Weekend in Fort Chipewyan

In May, I took a delegation of 16 Canadian church leaders, Southern and Indigenous partners, and KAIROS staff to Northern Alberta to visit the Athabasca Tar Sands. This was a very important step in work that we began couple of years ago, and that I first wrote about here last October.

The delegation's goal was to learn more about the impacts of these projects on the economy, the Boreal ecosystem, and the human communities that live in the region, in order to make a contribution to the public debate in Canada on the future of tar sands development. One of those communities is the indigenous community of Fort Chipewyan, built on the shore of Lake Athabasca at the mouth of the vast Athabasca delta, downstream from the tar sands mining projects near Fort McMurray. The people of Fort Chip are very concerned about the impacts of the projects on the river, the land, the animals, and their health. They want the projects to slow down until there can be complete and comprehensive environmental assessments, and they want to have a meaningful role in the debate about how, or even if, more development proceeds.

Early one Saturday morning we hopped into two small planes (a twelve-seater and a six-seater) for the hour long flight to Fort Chip. Here are four of our intrepid group at about 3500 feet.

L-R: Fabricio Guaman, Mike Karikpo, Bishop Susan Johnson, and Rev. Bruce Adema.

We took a detour to fly over a number of oil sands projects, including the two oldest mines, Suncor and Syncrude, plus the newer Shell-Albian Sands mine and Suncor's in situ Firebag project, so named because it is adjacent to the Firebag River. You can see pictures of the Suncor and Syncrude mines and get a sense of their ecological impacts here. In situ extraction, which accounts for 80% of the recoverable oil in the region, looks far more like conventional oil extraction, but is not without controversy. It uses massive amounts of relatively clean natural gas to produce steam that is injected into the ground under high pressure, forcing the thick bitumen to the surface. There are questions about the amount of water being used (though it is highly salinated, not potable, water) and there are concerns about the integrity of the shale system and the aquifers under the pressure of all this steam. It's also been shown in other areas of Alberta that the so-called "minimal" surface displacement caused by conventional oil or in situ tar sands extraction disrupts natural wildlife paths. These fine folks saw all this as we flew north, and they smelled the sulphur, coke, and petroleum that comes from the synthetic crude process as well.

Fort Chipewyan was a very different experience -- in many ways, no less brutal, but also a deeply moving experience of tremendous generosity on the part of the community. I don't think we were quite prepared for it.

After meeting with leadership from the four communities that are represented in Fort Chip --Mikisew Cree, Athabasca Chipewyan, Dene, and Metis-- we went on a tour of the town with Oliver Glanfield, who moved to Fort Chip more than 40 years ago while working with the Forestry Department. Oliver is now kind of the town historian, and his wife, Marjorie, is the Anglican priest.

He took us to a replica of one of the orginal Hudson's Bay Company buildings, which now serves as the community museum, and to the Anglican Church. Then we went to the Roman Catholic church. This is one of the oldest churches in Alberta, and for many many years the interior walls were covered in plain plywood sheets. But the Elders knew that there was something underneath those panels, and they were uncovered to reveal renderings of scriptural texts and the stations of the cross done in fish oil paint that had been tinted with natural dyes. One of the pictures below is in the Dene language; the other in Cree:




The ceiling was absolutely magnificent, painted with blueberry-fish oil paint:


That evening, we had a community dinner and discussion with people who told us the difficult stories of their lives. They feel caught in a system where an industry that helps pay their bills (some in the community work for the tar sands industry, the First Nations have companies that provide services, and there is some financial compensation for use of traditional territories) also seems to be harming them. The fish that is coming out of the water looks and tastes different than it used to, and so does the moose that they hunt as a main source of protein. There has been a well-documented but not well-understood cluster of rare cancer that many in the community believe to be related to the health of the river. One woman who had recently moved back to Fort Chipewyan after years away noted that she and her sister in Edmonton are the only surviving members of her family. Their four sisters, who stayed their entire lives in Fort Chip, had all died.

These stories were hard to hear, but they were honestly and generously shared. We experienced that generosity all weekend, in conversations, in a deeply moving ecumenical service on Sunday, in a farewell lunch of bison chili and roast moose. One of the most powerful examples of it was this performance by a group of young Jingle Dancers, girls between 6 and 13 years of age. The Jingle Dance, which is originally Anishnabe in origin, is a healing dance which, once taken on by a girl, is a great responsibility. The girls pick what symbols they want on their dresses, and make them with mothers. Right now, these dancers have 75 jingles on their dresses, but they will eventually have 365.


In the evening, we went for a walk around a few of the lakes in the region.


A coyote had run across the beach a few minutes before us.


Loons called.


We witnessed a sunset at 10:30 pm.


And were profoundly grateful for what we learned, and who we met.

Bishop Susan Johnson and me with Cynthia Simpson, Jingle Dance instructor, tour guide extraordinaire, and all-around amazing woman.

They gave us gifts when we arrived; mine was a small beaded moosehide wallet made by Cynthia's mother. Traditionally cured over fire, it has a smokiness that is released as you rub the soft hide between your fingers. I must do that two or three times a day as I reach for my subway pass or debit card. And every time, I am right back in Fort Chip with those amazingly generous people who are asking for nothing more than the right to be heard.