Image from Greenpeace: www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/Multimedia/Photos/Tar-sands/Aerial-2-of-Alberta-Oil-Spill/
An estimated 28,000 barrels of crude oil – 4.5 million litres – has spilled from the Rainbow pipeline onto the land of the Lubicon Indians in Northern Alberta. This is another terrible blow for an aboriginal community which was among the first in Canada to suffer the environmental impact of the oil industry.
Almost 30 years ago, in 1985, I covered this story as a television producer for Radio Canada, the French network of the CBC, together with one of my favourite journalist colleagues, Hélène Courchesne. We discovered and reported on a Cree community which had been left out of the treaty process, denied a land claims settlement, and was suffering the consequences of uncontrolled oil exploration and extraction.
ABOVE: Two of Hélène’s photos from 1982 show both traditional life and oil extraction.
Since then, hardly any progress has been made in settling the community’s claims. Instead, the mad rush for oil and gas has continued to impact them negatively. And now they have to deal with this horrendous pollution from the pipeline owned by Plains Midstream Canada – a subsidiary of Plains All American. The community of Little Buffalo is not far from the spill (the figures reported vary from 7 to 30 km) and the residents are complaining of health impacts such as headaches and nausea. The cleanup is underway, and will take many months. And how effective will it be ?
One of the great privileges of working for the CBC and Radio-Canada in those days was to be able to pretty much choose my subjects. For sure, they had to be approved by my superiors, but with a convincing pitch they usually said yes. I was very interested in the situation of aboriginal people and environmental issues, and I did a lot of those kinds of stories– 20-minute stories with a 3-week turnaround. The experience with the Lubicons was one of the most memorable and touching. Their situation was and still is one of Canada’s most shameful.
Here are a few links to organizations supporting the Lubicon or protesting the spill.
Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with the blog.
