Table of Contents

1. Introduction and Terms of Reference 1

2. Personal Qualifications and Areas of Expertise 8

3. Issues of Terminologies and Origins 12

4. Ethnography of People who now form the Mikisew Cree First Nation 21

Domestic Mode of Production 23 Fur Trade Mode of Production 27 Forces of Production 34 Relations of Production 41 Superstructure 43

5. Mikisew Cree First Nation Traditional Territory 44

6. 20th Century Restrictions Imposed on Mikisew Cree First Nation Traditional Lands 64

7. Mikisew Population Growth and Relocation to Fort McMurray 69

8. Maintaining Tradition: Passing on Mikisew Cree First Nation Traditions and Cultural Practices 70

9. Competing for Territory 72

Figures 76-78

References 79

Appendix 1. Publications Related to this Region 89

Appendix 2. Curriculum vitae 94 1. Introduction and terms of reference

I was requested by Janes Freedman Kyle Law Corporation on behalf of Mikisew Cree

First Nation to provide an ethno-historical report with respect to the following questions (e-mail message from Karey M. Brooks, 27 July 2010):

1. Provide an ethnographic description of the people who now form the Mikisew Cree First

Nation, including an analysis of how traditional band structures are different from those

created by virtue of the Indian Act.

2. Provide a description of the Mikisew traditional territory, including:

a. whether there was a pre-contact concept of a “Mikisew territory,”

b. the extent to which the Mikisew moved around their territory (including the

amount of space required to carry out their traditional activities; the need to be

respectful of others’ rights; and the depletion of resources), and

c. whether there was any amalgamation of groups (e.g., was there any overlap

between local groups and bands through marriage and family connections?).

3. Describe the circumstances around the Mikisew presence in Wood Buffalo National Park

in the 20th C and whether their occupation of the Park should be considered when

defining the scope of their traditional territory.

4. Describe the Mikisew population growth between the early 20th C and now.

5. Describe how the Mikisew passed on their culture and cultural practices to succeeding

generations (e.g., what were their oral history traditions?).

Summary responses

1. Provide an ethnographic description of the people who now form the Mikisew Cree 2

First Nation, including an analysis of how traditional band structures are different

from those created by virtue of the Indian Act.

The Mikisew Cree First Nation was an historic outgrowth of both Cree and Chipewyan people in the Fort Chipewyan region. It is a legal “Indian Band” that was created under the framework of the Indian Act in 1899, when Crees and Chipewyans at Fort Chipewyan negotiated their entry into Treaty No. 8, or, in the eyes of the treaty commissioners, took separate adhesions to the treaty that was first signed at Lesser Slave Lake. If the population had been smaller, there might have been only one Cree-Chipewyan Band, as there was at Fort McMurray. The size of the Cree and Chipewyan populations were sufficiently large that the commissioners created two separate bands, each with its own chief and two headmen, following a government formula. In the past, such Indian bands were administrative units for the convenience of the Department of

Indian Affairs. They had no correspondence to the on-the-ground reality of the local bands in which Aboriginal people lived on the land.

The report focuses on the local band structure that was the everyday social reality in northeast Alberta for Crees and Chipewyans, both in the pre-contact past and in the years after they became involved as trappers in the fur trade. Local bands were small, autonomous, co- residential units of production and consumption. They had individual leaders, no single overarching “chief.” Members of the local bands were related to one another by a complex network of kinship ties. Local bands often came together in summer, producing a temporary larger grouping, sometimes called a “regional band,” but the so-called regional bands were not bounded. Membership was fluid between regional bands as well as between local bands. 3

2. Provide a description of the Mikisew traditional territory, including:

a. whether there was a pre-contact concept of a “Mikisew territory,”

b. the extent to which the Mikisew moved around their territory (including the

amount of space required to carry out their traditional activities; the need to

be respectful of others’ rights; and the depletion of resources), and

c. whether there was any amalgamation of groups (e.g., was there any overlap

between local groups and bands through marriage and family connections?).

There was no pre-contact concept of a Mikisew territory, in that there was no entity that could be called the Cree Band until after the signing of Treaty No. 8 in 1899. However, there were lands that Crees and Chipewyans respectively considered their lands to use. Crees and

Chipewyans began to intermarry by the mid-19th century, which facilitated peaceful use of the entire northeast Alberta landscape and beyond, as individuals and local bands moved from place to place during the course of each year as well as longer-distance movements that were undertaken for a variety of subsistence and cultural reasons. People moved if they faced what has been called “the law of diminishing returns”: they had to put more effort into food production - hunting, fishing, and gathering - for decreasing results. This factor may have become more important once they became involved in the fur trade, because it can be easy to trap out fur bearers. However, the local bands also did considerable environmental management by using controlled burning, which produced rich habitats that were suitable for most of the animals they hunted or trapped. People and bands also moved for a broad group of reasons I have termed

“cultural”: either the husband or the wife had to move at marriage; an internal conflict could lead to relocation of an individual or family group; people might move following a death; people 4 wanted to travel and see new country. Everyone had the right to live anywhere they had kinsmen or in land that no one else was using at the time. The kinship ties that joined together Aboriginal people from Fort Vermilion to Fort McMurray and points between can be found in genealogies and treaty pay lists that show the extensive connections over a broad landscape.

3. Describe the circumstances around the Mikisew presence in Wood Buffalo National

Park in the 20th C and whether their occupation of the Park should be considered

when defining the scope of their traditional territory.

Wood Buffalo National Park was created in two stages in 1922 (north of the Peace River) and 1926 (south of the Peace River). Members of both the Cree and Chipewyan Bands were allowed to remain in the portion of the park that was north of the Peace River, because they were covered by treaty. However, in 1926 government officials imposed a different access rule that allowed anyone to remain in the part of the park south of the Peace River if they were there at the time the park was created. All the members of the Cree Band were present in the park and acquired park privileges. Only half the members of the Chipewyan Band were in the park; they acquired park privileges, while their Chipewyan relatives outside the park boundaries did not, even if they had previously used park lands. Park users were economically much better off than

First Nations people living outside the park in Alberta, because they were protected from the destruction of animal resources by White trappers who had no interest in conservation. This situation encouraged Crees and park Chipewyans to focus their land use in the park, and in 1946 the park Chipewyans were legally transferred to the Cree band. However, there is evidence for park users continuing to hunt elsewhere, even though new difficulties were introduced in the 5

1940s when first the Province of Alberta and then the park introduced systems of registered trap lines. The park boundaries do not define the limits of Mikisew Cree traditional lands, but the park remains a very important land use area for this First Nation.

4. Describe the Mikisew population growth between the early 20th C and now.

The Cree Band had a small population of 186 in 1899, when it was created. It suffered from several major epidemics during the first half of the 20th century, but the population recovered and slowly increased. In 1946 the park Chipewyans were transferred to the Cree Band, which was a major addition to Cree numbers.

In the second half of the 20th century, the Cree population began to expand, as did

Aboriginal populations across Canada. It had another jump in population after the passing of Bill

C-31 in 1985, when the Cree Band developed an “inclusive” membership code which welcomed back to the band people and their descendants who had been involuntarily enfranchised under the

Indian Act. The Cree Band became the Mikisew Cree First Nation in 1992. The First Nation’s membership in 2010 is 2,574. but the majority of its members no longer live in Fort Chipewyan or its vicinity. Many of them now reside in Fort McMurray or Fort MacKay.

5. Describe how the Mikisew passed on their culture and cultural practices to

succeeding generations (e.g., what were their oral history traditions?).

When Mikisew Cree members lived in local bands in the bush, passing on their culture was a seamless process. Children learned from watching and listening to their parents and grandparents and from taking part in all the activities that occurred. While transmission of 6 culture in that way is no longer possible, it is still very important to Mikisew members to pass on their culture to their children and grandchildren. While there are some initiatives in the schools, that is not seen as an adequate solution. A more appropriate place for children to learn traditional values is still in the bush, just as it was in the past. Children learn practical skills and a wide range of traditional Cree values that are considered very important not only for today but also for the future.

Presentation of Topics:

Following a short description of my own background as an anthropologist and ethnohistorian, I will address the questions in detail by presenting information and analysis of the information for the following broad topics:

• Who are the Mikisew Cree? Issues of terminology and origins

• Ethnography of people who now form the Mikisew Cree First Nation

• Mikisew Cree First Nation traditional territory

• 20th century restrictions imposed on Mikisew Cree First Nation traditional lands

• Mikisew population growth and relocation

• Maintaining tradition: passing on Mikisew Cree First Nation traditions and cultural

practices

A Note on Terminology

In discussing the peoples of the Subarctic in this report, I utilize historically-rooted and often-ambiguous terminologies. The history of terminologies found in northern usages is 7 complex and little studied. Preferred formal terms today in Canada are “First Nations” instead of

“Indian,” and “Métis” for “Half-breed.” These terms often bear little correspondence with the diversity of terms people living in Aboriginal communities use for themselves and others. They also misrepresent former ethnic identifications and cultural situations. The terminology followed in this report endeavors to respect documented historical usages, especially in the use of the term

“Indian,” which was the normal term used to refer to Aboriginal people in both Canada and the

United States until the late 20th century and was therefore the term used in the Constitution Act

1982. Since that time, it has been virtually replaced in Canada by the term “First Nation” for both popular and scholarly uses. I still use “Indian” at times as a collective noun when speaking about more than one group of First Natives, such as Chipewyans and Crees together.

Culturally specific terms are used when applicable, such as “Cree.” “Athapaskans” (as in people who speak Athapaskan languages) or “Dene” are also common terms for the people of the western Subarctic; increasingly, “Dene” has replaced “Athapaskan” in common parlance.

“Métis” is another collective term that commonly signifies people formerly called Half- breeds and Métis. In the north, they may also be Athapaskan or Dene people; the divisions drawn in southern Canada between First Nations and Métis are not as clear-cut or firm in the north (and in southern Canada they may be less clear-cut than they are often represented).

“Aboriginal” and “Native” may be used interchangeably as terms for the totality of Aboriginal peoples in the region.

“European,” “Euro-Canadian,” “non-Native,” and “White” all indicate non-Aboriginal persons, most of whom have European ancestry. I normally reserve the term “Euro-Canadian” for non-Aboriginal persons present after Confederation. 8

2. Personal Qualifications and Areas of Expertise

As I understand what I have been asked to do in preparing this report, I am to provide ethnographic and historical information about the Mikisew Cree First Nation, formerly known as the Cree Band of Fort Chipewyan, with particular reference to their traditional lands. While there is a large literature about Fort Chipewyan, the history of and cultural changes experienced by this First Nation and neighboring First Nations are largely unknown to the general public and managers of industries, whose knowledge has been governed by a set of stereotypes about the nature of the Aboriginal society and what happened to the structure of that society after those people became involved with Europeans, first through the fur trade and later through other forms of involvement with agents representing Canadian federal and provincial governments. I will address these stereotypes and beliefs in the course of this report, because they are important to understanding the impacts on this First Nation of their history of contact with Europeans, especially in the 20th century and into the 21st century. My experience and research have led me to concur with what Hugh Brody wrote in 1981 about the Indians of northeastern British

Columbia in his book Maps and Dreams: “The Indians’ use of the land, like every other aspect of their way of life, is little known and less understood by outsiders” (1981:146). And, “...the succession of frontiers [fur trade, agricultural, industrial] has not yet proved fatal to the life

Indians regard as traditional. There is a strong Indian economy in the region, but it is hidden”

(1981:211). This report will construct a picture of the way of life, economy, and pattern of land uses that were part of the life of the Mikisew Cree First Nation ancestors at contact with

Europeans and that have persisted, though not unchanged, until today. It will address the impacts of different government jurisdictions and population changes on the First Nation’s pattern of land 9 use, and it will also outline the various ways in which First Nation members learn about their traditions.

My background for addressing these issues is long-term (41 years), extensive research experience in northern Canada that has comprised field work in communities in northern Alberta, the Mackenzie Valley of the Northwest Territories (NWT), and the Yukon, and related research in archives, museums, and libraries. Northern Alberta and the Mackenzie Valley are covered by

Treaties No. 8 and No. 11. I have also done research in the Treaties No. 6 and No. 7 regions, working with both First Nations and Métis topics in the dual contexts of the European fur trade and the expansion of the Canadian nation-state into the Northwest. Much of this research is detailed in my curriculum vitae (Appendix 2).

Especially germane is my lengthy history of research and “lived experience” in Fort

Chipewyan itself, a community I first visited in 1969. I have spent time “on the land” with various individuals and families, including two trips down the Athabasca River, one of them by canoe, at a time (1975) when some families were still living in small settlements along the river.

My research has always been conducted with respect for the oral and written traditions of both community members and other people who have left some record about Fort Chipewyan. My primary goal has been to conduct scholarship of the highest caliber, which means that my own interpretations and understandings are ultimately my own, not dictated by community members, other scholars, or the people for whom I have undertaken related contracts. Conducting ethno- historical research as an academic is a privileged position, and my personal philosophy is that I can best serve everyone’s interests by attaining to scholarly excellence; that is, by striving to achieve the highest possible standard of scholarship in the ways I present and interpret historical 10 and ethnographic information. Such interpretations may differ from community knowledge or the “conventional wisdom,” whatever its source.

The products of scholarship are not fixed, because the “business” of scholarship is an open-ended and on-going process. Scholars “discover” new knowledge in the process of working with materials such as this report contains. My own interpretations about Fort

Chipewyan history have become more sophisticated over time as new information has become available and as I have thought about old problems in new ways. This report is another step in narrating the history of Mikisew Cree First Nation in the broad context of the history of the Fort

Chipewyan region, and its content relates directly not only to earlier publications but also to two new books. The first is a major study about Fort Chipewyan (ethno)history that will be published this fall by UBC Press, entitled Fort Chipewyan and the Shaping of Canadian History, 1788-

1920s (McCormack 2010). A second book that continues this story is nearing completion; it will consider the years from the end of World War I until the 1970s, and much of its content derives from my 1984 Ph.D. thesis (McCormack 1984). This two-part case study contains information related to the questions I have been asked to address for this report. Appended to this report is a list of publications and exhibits directly related to some dimension of Fort Chipewyan history

(Appendix 1), along with my curriculum vitae (Appendix 2). Many of the other publications and papers listed in the c.v. have helped me to think about Fort Chipewyan history and the cultures of its various members in new ways.

In the past, anthropological research among northern Athapaskan and Algonquian peoples relied primarily on both short-term (survey) and long-term fieldwork to learn about the cultures of Aboriginal peoples at or prior to contact and later. Anthropologists relied primarily on 11

“participant-observation” - living in the community they were studying - and interviews. They heard and sometimes collected formally narratives by Native and non-Native people, although narratives from non-Natives were rarely acknowledged as a source of data. Such observations and stories were supplemented with what they learned from published literature. I am probably the first generation of anthropologist not only to use these traditional approaches but also to make extensive use of archival documents, which has greatly expanded and transformed the field of historical analysis for Aboriginal people.

This approach to anthropology as a discipline is broadly ethnohistorical. Multiple definitions of ethnohistory abound, but basically ethnohistorians work in an interdisciplinary fashion, utilizing a wide range of resources and methodologies to produce (ethno)historical narratives, especially (but not exclusively) about groups of people who have been marginalized or excluded from the standard histories of nations. This report is an example of an ethno- historical narrative, and it relies on both ethnographic and documentary evidence to understand the history and evolving culture of people now known as the Mikisew Cree First Nation within the contexts of the European fur trade, the nation-state of Canada, and the Province of Alberta.

Some of the questions I have been asked to answer for this report also relate to subjects about which I teach at the University of Alberta, including: what were the cultural and economic structures of Aboriginal peoples prior to contact with Europeans, how did contact change those

Aboriginal people (e.g., what transformed and what persisted), what was their relationship with fur traders and later with agents of the federal and provincial governments, what do we mean when we talk about traditional societies and traditional lands, why do stereotypes about

Aboriginal people still persist today, and what impacts have these stereotypes had/continue to 12 have on policy development?

3. Who are the Mikisew Cree? Issues of Terminologies and Origins

The Mikisew Cree First Nation (also, MCFN) has a complex set of origins. Its history reaches back over 300 years to the histories of several diverse Aboriginal and European groups which met and became involved with one another at various times along the lower Athabasca

River (from what is now Athabasca, Alberta), the lower Peace River (from what is now Fort

Vermillon), the Slave River, and Lake Athabasca, especially its western end. They included:

• Western “Crees,” a term used as a broad gloss for those speakers of multiple Cree dialects

who lived in the parkland belt of the North Saskatchewan River and in portions of the

subarctic forest west of Hudson’s Bay. Cree is a language in the Algonquian language

family.

• “Chipewyans” (now also known as Dene Sø³iné), people speaking an Athapaskan or Dene

language, who lived to the north of these Algonquian-speakers. The lands occupied by

Chipewyans and their close relatives, Yellowknives, extended from the eastern portion of

Great Slave Lake to Lake Athabasca through the northern portions of what are now

Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the west coast of Hudson’s Bay in the Churchill region.

The term “Chipewyan” is a Cree term that evolved as a broad gloss for a large number of

Athapaskan-speaking peoples living north of Algonquian-speakers whose pre-contact

ethno-cultural divisions and identities are not clear to us today.

• People of mixed Aboriginal-European ancestry, commonly called “Half-breeds” or Métis,

whose origins were at Fort Chipewyan and other northern locations. 13

• Other Aboriginal peoples, such as Ojibwa, Iroquois, and people who had mixed-

ancestries from other regions (especially the Great Lakes), whose own histories brought

them to the Athabasca River and Lake Athabasca region, where they were eventually

either absorbed into local Indian societies or contributed to evolving Métis populations,

or both.

• European fur traders: Scots, Orcadians, English, French, and French-Canadian men who

arrived with the fur trade. Many of these men married women from local Cree and

Chipewyan families. Some of these families were absorbed into Cree and Chipewyan

societies and identities, while others contributed to evolving Métis identities.

• Euro-Canadians, who were Canadians of European origins who entered the region after

the creation of Canada. They dominated federal and provincial administrator sectors that

affected the region after 1870.

• Miscellaneous others, including French and English missionaries; fur traders originally

from Canada, Lebanon, the United States, and other locations; White trappers with

diverse European origins.

In this section I summarize portions of histories of these groups and their social structures and cultures that are relevant to understanding the question: who are the Mikisew Cree? The report will later explain the relationship of these people to the legal bands that were produced in

1899 when local Cree and Chipewyan leaders signed Treaty No. 8 in Fort Chipewyan and neighboring settlements and other Crees and Chipewyans had their names added to the treaty list 14 and by doing so to the Indian Registry provided for by the Indian Act.1

The people who became known as Crees were one of the founding populations of a region of the Mackenzie Basin in the vicinity of Lake Athabasca and three rivers: the Slave

River and the lower parts of the Athabasca and Peace Rivers. The term “Cree” is historically problematic, and it seems to be an historic extension of a name for one group of Algonquian- speakers to many other groups of people with closely related languages or dialects. The post- contact population now called Crees probably reflected the coalescence at Fort Chipewyan and other western locations of people from different Cree populations. There is evidence for three

Cree dialects at Fort Chipewyan itself: /r/, /th/, and /y/. The /y/ dialect, today known as Plains

Cree, is the Cree that is spoken there today. Until the fur trade began, the Crees in or on the fringes of the Lake Athabasca region represented the most northwesterly extension of those language speakers in North America.

Crees may have had a toehold in this region for a long time, though whether they were truly established as far north as Lake Athabasca itself prior to the advent of the fur trade is

1This report does not discuss the process of treaty itself, but it does draw on an extensive literature about Treaty No. 8 that is relatively recent and that is discussed in my forthcoming book, which also presents Aboriginal perspectives (McCormack 2010:chp. 8). Presenters at the Treaty No. 8 Centennial Conference, held in 1999 at Grouard, near the site of the first signing of the treaty, addressed a wide range of related questions, and their papers were published in the conference proceedings, Treaty 8 Revisited (Crerar and Petryshyn 1999-2000). From 1999 to 2001, preparations for Benoit et al. v. The Queen, a court case arguing the interpretation of a statement in the 1899 report of the treaty commissioners resulted in the production of numerous expert reports about the historical background to Treaty No. 8, the process of making treaty, and oral traditions about the treaty (Irwin 1999; 2001; McCormack and Drever 1999; 2001; Asch and Aasen 1999; Ens 2000; Flanagan 2000). This recent spate of intense public, scholarly, and legal scrutiny highlights diverse and conflicting interpretations about the terms of the treaty and its “spirit,” defined by Richard Price as its “'true intent or meaning as opposed to outward formal observance'” (Price 1979:xiii). 15 disputed, thanks to limited and ambiguous archaeological and documentary evidence (Mackenzie

1970:132; Thompson 1962:72-73; J. Smith 1981b; 1987; Wright 1975). Crees have a long history of residency in north central Saskatchewan, and their territories of use may have extended at least to the Lac La Biche and Clearwater River area of northeastern Alberta in the years prior to European arrival (e.g., Russell 1991; Pollock 1978:134). We know little to nothing about their very early relationships with non-Cree peoples with whom they were in contact. Crees and

Chipewyans have a lengthy history of enmity, but that may well stem from events of the fur trade itself. While there may have been a hostile interface between them that pre-dates the fur trade, it is more likely that at least some local bands lived harmoniously with one another, facilitated by marriages and possibly partnerships across band lines and producing some interdigitation of local bands within the broad expanse of the interface between Crees and Athapaskan-speaking people.

This possibility fits with what we know about relations among local bands elsewhere with more than one language and identity. Conversely, just because people spoke the same language (e.g.,

Cree or Chipewyan) did not preclude warfare among them.

In 1682, the Hudson’s Bay Company established Fort Nelson at the mouth of the Nelson

River on the west coast of Hudson’s Bay (Innis 1964:48). It initiated a period of nearly 100 years during which European influences reached the Athabasca region but before Europeans actually arrived on the scene. Fort Nelson was later replaced by nearby York Fort (later, York Factory) at the mouth of the Hayes River. These early posts were in lands used by Crees, whose proximity to European traders gave them the advantage of location and preferential access to trade goods, including firearms. Crees from this area, possibly joined by more westerly Cree-speakers as well, began to undertake distant trading and raiding trips to Lake Athabasca and beyond. This 16

period was one of active warfare and hostility. Alexander Mackenzie recorded an oral tradition

about a major alliance or peace that Crees made with Beaver Indians (another Athapaskan-

speaking group) at “Peace Point” on the Peace River (Mackenzie 1970:238), probably in the mid-

1700s.

