been asking for a tripartite process to negotiate the broader issues of Ring of Fire development for some time, according to background documents.

And in a recent briefing with The Canadian Press, a senior official with Aboriginal Affairs in Ottawa says the federal government is thinking along the same lines.

"We see this as a very realistic opportunity," said the official, who spoke on condition his name not be used, as has become customary with senior bureaucrats giving official briefings to reporters.

Section 35 of the Constitution obliges governments to consult meaningfully with First Nations on anything that would touch their way of life. While the Constitution is vague, court rulings are making it more and more clear that the duty to consult is far-reaching, and that governments must to some extent accommodate native demands.

By putting together a tripartite negotiating table, governments and First Nations can discuss their broader concerns about development in the Ring of Fire - infrastructure, hydro, training, jobs, benefits to reserves, overlapping claims, how to divide the proceeds and how to deal with the cumulative effects of industrial development - without having to consult on each issue separately with each interested party, the official said.

"What we're looking at is a table that deals specifically with the Section 35 duty-to-consult obligations," he explained.

"A table like this might deal with some of the consultation fatigue that occurs. It helps focus some of the capacity building, so that communities are not being besieged by government officials or industry proponents. So in a way, it is simplifying and making it more coherent for everybody."

The table would confront the same issue at the heart of the Idle No More protests across the country and the hunger strike by Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence.

As they angrily demand talks with the highest levels of government and garner support from protest movements across the continent, chiefs in the Ring of Fire region are hiring a small army of lawyers and consultants, talking with government officials, examining historical documents and soul-searching to define exactly what they hope to achieve.

Okeese is no less angry than Spence or the protesters. He is outraged, repeatedly, about the "X" his ancestors used to sign treaties they didn't understand, calling the ancient agreements "the biggest land robbery ever."

"We gave up everything," he says. "Our people didn't know what they were signing."

Protesters are hitting the streets because the younger generation is realizing the injustice of the way treaties have been implemented, with no respect for the nature of the agreements, Okeese said.

But now that mining companies and governments alike are thirsty for resource extraction from his area, First Nations have a chance to discuss their concerns in a broad way, area chiefs say.

Still, a willingness to talk does not assure a successful outcome. Mistrust runs deep in federal-aboriginal relations, and both sides come with significant baggage.

"We're trying to get the government to come to the table and recognize treaty obligations. They say they want to talk. We've heard that before," said Cornelius Wabasse, chief of the Webequie First Nation, one of the closest reserves to the mining interests in the Ring of Fire.

Over in Marten Falls, another nearby First Nation, Chief Eli Moonias sees the federal government turning a blind eye to environmental degradation in the oilsands, and doesn't want to see the same thing happen in his territory.

"How are you going to assure me that this is not going to happen here," he said.

That question will be answered in the environmental assessment process, rather than the tripartite table, but it underlines the lack of confidence Moonias has in dealing with Ottawa.

There's tension among the First Nations, too. Moonias says other bands are laying claim to some of his traditional territory in the hopes of bargaining for a larger percentage of the eventual benefits of mining.

"The whole of Ring of Fire is in our territory. Webequie says it's theirs. Landsdowne is saying so, too," said Moonias. "We have the larger percentage because we have the largest territory."

And which First Nations should be at the table? Should Attawapiskat be there because it is downstream from the proposed development?

The chiefs are planning to meet next month to sort things out, recognizing they will negotiate better if they work together, Moonias said.

Back in Fort Hope, Okeese says he believes that once all parties sit down and look each other in the eye as equals, respect will reign and mutually beneficial solutions can be reached.

Like Ottawa, he said, First Nations are fed up with dependence on government hand-outs that can be cut at the whim of the prime minister.

"Until there is a commitment from governments, I don't think there will be any resource development up north," he said. "We've got to go back to the treaty table."

His 36-year-old son Roland Okeese, who wants to get training and find work in mining eventually, hopes to see a fair deal.

"I'd like for it to happen," he said. "But it has to be where we can all benefit."