Cuthand: Environment, First Nations bypassed in pipelines talk

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All the talk of tariffs and pipelines have left one important item behind. The effects on the environment have not received the priority that they should.

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Trump’s outright attack on the environment is doing serious damage at a time when we can’t afford to relax the progress that has been made up to now.

Trump has taken the United States out of the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord. The Paris Agreement is an international treaty to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and keep global warming below 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.

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In addition, Trump has also opened new lands for oil development and is boosting oil production in existing oilfields. He has also opened areas of national forests for logging.

The U.S. is the world’s largest importer of lumber and, if suppliers like Canada are facing 25 per cent tariffs, domestic production will have to ramp up, placing more pressure on old growth and protected forests. Rather than raise red flags, Canadian premiers are ready to jump on the fossil fuel bandwagon.

Alberta’s Danielle Smith is lobbying to double Alberta’s oil exports to America, which consist of about four million barrels per day. Doubling Alberta oil production would be an environmental disaster.

Scott Moe’s jumped on board, declaring that pipelines crossing through Saskatchewan are to be considered pre-approved. This meaningless gesture is a copy of the authoritarian bent coming from south of the line and right-wing parties in general.

If he’s trying to copy Trump’s bluster and unilateral form of government, he is badly mistaken.

As far as the Sask. Party and the Moe government are concerned, it’s as if Indigenous people didn’t even exist. Although, if you combine First Nations and Métis people, we are about one quarter of the population.

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Indigenous people have a long history as stewards of the land. We lived off the land for years and it served our people well. When the first fur traders and explorers came, they travelled on long-established trade routes that our people had created generations earlier.

More and more, it seems that we are spectators as settler governments and their corporations clear-cut, mine and defile the land. The Athabasca tarsands are one of the world’s largest oil deposits, but they must be extracted in huge strip-mining operations that leave the land as barren and ruined as Appalachia in the U.S.

Now the energy feeding frenzy is on and the rules are sidelined, and producers rush to fill the pipelines and oil trains. The next four years will break all the attempts to control global warming.

Of course, Trump doesn’t believe that global warming is the result of carbon dioxide that is being emitted from the burning of fossil fuels. He stated once that it was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.

We need to reclaim our role as stewards of the land. In many ways it never left us. We all harbour a deep love of the land because that’s where our roots are.

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We must remember that First Nations have special status under the treaties and that extends to the Canadian Constitution and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people.

Because of this, the provincial and federal governments have a legal duty to consult with First Nations and Métis people about the development of resources, including extraction projects and the transportation of oil, covering both rail and pipelines.

We must step up and make our voices heard and form alliances with all people of good will and caution about their headlong race toward a much warmer earth and all the hell and havoc that it will create.

The treaties held the promise that we would share the land, but instead we have been shoved aside. Treaty 8 contains the tarsands, Treaties 6 and 7 contain the coal seams in the mountains, Treaty 9 contains the rare earth minerals in the ring of fire.

The development of resources in each treaty area must be negotiated between the various signatories to the treaties along with the federal and provincial governments.

Doug Cuthand is the Indigenous affairs columnist for the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and the Regina Leader-Post. He is a member of the Little Pine First Nation.

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