By the time the first European (Peter Pond) arrived on the Athabasca River in 1778,

Crees were established on the Athabasca River down river from the mouth of the Clearwater

River. They were named specifically in the English River Book Journal from 1786, which was

kept at Peter Pond’s “Old Establishment,” also on the lower Athabasca River (Duckworth

1990:9-11, 13-15). Usefully, Harry Duckworth, who edited the book, included in the publication

brief biographies of “Voyageurs and Traders” that also includes Chipewyan and Cree men.

Later, Paul Saint-Germain, a North West Company employee, built a “trading house for the

Crees” on the Athabasca River near the confluence with the Clearwater (Tyrrell 1968:392; see

also Duckworth 1990:168). A post was maintained for their trade long after Fort Chipewyan

itself had been established in 1788.

Unraveling the complex history of Cree movements and relocation over the period since

first contact and before is probably not possible. Crees have gradually moved into most areas of

northern Alberta. In many places, they live beside populations of Athapaskan speakers, who

were the occupants of most of northern Alberta prior to the fur trade. For example, in the 19th century and continuing into the 20th century, some Crees who had settled in the Lesser Slave

Lake region moved farther north to the Little Red River vicinity of the middle Peace River, which was then occupied by Beavers. The Crees of Little Red River intermarried with and contributed some members to the Cree population of the Fort Chipewyan region (Little Red 17

River Cree Nation members, personal communication; McCormack n.d.; LAC RG10, Treaty pay lists). People moved about the land by means of foot travel on overland trails and by canoe travel on rivers and lakes. The northern landscape did not impose a barrier to movement to people who enjoyed specialized knowledge about the boreal forest and its features at different times of the year. Moreover, much of northern Alberta and the southern Northwest Territories appears to have been more open - less densely wooded - in the past than it is today, thanks to the maintenance of grasslands and parkland environments by systematic Aboriginal burning practices. None of these Cree populations was so isolated that interaction could not occur among them. The dynamics of Cree population expansion are unclear but relate to both the fur trade and to internal cultural dynamics. Today, Aboriginal people with a Cree identity dominate much of the northern Alberta population landscape.

Chipewyans were the other founding Aboriginal group of this portion of the Mackenzie

Basin. Like the Cree, they may have been relative newcomers to the lands west of Lake

Athabasca. The original Athapaskan occupants are usually considered to have been the ancestors of the Beavers, who either retreated or were driven westward out of the region by incoming Crees and Chipewyans by the early 19th century (Mackenzie 1970:238; Ridington 1981:357; Wright

1975; McCormack 1984:165; see J. Smith 1987).

Chipewyan movements in the late 1700s were generally south and southwest, from what are commonly considered to have been their former ranges in the transitional tree line bordering the barren grounds into the northeastern corner of Alberta, occupying lands extending from what is now Wood Buffalo Park to the Fort McMurray-Fort McKay area, to Janvier, and to Cold Lake, in response to the presence of fur traders (Thompson 1962:72-73; Mackenzie 1970:125; Simpson 18

1938:355-6; Gillespie 1975; McCormack 1984:164-7). This statement implies that traditional

Chipewyan occupancy was farther to the north than it has been post-contact. However, it is also possible it appears this way because they had retreated northward to avoid warring Crees in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and in the late 18th century to avoid the devastating smallpox epidemic of 1780-82, which was said to have killed large numbers of Chipewyans (Innis

1964:152; Mackenzie 1970:149; Decker 1988). If this were so, they would have been re- occupying lands they used formerly. As with early Cree population dynamics, the details of early

Chipewyan expansion will probably never be fully known.

Fort Chipewyan was established on Lake Athabasca in 1788 to accommodate the

Chipewyan trade. A 1824-25 report for Fort Chipewyan distinguished between Chipewyans who were “more settled” and those who were “migratory” (HBCA B.39/e/8:fo. 28). This distinction may have been between two groups of Chipewyans that were often distinguished in the fur trade literature: the Chipewyans and so-called “Caribou Eaters,” who made “frequent visits” to Fort

Chipewyan both to trade and to visit relatives but who lived elsewhere (HBCA B.39/e/6:fo. 5), especially in the lands surrounding the east end of Lake Athabasca. Chipewyans in the immediate Fort Chipewyan region maintained family connections with both “Caribou Eater”

Chipewyans and Chipewyans farther south in the boreal forest, connected by travel routes of lakes, rivers, and especially overland trails.

As it was for Crees, there were no barriers to movement by Chipewyans over extensive regions. In fact, among Chipewyans, it was a source of personal prestige to have had experience with long-distance travel. It enabled the traveler to see first hand new lands, to meet new peoples, and to explore new opportunities for alliances and livelihood. Chipewyans and other 19

Dene considered such first-hand, experiential knowledge to be the most important and reliable form of knowledge, with knowledge leaned by observing others and hearing stories from others vying for second place (e.g., Jean-Guy Goulet 1994; 1998; Henry Sharp 2001; Scollon and

Scollon 1979). For instance, in 1717 the “Slave Woman,” a Dene woman also known as

Thanadelthur, who had been captured by Crees and escaped to join the English at York Fort, attested to the importance of a “Northern Indian” man who had entered into an alliance with

Crees by saying that he was the “Greatest Traveller in ye Country” (March 31, 1717, HBCA

B.239/a/3:fo. 38d). In the early 1770s, Samuel Hearne (1958) traveled from the mouth of the

Churchill River to Slave River, Great Slave Lake, and the mouth of the Coppermine River, an immense country, with Chipewyans and Yellowknives. Until then, Chipewyans who wanted

European goods had to either make long journeys to Fort Prince of Wales (Churchill) or trade locally with Cree middlemen, who themselves made long journeys. Even after the arrival of

European traders, Chipewyans continued to be highly mobile, both yearly and over longer periods of time, such as when families would live for a time in the Fort Chipewyan region and at other times in the Fond du Lac/Black Lake region at the east end of Lake Athabasca or in the

Namur Lake area on the southern slope of Birch Mountain. Until the mid-20th century,

Chipewyans dominated the Aboriginal population of the Fort Chipewyan region (e.g., HBCA

B.39/e/6:fo. 3; “Recapitulation: Census of the Population of Athabasca District in 1873,” PAA

A.245/1; McCormack n.d.; Govt. of Canada 1966).

The newly-arrived Europeans, virtually all men, were similar diverse. The North West

Company was dominated by Highland Scots at Montreal, with a labor force comprising Scots,

French-Canadians, and mixed-ancestry people (from fur trade developments in the Great Lakes). 20

The Hudson’s Bay Company recruited heavily in the Orkney Islands, and after 1821 it recruited also from Stornoway, in the Isle of Lewis, and elsewhere (McCormack 1996).

Many of these men married local women, especially Chipewyan women, which began a process that would generate a local “Half-breed” population; Half-breed was a term commonly used in the past in the north for people of mixed Aboriginal-European ancestry, though its meaning did not necessarily refer to cultural distinctiveness. While the term “Métis” is commonly used today for and by that group of people who are not First Nation (i.e., not on a

Treaty No. 8 pay list or on the Indian Registry) but are of mixed-ancestry, they should not be confused with Métis of the Red River or Batoche regions of the prairies. Instead, they emerged as a distinctive population of mixed-ancestry people who remained closely connected to their

Chipewyan and Cree relatives. Many mixed-ancestry families assimilated into Chipewyan or

Cree local bands and today have a Chipewyan or Cree identity; the descendants of other mixed- ancestry families are now considered to be Métis. It is important not to overemphasize an historic distinction between “Indians” and “Half-breeds” in northern Alberta in the 19th century.

There is no evidence that the people themselves drew such firm boundaries until after Treaty No.

8 was negotiated. Such an emphasis reflects a European racial consciousness, fostered by political situations at Red River and in the Saskatchewan basis, where in the 19th century “Métis” became politically and militarily powerful. The ethnic distinctions imposed in northern Alberta by government policies at the time of Treaty No. 8 in 1899 were consequences of these developments elsewhere (McCormack 1998).

4. Ethnography of the People who now Form Mikisew Cree First Nation 21

Both Crees and Chipewyans, as discussed above, must be considered when addressing the

ethnography of MCFN, for the following reasons that will be discussed in more detail later in this

report:

• In the mid 19th century, if not earlier, Crees and Chipewyans began to intermarry, which

provided them access to all the lands that each was using (these lands included as well

those lands they had used in the region in the past and that they might reasonably use in

the future).

• In 1899, Treaty No. 8 was negotiated with Aboriginal people of northern Alberta. Legal

bands under the Indian Act were created at multiple locations in northeast Alberta and

adjacent regions:2

• At Fort Chipewyan, a Cree Band and a Chipewyan Band were created, many

members of which had mixed Chipewyan-Cree ancestry (see the point above).

• At Fort McMurray “and the country thereabouts,” a band was created that

contained both Chipewyan and Cree Indians, later known as the Cree-Chipewyan

Band.

• At Fort Vermilion, a band was created that contained both Beaver and Cree

Indians.

2In a 1994 paper, Neil Reddekopp called these bands “the fundamental administrativie units through which the federal government carried out its functions with regard to Indian people.” “The characterization of Bands and Band membership in the [Indian Act] legislation was incorporated into the numbered Treaties” (1994:2). While “the Treaties presumed the pre- existence of Bands” (ibid.:3) with formal leaders and that were presumably ethno-culturally homogeneous, the Indian Act required stand-alone bands to have a minimum membership. In northern Alberta, where numbers of people with specific cultural affiliations were sometimes too small to meet that requirement, people with different cultures or identities were cobbled together to construct legal bands, as they were at Fort McMurray and Fort Vermilion. 22

• At Smith’s Landing, a Chipewyan Band was created.

• At Fond du Lac, a Chipewyan Band was created.

• In 1946, about half the members of the Chipewyan Band of Fort Chipewyan were

removed from the Chipewyan Band List and added to the Cree Band list, thereby

becoming members of that band. That means that the Mikisew Cree First Nation, which

is the renamed Cree Band, actually consists of many people who were Chipewyans by

culture and in terms of original formal treaty assignment.

The broad structures of Cree and Chipewyan life were, however, the same. I find it useful to think of these structures by using an analytical structure called mode of production, which is one way to talk about the internal workings of the Cree and Chipewyan societies, both before and following their integration into the northern fur trade. It includes “...at the most fundamental level both the ‘physics’ of production and the social relationships human beings enter into in order to motivate (or operate) the technical dimension of production.” It is “a structure of material reproduction [that] incorporates both technical and social components” (Asch 1979:88-

89). It encompasses the forces of production and the social relations of production.

The forces of production are the manner by which natural resources are transformed into products for personal use or for exchange and acquire value. They comprise three sets of factors: the raw materials necessary for production; technology, including the infrastructure of production and circulation; and labor, or the organization of labor in the productive process. Resources plus technology are jointly termed the means of production (Asch 1979:89).

The social relations of production represent this same set of traits as relations of appropriation between persons. Humans work together in the productive process, but their 23 relationship to the means of production and their control over their labor and their production vary considerably. The relations of production are concerned with ownership and control of the means of production and of labor and its products. They provide the framework for the network of power that determines who benefits from productive efforts.

The other side of the equation is those institutions collectively termed the superstructure, which provides for the reproduction of the system as a whole: “juridico-political and ideological relations that suppress, displace, or misrepresent basic conflicts” (O’Laughlin 1975:349).

Superstructural elements enter into people’s consciousness or awareness about their situation and are often expressed as ideology, or “an articulated system of meanings, values, and beliefs of a kind that can be abstracted as [the] ‘worldview’ of any social grouping” (Comaroff and Comaroff

1991:24). Such structures are the vehicles by which members of the society recognize the legitimacy of their institutions. They undermine support for challenges from other sectors of the society. In short, the reproduction of a system of relations of production requires the support of and acquiescence to the status quo by the members of the society.

The Domestic Mode of Production

Before they became engaged in the fur trade, the Aboriginal peoples of the Mackenzie

Basin had a use-oriented or “domestic” mode of production, in which the primary goal of production was family survival. Asch’s description of this mode of production for the

Mackenzie River Dene (1979:90-91; 1977:47-49) can be applied to both Crees and Chipewyans.

The forces of production were based on the resources or raw materials comprising the flora and fauna of the boreal forest and transitional tree line biomes. There was considerable diversity of 24 animal populations regionally and seasonally, and some animals were always considered more important for food as well as for spiritual reasons. For example, moose and caribou were particularly significant species, and they remain so to this day. Some species also fluctuated in number over time. Aboriginal technology was dominated by apparently simple tools for snaring and entrapment and for processing of raw materials. The successful use of these tools was predicated on a rich knowledge of animal behavior and appropriate uses of tools and spiritual power, what Robin Ridington calls “artifice” as well as artifacts (1982:470). People also had the capacity to create and manage landscapes by using fire, another technology requiring extensive, detailed knowledge of ecosystem relationships (1977; 1978; 1982). Travel was by foot and canoe, with limited use of dogs as pack animals, which meant that transport capacity was restricted. People solved the “problem” of the variable availability of game, combined with their limited transportation abilities, by traveling through their lands in search of game, rather than by moving game killed to a central camp. Finally, there was a simple division of labor based on gender and generation, though such a statement overstates the differences between the activities of men and women.

The social relations of production were broadly egalitarian. The unit of production and consumption was the local band, a group of related people who lived together as a co-residential unit or in the immediate vicinity. While this group varied in size over the course of a year and its social history, it was typically a small, face-to-face social unit of approximately 25-50 people.

The members of each local band normally produced only what they needed for their own use and were “collectively responsible” for their own physical survival (Asch 1979:90). Together they

“owned” and controlled the means of production: the land and its resources, the technology 25 necessary for production, and all crucial basic knowledge. Henry Sharp points to the portability of such knowledge: “Knowing a territory is not memorizing where things are but understanding how things relate to each other” (2001:38). Mechanisms of reciprocity and sharing, as well as expectations that all persons would learn basic life skills and knowledge, prevented any individual or family from monopolizing crucial resources or products. Leadership reflected an on-going demonstration of personal competence and authority but did not confer coercive power.

Leaders led because people chose to follow them (e.g., MacNeish 1956; Goulet 1998:36; Preston

2002:78-9). As James Keith described the Chipewyans in 1825, there were few who warranted the title of “Chief”: “their influence & authority being little known beyond the circle of their own Family” (HBCA B.39/e/8:fo. 28). Little had changed in this regard by the time of treaty in

1899, as the treaty commissioners remarked: “The chiefs and headmen are simply the most efficient hunters and trappers” (Govt. of Canada 1966:8). Every local band had its own leader.

When that leader died or became unable to fulfill that role, a relative in the local band would become the new leader; each leader enjoyed personal autonomy; each local band made its own decisions about every aspect of life. People who were unhappy with leadership in any way were free to relocate to other local bands or establish their own bands. There was no paramount

“chief,” although there would have been a hierarchy of sorts of influential people that would have changed over time as young people acquired appropriate leadership skills, became older, and demonstrated their worth, and their elders passed away.

Local bands were tied to one another by multiple bonds of kinship, creating social and political interconnections which afforded them a safety net for dealing with variability in resource availability (e.g., Jarvenpa 2004). The regional network of local bands, which was also 26 the usual marriage universe, comprised what has been termed the “regional band.” While their members occasionally assembled temporarily for seasonal hunting, fishing, or socializing, it was a co-residential unit only briefly. Regional bands did not form cohesive social groups, nor were boundaries drawn between local bands in one regional band and those in another (Helm 1968;

Rogers and Smith 1981:141; J. Smith 1981a:276; 1975:439; n.d.:11).3 More important was the network of kinship ties, which reached out in every direction. Marriages could and would occur among members of local bands from different regional bands, especially those whose members met occasionally or regularly.

Asch (1979:91) has summarized the superstructural elements that contributed to the reproduction of this system:

These relations of production were expressed juridicially by a kinship system that, through the use of lateral extensions, incorporated the rights of local production group membership to all Slaveys (and indeed all Dene); an inheritance system that forbade the transmission of land, raw materials, technology, and, indeed, “special” hunting knowledge from one generation to another; and a marriage system that required for its operation the continual outmovement of members of each local production group.

Children were expected to seek their own sources of power and personal ties to the spiritual world, acquiring knowledge independently. This quest for greater knowledge continued through one's life (e.g., D. Smith 1973; Sharp 2001; Preston 2002; Bird 2005; Ridington 1982; Goulet

1998:chps. 2, 3; Asch 1979:91).

The Fur Trade Mode of Production

3This section does not attempt to review the ample literature describing the social structures of Crees and Chipewyans. 27

When Aboriginal and European peoples met at posts along the Athabasca, Peace, and

Slave Rivers and at Lake Athabasca, they had to build bridges between their separate systems of production and meaning, to create a new space that would allow them successfully to negotiate exchanges of furs, foods, and goods. The mode of production introduced by Europeans was a capitalist one. European traders were merchant capitalists, and mercantilism persisted as the dominant form of capitalism in northern Alberta and the rest of the Mackenzie Basin until after

World War I. Its goal was to produce profits for the owners of the trading companies.

Merchants are traders, agents of the marketplace. They buy goods from a vendor and sell them to a buyer. They do not engage in direct production and therefore cannot increase the value of the commodities which they buy and sell (Kay 1975:65, 86). Instead, they realize profit by engaging in unequal exchange with producers. At least one transaction “must take place at a price that is not equal to value” (ibid.:87).

It was merchant capitalism that “created the framework of the world market and laid the foundations of underdevelopment as well as development” (Kay 1975:94). Merchants broaden their investment possibilities by fostering the expansion of markets and commodity production.

In the fur trade, they encouraged the people with whom they traded to expand their production of commodities and their consumption of imported goods, and they also encouraged more people to become involved. In northeast Alberta and elsewhere in the Northwest, an ever-enlarging number of Indians who had formerly produced strictly for their immediate needs also began to produce for exchange, to acquire items imported from other parts of the world. These new objects supplemented and replaced much of their pre-contact material culture repertoire.

Merchants made their profits by manipulating rates of exchange, all expressed in the fur trade 28 standard, “Made Beaver.” The result was inter-regional integration, the hallmark of a world system.

According to Kay, such developments “corrode” the pre-capitalist social formations and open “the way for the reorganization of production upon a capitalist basis” (1975:95, 155). But, in northeast Alberta, the reorganization of production along capitalist lines would be the result of state intervention after 1899 and is arguably still not completed more than a century later. While

Chipewyans and Crees altered their domestic mode of production to accommodate their new trading interests, that did not mean they adopted a fully-capitalist mode of production or greatly altered other aspects of their cultures.

Indian involvement in the fur trade has often been conceptualized as the rapid adoption of

European manufactures and consequent Indian “dependence” on Europeans. Enrique Rodríguez-

Alegría (2008) has called this the “quick replacement model” of presumed inferior and static

Indigenous technologies by presumed superior European ones. Yet dependence was a two-way street. Europeans relied almost exclusively on Aboriginal men and women to produce fur, to produce food provisions to sell (especially fresh and dried meat and pemmican), and on occasion to sell their labor to help with transport, work at the post, and manufacture persistent and highly adaptive items of “Indian” technology, such as snowshoes, moccasins, and other items of clothing suitable for long, cold winters (for example, see Ray 1984:10; Bellman and Hanks

1998:59-60). Jennifer Brown has described much of this work as “a woman's industrial revolution” (1993:83). Brown (1980) and Van Kirk (1980) have written extensively about

European reliance on the labor and knowledge of Indian and Métis women. This dependence on local people was probably inevitable, given Indian knowledge of the resource base, which gave 29 them economic control, and the sovereignty they exercised over their lands, which gave them political control. Europeans who came into the country learned crucial skills and local customs from other employees who had already mastered them and from their Indian and Métis associates. Ironically, to the extent that Europeans and Métis learned how to survive locally and were socially integrated into Indian bands, they themselves became independent, in varying degrees, from direct control by the traders, much as were the Indians themselves. It is telling that one term for Métis who were no longer under contract to a trading company was “freeman.”

As long as Crees and Chipewyans brought in furs and food to trade, European traders did not need to control the labor process directly. They nevertheless sought some measure of control over the producers, to keep their attention focused on producing desired commodities and to ensure that furs came to them rather than to a competitor. For instance, in April 1827, John

Franklin (1969:304) described how the Hudson's Bay Company had developed new regulations

“respecting the trade with the natives. The plans now adopted offer supplies of clothes, and of every necessity, to those Indians who choose to be active in the collection of furs.” At the same time, Indians sought some control over the terms of trade, the quality of goods available to them, and the extent to which economic relations needed to be mediated by social relations (e.g., Ray

1974; Innis 1964:373).

This discussion suggests several points of articulation between the domestic mode of production and the (merchant) capitalist mode of production at Fort Chipewyan and other posts in the Mackenzie Basin. Chipewyan and Cree men and women were willing to produce furs and provisions to exchange for imported commodities and increasingly to work directly for the traders on an occasional basis, especially as post hunters and fishermen. They were willing for 30 their daughters and sisters to marry European traders and employees. These marriages established bonds of kinship that facilitated and channeled economic exchanges, created a female labor force at the post, and produced children who became part of the local labor force.

The result was that Chipewyans and Crees added two new components to their economy: independent (petty) commodity production and wage labor, although reimbursed by exchange credits, not cash payments (Innis 1964:161, 240; Mandel 1968:66). Thus, the new mode of production was a mixed economy, one with three different sectors: domestic production, independent commodity production, and wage labor. It was oriented in many ways to, but not dominated by, capitalist exchanges.

For their part, Europeans were willing to enter into a range of social relations or transactions with the Indians which transcended the purely economic aspect of exchanges.

Europeans also needed to provide most of their own food from local resources. Costs incurred in hunting and fishing to support the post were part of the overhead of doing business. The distinction between commercial and subsistence food production narrowed when European and

Métis employees lived and hunted with their Indian allies and kinsmen. Such activities were a reversal of the trend among Europeans toward a fully socialized labor force.

While Indians certainly wanted a wide range of European manufactures, which became part of their means of production, it is simplistic to claim that their involvement in the trade as regular producers of fur and food was due primarily to a “seemingly insatiable appetite” for these goods (Murphy and Steward 1968:400). The fur trade literature contains numerous examples of northern Indians who were discerning consumers and in some instances had little use for most of the trade goods they were offered (e.g., Hearne 1958:50-51, 176; Murray 1910:29; Ray 1980). 31

Arthur Ray has pointed out that Indian demand for goods was relatively “inelastic.” If prices

paid for furs increased, Indians often trapped less, not more (1974:68-69; 141-2). Many Indians

had to be induced to produce goods for trade, especially in the volume desired by the traders, and

it was an on-going concern at Fort Chipewyan throughout the 19th century.

The methods used by European traders were related to changes in the social formation of

the region that occurred as traders and their employees entered into the relations of production of

the Indian bands, in two ways. First, traders and their employees entered into “country

marriages,” or marriage à la façon du pays, with Aboriginal women (Van Kirk 1980; Brown

1976; 1980). As Sylvia Van Kirk explained (1980:4), “The marriage of a fur trader and an Indian woman was not just a 'private' affair; the bond thus created helped to advance trade relations with a new tribe, placing the Indian wife in the role of cultural liaison between the traders and her kin.” Trappers and traders ideally became affinal kinsmen, a relationship with expectations of mutual assistance and reciprocal exchanges.

Indians and Europeans were also linked together by the extension of credit, or debt, to individual trappers, a financing system that became extensive in the 19th century in the fur trade country and persisted in the Fort Chipewyan region until the 1940s, although diminished in the

20th century (cf. Ray 1974:137-8, 196-7; 1984; 1990b; Morantz 1990; Tanner 1965; McCormack

1977-78). To Rosemary Ommer (1990:9), credit was “the mechanism whereby merchant capital delegated the power of production to ‘independent’ operators on certain terms, with certain strings attached, in order to generate the flourishing of individual enterprise and the expansion of the whole economy.” Tanner has discussed how credit both defined and mediated the trade relationship: 32

The obtaining of credit marked an important change in the economic life of a trapper. It indicated a long-term commitment to trapping as the major winter productive activity, and to dealings with a single trader, in order to exchange the results of this activity for some valued end [1965:46].

While credit was extended to group leaders in the early years of the fur trade, in the

Athabasca country it seemed to have been an individual matter from the earliest record, which is

Cuthbert Grant's 1786 journal of spring activities at the Athabasca River post (Duckworth 1990).

Several trappers, each representing his immediate family group or local band, dealt personally with the trader in the credit relationship, rather than being represented by a trading chief or other

Aboriginal middleman.

Post managers kept account books that tracked each trapper's sale of furs and provisions and purchases of goods at the post. A trapper who accepted credit became linked to a particular trading post and was required to travel there at least twice yearly, once to obtain his fall trapping

“outfit” on credit and a second time to trade his furs and pay off his debt. Credit stabilized a trapper's relations with the trader and allowed the trader to plan his business. An 1860 Fort

Chipewyan report remarked, “Debts are given to Indians who are faithful in paying them”

(HBCA B.39/e/10:fo.1). From the trapper's point of view, it was a way to capitalize the coming winter's trapping, by providing the goods he needed from the post, while at the same time it allowed him to trap when and how he pleased (Tanner 1965:47; Morantz 1990:221). On a pragmatic level, it stimulated trapping because trappers had to pay for their purchases in order to obtain more credit, despite the Hudson's Bay Company policy of periodically writing off bad debts. More broadly, it accorded with Chipewyan and Cree ideologies of reciprocity, the need to repay those who have assisted you (e.g., Ray 1984:11; Morantz 1990:221). The trader could use 33 credit to limit the sorts of goods available to trappers:

By allowing only certain goods to be purchased on credit a trader was able to do more than just influence the buying habits of Indians along what he thought to be more prudent lines. He was also able to stress the importance of trapping as an activity, allowing only those supplies needed for a trapping expedition on credit. In this way he ultimately could increase the fur harvest of his district, on which most of his profit could be made [Tanner 1965:49].

Credit established personal relations between the trader and his trappers, and gave the trader the advantage of having the trappers under an obligation to him. Through this relationship he was able to directly influence their economic life by personal intervention, and discourage activities which conflicted with trapping [ibid.:47-8].

At the same time, some Aboriginal people were reported as taking advantage of the lack of easy communication between posts to take their debt at one post and then avoid paying it off by trading their furs at another post. This practice required them to travel great distances.

Another explanation was that after taking credit, they had spent the winter trapping (and living) in an area far from the post that issued the credit, and they wanted to trade at the nearest post.

Both explanations probably apply; the lack of barriers to long-distance travel was mentioned above. While it was usually to the trader’s advantage to have a stable number of fur collectors oriented to his particular post, the Aboriginal people balanced their ties to the trader with their personal interests. Periodically, local posts would “write off” debt that they believed could not be collected.

Country marriages and creditor-debtor relations established social ties which transcended the purely economic aspect of exchange. As Sahlins suggests, it was “social relations, not prices

[that] connect up 'buyers' and 'sellers'” (1974:298). As Indian involvement in the fur trade became regularized, Indians relied more on transactions that appear to be individual, although the 34 goods they acquired in trade were used to benefit their entire local bands. While they may have been listed on the account books as individuals, their trade represented production by their immediate families and the larger social groups of which their families were members - the local bands. The Chipewyan and Cree bands were no longer marginal or outside the world system but integrated into it as a periphery. This transformation occurred at Fort Chipewyan after the establishment in 1821 of a monopoly on trade by the Hudson's Bay Company (McCormack

1984a). By the second quarter of the 19th century, the Chipewyans and Crees who had become permanent occupants of the Fort Chipewyan region and traded there regularly could no longer be characterized by a “total economy.” The new mode of production had the following configuration.

Forces of Production: Resources While the total resource base was initially unchanged, Chipewyans and Crees developed different patterns of resource exploitation, which can be inferred in part from records of fur and food production. They emphasized some fur and game resources that previously would have been little utilized or utilized differently, thereby affecting regional ecosystems in often-significant ways. From the earliest days of the Athabascan fur trade, provisions were important trade items, especially fresh and dried meat (Duckworth

1990). Bison became an important resource for sale, hunted so intensively to provision the posts that by the 1840s, they were in serious decline (Ferguson 1993).

The Chipewyans who relocated to the western end of Lake Athabasca and other points in northeast Alberta shifted from the resources of the transitional tree line zone to those of the boreal forest. While they still hunted caribou, especially in winter, they also went after bison and 35 moose and a different configuration of smaller animals. For example, in 1791-92, Peter Fidler described Chipewyans hunting bison and beaver in the Little Buffalo River west of Slave River, beaver in the Taltson River, and moose in the vicinity of the Slave River itself. No caribou were mentioned (Tyrrell 1968:Journal VIII). The resources available in the biome of the Fort

Chipewyan -Athabasca river region were rich, especially given the role played by controlled burning in managing habitats for game and fur animals. In the late 18th -early 19th centuries, before bison numbers diminished, substantial herds ranged as far as north as Great Slave Lake and east of the Slave River and were plentiful in the Peace River country (e.g., Hearne 1958:161-

4; Tyrrell 1968:370-411, Journal VIII; Van Zyll de Jong 1986) . Samuel Hearne pointed out that

“Of all the large beasts in those parts the buffalo is easiest to kill” (1958:163). Barren ground caribou continued to migrate occasionally to the Fort Chipewyan region, woodland caribou lived in the Birch Mountains, and the Peace-Athabasca Delta supported a rich resource complex. Even deer and elk were reported in the region (HBCA B.39/e/7:fo. 5). The 1823-1824 post report remarked, “The hunting grounds of the Indians in that locality are well stocked with large animals” (ibid.:fo. 3). The following year, the report commented that the Chipewyans feed off the “fat...of the land & water of the first of which they are seldom destitute” (HBCA B.39/e/9:7).

While Chipewyans and Crees established themselves in the Fort Chipewyan-Athabasca

River region, they continued to travel to areas suitable for hunting, trapping, and other land pursuits and also for visiting families in order to arrange marriages for their children.

Chipewyans were described as relatively independent of Europeans and their goods, despite their

“numerous Population,” because of their “wandering habits, great attachment and frequent Visits to their lands” (HBCA B.39/e/8:fo. 8). Crees, on the other hand, had a “more Ltd. Population, 36 stationary habits, & dependent situation on Europeans” (ibid.:fo. 7). However, such statements have to be read with care. Neither Chipewyans nor Crees restricted themselves to specific locations but were typically on the move over the course of the year, as they took advantage of different resources that were available in different regions. In the post journals, they are typically described as associated with specific regions, such as Birch River or Jackfish Lake (now,

Richardson Lake), but those are general comments that do not begin to address the even complexity of the annual cycle of activities and the lands required for them, let alone the complexity of a broader pattern of rotating or shifting land usage.

Strategic Cree-Chipewyan marriages seem to have begun in the mid 19th century, though that may reflect only the beginning of relatively reliable missionary records.4 Those marriages paved the way for peaceful interaction between the numerically dominant Chipewyans and minority Crees, who were now living in the same broad region. It was especially common for

Cree men to marry Chipewyan women, though the reverse did occur. Typically, a man lived with and was expected to provide support for his wife’s parents, especially in the early years of marriage (so-called matrilocal residence). That meant that Cree men who married Chipewyan women would now live and work with their in-laws, traveling to, using, and learning new regions. Members of ethnically distinctive local bands thereby began to construct a new multi- ethnic regional band centered about Fort Chipewyan and other fur trade posts, as the points

4It is not yet clear how these marriages related to pre-contact Chipewyan-Cree marriages, known from oral traditions and some fur trade records. In the early 18th century, Crees raided northern Athapaskans for women and children, but other marriages may have occurred in an earlier, more peaceful social situation in which at least some Chipewyans and Crees established alliances between their respective local bands. Plural societies pre-dated the arrival of Europeans. 37 where local bands came together briefly each summer.

Forces of Production: Technology The most striking feature of the fur trade mode of production, and the one most obvious to Europeans, was that an increasingly large portion of

Aboriginal technology was obtained through trade. Chipewyans and Crees enjoyed access to a wide inventory of imported manufactures, including guns and ammunition, metal goods, textiles, and decorative items. The post blacksmith made gun repairs, which encouraged reliance on firearms. Some theorists have argued that Chipewyan relocation to this region was possible only because of the new fur trade goods they could obtain, especially guns, which facilitated their hunting of large, solitary animals rather than herds of caribou. However, the frequent references in Cuthbert Grant’s 1786 journal to hunters bringing moose meat to the post to trade indicate that by this early date, Chipewyans as well as Crees were hunting moose quite capably, although it is not clear whether or not they relied on firearms as opposed to snares or other traditional hunting techniques (Duckworth 1990).

By 1823, the Chipewyans who were “more accustomed to whites” were reported to be copying them in manner and dress (HBCA B.39/e/6:3). By mid century, all Indians had evidently replaced much of their material culture inventory. Father Taché, writing at Ile à la

Crosse in 1851, noted that Chipewyan “Men's clothes are quite similar to those of our peasants; they obtain their clothing in the stores of the Company where it is received ready made from

England” (Taché 1978:146). In 1859, Robert Campbell, the Hudson's Bay Company factor at

Fort Chipewyan, wrote to the director of the new Industrial Museum of Scotland:

You will perhaps be surprised to learn, that even in this Northern District, the “Indians” appreciate the convenience of the articles of civilised usage so much, that hardly a trace now remains of their former dress, domestic utensils, or weapons of war, or the chase; all 38

have already fallen into disuse among them [Royal Museum of Scotland, 5 May 1859].

Such comments support the popular notion that Indians peoples had become “dependent” on the fur trade. As “trappers,” they were believed to have “lost” their original autonomy. Ray referred to Indians as “increasingly caught in the trap of having to buy the tools that they needed”

(1984:4), at a time when the resource base was, he believed, increasingly unstable. Such an interpretation involves a material culture-focused concept of “autonomy” that is not usually applied to non-Aboriginal peoples. “Dependence” has become established in academic and popular discourse as a term connoting a special kind of Aboriginal subordination. In fact, all peoples who became part of the capitalist world system were (and are) “dependent” on exchanges in the market place. Among their ranks were British workers, but the term dependence is rarely used to characterize them. Ironically, British workers were probably more dependent on the goodwill of company owners than were northern Indian trappers and hunters, who maintained considerable independence and had to be courted and enticed by Company traders throughout the

19th century.5

There is no evidence that the less visible aspects of Aboriginal technology were replaced.

As Father Taché wrote in 1851: “All the Indians are better naturalists, not only than our country people, but even than the most learned elements of our populations” (1978:138). In her memoir of the Fort Vermilion region a half century later, Mary Lawrence stated that to the Indians, “the sheer stupidity of the white man in the bush was something beyond belief” (Fort Vermilion Ag.

Soc. 2008:16). “[W]hen he comes into this country he’s like a child. He doesn’t know anything

5Elsewhere, Toby Morantz has argued that the Crees of James Bay were neither controlled by debt nor dependent on the Hudson’s Bay Company, but “fully in control of their own hunting strategies” (1990:221). 39 and he does things that even a child would be ashamed of” (ibid.:172). Indians maintained their knowledge of local ecosystems, animal behavior, and the use of fire to manipulate plant and animal populations. Controlled burning, or “domesticated fire,” was an important tool to create and maintain the prairies and other early successional habitats on which most species of fur trade and subsistence importance relied (Lewis 1977; 1978; 1982; McCormack 1975; 1976; 2007). It had very different consequences than did wild fires. In fact, one of the benefits of regular and extensive controlled burning was to reduce the potential for holocaust fires. While Crees, with their origins in the fire-adapted parkland habitats of the Saskatchewan basin, were undoubtedly familiar with the principles of fire management and could easily apply them to their new northern homeland, it may have been a new technology to Chipewyans, who would not have used it in the caribou ranges of the transitional tree line. Presumably they learned its use by observing other residents, including the Beaver Indians they displaced, by working with their new Cree relatives, and by trial and error.

An important addition to their technology, and crucial to the development of trapping as a regularized activity, was the dog team, probably in the late 18th century. Dogs were hitched in a single line to a toboggan or sled, facilitating winter travel among residential settlements, trapping areas, and the fur trade post. While the idea was introduced, perhaps by example, the implements were homegrown, a synthesis of pre-existing sleds and the carioles and dog harnesses used by traders and their employees (Hearne 1958:213; Mackenzie 1970:154;

McCormack 1988:48, 55; McCormack 2009). People fashioned their own sleds and harnesses from wood and leather. People also continued to use dogs for “packing” furs and other items when sleds could not be used (McCormack 1988:49, 57). When dog teams were adopted by 40

Indians in northeast Alberta is not known, but it may have been related to some measure of increased sedentariness; keeping dogs requires their owners to stock meat or fish for their feed.

Forces of Production: Labor Labor allocation was similar to that of the domestic mode of production, in that men and women undertook different and complementary fur trade and subsistence activities. Both men and women trapped, though generally for different species and in different localities. Women's trap lines were usually in the vicinity of their settlement, whereas men used their dog teams to trap at a greater distance, thereby increasing the overall productive capacities of the local band. However, some women also ran their own dog teams; the division of labor was not as strictly gendered as it has sometimes been made out to have been.

Dog teams provided transport between kill sites and winter settlements.

There was also a new regional division of labor represented by the concentration of some

Aboriginal peoples in trapping and subsistence pursuits and others in wage labor. While the former have often been characterized as Chipewyans and Crees, and the latter, as Half-breeds and

Métis, these identities were influenced by occupational choices and the social communities to which people belonged. Such specialization was rarely exclusive. People who worked directly for the traders and, in the second half of the 19th century, for missionaries, typically enhanced their wages by hunting, fishing, cultivating small gardens, and acquiring food from their bush- based relatives, thereby reducing both the costs incurred by traders in maintaining the labor force and their otherwise dependent position as laborers. People living in the bush occasionally performed wage labor (until the 20th century, paid for in-kind by Made Beaver credits). The concept of a regional division of labor, with occupational specialization occurring within immediate social networks - the local bands and their later outgrowths within the town of Fort 41

Chipewyan itself - also marks the mixed economy of the fur trade mode of production.

Relations of Production The primary goal of Chipewyans and Crees was still survival. That meant that trapping and wage labor were undertaken only to provide themselves with enough exchange-value to purchase the items they needed.6 Not surprisingly, there were few changes from the pre-existing relations of production. The major change was the intervention of the European trader and his employees in the relations of production, paralleling the intervention of imported manufactures in the forces of production. It was the traders who solicited and encouraged Aboriginal participation in the fur trade and employed them as occasional laborers. They drew upon their social ties with Aboriginal peoples and their control over exchange rates, although not without considerable negotiation and occasional resistance by

Aboriginal producers. For example, on October 2, 1868, the Chief Factor at Fort Chipewyan,

William McMurray, “had a conference with the Indians & explained to them his intentions concerning their debts furs &c during the ensuing Winter” (HBCA B.39/a/46:fo. 41). Traders did not seek otherwise to alter Aboriginal use of or access to bush resources. All Indian participants had to provide themselves with food and other subsistence items, thereby underwriting their own reproduction costs, which reduced costs that the traders would otherwise have been forced to cover and enhanced the value appropriated by the traders.

Ray has argued that one role of the traders was to encourage Indian trappers to rely upon a

6The reasons were probably both ideological and pragmatic. Aboriginal people tended to “make do,” an appropriate tactic when everyone had the knowledge necessary to make most items of technology. This approach can be seen even today among local residents. As well, it was difficult for people who moved around a great deal to carry many items with them, which in turn undermined any tendency to consumerism. 42 less reliable resource base, by relying instead on assistance from the Hudson's Bay Company during times of privation (1984:7-8). The Company stocked food stuffs for distribution at such times. This practice, he said, reduced Indian self-sufficiency even further. Indians were therefore vulnerable to low fur returns and shortages of food (ibid.:10). They turned to the

Company for relief at such times, a situation that Ray has interpreted as a fur trade-based

“welfare system” (ibid.:16-7). However, Ray himself has pointed out that assistance provided to

Indians was drawn from the “excess profits” made by the Company. Conceptualizing it as welfare supports an interpretation of Indian “dependency.” It may be better thought of as a return of a portion of the excessive surplus value appropriated by fur trade merchants. Occasional assistance provided by the trading companies was a way of helping the Indians make a “living wage,” not equivalent to government support in the 20th century for peoples displaced from the production process. Moreover, the region surrounding the western end of Lake Athabasca, defined by the rich Peace-Athabasca Delta, may have provided a resource base that was more reliable than at most posts, and there is little evidence to support the notion that the Company regularly put up extra supplies in case Indians went hungry. Instead, the post journals recorded complaints if Indians had to be fed from post stores during intervals of starvation.

The bottom line is that the structure of control within Chipewyan and Cree societies was still vested in the members of the local bands. What was distinctive about the fur trade mode of production was the addition of trapping, production of provisions, and wage labor to the former economy. It was the beginning of a mixed economy that would provide additional flexibility for livelihood. At the same time, Aboriginal peoples were vulnerable to any constraints that might be imposed on their access to the resources of the bush, to changes in the availability of the 43 species they exploited, and to changes in the structure of the fur trade. While involvement in the fur trade is often seen as making Aboriginal economic structures more fragile and less certain, at the same time the existence of a mixed economy evened out some of the problems, by offering new ways of livelihood.

Superstructure Superstructural elements were an outgrowth of those of the originating modes of production. There is no evidence that Crees or Chipewyans who trapped changed their fundamental value systems in any significant way, or that they came to accept the legitimacy of lineal authority, whether by outsiders or their own members. Traders insinuated themselves into the relations of production by manipulating exchange relationships, not by imposing any measure of formal authority. However, more subtle changes may have resulted from the roles played by Métis and European employees in the fur trade relations of production.

Especially in earlier days, they were often sent out to winter with Indian bands, to encourage production of furs and provisions and also to support themselves. Many men married local women and began families. Fathers transmitted their values to their children, even when those children were raised in their mother's culture and with her cultural identity. These values supported an acceptance of trapping and trading as legitimate and worthy activities. Roman

Catholic Métis and Protestant Scots also taught their families some aspects of their Christianity, paving the way for the Christian missionaries who would arrive in the mid 19th century (see

Podruchny 2006). These men were a less formal but highly important influence in the relations of production. 44

5. Mikisew Cree First Nation Traditional Territory

The discussion to this point has spoken about Crees and Chipewyans living their lives in the vast lands of northeast Alberta and adjacent lands in Saskatchewan and the North-West

Territories. This section addresses the concept of “traditional territory,” with specific reference to how the traditional territory of the Mikisew Cree First Nation was and is constituted and defined. As the earlier discussion explained, that traditional territory actually comprises the combined traditional territories of the Crees and Chipewyans who historically joined together through both marriage and legal band transfers to constitute this modern First Nation.

The term “traditional territory” has been widely used but rarely defined. It is understood differently by Euro-Canadians and Aboriginal people, just as Aboriginal land use was poorly understood in the past by Europeans/Euro-Canadians. Euro-Canadians have an intellectual framework for understanding and thinking about land and territory that derives from the system of land ownership introduced in Canada by British and French immigrants. Canada’s development as a nation-state went hand-in-hand with the creation of an overarching system of individual ownership and control of land and resources, under the sovereignty of the Crown, which set the ground rules for how the land could be occupied and parceled out. When the new

Dominion of Canada expanded after 1870 into the lands newly-acquired from the Hudson’s Bay

Company, the Dominion Land Survey was the federal agency responsible for surveying the

Northwest. Its goal was to impose a grid of Base Lines and Meridians, followed by Townships and Range Roads, respectively, anticipating settlement by non-Aboriginal people who would take up homesteads and invest in industries. It provided(provides) for “ownership” of a clearly defined piece of land and for control over the land within its boundaries, subject to whatever 45 rules are in place for land ownership and use by the jurisdiction making the land available or having some input into its governance (e.g., the federal or provincial Crown, municipality, a rural subdivision). Each piece of land has a surveyed boundary, and the land-owner’s control extends to that boundary and no farther. The land-owner has no control over his neighbor’s land.

Persons (including corporate persons) who are given leases of either land (e.g., grazing reserves) or a resource on those lands (e.g., a timber berth for tree-cutting) have similar though not identical powers, depending on the terms of the lease, and they too have surveyed boundaries, which define the geographic limits to their activities.

This apparently straight-forward system does not work when attempting to discuss

Aboriginal land uses or their “traditional lands.” When Aboriginal people are asked today to identify their “traditional lands,” what they are really being asked to do is to identify boundaries in order to define where their legitimate interests in the land stop and start. That is an interesting position, in that it contradicts the belief by Europeans about former land uses by northern

Aboriginal people, which is that Aboriginal people who lived by hunting, fishing, and gathering were nomadic, a problematic term which meant, to Europeans, that they did not truly occupy the land but simply “roamed over” it, having no specific land they could call their own. For example, when Alfred von Hamerstein testified about the Athabasca District before the Select

Committee of the Senate in its 1906-07 hearings, he tried to distinguish between “'white half- breeds' and 'Indians'” on the basis of whether or not they were permanently settled. He said:

“Some of the half-breeds live a white man's life, and others live like Indians; that is, they are on the move all the time” (Chambers 1907:43). Even today, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines a “nomad” as a “member of a people roaming from place to place for food or fresh 46 pasture,” or “a wanderer” (Barber 2001:987). “Roaming” and “wandering” both connote randomness. The tendency by some social scientists today to refer to “settler societies” when talking about incoming Europeans is related, in that the term contrasts settlers to Aboriginal people, which denies implicitly that Aboriginal people themselves “settled” the land. At issue is a concept of settlement that means a sedentary life lived on a bounded piece of land, with an agrarian base. It posed a problem for Charles Mair, who accompanied the Half-breed Scrip

Commission to northern Alberta in 1899 and observed the parallel Treaty No. 8 Commission at

Lesser Slave Lake Settlement. Mair compared many “white settlers” he had seen unfavorably to the “Indians” he saw at Lesser Slave Lake, whom he considered superior “in sedateness and self- possession” (1908:54). He looked for but did not see “some savage types of men” among the

Indians and indeed expressed disappointment at the ordinary scene before him (ibid.:54-55).

They were, instead, “commonplace men” (ibid.:55), which surprised him “for there was, as yet, little or no farming amongst the old ‘Lakers’” (ibid.: 73). It has been difficult for Euro-

Canadians to come to grips with a system of territory that was not based on sedentary settlement but on “wandering.”

Associated with the concept of Aboriginal nomadism and lack of permanent Aboriginal settlement was the idea that the boreal forest, including the lands of northern Alberta, was a

“tractless wilderness,” a vast expanse of wild lands. In 1899, the treaty commissioners found it difficult to contemplate that Indians would or could be displaced from such lands anytime soon.

In fact, they said in their report that they did not expect the Indians in the Athabasca and Slave

River areas to take up the provisions in the treaty to support farming, because “It does not appear likely that the conditions of the country on either side of the Athabasca and Slave Rivers or about 47

Athabasca Lake will be so changed as to affect hunting or trapping, and it is safe to say that so long as the fur-bearing animals remain, the great bulk of the Indians will continue to hunt and to trap” (Govt. of Canada 1966:7). That is, they equated the persistence of the intact boreal forest landscape with the exercise of rights to hunt and trap under Treaty No. 8. They also pointed out the “the extent of the country treated for make it impossible to define reserves or holdings”

(ibid.). Charles Mair, who was part of the Half-breed Commission, wrote about “primeval masses of poplar and birch foliage” (1908:41); the word “primeval” suggests untouched wilderness. As recently as 1997, a brief survey of Canadian Indian culture areas described the western Subarctic as a bleak, forbidding land “of dark forests, barren lands and the swampy terrain known as muskeg” (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada 1997:9), a specific kind of wilderness.

Yet to northern Crees and Chipewyans, northern Alberta was neither “tractless” nor

“wilderness.” It was covered by a network of well-known overland trails, at least some of which were maintained by controlled burning, and water routes. These trails were their grids. They showed the ways in which people traveled in the country; they were not boundaries that restricted where they could live or how they could use the land. It is true that most Crees and Chipewyans did not have permanent, year-round settlements until recently, but they does not mean they were

“nomads” in the “random use” sense of that term. We should either redefine the term “nomad” or stop using it. First Nations used the land and its resources in an orderly and methodical manner, based on their highly detailed knowledge of plant and animal behavior and interaction, their ability to predict ecosystem dynamics, and their practices of controlled burning.

Collectively, this knowledge is today called “traditional environmental knowledge,” “traditional 48 ecological knowledge,” “indigenous knowledge,” or simply “local knowledge.” Fikret Berkes defines such knowledge as “a cumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief, evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings (including humans) with one another and with their environment”

(1999:8; italics removed). It is “both cumulative and dynamic, building on experience and adapting to changes” (ibid.). Contributing to the decisions they made about land use were factors generated by the mode of production - the kinds of resources they needed or wanted at specific times of the year - and the social relations of production - various social factors that motivated people to use certain places rather than others.

The hallmark of the domestic mode of production and the successor fur trade mode of production was that no one could control critical resources, which were available to everyone.

In this vein, it is a common aspect of northern Aboriginal discourse for people to say that they do not own the land, but rather use and look after it, which speaks to their sense of relationship and stewardship vis-à-vis the land and its resources. Aboriginal people were opposed to attempts to break up the vast expanses of land upon which they depended for livelihood, just as in 1899 and

1900 they would made it clear that they would refuse the treaty if it meant that their freedom to use the land would be restricted in any way, both by being forced to live on reserves or to obey game regulations. Aboriginal resistance to such restrictions appeared when the first surveyors came onto their traditional lands. For example, on 7 February 1883, W. T. Thompson, who was surveying in the Lesser Slave Lake area:

was interviewed by the head man of the Indians (self elected), his sons and grandsons following in the wake, who informed him that they were perfectly aware that he was passing through the country to spy out the nakedness of the land, intending next summer 49

to take this land to himself, and that he [the head man], as lawful possessor of the soil, forbade Mr. Thompson to proceed any farther [EB, “Slave Lake,” 17 March 1883:3].

During negotiations for Treaty No. 8 in 1899 and 1900, the question about whether or not Indians would find their land uses restricted after entering into treaty arose over and over again. The treaty commissioners assured them that they would not have to live on reserves and that they retained the freedom to use the land “to hunt and fish after the treaty as they would be if they never entered into it” (Govt. of Canada 1966:6), assurance predicated on the idea of an intact land base. They made such promises despite explicit provisions in the treaty for reserves, game regulations, and “such tracts as may be required or taken up from time to time for settlement, mining, lumbering, trading or other purposes” (ibid.:12). Evidently they did not anticipate that such land uses would impinge in any major way on Indian uses of the land and its resources.

While Treaty No. 11 was not negotiated along the Mackenzie River until 1921, land surveys occurred there before World War I which seem to have been just as contentious as the survey near Lesser Slave Lake in 1883. In 1914 at Fort Simpson, Indian Agent Thomas W.

Harris wrote to the Assistant Deputy and Secretary of Indian Affairs that local Indians wanted to know why the surveys were being undertaken. “‘I have answered that so far as I know it is to protect the rights of the settlers who may come in at a future date. This does not seem to satisfy them and all sorts of absurd rumours are current, and a certain amount of dissatisfaction is expressed’” (in Fumoleau 1975:117). Harris, along with many other government agents, tended to dismiss the legitimacy of Indian concerns when they did not accord with his own understandings.

Aboriginal stewardship over the land was both ideological and practical. To the extent 50 that people practiced controlled burning, which was a widespread practice, they were actively managing habitats to produce the conditions that supported the animals they hunted and trapped.

They handled animals and plants in culturally-defined ways that were intended to manage the availability and abundance of game. Even their spiritual powers were recruited to manage animals; some people were reported to be able to dream about the animals that they then hunted successfully or directed others to hunt. Such beliefs were and are not only part of the spiritual systems of Aboriginal people, they have been part and parcel of their empirical ecological practices and land management. Their very lives depended upon their being able to feed themselves at all seasons of the year, and for the most part, they were highly successful.

Ironically, the same Europeans who relied on Aboriginal assistants and guides when they traveled on the land and on Aboriginal production of food provisions to survive at the posts commonly belittled Aboriginal beliefs as “superstitions.” Euro-Canadians government agents and scientists spent virtually no time on the land and had little no real knowledge about boreal forest ecosystems and the dynamics of animal populations, yet they were confident that the land- use regulations they devised and imposed were appropriate. Aboriginal protests were almost always dismissed. Euro-Canadians prided themselves on their rational science, while historically the regulations for hunting, fishing, and trapping, both federal and provincial, were based on poor science overall (for example, see McCormack 1984; 1992; 2010; Sandlos 2002; 2003).

While the lands under Aboriginal stewardship were broad, the specific practices of stewardship were implemented on the particular places where members of local bands lived and worked during the course of each year. Their traditional lands comprised the lands they were using actively, lands they had used in the past and that were known to have been used by their 51

ancestors, and the lands they might wish or need to use in the future. As the Cowichan First

Nation of British Columbia explain in a website, “Our traditional territory is the geographic area

occupied by our ancestors for community, social, economic, and spiritual purposes” (Cowichan

Tribes 2005). That definition speaks to a breadth of landscape that extends beyond any specific

region occupied by a set of families at any one time.

The Katzie First Nation, a Salish First Nation in the Fraser River region of BC, has taken

two different approaches to defining traditional territory. First and foremost, it is “that territory

granted by the Creator, to the descents of Oe’lecten and Swaneset - the Katzie people.” This meaning resonates with the Cowichan definition. The second definition, intended to meet “the purposes of the BC Treaty Commission process,” defines Katzie traditional lands as encompassing “all those lands, waters, and natural resources used and occupied by the Katzie

First Nation, and owned by the Katzie First Nation, according to Katzie customary law” (Katzie

First Nation 2002). This definition seeks, unsuccessfully, to distinguish between lands that are considered to be “‘shared territory’” with other first nations” and lands that are exclusively those of the Katzie First Nation. It notes that some members may consider those shared lands “to be properly Katzie territory.” Similarly, with respect to the idea of overlapping territories, other

First Nations may have “rights and interests” in the Katzie Nation lands, and Katzie Nation members may have rights and interests in the lands of other First Nations. The First Nation points to its “long-standing ties within this larger [Coast Salish] cultural family. The ambiguities in this definition stem from an attempt to reconcile a concept of territory that is broad in nature with a restricted notion of territory that is intended to erect boundaries and confer restricted rights of ownership and use, the difference between lands “we use” and lands “used by others,” when 52 the “we” versus “them” opposition is itself a consequence of government definition rather than

First Nation culture and understandings. In its website, the Katzie First Nation addresses this problem indirectly by noting the existence of important cultural differences in articulating the concept of traditional territory:

At the outset, it is important to state that aboriginal concepts related to title, rights and territory do not easily conform to European or Canadian terms such as “territory” and “boundary.” This difficulty is apparent in misunderstandings such as the existence of apparent ‘overlapping claims.’”

Discussions with Katzie elders clearly show that the English language and European concepts are limited in their ability to articulate the nature of the Katzie First Nation’s traditional view of ‘ownership’ [ibid.].

The traditional territory of the Crees and Chipewyans who constituted the Mikisew Cree

First Nation is geography defined by social network, and it did not in the past nor does it now have clear boundaries. The multiple kinship relations that existed among members of the local bands of northeast Alberta and adjacent areas - the on-the-ground co-residential groups - also defined the extent of on-going and potential land use by members of those groups. In these societies, any person was entitled to move to and join any group to which he or she could demonstrate or establish a primary kinship tie. This “custom” or practice was part of what today would be called Cree and Chipewyan customary law. The kinship system was a flexible one that easily accommodated new people by extending terms of primary kinship to both more distant kinsmen and non-kin. That can be seen even from Charles Mair’s narrative about Treaty No. 8 negotiations at Lesser Slave Lake. When talks began, Keenooshayo, an important Cree leader and spokesman, challenged the claim by the treaty commissioners statement that they were “brothers”

(Mair 1908:59). As negotiations moved forward, Moostoos, the other major Cree spokesman, 53 extended kinship terms to the commissioners: “You have called us brothers. Truly I am the younger, you the elder brother. Being the younger, if the younger ask the elder for something, he will grant his request the same as our mother the Queen” (ibid.:60). While the commissioners may have considered such terms to be simply flowery oratory, the Crees took them seriously as defining formal relationships with attached rights and duties, which Moostoos explained when he instructed the commissioners in their behavioral meaning.

Even today, Aboriginal people often talk in northern communities about how everyone is related, and that is true. Newcomers who enter these areas and become engaged in the local social network will find themselves defined as various kinds of relatives. The Euro-Canadian emphasis on actual biological ties or “blood” is not significant in traditional Cree and Chipewyan kinship systems. As relatives, they have rights and duties. In the past, these included the right to join a local band if they wished to do so. That meant that they had the right to enjoy all land- based activities - hunting, fishing, gathering, trapping - on those lands. They had a right to share the food that was produced by the other families with which they lived, and those families enjoyed similar rights in the production of the newcomers. Mutual cooperation and sharing in production and consumption was fundamental to the local bands. While local bands, as land- based entities, do not exist in the larger residential centers where virtually everyone lives today, the network of kinship ties still functions and affects how people work together and share material possessions and bush foods.

These relationships were not restricted to the local bands that constituted a regional band but extended to the members of all local bands with whom one might have contact. As June

Helm pointed out (2000:10), the regional band was an amorphous entity which: 54

lacks continual nucleation of camp or settlement. Its members are commonly scattered over its range in smaller groups. The dimensions of the regional band’s range are defined in terms of its “roads,” the main routes of movement for its constituent groups. The regional band’s zone of exploitation thus has axes rather than boundaries or edges. We may speak of a regional band’s traditional range as its territory, but it is territory without territoriality. Ties of amity and kinship bring people from one regional band to another, free to use its resources.

Before fur trade posts entered the region and became a focus of interaction, said Helm (2000:18), there would have been “flows of personnel between regional and supraregional populations and, sometimes, shifts of exploitative ranges of groups.”

In fact, these “flows of personnel” did not stop once people were involved in the fur trade or even after they entered into Treaty No. 8. Throughout the 20th century, members of neighboring local bands were engaged with one another in a variety of what Helm termed “axes.”

The major rivers - Peace, Slave, and Athabasca - comprised three significant axes that linked together the members of the local bands along these routes. Settlements occupied by local bands were located along all of these rivers. The Wabasca River further to the west was another significant axis. Lake Athabasca was another axis. The major overland trails constituted additional axes. They have been overlooked or marginalized in importance by most Euro-

Canadians, who have tended to look at the boreal forest as impenetrable wilderness and have focused on waterways for travel. One of the most important of these was the system of trails or

“roads” over the Birch Mountain and from there to the Athabasca River that linked together people from the Fort MacKay and Fort Chipewyan regions. People regularly walked across the

Birch Mountain to visit one another and use the resources in these different regions, just as they traveled by boat along the Athabasca River. Namur Lake and Gardiner Lake on the Birch

Mountain were important locations for people from both Fort MacKay and Fort Chipewyan in 55 the past, just as they are today, and from those lakes people could travel easily to Birch River or the Athabasca River.

It was not uncommon for people who occupied settlements that were often far removed from one another to be related in some way. These kinship ties can be seen in genealogies and treaty pay list information (McCormack n.d.; LAC RG10 Treaty Pay Lists). It was this network of kinship that tied together the local bands and provided the vehicle for people to change their band affiliations.

A good example is the Piche family. When North West Mounted Police Jarvis made the first police patrol into this portion of northern Alberta, he stopped at the Little Red River on the

Athabasca River, where he spoke with residents, one of whom was a local leader, Chrysostom

Pische (Jarvis 1898:158), spelled Chrysostome Piche in the Oblate genealogies and also Piché

(McCormack n.d.). The founder of this family and probably Chrysostome’s grandfather was probably François Piché, who was reported in the Athabasca country in 1786 and was reputed to have killed John Ross in 1787. He then fled to live with the Chipewyans, where he remained for three years. He later worked at a number of trading posts, including Fort Chipewyan (Duckworth

1990:163-4). He took at least one Chipewyan wife (possibly more than one) and founded a large

Piche family with a Chipewyan identity found in the Fort McMurray and Fort Chipewyan regions. Members of this family married into both Chipewyan and Cree families. For instance,

Charlot Piche, Chrysostome’s brother, married Josette Martin in 1862. Josette was the daughter of Job Martin and Anne Iyisaskew, the second generation of one of the biggest Cree families in the lower Athabasca, and probably one of the Cree families for which the fur traders had continued to maintain a separate post. Job Martin appears to have married all of his children 56 strategically, to both Chipewyan and Cree men and women, thereby gaining access to all those lands for all of their families and the local bands in which they lived. The linkages of the Martin family just at that generation included Grandjambes, Bouchers, Egus, Dzenk’as (Ratfats),

Tourangeaus, Wabistikwans (Whiteheads), and Gibbots. One of Job Martin’s sons, and Josette’s brother, was Justin Martin, who in 1899 became the highly respected first chief of the Cree Band, due to his age, his connectedness to other families, and his great spiritual power. Similar ties can be traced among other families.

Neil Reddekopp (1994) has traced some kinship connections of two other families -

Grandjambes and Bouchers - from the perspective of their ties to the Fort McMurray-Fort

MacKay area. My own genealogical data provide additional information ( McCormack n.d.).

The earliest Grandjambe in the Fort Chipewyan genealogical records was Siyakwatam dit

(called) Grandjambe. The marriages of this family seem to been made primarily with other Crees for at least the first two generations of descendants. Reddekopp looked at the history of Albert

Grandjambe, who was born at Fort Chipewyan in 1893, and whose father Baptiste (Jean Baptiste) entered into treaty there as an original member of the Fort Chipewyan Cree Band. Baptiste moved around, working for the Hudson’s Bay Company at Little Red River, where he had married Caroline Sakiskanip, from a very old Cree family now known as Gibbot (and which is closely connected by kinship to the Chipewyan Adam family). Several of his brothers and one sister married into families at Tallcree and Little Red River. By 1919, Albert, then about 26 years old, was at Fort MacKay, where he married Marie Rosine Kokan; they made their home there for the rest of their lives.

Boucher is another family with French origins. Several Bouchés appear in the Athabasca 57 region, working for the North West Company (Duckworth 1990:137-8). Joseph Boucher was born about 1851 and later married Madeleine Piche, joining him to this large and influential family. Their children found both Cree and Chipewyan husbands and wives. One of his descendants, Michel (son or grandson is unclear) married Catherine Grandjambe, the widow of

Pierre Takaro, who was part of the large family which also included Kaskamans and Antoines.

Family members can be found from Little Red River/Fort Vermilion to Fort McMurray.

Reddekopp also named five women from the Cree Band at Fort Chipewyan who married into the band at Fort McMurray and who subsequently were transferred to that band’s treaty pay list, following the Indian Act requirement that a woman’s legal status derived from that of her husband (Reddekopp 1994:37). That speaks to sufficient movement within the area that such marriages could be arranged. Men traveled to the areas where the women lived, for work, to visit, or even to look for wives, or families with marriageable daughters visited places where these men were living to the south. Both possibilities are likely.

These extended families provide excellent examples of how kinship ties connected local bands across a vast landscape. The pattern of marriage between families in one generation often set up marriages in the next generation. This discussion has focused on the great expanse of land from Fort Vermilion/Little Red River to Fort McMurray/ Fort MacKay, but from both those areas family connections existed with families at Tallcree Prairie, Wabasca, Bigstone, and Chipewyan

Lake, in short, much of the Woodland Cree world in northern Alberta. Family connections could also be traced to Chipewyan families in other regions.

In short, “traditional territory” for the Mikisew Cree First Nation constitutes the totality of the lands used by the ancestors of the Mikisew Cree First Nation and those lands used by their 58

descendants over time. They included not only lands actually in use, but lands abandoned for a

period of time because the resources had diminished there or because other lands were seen as

more attractive, or because a social reason had led a family to relocate. They included all those

lands that were not only used but potentially might be used by its members as a result of their kinship ties.

There were reasonable limits, but no clear boundaries, to this traditional territory. The fringes of the traditional territory in the past were governed solely by the abilities of Crees and

Chipewyans to travel to areas where they had known kinship ties. While people at Fort

Chipewyan could travel to Lesser Slave Lake or to Edmonton, those were special trips, done rarely, and we would not consider either Lesser Slave Lake or Edmonton to have been traditional lands of either Crees or Chipewyans. However, the traditional lands did extend south to at least to Fort McMurray, and they encompassed the Birch Mountain and the lands between the Birch

Mountain and the Athabasca River. They extended west to encompass the areas around the

Peace River as far as Little Red River and north to at least the eastern edge of the Caribou

Mountain. They extended well north of the Peace River area. Finally, they extended east at least as far as the Fond du Lac-Black Lake region. People had multiple possibilities for the lands they chose for their subsistence and trapping activities; they operationalized certain possibilities according to their own personal and family strategies and the resources available to them.

People changed the lands they used for many reasons. The most obvious reason was that resources had grown scarce, and people using those lands would move to other areas where they hoped to find an adequate resource base. To some extent, people rotated their use of the land, a strategy that was practical as long as people were not displaced from the land and there were no 59 competing land uses. I have heard people talk about trapping an area for a period of time, then leave enough animals to provide “seed” so that the animal populations would grow, while they moved to other areas to hunt and trap. Clearly the intent was eventually to return to the areas that had been depleted.

People also moved for a variety of other culturally-defined reasons. Marriage was a typical reason, in that marriages normally occurred between a man and woman from separate local bands. That meant that one party - usually the new husband - left his natal band and joined that of his wife (which was not the practice followed by the Indian Act membership provision).

The husband thereby learned the details of the landscape of an area that may have been new to him. Another reason to move was to deal with conflict or potential conflict. A family that was not getting along with someone in the local band might choose to move as a way to deal with the problem; direct confrontations were not considered appropriate behavior. Chipewyans placed a high value on travel, and people who traveled widely enjoyed enhanced personal prestige. They might also obtain wives or adopt children from different localities, providing the formal link that allowed them access to those lands. People also placed a high value on visiting, which was not only enjoyable but also important for sharing information and arranging marriages. People would travel to visit, sometimes staying with their relatives for a period of time. Finally, people often left an area after a family member had died there. People have talked about being “too sad” to continue to live there. For example, the Birch River communities were abandoned as residential sites in the 20th century due to the epidemic of tuberculosis that claimed many lives there, as well as the other diseases that periodically swept through the region. While by the end of the 19th century Crees and Chipewyans living in the bush were erecting wooden houses, they 60 normally lived in them only during the winter season while they were trapping, and the existence of these houses was not enough to keep people from leaving for a time, or permanently, for another part of their traditional lands, for any of the reasons given above.

When Treaty No. 8 was negotiated in 1899, the treaty party never bothered to identify the lands used by specific bands; indeed, the treaty commissioners knew it was beyond their abilities and did not try. There was no discussion that suggested that individuals might have to restrict their treaty rights of hunting, fishing, gathering, and trapping to areas surrounding the communities where they took treaty and that the commissioners had used as the locus for each band. In fact, there is nothing in the treaty literature to suggest that the commissioners knew much at all about Aboriginal land use or felt they needed that information in order to negotiate the treaty. The lands available for use were all considered to be encompassed in the broad treaty lands shown on the map that accompanied the treaty (Figure ).7 However, the division of the collective Aboriginal population into several specific legal bands suggested that the treaty commissioners believed that a territorial reality underlaid each band. To some extent, that was true - in 1899. The newly-created bands were a snapshot of the social arrangements among the

Aboriginal people and their economic links to particular trading posts in that year. Each band list was oriented to a particular post; the lists themselves created the fiction of a band that was a real identity, instead of an identity constructed at one moment in time by a representative of the

Department of Indian Affairs. By creating legal bands - bands defined by the rules of the Indian

Act - and then drawing up band lists, the Department of Indian Affairs set in place a legal

7It is a weakness in the system of numbered treaties that the Treaty Commissioners never addressed: determining the lands used by peoples of specific regions, and especially areas of potential overlap with other peoples with whom they had not yet negotiated treaties. 61

structure that presumed a relatively static system of land use and that was expected eventually to

be realized in reserves.

Reddekopp (1994:2) has contrasted what he calls “the relationship between the well-

ordered world of Band membership as envisaged by the Indian Act and the demographic realities

of the Treaty 8 area.” The demographic and social reality was that people moved around a lot

and did not stay in the lands in the vicinity of specific posts. If the treaty had been negotiated

five years earlier or five years later, the configuration of people on each band list would have

differed. The way the Indian Agents dealt with such changes after the fact was to remove those

individuals from the pay lists of their bands and add them to the pay lists of the bands in the land

where they were now living. Reddekopp (1994) pointed to many such changes, and I saw them

when I reviewed Treaty No. 8 pay lists in the Northwest Territories for another project. By doing

so, they were recognizing the reality that band territories were not fixed.

Evidence for such movements in the 20th century exists in the oral traditions about past and present land use documented in six Traditional Land Use Studies commissioned by the

Mikisew Cree First Nation, discussed and assessed by Peter Douglas Elias (2010). The discussion that follows outlines some of this information, drawn from the Mikisew Cree First

Nation Traditional Land Study that was done for the Total Joslyn North Mine Project by the

Calliou Group (Calliou Group 2009). The study interviewed 26 people for this study. Fourteen were over 50 years of age; 12 were under 50 years. Seventeen were male; 9 were female. All were members of Mikisew Cree First Nation. The data collected from these interviews has been added to the land use data from the other studies to construct maps showing collective land use by people born in the decades 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, and 1970. These maps are 62 presented in Elias’ report. People would normally begin serious land use in the second decade of life, so these maps show collective land uses from the 1930s to today. It is not surprising, but expected, for Elias’ map 7 to show heavy land use within Wood Buffalo National Park, especially oriented to the rivers, and in the area surrounding the west end of Lake Athabasca, much of which was the resource-rich Peace-Athabasca Delta.

Figures 1 and 2 in this report were drawn from that collective body of data to focus on land uses from the Birch River and mouth of the Athabasca River to the south. Figure 1 shows information about travel routes taken from the Calliou Study and the PAC Team Study. Figure 2 shows landscape use south of Wood Buffalo National Park.

Much evidence exists for the great water highway and traditional use corridor that was the

Athabasca River. There were many settlements along the great water highway of the Athabasca

River: Jackfish (Richardson) Lake, Embarras, Poplar Point, Point Brulé, Lobstick Point, and

Little Red River (about 35 miles north of Fort McMurray; not to be confused with Little Red

River on the Peace River). Some of these settlements later became part of the Chipewyan Band

(now, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation) reserve lands. Most of the people who were interviewed spoke about the historic and on-going importance of the Athabasca River for travel, hunting, fishing, and gathering. The river was a way to access lands both west and east.

However, with the expansion of industrial projects, participants in the study also spoke about how they have had to travel further inland to hunt, due to a shortage of game close to the river, a decline in the quality of the remaining resources, and their fear of diseased and poisoned resources. A further complication today is that many areas people used in the past are leased areas that restrict access. The Athabasca River was identified as an important corridor that 63

“should be protected from further industrial development,” but “it may already be too late” (Roy

Campbell, Calliou Group 2009:36).

The Calliou study identified two other major harvesting corridors: one is the corridor from Fort MacKay westward to Namur and Gardiner Lakes, which includes the important Ells

River. and the second is the corridor east from the Athabasca River to Marguerite River Wildlife

Provincial Park. Figures 1 and 2 shows the collective information from all studies about land use by Mikisew Cree First Nations people in these areas, as far north as the Birch River. This information is provided in closer detail in Elias’ maps 8 and 9 (Elias 2010:29, 30). It is clear that these travel routes go through the area of the Total lease and that traditional land uses occur directly on that area. People continue to use broader areas on both sides of the river for hunting, fishing, and gathering, although only people with registered trap lines (Fur Management Areas) are allowed to trap. The corridor from Fort MacKay through Namur and Gardiner Lakes to the

Birch Mountains was called very important for future protection by Mikisew Cree interviewees.

As it is, people are concerned about increased difficulties they face in finding or accessing areas for hunting, fishing, and gathering. They express the same fears about declining quality and quality of resources, including medicinal plants, as they did for the Athabasca River corridor.

There are two kinds of problems with access: some areas are restricted by fences and gates, while others are so distant that they take a long time to reach. They are worried for their own safety when they are in the bush, as a growing non-Aboriginal population in the Fort McMurray region goes hunting. They are also worried for the burial sites that are distributed throughout the entire area. Yet these lands south of Wood Buffalo National Park are not diminishing in importance for the Mikisew Cree First Nation but instead are becoming more important, as many 64

First Nation members now live at Fort McMurray and Fort MacKay and are still looking to use the resources of the land for food, medicines, and spiritual reasons. The land is important culturally in that it continues to connect First Nations members to the land and to one another.

6. 20th Century Restrictions Imposed on Mikisew Cree First Nation Traditional Lands

The extent of the traditional lands of the MCFN have been obfuscated by a series of events that occurred in the 20th century, especially the creation of Wood Buffalo National Park and the creation of a system of registered trap lines in the 1940s, but also the overall regime of regulation of land-based resources that was introduced by federal and provincial governments.

The sequence and impacts of these events are explained in my Ph.D. thesis, in a major article published in Arctic in 1992, in a paper on controlled burning, and in my forthcoming book

(McCormack 1984; 1992; 2007; 2010).

Briefly, Wood Buffalo National Park was created in two steps, in 1922 and 1926. The impetus for the park was the invasion of northeast Alberta and other northern areas by White trappers after World War I. Fur prices soared at the same time that there was a post-war depression in prairie agriculture. Many of the White trappers were homesteaders, who were looking to generate some funds to help support their farming operation. They went north to make as much money as they could, not just to survive; they operated by means of a capitalist mode of production, not a fur trade mode of production, even though they were trappers. They have been described as mining the land for fur, with little regard for conservation and whether or not they would leave behind any animals. They did not go to areas no one was using but set up their trap lines in the most productive fur regions they could find, which were the same regions 65 already used by Aboriginal hunters and trappers. Some White trappers were very aggressive in trying to prevent Aboriginal people from operating on lands they now considered to be “theirs.”

No restrictions were placed on their activities by any level of government. Culturally, it was very difficult for local Aboriginal people to oppose them directly, and they were mindful that when they took treaty they had promised to live peacefully with newcomers.

The federal government was worried that these White trappers would poach bison, and it finally decided to create Wood Buffalo Park in 1922 in lands north of the Peace River, to provide protection for the last surviving wild bison in North America (see Figure 3). Although the federal government would have preferred forcing all people out of the park, Treaty No. 8 Indians were allowed to remain, but all other people were forced to leave, including mixed-ancestry people who may have had a long history of use in that region. People from other Treaty No. 8 regions were allowed to enter the park for a brief period.

The following year, the federal government began to import plains bison from the

Wainwright Bison Park to what it considered to be relatively empty bison lands in Wood Buffalo

Park. This decision was a political one, made over the objections of biologists. When the bison moved outside the park boundaries, the federal government expanded the park, annexing land south of the Peace River in 1926 (Figure 3). A different access rule was used, presumably responding to pressure from residents of Fort Chipewyan, who lived on the edge of the new park and used those lands, but mostly did not have treaty status. It allowed anyone who was in the

“new” park or “annex” in 1926 to remain there after, which included treaty Indians, Métis, and

White trappers. If someone was not resident in the new park in 1926, even if he had used the park the previous year, he could not thereafter gain entry to the park. 66

All the Crees on the Fort Chipewyan Cree Band list must have been in the park at this time, because they were allowed to continue in the park thereafter. However, the Chipewyan

Band membership was divided in half: approximately half of the members were living in the park, and they were able to continue in the park. The other half - those living at places such as

Old Fort and locations along the Athabasca River - were denied access to park lands.

This important provision meant that people in the park were largely protected from the exploitation of the resource base by White trappers outside the park. There is some evidence to show that annual incomes of people within the park were markedly better than those outside the park. Given the climate of competition by White trappers for furs and meat, the park boundary was a device that encouraged park users to restrict their land uses to the park lands. Despite this situation, people from park still traveled across the Birch Mountain, and there were some people from the south of Birch Mountain who entered the park illegally.

Chipewyans outside the park still considered lands within the park to be part of their traditional lands, which they were, based on the discussion presented above, and they continued to ask for access to those lands, which would have afforded them some economic assistance.

They were turned down every time and became increasingly impoverished, even after the lands for a series of small reserves, with the biggest one at Jackfish (Richardson Lake), were finally identified for them.

The creation of registered trap lines was the next important step in government restriction of large blocks of traditional lands. In the early 1940s, the Province of Alberta introduced a system of registered trap lines. It was intended to foster conservation of fur and accommodate the White trappers who were still using the land. The provincial regulations provided that people 67 who had park privileges would not be eligible for trap lines in non-park Alberta. A few years later, Wood Buffalo Park also introduced a system of restricted land use, in which the total body of treaty Indians was divided into group areas and non-treaty users could obtain individual trap lines in the heart of the delta. These measures were introduced over the objections of local First

Nations. Registered trap lines were a non-owned kind of individual property analogous to a lease of resources to an industry. Only the person in whose name the line was registered, along with his partner or assistant, were allowed to trap fur bearing animals on that land. In theory, treaty

Indians were allowed to hunt anywhere, but in reality hunting and trapping were activities that occurred in tandem during late fall and winter.

The third area was called the “regime of regulation of land-based resources that was introduced by federal and provincial governments.” It is beyond the scope of this report to discuss them all, but both the federal government and provincial government developed elaborate systems of policies, laws, and regulations for Aboriginal people and others and for the resources of northern Alberta. Aboriginal people were never consulted in any of these, despite the assurance they had been given by the treaty commissioners that “only such laws as to hunting and fishing as were in the interest of the Indians and were found necessary in order to protect the fish and fur-bearing animals would be made, and that they would be as free to hunt and fish after the treaty as they would be if they never entered into it.” They were assured “that the treaty would not lead to any forced interference with their mode of life” (Govt. of Canada 1966:6; emphasis added). Crees and Chipewyans regularly protested measures to which they objected, but their objections seem never to have been considered seriously by senior officials. These regulations prohibited Aboriginal burning, which was not understood by Forestry officials, who believed that 68

Indians just set forest fires which destroyed trees. Game regulations restricted how and when people could trap, even of animals that were critical for food as well as fur. Commercial fishing was allowed in Lake Athabasca in the 1920s, depleting the lake’s fish populations. After World

War II, new industries were allowed in Wood Buffalo National Park - commercial fishing, bison slaughters, and logging - which for the most part were opposed by Aboriginal people. The park also placed a strict limit at this time on the number of moose park users could hunt.

What is remarkable, when one juxtaposes the 20th century history of the region with the maps produced by the traditional land use studies, is that Crees and Chipewyans born in the

1920s and later continued to use lands outside the park, especially along the Athabasca River and in the Namur and Gardiner Lakes and Birch Mountain region. They never abandoned hunting, fishing, and gathering in areas that were part of their traditional lands. At the same time, the patterning of the maps suggests that by the mid 1950s and the years that followed, people were more likely to access these lands not from Birch River, but from the Athabasca River, traveling up the rivers that entered the west bank of the Athabasca River. By the 1950s, people who lived in local bands in bush settlements were beginning the process of moving into Fort Chipewyan for permanent residence (see McCormack 1984 for a discussion of that process). As Syncrude and

Suncor industries got underway, some people from Fort Chipewyan began to move to Fort

McMurray for employment and also to participate in fly-in, fly-out employment with Syncrude.

The shift in residence to Fort McMurray and Fort MacKay dates from the development of these industries. That does not mean, however, that people abandoned the land-based activities of hunting, fishing, and gathering. People living in these southern centers now turned to lands to those areas to exercise their traditional treaty rights. 69

7. Mikisew Population Growth and Relocation

An earlier part of this report discussed the various factors that led to the modern Mikisew

Cree First Nation. This section addresses briefly some of the demographic information available.

When Treaty No. 8 was signed at Fort Chipewyan in 1899, 410 Chipewyans and 186 Crees

entered into treaty (Govt. of Canada 1966:10). Additional people were added to the treaty pay

lists in the years that followed. Despite large numbers of death from epidemic diseases in the

years that followed for the first half of the 20th century, by 1940 the treaty pay lists had grown to

269 Chipewyans and 273 Crees (LAC RG10 Treaty Pay Lists). In 1946, the mass transfer of

Chipewyans living in Wood Buffalo Park to the Cree Band occurred. The Cree Band numbered

374 people in that year.

Aboriginal populations began to grow markedly all across Canada after World War II. In addition to natural increase, the Cree Band increased in numbers after 1985 due to Bill C-31, passed by the federal government to end the involuntary enfranchisement of Indian Status women who had married out of their bands. Not only did Bill C-31 end that practice, it also provided a means for bands to establish their own membership codes. In 1987, Mikisew Cree First Nation developed an “inclusive” membership code, which means that they welcomed back persons who had been forced to leave the band through involuntary enfranchisement of themselves or an ancestor (MCFN 1992b).8 It was in 1992 that the Cree Band formally adopted the name Mikisew

Cree First Nation, in line with a trend by other Status Indian bands to choose their own names

(MCFN 1992a).

8MCFN wrote its first membership code in 1987, in accord with the requirements of the legislation. It was amended in 1988 and again in 1992 (MCFN 1992b). 70

Statistics Canada reported that the Aboriginal population grew six times faster than the growth rate for the non-Aboriginal population of Canada for the years 1996-2006 (Statistics

Canada 2009). In 2003, the Mikisew Cree First Nation population was 2,316. Of this total, 164 people lived on reserve, 610 people lived on Crown lands, and 1,542 lived off-reserve (Alberta

Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development 2004). The First Nation reserve lands include some lands in Fort Chipewyan and some small sections of land in Wood Buffalo National Park and north of Lake Athabasca. The distinction between Crown lands and off-reserve lands is unexplained in this document. In 2010, the Mikisew population had grown to 2,574, of whom

773 were living either on-reserve or on Crown land, while 1,801 were off-reserve (Govt. of

Alberta 2010:15, 42). The documents containing this census information do not indicate how many of these people are now resident in Fort McMurray and Fort MacKay, but according to the

First Nation it is the majority of them.9 While wage labor is obviously an important reason for living in these centers, they continue to hunt, fish, and trap on their traditional lands, which are now more likely to be accessed from this southern area.

8. Maintaining Tradition: Passing on Mikisew Cree First Nation Traditions and Cultural Practices

People from Mikisew Cree First Nation and many other First Nations talk with great sadness about the loss of their traditional languages and other cultural practices. Much of the history of their involvement with Europeans has involved attempts by those Europeans to undermine Aboriginal practices and beliefs and replace them with those of Europeans. The

9Some members also live in Fort Smith and Edmonton, with a smaller number living in other locations. 71 missionaries played a role in this process from the mid 19th century on, but until the 20th century they did not have the power of the state behind them. Today, much discourse in Fort Chipewyan, as in other Aboriginal communities, is highly critical and accusatory about damage caused by the residential school. At the same time, it is important to remember that it was the federal and provincial governments that allowed and even facilitated competing land uses and undermined the traditional mixed economy to such an extent that it became difficult to impossible for people to continue living their former way of life on the land in the local bands.

People have struggled to balance their need for wage labor for livelihood with the loss of social community that accompanied first the move from the bush settlements to Fort Chipewyan, and then the relocation of Fort Chipewyan residents to other centers. Although some information about local traditions is taught in the schools, the provincial curriculum still teaches what is basically a Euro-Canadian centered history that marginalizes Aboriginal people (see McCormack

2005). More and more, it falls to parents and grandparents to try to teach their children and grandchildren aspects of their traditional culture, but in non-traditional settings.

In the past, such learning occurred easily and naturally, as children lived on the land with their families. Boys and girls, young men and women learned the basics of living on the land.

They went on hunting trips; they learned how to prepare and set nets; they learned how to set snares and traps, how to prepare the furs, and how to cut the meat; they learned about basic medicines. While they did these everyday things, they also learned landmarks and the stories associated with them. They learned how to “read” the land so that they could travel across it safely at all times of the year. They learned about animal behavior and ecosystem relationships by observing them firsthand. They learned oral traditions, both sacred stories and family stories. 72

They learned important values, such as the importance of generosity and sharing and the theme of non-interference with another person’s decisions. When people talk about teaching their traditions today, they may speak about hunting, but hunting is part of a much bigger cultural package.

While some of this teaching still occurs in the home, parents and their children face the same barrage of influences as do children elsewhere in Canada, from that of their peers to influences from television and the Internet. That makes time spent on the land especially valuable, because it may be the only way in which First Nation members can help their children learn the traditional values of their Cree culture. Today, teaching culture is done deliberately, on weekends and special trips. Yet some of the participants in the Calliou Group’s study (2009) reported that it was hard to take a child into the bush if it involved traveling much distance, and they worried about doing so if the food or water they ate there might be tainted. I have heard the same fears about taking children into the bush around Fort Chipewyan. The right to transmit their culture to their children relies on access to traditional lands.

9. Competing for Territory

Philip Morris and Gail Fondahl have discussed how social space is altered as societies with different approaches to space and to territory come together. “Multiple influences on the production of social space will produce a hybrid space - in the sense that it is the combination of influences, and also in the sense that it is something new created from their interaction”

(2002:109). In northeast Alberta, lands that were “Native space” were converted over time into what Morris and Fondahl call “government space” by a series of building blocks: land surveys, a 73 treaty that promised reserves, the creation of Wood Buffalo National Park, and the development of a restrictive regulatory system, one component of which was the registered trap line system.

Later, leases of rights to companies to exploit oil and gas and forestry resources continued this process.

It is ironic that in the end, registered trap lines are now seen by most First Nations as lands that are still theirs, even though they enjoy no true “ownership,” only use rights. But as

Elizabeth Lacorde pointed out, having a trap line is useless for trapping if no animals remain there due to industrial disturbance (Calliou Group 2009:45).

Hugh Brody (1981) has written about how the Aboriginal people of northeastern British

Columbia tended to move away from the people who moved onto their traditional lands and competed with them for resources. The First Nations who entered into Treaty No. 8 agreed to share their land with newcomers. They could work around a few blocks of land removed from the totality of their traditional lands. Blanketing an entire landscape with industrial lands is a different matter entirely, a kind of industrial clearcutting. As industries have expanded their northern presence and began to build roads to access oil and gas and forestry resources, it opened the door to additional people moving onto even those lands that Indians had managed to preserve. At some point, they will run out of lands to which they can move. There is no evidence that these changes will or even can be compensated for by the provision of wage labor.

Although government officials have assumed for many years that at some point in the future

Aboriginal people will no longer support themselves by hunting, that does not mean that

Aboriginal people hold the same belief about their future. The reality in the north is that even today, there are many people to whom hunting and other land-based activities are an important 74 part of their livelihood and values. Hunting still provides high-quality food in addition to other benefits (e.g., Asch and Smith 1993). Mikisew Cree people have not left the bush, even though their extensive use of it today is not easily seen by outsiders. Nevertheless, the default position across much of northern Canada is that it is inevitable that northern hunters will or must one day stop hunting and move fully into a capitalist mode of production as wage laborers or business owners.

In 1899, Keenooshayo at Lesser Slave Lake had tried to ensure that what they agreed to verbally was also what was included in the written treaty: “We want a written treaty, one copy to be given to us, so we shall know what we sign for” (Mair 1908:62). After the treaty was finalized, copies printed on parchment were sent to each official chief for his band. The original typed treaty text was identical to the printed document. What the Indians believed were other

“promises” appear only in the Commissioners' report and in the oral traditions as verbal assurances made to the Indians. Given this immense gulf in understanding, it is not surprising that Indians continue to view the imposition of game regulations and other regulations impeding their access to land and resources and the degradation of the resource itself as violations of treaty promises.

It is tempting to speculate that most government officials responsible for the Treaty Eight region were themselves unfamiliar with the terms of the treaty. Even those familiar with it - mostly Department of Indian Affairs officials - either did not take it seriously as a legal, enforceable document or were relatively powerless vis-à-vis other government agents, such as those in Alberta. With some exceptions, there is little evidence that anyone in government thought about how its “spirit and intent” clashed with federal and provincial laws. There is little 75 evidence that high level Indian Affairs bureaucrats made much effort to support treaty Indians in their dealings with hostile provincial governments, which is why today the Mikisew Cree First

Nation, along with other First Nations, is forced to resort to the courts to address these issues and to recruit legal assistance for interventions into industrial initiatives to which they are opposed. 76

Figure 1. Travel routes from Birch River and Lake Athabasca south

Information based on Calliou Study and PAC Team Study 77

Figure 2. Landscape use south of Wood Buffalo National Park

Information based on Deer Creek Study cohort groups 78

Figure 3. The creation of Wood Buffalo Park

(McCormack 1984:124)

79

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Decker, Jody F. 1988 Tracing historical diffusion patterns: the case of the 1780-82 smallpox epidemic among the Indians of western Canada. Native Studies Review. 4(1,2):1-24.

Duckworth, Harry W., ed. 1990 The English River Book. A North West Company Journal and Account Book of 1786. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 81

Edmonton Bulletin 17 March 1883

Elias, Peter Douglas 2010 Description, analysis and synthesis of six traditional use studies. Prepared for Mikisew Cree First Nation. 29 Aug. 2010.

Ens, Gerhard J. 2000 Research report in the case of Benoit et al v. Canada. Expert report produced for the defence in Benoit et al v. The Queen. 30 Nov. 2000.

Ferguson, Theresa A. 1993 Wood bison and the early fur trade. In Patricia A. McCormack and R. Geoffrey Ironside, eds., The Uncovered Past: Roots of Northern Alberta Societies. Pp. 63-79. Circumpolar Research Series No. 3. Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta.

Flanagan, Thomas 2000 Research report in the case of Benoit et al v. The Queen. Expert report produced for the defence in Benoit et al v. The Queen. #1 Oct. 2000.

Fort Vermilion Agricultural Society and Marilee Cranna Toews, eds. 2008 Wilderness Outpost: The Fort Vermilion Memoir of Mary B. Lawrence 1898-1907. Calgary: Alberta Records Publication Board, Historical Society of Alberta.

Franklin, John 1969 Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea in the Years 1819, 20, 21, and 22. Edmonton: M. G. Hurtig Ltd. (Orig. 1823)

Fumoleau, René 1975 As Long as this Land Shall Last. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited.

Gillespie, Beryl C. 1975 Territorial expansion of the Chipewyan in the 18th century. In A. McFadyen Clark, ed., Proceedings: Northern Athapaskan Conference, 1971. Canadian Ethnology Service Paper no. 27. National Museum of Man Mercury Series. Ottawa: National Museum of Canada.

Goulet, Jean-Guy A. 1994 Ways of knowing: toward a narrative ethnography of experiences among the Dene Tha. Journal of Anthropological Research. 50:113-139.

1998 Ways of Knowing. Experience, Knowledge, and Power among the Dene Tha. 82

Vancouver: UBC Press.

Government of Alberta 2010 Métis Settlements and First Nations in Alberta: Community Profiles. Aboriginal Relations, Government of Alberta. March 2010. http://www.aboriginal.alberta.ca/documents/MetisSettlement_FirstNation_Profile.pdf Retrieved 17 Aug. 2010.

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Hearne, Samuel 1958 A Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort in Hudson’s Bay to the Northern Ocean. Richard Glover, ed. Toronto, ON: The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited.

Helm, June 1968 The nature of Dogrib socioterritorial groups. In Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore, eds., Man the Hunter. Pp. 118-125. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.

2000 The People of Denendeh. Iowa City, IO: University of Iowa Press.

Hudson’s Bay Company Archives (HBCA), Provincial Archives of Manitoba B.39/a/46 Fort Chipewyan 1867-1869. Reel 1M25. B.39/e/6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Fort Chipewyan Reports on District, 1823-1860. Reel 1M777. B. 239/a/3 York Fort Journal, 1716-1717. Reel 1M154.

Indian and Northern Affairs Canada 1997 First Nations in Canada. Ottawa, ON: Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

Innis, Harold A. 1964 The Fur Trade in Canada. Revised ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Irwin, Robert 1999 Historical report on Treaty Eight and taxation. Prepared for Karin Buss, Ackroyd, Piasta, Roth & Day. 8 March 1999.

2001 Treaty Eight and taxation. A response to Gerhart Ens. Prepared for Karin Buss, Ackroyd, Piasta, Roth & Day.

Jarvenpa, Robert 2004 Silot’ine: an insurance perspective on northern Dene kinship networks in recent history. Journal of Anthropological Research. 60(2):153-178. 83

Jarvis, A. M. 1898 Appendix L. Re northern patrol, with supplementary report, 24 April 1897. Report of the Commissioner of the North-west Mounted Police Force, 1897. Pp. 158-173. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer.

Katzie First Nation 2002 Traditional territory. Katzie First Nation. http://katzie.ca/traditional_territory.htm. Retrieved 28 July 2010.

Kay, Geoffrey 1975 Development and Underdevelopment: A Marxist Analysis. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd.

Lewis, Henry T. 1977 Maskuta: the ecology of Indian fires in northern Alberta. Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology. 7(1):15-52.

1978 Fires of Spring. Film produced with the assistance of the Motion Picture Division, Technical Services, University of Alberta.

1982 A Time for Burning. Occasional Publication No. 17. Edmonton: Boreal Institute for Northern Studies, University of Alberta.

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) RG 10 Treaty Pay Lists, Cree Band and Chipewyan Band, Fort Chipewyan.

Provincial Archives of Alberta (PAA) Anglican Church Archives, Diocese of Athabasca A.. 70.387 A.245/1 Box 48 Recapitulation: Census of the Population of the Athabasca District in 1873. Mackenzie, Sir Alexander 1970 The Journals and Letters of Sir Alexander Mackenzie. W. Kaye Lamb, ed. Cambridge: Published for the Hakluyt Society at the University Press.

MacNeish, June Hellm 1956 Leadership among the northeastern Athabascans. Anthropologica. 2:131-163.

Mair, Charles 1908 Through the Mackenzie Basin. A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899. Toronto, ON: William Briggs.

Mandel, Ernest 1968 Marxist Economic Theory. London: Merlin Press. 84

McCormack, Patricia A. 1975 Fort Chipewyan field journal. In possession of the author.

1976 Fond du Lac River-Black Lake field journal. In possession of the author.

1977-78 Fort Chipewyan field journals. In possession of the author.

1984 How the (North) West was won: development and underdevelopment in the Fort Chipewyan region. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta.

1988 Northwind Dreaming. Fort Chipewyan 1788-1988. Exhibit catalogue. Provincial Museum of Alberta Special Publication No. 6. Edmonton: Provincial Museum of Alberta.

1992 The political economy of bison management in Wood Buffalo National Park. Arctic. 45(4):367-380.

1996 Orkneymen and Lewismen: distinctive cultures and identities in the Canadian fur trade. Paper presented at the 1996 Rupert’s Land Colloquium, 31 May-4 June 1996, Whitehorse, Yukon.

1998 Northern Métis and the treaties. In Picking up the Threads. Métis History in the Mackenzie Basin. Pp. 171-201. Yellowknife: Métis Heritage Association of the Northwest Territories.

2007 Deconstructing Canadian subarctic grasslands. Paper prepared for the European Environmental History Conference, Amsterdam, 5-9 June 2007.

2009 Evolving accommodations: the sled dog in the Canadian fur trade. Third International meeting of the conference series, “Des bêtes et des hommes”: “Une bête parmi les hommes: le chien.” Université de Valenciennes, France, 5-6 November 2009.

2010 Fort Chipewyan and the Shaping of Canadian History, 1788-1920s: “We Like to be Free in this Country.” Vancouver, BC: UBC Press. In press. n.d. Fort Chipewyan genealogies.

McCormack, Patricia A., and Gordon Drever 1999 Treaty No. 8 and issues of taxation. Report prepared for Karin Buss, Ackroyd, Piasta, Roth & Day, in conjunction with Benoit et al v. the Queen. 30 April 1999.

2001 Treaty No. 8: rebuttal report. Prepared for Karin Buss, Ackroyd, Piasta, Roth & Day, in 85

conjunction with Benoit et al v. the Queen. 20 March 2001.

Mikisew Cree First Nation (MCFN) 1992a Band Council Resolution. 4 May 1992.

1992b Membership Code of the Mikisew Cree First Nation. December, 1992.

Morantz, Toby 1990 “So evil a practice”: a look at the debt system in the James Bay fur trade. In Rosemary E. Ommer, ed., Merchant Credit and Labour Strategies in Historical Perspective. Pp. 203-222. Fredericton, NB: Acadiensis Press.

Murray, Alexander Hunter 1910 Journal of the Yukon 1847-48. L. P. Burpee, ed. Publications of the Canadian Archives No. 4.

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Ommer, Rosemary E. 1990 Introduction. In Rosemary E. Ommer, ed., Merchant Credit and Labour Strategies in Historical Perspective. Pp. 9-15. Fredericton, NB: Acadiensis Press.

Podruchny, Carolyn 2006 Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Pollock, John 1978 Early cultures of the Clearwater River area. Archaeological Survey of Alberta, Occasional Paper no. 6. Edmonton: Alberta Culture, Historical Resources Division. Preston, Richard J. 2002 Cree Narrative. Expressing the Personal Meaning of Events. 2nd ed. Montreal: McGill- Queen’s University Press. (Orig. 1975)

Price, Richard, ed. 1979 The Spirit of the Alberta Indian Treaties. Toronto: Institute for Research on Public Policy.

Ray, Arthur J. 1974 Indians in the Fur Trade. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

1980 Indians as consumers in the eighteenth century. In Carol M. Judd and Arthur J. Ray, eds., 86

Old Trails and New Directions: Papers of the Third North American Fur Trade Conference. Pp. 255-271. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

1984 Periodic shortage, native welfare, and the Hudson’s Bay Company 1670-1930. In Shepard Krech III, The Subarctic Fur Trade: Native Social and Economic Adaptations. Pp. 1-20. Vancouver: UBC Press.

1990 The decline of paternalism in the Hudson’s Bay Company fur trade, 1870-1945. In Rosemary E. Ommer, ed., Merchant Credit and Labour Strategies in Historical Perspective. Pp. 188-202. Fredericton, NB: Acadiensis Press.

Reddekopp, G. Neil 1994 Post 1915 additions to the membership of the Fort McKay Band. Unpublished paper.

Ridington, Robin 1981 Beaver. In June Helm, ed., Subarctic. Handbook of North American Indians. 6:350-360. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

1982 Technology, world view, and adaptive strategy in a northern hunting society. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. 19(4):469-481.

Rodríguez-Alegría, Enrique 2008 Narratives of conquest, colonialism, and cutting-edge technology. American Anthropologist. 110(1):33-43.

Rogers, Edward S., and James G. E. Smith 1981 Environment and culture in the Shield and Mackenzie Borderlands. In June Helm, ed., Subarctic. Handbook of North American Indians. 6:130-145. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh Letter from Robert Campbell, Fort Chipewyan, to George Wilson, Industrial Museum of Scotland, 5 May 1859.

Russell, Dale R. 1991 Eighteenth-century Western Cree and their Neighbours. Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury Series Paper 143. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization.

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Sandlos, John 2002 Where the scientists roam: ecology, management and bison in northern Canada. Journal 87

of Canadian Studies. 37(2):93-129.

2003 Landscaping desire. Poetics, politics in the early biological surveys of the Canadian north. Space & Culture. 6(4):394-414.

Scollon, Ronald, and Suzanne B. K. Scollon 1979 The context of the informant narrative performance: from sociolinguistics to ethnolinguistics at Fort Chipewyan, Alberta. Canadian Ethnology Service Paper no. 52. National Museum of Man Mercury Series. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada.

Sharp, Henry S. 2001 Loon. Memory, Meaning, and Reality in a Northern Dene Community. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

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Smith, David M.

1973 Inkonze: Magico-religious beliefs of contact-traditional Chipewyan trading at Fort Resolution, NWT, Canada. Ethnology Division Paper no. 6. National Museum of Man Mercury Series. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada.

Smith, James G. E. 1975 The ecological basis of Chipewyan socio-territorial organization. In A. McFadyen-Clark, ed., Proceedings: Northern Athapaskan Conference, 1971. Vol. 2:3890461. Canadian Ethnology Service Paper no. 27. National Museum of Man Mercury Series. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada.

1981a Chipewyan. In June Helm, ed., Subarctic. Handbook of North American Indians. 6:271- 284. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

1981b Western Woods Cree. In June Helm, ed., Subarctic. Handbook of North American Indians. 6:256-270. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. n.d. Historical changes in the Chipewyan kinship system. Ms. in the possession of the author.

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Taché, Bishop Alexandre 88

1978 Letter from Bishop Alexandre Taché to his mother, concerning his life with the Chipewyan Nation. Father Gaston Carrière, trans. Prairie Forum. 3(2):131-156.

Tanner, Adrian 1965 The structure of the fur trade. M.A. thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia.

Thompson, David 1962 David Thompson’s Narrative 1784-1812. Richard Glover, ed. Toronto: The Champlain Society.

Tyrrell, J. B., ed. 1968 Journals of Samuel Hearne and Philip Turnor. New York: Greenwood Press. (Orig. 1934)

Van Kirk, Sylvia 1980 “Many Tender Ties.” Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870. Winnipeg: Watson & Dwyer Publishing Ltd.

Van Zyll de Jong, C. G. 1986 A Systematic Study of Recent Bison, with Particular Consideration of the Wood Bison (Bison bison athabasca Rhoads 1898). Publications in Natural Sciences No. 6. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada.

Wright, J. V. 1975 The prehistory of Lake Athabasca: an initial statement. Archaeological Survey of Canada Paper no. 20. National Museum of Canada Mercury Series. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. 89

Appendix 1. List of Publications, Papers, and Exhibits about Fort Chipewyan

Refereed Publications

2010 Fort Chipewyan and the Shaping of Canadian History, 1788-1920s: “We Like to be Free in this Country.” Vancouver, BC: UBC Press. In press.

2000 Overcoming the differences of treaty and scrip: the Community Development Program in Fort Chipewyan. In Duff Crerar and Jaroslav Petryshyn, eds., Treaty 8 Revisited: Selected Papers on the 1999 Centennial Conference. Lobstick. 1(1):277-295.

Northern Metis and the treaties. In Picking Up the Threads; Metis History in the Mackenzie Basin. Pp. 171-201. Yellowknife, Metis Heritage Association of the Northwest Territories.

1996 The Canol project at Fort Chipewyan. In Bob Hesketh, ed., Three Northern Wartime Projects. Pp. 183-199. CCI Occasional Publication No. 38. Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta, and Edmonton & District Historical Society.

1994 Linking bush and town: the mixed economy of the Aboriginal peoples of Fort Chipewyan. In Proceedings of the 8th International Abashiri Symposium on Peoples and Cultures of the Boreal Forest. Pp. 21-33. Hokkaido Museum of Northern Peoples, Abashiri City, Hokkaido, Japan. l993 Romancing the northwest as prescriptive history: Fort Chipewyan and the northern expansion of the Canadian state. In Patricia A. McCormack and R. Geoffrey Ironside, eds., The Uncovered Past: Roots of Northern Alberta Societies. Pp. 89-104. Circumpolar Research Series No. 3. Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta.

Co-editor with R. Geoffrey Ironside. The Uncovered Past: Roots of Northern Alberta Societies. Includes the "Introduction" and "Conclusion." Circumpolar Research Series No. 3. Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta. l992 The political economy of bison management in Wood Buffalo National Park. Arctic. 45(4):367-380. Nominated for the Eleanor B. Leacock award. l991 "That's a piece of junk": issues in contemporary subarctic collecting. Arctic Anthropology. 28(l):124-137. l989 Chipewyans turn Cree: governmental and structural factors in ethnic processes. In K. S. Coates and W. R. Morrison, eds., For Purposes of Dominion: Essays in Honour of 90

Morris Zaslow. Pp. 125-138. North York, Ont.: Captus Press.

Working with the community: a dialectical approach to exhibit development. Alberta Museums Review. 14(2):4-8. l987 Fort Chipewyan and the Great Depression. Canadian Issues. 8:69-92.

1984 Becoming trappers: the transformation to a fur trade mode of production at Fort Chipewyan. In Rendezvous, Selected Papers of the Fourth North American Fur Trade Conference, 1981. Pp. 155-173. St. Paul, Minnesota: North American Fur Trade Conference.

Other Publications

2002 Introduction: “A promise by any other name...” Treaty No. 8 and taxation. P. 283. With Gordon Drever. Imposing tax: taxation in the Northwest Territories and Aboriginal fears in the Treaty Eight region. In David G. Malaher, compiler, Selected Papers of Rupert's Land Colloquium 2002. Pp. 309-315. Winnipeg: Centre for Rupert's Land Studies, University of Winnipeg.

2001 Genealogical studies in community-based research. Proceedings, Canadian Indigenous/Native Studies Association Annual Conference. CD ROM.

1996 The Athabasca influenza epidemic of 1835. Issues in the North. CCI Occasional Publication No. 40. Pp. 33-42. Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta.

1995 Revision of the entry on "Chipewyan" for the Canadian Encyclopedia, originally written by James G. E. Smith (deceased); revised version carries both names as co-authors. l990 Government comes to Fort Chipewyan: expansion of the state into the heart of the fur trade country. In Patricia A. McCormack and R. Geoffrey Ironside, eds., Fort Chipewyan-Fort Vermilion Bicentennial Conference Proceedings. Pp. 133-137. Edmonton: Boreal Institute for Northern Studies. l988 Northwind Dreaming: Fort Chipewyan l788-l988. Exhibit catalogue. Provincial Museum of Alberta Special Publication No. 6. Edmonton: Provincial Museum of Alberta.

Exhibits

1999 Treaty No. 8 and the Northern Collecting of Dr. O. C. Edwards 500 square foot centennial commemoration exhibit developed in cooperation with NS480 91

students. Designed by Bernd Hildebrandt. School of Native Studies and Museums and Collections Services, University of Alberta. l989 Northwind Dreaming: Fort Chipewyan l788-l988 500 square foot traveling exhibit, for venues in Alberta, NWT, Yukon, B.C., Sask., and Manitoba, l990-94. Designed by Vic Clapp. Provincial Museum of Alberta, Edmonton. l988 Northwind Dreaming: Fort Chipewyan l788-l988 3,000 square feet feature exhibit commemorating the bicentennial of the founding of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta's oldest, permanently occupied community, and celebrating the lives of the Indian, Metis, and non-Native peoples who have made their homes there for 200 years and longer. Developed in collaboration with community residents. Contained over 400 artifacts, many borrowed from collections in Canada, U.S., and Scotland. Designed by Vic Clapp. Provincial Museum of Alberta, Edmonton. l986 Trapping in Transition: Native Trapping in Northern Alberta l,000 square feet exhibit depicting the roles of trapping in Aboriginal economies in northern Alberta in the years before World War II and in the present. Designed by Shelby Craigen. Provincial Museum of Alberta, Edmonton.

Selected Papers10

2007 Deconstructed Canadian subarctic grasslands. Prepared for the European Environmental History Conference, Amsterdam, 5-9 June 2007.

2002 Imposing tax: taxation in the Northwest Territories and Aboriginal fears of the state in the Treaty Eight region. Co-authored with Gordon Drever. Prepared for book about the Benoit case.

2001 Expanding the boundaries: studying Dene kinship. Presented as part of “Dene Kinship and Ethnohistory,” at the 100th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropology Association, Nov. 28-Dec. 2, 2001, Washington, D.C.

Canadian nation-building: a pretty name for internal colonialism. Presented at “Nation Building,” British Association for Canadian Studies 25th Annual Conference, April 11-14, 2000, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

1998 Smith's Landing/Fort Fitzgerald: an economic history. Prepared for the Smith's Landing First Nation, October 23, 1998.

1994 James and Isabella Thomson: a Lewis family in the Canadian fur trade. Presented at the

10This list does not include conference papers that were published or “popular” papers. 92

Sixth Biennial Rupert's Land Research Centre Colloquium, Edmonton, May 25-27, l994.

Two solitudes: museum displays and Indians in the fur trade. Presented at Inventing Fur Trade Traditions, a session organized by Patricia A. McCormack and Robert Coutts for the Fifth Biennial Rupert's Land Colloquium, Winnipeg, Feb. 6-9, l992.

Expanding state regulatory systems and their impacts on northern and Native peoples. Presented at Symposium on Contemporary and Historical Issues in Legal Pluralism: Prairie and Northern Canada, organized by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Law in Society Program, Winnipeg, Nov. 7-8, l992.

The Canadian fur trade: the Orkney connection. Presented at Focus on the Forks, a conference on the historical significance of the forks region, Winnipeg, April, l991.

l990 Northern boats: Native lake skiffs and their possible Orkney origin. Prepared for the Orkney Museum Service and presented in Orkney, Scotland, September, l990.

The Orkney Islands and the Canadian fur trade and Native communities. Presented at Partnerships: Museums and Native Living Cultures, Alberta Museums Association Professional Development Series, Edmonton, Dec. 3-4, l990.

l989 From their labor: a material slant to ethnohistorical research. Presented at the American Society for Ethnohistory Conference, Chicago, Nov. 2-5, l989.

Reviving contemporary collecting: the Fort Chipewyan collection at the Provincial Museum of Alberta. Presented at Collecting the Objects of Others, a special session of the 88th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.C., Nov. 15-19, l989.

Hub of the North: Fort Chipewyan l788-l988. Presented at the Rupertsland Colloquium, Winnipeg and Churchill, June 29-July 3, l988.

l986 Rooted in the past: the modern community of Fort Chipewyan. Presented at the Boreal Institute for Northern Studies 25th anniversary conference, Knowing the North.

1982 Fur trade society to class society: the development of ethnic stratification at Fort Chipewyan, Alberta. Presented at the Canadian Ethnology Society meetings, Vancouver, B.C.

1979 The Cree Band land entitlement in Wood Buffalo National Park: history and issues. Presented at the Edmonton Chapter of the National and Provincial Parks Association of Canada. 93

Expert witness reports

2001 Treaty No. 8: rebuttal report. Co-authored with Gordon Drever. Prepared for Karin Buss, Ackroyd, Piasta, Roth & Day, in conjunction with Benoit et al v. the Queen. 20 March 2001.

1999 Treaty No. 8 and issues of taxation. Co-authored with Gordon Drever. Prepared for Karin Buss, Ackroyd, Piasta, Roth & Day, in conjunction with Benoit et al v. the Queen. 30 April 1999. Appendix 2.

CURRICULUM VITAE

PATRICIA A. McCORMACK

Associate Professor Faculty of Native Studies 2-31 Pembina Hall University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2H8 Canada

Phone 780 492-7690 (university office) 780 992-9792 (home office) Fax 780 492-0527 E-mail [email protected]

Current Adjunct Positions

Adjunct Professor, Comparative Literature Program, Office of Interdisciplinary Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Human Ecology, Faculty of Ales University of Alberta Adjunct Associate Professor, Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta Adjunct Researcher, Royal Alberta Museum

EDUCATION

1984 Ph.D. Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta Thesis: "How the (North) West Was Won: Development and Underdevelopment in the Fort Chipewyan Region"

1975 M.A. Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta Thesis: "A Model to Determine Possible Adaptive Strategies for the Aboriginal Treeline Dene"

1969 B.A. (Honors) Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta Thesis: "A Colonial Factory: Fort Chipewyan"

SKILLS OVERVIEW

1. Subject interests • North American Aboriginal peoples: Aboriginal and traditional cultures and identities, cultural suppression, cultural transformation/renewal, modern cultures 95

• Subarctic and Canadian North, northwestern Plains • Scots and the Canadian fur trade; cultures and histories of Orkney and Lewis • Canadian history: expansion of the state and internal colonialism; political economy • Ethnohistory • Oral traditions and indigenous knowledge • Genealogy • Material culture, museology, repatriation • Discourse and representation • Social structure • Gender relations

2. Research process and outcomes • Community-based research and partnership projects • Archival and museum-based research • Expert reports and courtroom testimony • Research ethics

3. Education • Adult education; course design and instruction • Evaluation of students

4. Administration • Participation on university, government, and interagency committees • Budget preparation and management • Hiring, management, and evaluation of personnel • Volunteer recruitment and management • Conference planning

5. Heritage and museums programs • Heritage preservation and interpretation; cultural resource management • Material culture research and collecting; collections management and conservation • Exhibit development • Public programming

6. Media and public relations • Radio and T.V. experience • Public speaking to diverse audiences

AWARDS 96

Scholarly Awards

1993 Fellow of the American Anthropological Association

1969 Woodrow Wilson Fellowship

Public Awards

1993 Fort Chipewyan Historical Society, Lifetime Membership

1983 Yukon Historical and Museums Association, Honorary Life Membership

GRANTS

Research Grants

1998 University of Alberta: EEF Support for the Advancement of Scholarship Operating Grant (Small Faculties Research Grants Program), for “The Making of Modern Fort Chipewyan, a Contemporary Native Community,” $4,998.00. 13 May 1998.

Alberta Historical Resources Foundation, for “The Making of Modern Fort Chipewyan, a Contemporary Native Community,” $8,000.00. 18 December 1998.

1996 University of Alberta: Central Research Fund Operating Grant for "Blackfoot Traditions Project," $4,755.00.

1989 Wenner-Gren Grant-in-Aid for "The Orcadian/Scottish Roots of Canadian Native Cultures: An Ethnohistorical Study," $8,000.00 US.

1987 Canadian Museums Association Short-Term Study Grant for "Fort Chipewyan Bicentennial Project: Research in British Collections," $1,000.00.

1985 Boreal Institute Research Grant for "The Fort Chipewyan Fur Trade - Fort Chipewyan, Alberta," $4,552.50

1975 Boreal Institute Research Grant for "Native Uses of Fire in the Lake Athabasca Region"

1970, 1974-1977 University of Alberta Summer Bursaries

Travel Grants

2006 EFF Support for the Advancement of Scholarship, Travel Grant, to present a paper at the 9th North American Fur Trade Conference and 12th Rupert’s Land Colloquium, St. Louis, 97

Mo., 24-28, 2006. Grant #A026663 for $2,000.00 awarded 9 May 2006.

2004 EFF Support for the Advancement of Scholarship (Small Faculties), Travel Grant, to present a paper at the 11th Rupert’s Land Colloquium 2004, 24-31 May 2004, Kenora, Ontario. Grant #A017639 for $1,404.00 awarded 27 April 2004.

2003 HFASSR Humanities, Fine Arts and Social Sciences Research Travel Grant, to present a paper at the American Society for Ethnohistory Annual Meeting, 5-9 Nov. 2003, Riverside, California. Grant #A014704 for $800.00 awarded 22 Sept. 2003.

2002 UFASSR Humanities, Fine Arts and Social Sciences Research Travel Grant to present a paper at the Rupert's Land Research Centre Colloquium, 9-12 April 2002, Oxford, England. Grant #G124120491 for $1,200.00 awarded 10 January 2002.

2001 EFF Support for the Advancement of Scholarship (Small Faculties) grant to present a paper at the 100th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Session, 28 Nov. - 2 Dec. 2001, Washington, D.C. Grant #G018000417 for $1,737.889 awarded 10 May 2001.

2000 SSR Conference Travel Fund grant to present a paper at “Nation Building,” British Association for Canadian Studies 25th Annual Conference, 11-14 April 2000, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Grant #G124120312 for $1,200.00 awarded 12 April 2000.

1997 Central Research Fund grant to present a paper at The Fur Trade Era: The Influence of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade on the Development of the American West, Museum of the Mountain Man, 11-13 Sept. 1997, Pinedale, Wyoming.

1996 CRF grant to present a paper at the Sacred Lands conference, 24-26 Oct. 1996, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

1995 CRF travel grant to present a paper at the Rupert's Land Research Centre Colloquium, 1-4 June 1996, Whitehorse, Yukon.

1994 CRF travel grant to present a paper at the Western History Association 34th Annual Conference, 19-24 Oct. 1994, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

EMPLOYMENT AND RESEARCH

1998-present Associate Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta (on leave, 1 Jan. - 30 June 2010) Tenure awarded December 1997; effective 1 July 1998 1994-98 Assistant Professor, School of Native Studies, University of Alberta 98

Position involves research into Aboriginal cultures, histories, and identities and subsequent publication; development of courses with an emphasis on Aboriginal perspectives and instruction to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students; professional contributions; university and community service.

Current research: One focus is a broad research program designed to study the transformation of the cultures, identities, social structures, lifeways, and material cultures of the Aboriginal peoples of northwestern Canada, with particular reference to Chipewyans, Crees, Scots-Métis, and French-Métis. Current projects include: “Fort Chipewyan and the Shaping of Canadian History,” with one book in press and a second in revision; a book about Thanadelthur and the early fur trade on the west coast of Hudson Bay; and a transatlantic study of Orcadian/Lewis connections to Canadian Native peoples and cultures.

A second focus is research into traditional Blackfoot culture and history (northwestern Plains) and contemporary cultural revitalization/redefinition, its material aspects and representation in museum collections and interpretation, and the meanings of repatriation. The "Blackfoot Traditions Research Program” includes two major components: the history of Blackfoot ranching and the revitalization of Blackfoot religious traditions. The continued importance of horses is a thread that connects both projects and also relates to my personal life.

Artifact collection: I have developed and continue to build a personal collection of artifacts with two dimensions: stereotypes about Aboriginal people and contemporary Aboriginal iconography.

Adjunct Positions

2010-2013 Adjunct Professor, Comparative Literature Program, Office of Interdisciplinary Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta. 1 Jan. 2010-31 Dec. 2014.

1996-present Curator, University of Alberta Art and Artifact (Ethnographic) Collection (six Ethnology Collections: Edwards/Scully, Smith, Lord, Mason, Molly Cork Congo Collection). Part of the Multi-MIMSY Users' Group (computer-based collections database).

1995-present Research Associate, Royal Alberta Museum (formerly, Provincial Museum of Alberta)

1990-present Adjunct Associate Professor, Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta

Adjunct Professor, Department of Human Ecology, University of Alberta 99

1992-98 Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Anthropology l99l-95 Associate Curator of Ethnology, Glenbow Museum l988-90 Adjunct Researcher, Boreal Institute for Northern Studies, University of Alberta

Professional Employment

2010 For a Fort Nelson First Nation family, represented by Karey M. Brooks (Janes Freedman Kyle Law Corporation, Vancouver): an expert report relating to a variety of ethnohistorical and Treaty No. 8 issues (135 pp.).

2007 For Mikisew Cree First Nation, represented by Peter McMahon (Rath & Company, Calgary): genealogical consultation regarding a Treaty Eight claim.

2005 For Siksika Nation, represented by Clayton Leonard (MacPherson Leslie & Tyerman, Calgary): a report about historic Blackfoot territories (52 pp.).

2004 For Mikisew Cree First Nation, represented by Peter C. Graburn (Rath & Company, Calgary): an economic history of the First Nation in connection with a Treaty Eight claim (124 pp.).

2003-2006 For Big Island Lake Cree Nation, Saskatchewan, represented by James Jodouin (Woloshyn & Company, Saskatoon): research in connection with a Treaty Six claim.

1999-2002 For Treaty 8 First Nations (Akaitcho Tribal Council, Lesser Slave Lake Indian Regional Council, Athabasca Tribal Council, Kee Tas Kee Now Tribal Council), represented by Karin Ross and Elizabeth Johnson (Ackroyd, Piasta, Roth & Day, Edmonton): research about what Aboriginal peoples in the Treaty 8 region may have known about taxation when they negotiated the treaty in 1899 and 1900. In collaboration with Gordon Drever, prepared an expert report (30 April 1999; 63 pp.) and a rebuttal report (20 March 2001; 61 pp.). Served as an expert witness summer, 2001, and advised the lawyers about cross-examination of defense witnesses. Subsequently organized a conference session that included expert witnesses and lawyers from both plaintiffs and defense.

1999-present Appraisals of Native artifacts for various clients (e.g., University of Alberta, Royal Alberta Museum, Northern Cultural Arts Museum, Motor Association Insurance Company)

1998 For Smith's Landing First Nation, represented by Jerome Slavik (Ackroyd, Piasta, Roth & Day, Edmonton): prepared a report on the economic history of Smith's Landing/Fort Fitzgerald for its use in a Treaty Eight claim (40 pp.). 100

1997 For the Métis Heritage Association of the Northwest Territories: prepared a chapter about the history of northern Metis in relation to Treaties No. 8 and No. 11 and scrip for a book on Métis of the Mackenzie Basin.

For the Provincial Museum of Alberta: wrote script for two units of the new Gallery of Aboriginal Peoples dealing with contemporary economic ventures and political activities.

1996-98 For Little Red River Cree Nation and Tallcree First Nation: Project Director, Cultural Resource Inventory Project. Designed project, provided training to members of four research teams (1996) and one research team (1997), and supervised the teams as they researched places of cultural significance in the traditional lands of these two First Nations. Prepared regular reports for Chiefs and Councils. Contributed to development of project software (LightHouse) and user manual and coordinated with a parallel Biophysical Inventory Project. Participated as requested in meetings with the two First Nations.

1996 For Treaty Land Entitlement, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada: Prepared a confidential report on a northern claim consisting of an annotated bibliography and an historical analysis (57 pp.).

1984-94 Curator of Ethnology at the Provincial Museum of Alberta (now the Royal Alberta Museum)

Administered the Ethnology Program, a sub-unit of the museum, which involved program and policy development, budget planning and management, and personnel recruitment and management. Program activities focused on the curation of a large collection of material culture of the Aboriginal peoples of Alberta and other regions (First Nations, Métis, Inuit), documentation of Aboriginal cultures and lifeways through field and archival investigations and collection of additional artifacts, interpretation through publications, exhibits, and public programs, and cooperation with a wide range of client groups. Program responsibility was for the entire province and related regions (primarily the western Subarctic, northern Plains, and Canadian Arctic). Collecting activities emphasized contemporary materials with good documentation, although older artifacts were also acquired.

Research: Conducted research at Fort Chipewyan, Janvier, Sucker Creek, Saddle Lake, Kehewin, Blood Reserve, Peigan Reserve, Poorman Reserve, and in Scotland, especially the Orkney Islands and the Outer Hebrides. Museum and archival collections were studied in the United States, Canada, and Britain.

Major project: Initiated, coordinated, and conducted research for a special project to commemorate the Fort Chipewyan Bicentennial with a major in-house exhibit, travelling exhibit, exhibit catalogue, conference, and public programming. Served on two 101

committees, one to plan the conference and publish proceedings and a book of referred papers, and the second to administer a special research fund for scholarly research in the Fort Chipewyan and Fort Vermilion regions. Participated in extensive fund-raising and coordinated activities with Fort Chipewyan residents. Co-edited conference proceedings (l990) and a book of refereed papers (l993). In 1993 was awarded a lifetime membership in the Fort Chipewyan Historical Society in recognition of work researching and promoting the heritage of the community.

1984 For the Friends of Jezebel, a society organized to promote tolerance and understanding of prostitutes in Edmonton: developed a research proposal on the "sex industry" in Edmonton

1983 For the Yukon Native Languages Project: prepared community study kits for Pelly Crossing, Carmacks, Burwash Landing, Destruction Bay.

1980-83 For CBC: commentaries for national and regional programs on Native and northern affairs.

1982 For CBC: "Homeland": 12 episode series tracing the development of the concept of Aboriginal rights and land claims in Canada. Taped for CBC Radio (Whitehorse) with broadcaster Neil Ford.

1982 For Athabasca University: developed a draft correspondence course, "Contemporary Native Issues."

l98l-82 For the Yukon Educational Television Society: prepared briefs on three Yukon historical figures (Leroy Napoleon "Jack" McQuesten, William Ogilvie, and Skookum Jim, or Keish) as background information for three episodes of The Yukoners, a series of videotaped interviews between a CBC broadcaster and the historical figure, played by a local actor.

1980-81 For Council for Yukon Indians: researcher-consultant to oral history program. Assisted in coordinating an oral history workshop for Native researchers (1981).

1979-80 For the Yukon Native Brotherhood and the University of British Columbia: developed a "Yukon Studies" course outline, which entailed a survey of literature related to all aspects of the Yukon's history and socioeconomic development. The commentary provides an overview of Yukon social, economic, political, and constitutional history, with an annotated bibliography of nearly 500 sources.

1975-76 For the Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta: General Editor of The Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology, a quarterly professional journal. Solicited 102

manuscripts, edited and published several special issues as well as general issues

1971 For Keith Crowe, DIAND: research to support a history of northern Native Canadians. Included library research and fieldwork in communities in the Great Slave Lake and upper MacKenzie regions.

Expert Witness and Related Research

On-going advice provided to lawyers in Alberta and Saskatchewan regarding Native cultures, lifeways, and histories related to the First Nations and Métis peoples of the Treaties No. 6, 7, 8, and 11 regions, and to alleged offenses under fisheries and wildlife legislation.

Qualified as an expert witness in the following trials:

1986 Expert witness by way of Affidavit, in The Queen and John Piche.

20 Jan. 1986 R. vs. Donald Harvey et al. (Sturgeon Lake First Nation). Fishing regulations violation.

12 May 1986 R. v. Joe Desjarlais, William Durocher, and Dorothy Durocher (Fishing Lake Metis Settlement). Fishing regulations violation.

9 Sept. 1987 R. v. Walter Janvier and R. v. John Cardinal (Janvier First Nation). Fishing regulations violation.

14 Oct. 1988 R. v. Vic Machatis (Cold Lake First Nation). Fishing regulations violation.

2-5 Dec. 1991 R. v. Ernest Wolf (Onion Lake First Nation). Hunting regulations violation.

10-11 Sept. 1992 R. vs. Larry Littlewolfe (Onion Lake First Nation). Hunting regulations violation.

8 Feb. 1995 R. v. Angelique Janvier (Cold Lake First Nation). Hunting regulations violation.

16 Sept. 1996 R. v. Hazel Jacko et al. and R. v. Jobby Metchewais et al. (Cold Lake First Nation). Fishing regulations violation.

Summer 1997 Appeared in Edmonton, before Judge Meuwissen, with the U.S. Department of the Interior, in connection with the U.S. White Earth Lands Settlement Act. 103

23 May 2001 Benoit et al. v. the Queen (Treaty No. 8 First Nations). Treaty Eight litigation in federal court. Justice Douglas Campbell.

12 May 2005 Brett Janvier v. the Queen (Cold Lake First Nation). Fishing regulations violation. Judge Wheatley.

29 Sept. 2009 Betty Woodward and Mickey Cockerill and Harry Cockerill vs. Chief and Council of the Fort McMurray No. 268 First Nation (Treaty 8 First Nation). Judicial review of two cases heard concurrently concerning band membership. Federal Court Justice O’Reilly.

Early Research and Other Activities

1978 Archival investigations in Edmonton (Provincial Archives), Ottawa (Public Archives of Canada), and Fort Smith (Archives of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate; Archives of the Bishop)

1977-78 Community research in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta

1975-76 Fieldwork on Native uses of fire as an habitat management tool in the Lake Athabasca region (Fort Chipewyan and Black Lake).

1970 Research in the Hudson's Bay Company archival collection in the Public Archives of Canada, Ottawa

1968 Alberta Service Corps, Fort Chipewyan, Alberta: conducted community service projects.

1967 Ward Aide, Charles Camsell Hospital, Edmonton, Alberta.

1966 Nurse Aide, Delaware General Hospital, Wilmington, Delaware.

UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION AND SERVICE

University Committees

2009-12 General Faculties Council representative for the Faculty of Native Studies (24 Nov. 2009-30 June 2012)

2009 Association for Academic Staff, University of Alberta representative for faculty members at the Faculty of Native Studies

2005-11 GFC Academic Appeals Committee (faculty member) 104

2001-09 University Committee on Human Research Ethics (UCHRE)

2003-present Council for the Interdisciplinary Program in Religious Studies (formerly, Religious Studies Advisory Council), University of Alberta

1997-present Multi MIMSY Users' Group (University curators)

2003-04 General Faculties Council representative for the School of Native Studies

2003-04 Henry Marshall Tory Selection Committee

2002-03, 1997 Selection Committees, Director of the School of Native Studies

2003-06, 1997-2000 Association for Academic Staff, University of Alberta, for faculty members at the School of Native Studies

1995-98 General Faculties Council Special Sessions Committee, Univ. of Alberta, 1 July 1995 - 30 June 1998

Faculty of Native Studies

2003-present Acting Dean in the Dean’s absence, upon request (originally appointed 3 Dec. 2003)

2009-12 Member, Academic Affairs Committee

2006-09 Chair, Faculty Evaluation Committee

2007-09 Ad hoc Curriculum Review Committee

2007-08 Ad hoc committee to coordinate NS210 and NS211

2006-present Research Methods and Theory Undergraduate Curriculum Working Group

1996-97, 1998-99, 2003-04 Selection Committees for faculty positions

1994-present Faculty of Native Studies Council

1999-2006, 2007-09 Chair, Research Ethics Board 2007 Member, Research Ethics Board

1996-2000 School of Native Studies Executive Committee 105

1997-99 Committee on Retention and Support

Other University Involvement l990 Department of Textiles and Clothing, University of Alberta: participated in developing new departmental material cultural focus

TEACHING POSITIONS

University of Alberta 1998-present Associate Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta 1994-97 Assistant Professor, School of Native Studies, University of Alberta l972-76, l978, 1984-89, l993, 1994 Sessional Lecturer/Instructor (Anthropology, Canadian Studies, Geography)

Sessional Lecturer/Instructor: other institutions l993 University of Idaho 1984 Grant MacEwan Community College at Alexis Reserve 1979-83 Yukon Campus, Whitehorse, for the University of British Columbia (from l979-8l, Yukon Teacher Education Program) l979, 1983 Athabasca University at Blue Quills Native Education Centre, St. Paul, Alberta

Graduate Teaching Assistantships l970-71, 1973-75 Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta

For Parks Canada 1995 Developed and delivered a curriculum package on "Partnerships and the Parks Canada Cultural Resource Management Policy" for a Cultural Resource Management Orientation Course, held in Haines Junction, Yukon, 19-21 Oct. 1995.

For the Alberta Government 1993 Insights toward Understanding Contemporary Aboriginal Cultures. Developed with Art Sciorra for instruction to forestry service staff from Alberta, B.C., and the N.W.T., at the Forest Technology School, Hinton, Alberta, 25 October l993.

Understanding Contemporary Aboriginal Issues and Working with Aboriginal Cultures and Communities. Developed with Art Sciorra for instruction to senior managers, Department of Environmental Protection, Lands and Wildlife Division, 13-14 May l993.

COURSES OFFERED An asterisk [*] denotes new course development.

University of Alberta 106

Faculty of Native Studies 100 Introduction to Native Studies 210 Native Issues and Insights I (Issues in Native History) 300* Traditional Cultural Foundations I 330* Native Economic Development 335* Native People and the Fur Trade 355* Oral Traditions and Indigenous Knowledge 361* Challenging Racism and Stereotypes 376* Native Demography and Disease 380* Selected Topics in Native Studies • Oral Traditions and Indigenous Knowledge (became NS355) • Traditional Cultural Foundations (became NS300 and paved the way for NS361) • Native Material Culture • Challenging Racism and Stereotypes (became NS361) 390 Community Research Methods * Research Methods in Native Studies (new course in 2008) 400* Traditional Cultural Foundations II 403* Selected Topics in Native Studies • Aboriginal Origins; Traditional Cultural Foundations II (became NS400) • Native Demography and Disease (became NS376) 480* Métis/Indian/Inuit Issues Seminar: Treaty No. 8 and Métis Scrip (1999) 490* Community-Based Research 499* Research Project 503 Directed Readings in Native Studies 520* Honors Seminar

Anthropology 202 Man and Culture 210* Sex, Society, and the Individual 282* Canadian Issues in Ethnographic Perspective 306 Introduction to Prehistory 346 Circumpolar Peoples 350 North American Indians 355 Contemporary Canadian Indians 410* Sex and Status in Comparative Perspective

Canadian Studies 402* Canada's North: The Human Dimension 302* Canada’s North: The Human Dimension

Geography 446 Northern Human Geography 107

Human Ecology 238 Material Culture

University of Idaho History 404-504 Anthropologist on teaching team for a course about Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce War

University of British Columbia (in Whitehorse, at Yukon College) Anthro/Soc 100* Elementary Problems in Anthropological and Sociological Analysis 200* Introduction to Social Organization 201* Ethnic Relations 329* Indians and Eskimos of Canada

Athabasca University Anthro 207 Introductory Anthropology 326* Contemporary Native Issues

GRADUATE AND HONOURS SUPERVISION

Graduate Supervision

University of Alberta: Although the Faculty of Native Studies does not yet offer a graduate program, I have been formally involved with 18 graduate students at the University of Alberta, 8 at the Ph.D. level and 10 at the Master's level, serving on supervisory committees and as an external examiner for candidacy exams and dissertation defenses in the following faculties (departments in parentheses): Agriculture, Forestry, and Home Economics (Human Ecology), Arts (Anthropology, Comparative Literature, English, History, Human Geography, Political Science), Education (Educational Policy Studies), Physical Education and Recreation (Recreation, Sport, and Tourism), Science (Biology), and Business.

External committee member for: M.A. in Design at the University of Calgary

External examiner for: • M.A. defense in Anthropology at the University of Lethbridge • Ph.D. defense in History at Carleton University • Ph.D. defense in History at the University of Manitoba

Honours Supervision

1998-99 The School of Native Studies initiated an Honours Program and accepted its first honors students - a class of four - in September 1998. I supervised the first year of this program and developed a draft Honours Program guide. 108

1998-2009 NS Honours student supervision (10 in total)

2002-03 - supervised one honours student for the Department of Anthropology

PUBLICATIONS, EXHIBITS, PAPERS

Refereed Publications

2010 In press Recollecting: Lives of Aboriginal Women of the Canadian Northwest and the U.S. Borderlands. Edited jointly with Sarah Carter, with jointly written introduction. Athabasca, AB: Athabasca University Press. Includes my own article: “Lost women: Native wives in Orkney and Lewis.”

In press Fort Chipewyan and the Shaping of Canadian History, 1788-1920s: We like to be free in this country. Vancouver: UBC Press.

2007 Visioning Thanadelthur: shaping a Canadian icon. Manitoba History. No. 55:2-6. June 2007.

2005 Competing narratives: barriers between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state. In Duane Champagne, Karen Jo Torjesen, and Susan Steiner, eds., Indigenous Peoples and the Modern State. Pp. 109-120. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press.

2003 The many faces of Thanadelthur: documents, stories, and images. In Jennifer S. H. Brown and Elizabeth Vibert, eds., Reading Beyond Words: Contexts for Native History. 2nd ed. Pp. 329-364. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press.

2000 Overcoming the differences of treaty and scrip: the Community Development Program in Fort Chipewyan. In Duff Crerar and Jaroslav Petryshyn, eds., Treaty 8 Revisited: Selected Papers on the 1999 Centennial Conference. Lobstick. 1(1):277-295.

1999 Securing Northern Futures: Developing Research Partnerships. Co-editor with D. Wall, M.M.R. Freeman, M. Payne, E. E. Wein, and R. W. Wein. Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press, University of Alberta.

1998 Native homelands as cultural landscapes: decentering the wilderness paradigm. In Jill Oakes, Rick Riewe, and Kathi Kinew, eds., Sacred Lands: Claims, Conflicts and Resolutions. Pp. 25-32. Occasional Publication No. 43. Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta.

Northern Métis and the treaties. In Picking Up the Threads; Métis History in the Mackenzie Basin. Pp. 171-201. Yellowknife, Métis Heritage Association of the Northwest Territories. 109

1996 The Canol project at Fort Chipewyan. In Bob Hesketh, ed., Three Northern Wartime Projects. Pp. 183-199. CCI Occasional Publication No. 38. Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta, and Edmonton & District Historical Society.

1994 Linking bush and town: the mixed economy of the Aboriginal peoples of Fort Chipewyan. In Proceedings of the 8th International Abashiri Symposium on Peoples and Cultures of the Boreal Forest. Pp. 21-33. Hokkaido Museum of Northern Peoples, Abashiri City, Hokkaido, Japan. l993 Romancing the northwest as prescriptive history: Fort Chipewyan and the northern expansion of the Canadian state. In Patricia A. McCormack and R. Geoffrey Ironside, eds., The Uncovered Past: Roots of Northern Alberta Societies. Pp. 89-104. Circumpolar Research Series No. 3. Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta.

Co-editor with R. Geoffrey Ironside. The Uncovered Past: Roots of Northern Alberta Societies. Includes the "Introduction" and "Conclusion." Circumpolar Research Series No. 3. Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta.

Images of the buffalo in the collection of the Provincial Museum of Alberta. Alberta. 3(2):37-43. With Ruth McConnell. l992 The political economy of bison management in Wood Buffalo National Park. Arctic. 45(4):367-380. Nominated for the Eleanor B. Leacock award.

The Ethnology Oblate Collection at the Provincial Museum of Alberta. Western Oblate Studies 2. Pp. 231-236. Queenston, Ont.: The Edwin Mellen Press. With Ruth McConnell.

Editor: Prairie Forum. Vol. l7, no. 2. Special issue on Aboriginal peoples. l991 "That's a piece of junk": issues in contemporary subarctic collecting. Arctic Anthropology. 28(l):124-137. l989 Chipewyans turn Cree: governmental and structural factors in ethnic processes. In K. S. Coates and W. R. Morrison, eds., For Purposes of Dominion: Essays in Honour of Morris Zaslow. Pp. 125-138. North York, Ont.: Captus Press.

Working with the community: a dialectical approach to exhibit development. Alberta Museums Review. 14(2):4-8. l987 Fort Chipewyan and the Great Depression. Canadian Issues. 8:69-92.

1986 The Yukon. In R.B. Byers, ed., Canadian Annual Review of Politics and Public Affairs 110

l983. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

1985 The Yukon. In R.B. Byers, ed., Canadian Annual Review of Politics and Public Affairs 1982. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

1984 Becoming trappers: the transformation to a fur trade mode of production at Fort Chipewyan. In Rendezvous, Selected Papers of the Fourth North American Fur Trade Conference, 1981. Pp. 155-173. St. Paul, Minnesota: North American Fur Trade Conference.

Accepted (refereed)

“A world we have lost”: the plural society of Fort Chipewyan. To be included in Finding a Way to the Heart: Feminist Writings on Aboriginal and Women’s History in Canada, a volume submitted to University of Toronto Press, dedicated to Sylvia Van Kirk, co-edited by V. J. Korinek and R. J. Brownlie.

In Preparation (will be refereed)

Fort Chipewyan and the Shaping of Canadian History, Book 2. From the 1920s to the 1970s. Book ms. To be submitted to UBC Press.

Deconstructing Canadian subarctic grasslands.

Other Publications (non-refereed)

2004 Telling the story of Canada: the roles of the fur trade. In David G. Malaher, compiler, Selected Papers of Rupert's Land Colloquium 2004. Pp. 473-482. Winnipeg: Centre for Rupert's Land Studies, University of Winnipeg.

2002 Introduction: “A promise by any other name....” Treaty No. 8 and taxation. P. 283. With Gordon Drever. Imposing tax: taxation in the Northwest Territories and Aboriginal fears in the Treaty Eight region. In David G. Malaher, compiler, Selected Papers of Rupert's Land Colloquium 2002. Pp. 309-315. Winnipeg: Centre for Rupert's Land Studies, University of Winnipeg.

2001 Genealogical studies in community-based research. Proceedings, Canadian Indigenous/Native Studies Association Annual Conference. CD ROM.

1996 The Athabasca influenza epidemic of 1835. Issues in the North. CCI Occasional Publication No. 40. Pp. 33-42. Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta.

1995 Revision of the entry on "Chipewyan" for the Canadian Encyclopedia, originally written by James G. E. Smith (deceased); revised version carries both names as co-authors. 111

1993 Living Cultures: The Aboriginal Peoples of Alberta. Exhibit catalogue. Hokkaido, Japan: Historical Museum of Hokkaido.

Editor: Soapstone and Seedbeads: Arts and Crafts at the Charles Camsell Hospital, by Annalisa Staples and Ruth McConnell. Provincial Museum of Alberta Special Publication No. 7. Edmonton: Provincial Museum of Alberta. l990 Government comes to Fort Chipewyan: expansion of the state into the heart of the fur trade country. In Patricia A. McCormack and R. Geoffrey Ironside, eds., Fort Chipewyan-Fort Vermilion Bicentennial Conference Proceedings. Pp. 133-137. Edmonton: Boreal Institute for Northern Studies.

Co-editor with R. Geoffrey Ironside. Proceedings of the Fort Chipewyan and Fort Vermilion Bicentennial Conference. Edmonton: Boreal Institute for Northern Studies.

A survey of the Scriver Blackfoot collection. In Philip H. R. Stepney and David J. Goa, eds., The Scriver Blackfoot Collection: Repatriation of Canada's Heritage. Pp. 105-134. Edmonton: Provincial Museum of Alberta. With Karen Robbins. l988 Northwind Dreaming: Fort Chipewyan l788-l988. Exhibit catalogue. Provincial Museum of Alberta Special Publication No. 6. Edmonton: Provincial Museum of Alberta.

1981-82 Newsletters of the Yukon Historical and Museums Association, nos. 8-11.

1977 Introduction. The Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology. 7(1):1-14. Special issue: Environmental Manipulation, P. McCormack, ed.

1976 Introduction. The Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology. 6(3):1-7. Special issue: Native Peoples: Cross-Sex Relations, P. McCormack, ed.

"Big Man" on the steppes: social causes for economic transformations. Abstract in the AMQUA Fourth Biennial Conference abstract Volume.

1975 A theoretical approach to northeastern Dene archaeology. The Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology. 5(3,4):187-229. Special issue: Athapaskan Archaeology, D. Hudson and D. Derry, eds.

Book and Film Reviews

2006 Betty Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing: The Worldview of the Siksikaitsitapi. Calgary, Alberta, University of Calgary Press, 2004. Great Plains Quarterly. 26(2):134- 5.

2004 Celeste Ray, Highland Heritage. Scottish Americans in the American South. Chapel 112

Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. American Anthropologist. 106(3):631-2.

1998 Flora Beardy and Robert Coutts, editors and compilers, Voices from Hudson Bay. Cree Stories from York Factory. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996. Vol. 5 in the Rupert's Land Record Society Series. Manitoba History. No. 35 (Spring/Summer):25-26.

Julie Cruikshank, The Social Life of Stories. Narrative and Knowledge in the Yukon Territory. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. American Indian Quarterly. 22(4):499-500.

Katherine Pettipas, Severing the Ties that Bind. Government Repression of Indigenous Religious Ceremonies on the Prairies. Winnipeg: The University of Manitoba Press, 1994. Canadian Ethnic Studies. 30(2):161-2.

1997 Clark Wissler and D.C. Duvall, Mythology of the Blackfoot Indians. Introduction to the Bison Book Edition by Alice Beck Kehoe. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. The Canadian Journal of Native Studies.

1995 Kerry Abel, Drum Songs: Glimpses of Dene History. The Canadian Journal of Native Studies. 14(2):395-398.

David V. Burley, John D. Brandon, and Gayle A. Horsfall, Structural Considerations of Metis Ethnicity: An Archaeological, Architectural, and Historical Study. The Canadian Historical Review. Pp. 692-694.

Peter Iverson, When Indians Became Cowboys: Native Peoples and Cattle Ranching in the American West. The Journal of American History. 82(3):1239-1240.

Jocelyn Riley, Mountain Wolf Woman: 1884-1960 and Her Mother Before Her: Women's Stories of their Mothers and Grandmothers. The Public Historian. With William R. Swagerty. 18(4):148-149. [Film review]

1994 Lynda Shorten, Without Reserve. Great Plains Quarterly. 14(3):221-2.

Michael Ames, Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes. The Anthropology of Museums. Alberta Museums Review. 20(2):42.

1993 Terry Garvin, Bush Land People. Arctic. Vol. 46, no. 4:367-8.

James W. VanStone, Material Culture of the Blackfoot (Blood) Indians of Southern Alberta. Museum Anthropology. 17(3):72-73.

1992 Kerry Abel and Jean Friesen, eds., Aboriginal Resource Use in Canada: Historical and 113

Legal Aspects. Manitoba History. No. 24:45-46.

Arthur J. Ray, The Canadian Fur Trade in the Industrial Age. The Western Historical Quarterly. 25(2):237-239. l986 The Great Buffalo Saga. The Canadian Field-Naturalist. 100(3):398-399. [Film review]

Robert G. McCandless, Yukon Wildlife: A Social History. Archivaria. 22:209-12.

1985 Julie Cruikshank, The Stolen Woman: Female Journeys in Tagish and Tutchone Narrative. The American Indian Quarterly. 9(1):115-6.

Shepard Krech III, The Subarctic Fur Trade: Native Social and Economic Adaptations. Canadian Ethnic Studies. l7(3):135-137.

1982 Sylvia Van Kirk, "Many Tender Ties": Women in Fur Trade Society, 1670-1870. Resources for Feminist Research. 11(3):313.

1979 Rene Fumoleau, As Long as this Land Shall Last. Canadian Ethnic Studies. 11(1):174-175.

Exhibits

2001 Muse Project (with Lisa Barty). A teaching exhibit in the foyer of the Education Building featuring Blackfoot and Inuit artifacts. In cooperation with Museums and Collections Services. Designed by Kevin Zak and Bernd Hildebrandt.

1999 Treaty No. 8 and the Northern Collecting of Dr. O. C. Edwards 500 square foot centennial commemoration exhibit developed in cooperation with NS480 students. Designed by Bernd Hildebrandt. School of Native Studies and Museums and Collections Services, University of Alberta.

1997 Script for portions of The Syncrude Gallery of Aboriginal Culture, Provincial Museum of Alberta: "For Every Three Families, One Plow and One Harrow" (Native farming and ranching, with Rhonda Delorme) and units on Economic Ventures and Political Activity.

1994 Storyline for the ethnology portion of The Syncrude Gallery of Aboriginal Culture: a new permanent gallery (9,500 square feet). Developed with Ruth McConnell, Assistant Curator of Ethnology, in consultation with other museum staff and a Native Advisory Committee.

1993 "In All their Finery": A Legacy from the Past 1,000 square foot exhibit featuring aesthetically distinctive, older items made by Aboriginal peoples of the northwestern Plains and western Subarctic; the first phase of a new permanent gallery. Designed by Bryan McMullen. 114

Aboriginal Peoples of Alberta Large traveling exhibit and catalogue developed for the Historical Museum of Hokkaido. Designed by Virginia Penny.

1992 Gateway from the North: The Charles Camsell Hospital Collection One case display featuring "arts and crafts" from the Camsell Collection (with catalogue); circulated to other venues in Edmonton l992-93. Designed by Bill Gordon. l990 Kayasayawina Ka Wapahtihitohk: To Show the Old Things 500 square foot exhibit of artifacts showing the diversity of the collection and of the Aboriginal peoples of Alberta. Designed by Paul Beier. (The exhibit became part of the Royal Alberta Museum Syncrude Gallery of Aboriginal Culture)

Clothing of the Northern Plains Three-case display for Head-Smashed-In Historic Site. Designed by Bill Gordon. l989 Northwind Dreaming: Fort Chipewyan l788-l988 500 square foot traveling exhibit, for venues in Alberta, NWT, Yukon, B.C., Sask., and Manitoba, l990-94. Designed by Vic Clapp. l989 Dr. Robert Bell: Geologist and Collection One case display. l989 Douglas Light Collection Temporary display prepared for the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation. l988 Northwind Dreaming: Fort Chipewyan l788-l988 3,000 square feet feature exhibit commemorating the bicentennial of the founding of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta's oldest, permanently occupied community, and celebrating the lives of the Indian, Métis, and non-Native peoples who have made their homes there for 200 years and longer. Developed in collaboration with community residents. Contained over 400 artifacts, many borrowed from collections in Canada, U.S., and Scotland. Designed by Vic Clapp. l987 Indian Tipis One case traveling display, for the library case circuit. Designed by Julian West. l986 Trapping in Transition: Native Trapping in Northern Alberta l,000 square feet exhibit depicting the roles of trapping in Aboriginal economies in northern Alberta in the years before World War II and in the present. Designed by Shelby Craigen. l985 Rigging the Chiefs 500 square feet exhibit depicting historical relations between Indians and non-Indians 115

mediated through the giving of gifts. Cases show the fur trade, treaty, and modern eras. Designed by Julian West.

Métis Artifacts Temporary display.

Native Games One case traveling display, for the library case circuit.

Indian Dolls One case display.

Conference/Session Development

2006-8 Organizing committee, Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies 2008 Colloquium, Rocky Mountain House

2007 With Sarah Carter, organized “Negotiating Identities: Aboriginal Women’s Stories of Northwestern America,” a session for the American Society for Ethnohistory annual conference, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 7-10 Nov. 2007.

2006 Organized “Imagining the Unknown: Visual and Textual Images of Early History Makers,” a session for the American Society for Ethnohistory annual conference, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1-5 Nov. 2006.

2005-6 Member of the Scientific Committee for the 12th Qualitative Health Research Conference, 2- 5 April 2006.

2001-2 Organized “'A promise by any other name...': Treaty No. 8 and Taxation,” a session for the 10th Rupert's Land Colloquium, 9-12 April 2002, Mansfield College, University of Oxford.

2001 Organized “Dene Kinship and Ethnohistory,” a session for the 100th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropology Association, 28 Nov. - 2 Dec. 2001, Washington, D.C.

2000 With Michael Payne, organized “Representing Aboriginal Histories and Cultures at Historic Sites and Museums,” a panel for the Canadian Indigenous/Native Studies Association Annual Meeting and Conference, 28-31 May 2000, Edmonton.

1997-9 Member of the organizing committee for the 1899 Centennial Conference, A Conference in Commemoration of the Initial Signing of Treaty #8 & the Distribution of Scrip in 1899; serving also on the program and publicity subcommittees.

1997-99 Member of the organizing committee for Traditions for Today: Building on Cultural Traditions, an International Indigenous Research Institute organized by the School of 116

Native Studies, University of Alberta, and held at the University May 26-28, 1998. Proposed the Institute's theme and planned the session, “How can we talk about indigenous Christianity.”

1995-99 Member of the organizing committee for an international conference, Securing Northern Futures: Developing Research Partnerships, sponsored by the Canadian Circumpolar Institute, held in Edmonton 1-4 May 1997. Special responsibility for organizing the sessions on "Reconfiguring the North," with Michael Payne. Co-edited proceedings with Michael Payne.

1995 On behalf of Native Studies, chaired a campus working group that assisted in planning a Parks Canada workshop on cooperative management of protected areas. Developed the final program jointly with a Parks Canada staff member, attended the workshop on March 4-5, chaired one day's proceedings, and acted as a rapporteur the second day. Co-edited proceedings with Richard Stuart (proceedings never published).

With Anne M. Lambert, organized Managing Change: Drawing on the Dynamics of Cultural Traditions, a session of the Canadian Home Economics Conference, Beyond Tradition, Edmonton, 9-11 July 1995.

1992-94 Co-organized the Sixth Biennial Rupert's Land Research Centre Colloquium, held in Edmonton, May 25-27, l994.

1993 With Joseph Tiffany, organized a session on museums and Plains archaeology for the l993 Plains Anthropology annual meetings, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. l992 Organized "Contemporary Collecting: The Production of New Collections for the Future," a session for the 91st Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, Dec. 2-6, l992. Session was invited by the Council for Museum Anthropology. l991-92 With Robert Coutts (Parks Canada, Winnipeg), organized "Inventing Fur Trade Traditions," a session for the l992 Rupert's Land Colloquium, Winnipeg. l985-88 With R. G. Ironside, organized a major conference to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Fort Chipewyan and Fort Vermilion, in northern Alberta. Served as liaison with Fort Chipewyan residents and conference participants.

Papers

2009 Ethical requirements: how far is too far? Going overboard to satisfy university risk management. Invited for “Practical Problems and Pragmatic Solutions in Conducting Ethical Research,” sponsored by the Native History Group of the CHA, 88th Annual General Meeting, Canadian Historical Association, Ottawa, 25 May 2009. 117

Rethinking the Blackfoot and the fur trade of the northern Plains. Invited for the Fourth International Fur Trade Symposium, Fort Whoop-Up National Historic Site, Lethbridge, AB, 9-13 September 2009.

James Thomson and his fur trade wives: fur trade reality or the soap opera of Fort Chipewyan? Invited paper for a session about . Presented at Ethnohistory, 30 Sept.- 4 Oct. 2009, New Orleans, Louisiana.

The racialization of traditional knowledge. Invited for the Cumulative Environmental Management Association (CEMA) TEK 2009 Coaching Workshop, “Perspectives into Practice.” 28 October 2009, Fort McMurray, AB.

Evolving accommodations: the sled dog in the Canadian fur trade. Third International meeting of the conference series, “Des bêtes et des hommes”: “Une bête parmi les hommes: le chien.” Université de Valenciennes, France, 5-6 November 2009.

2008 Down the Fond du Lac River with David Thompson. Prepared for the 13th Rupert’s Land Colloquium, Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, 14-16 May 2008.

The invisible parkland: rethinking the Plains and Subarctic culture areas. Presented at The West and Beyond: Historians Past, Present, Future, University of Alberta, 19-21 June 2008.

2007 Tipi dweller: all the comforts of home. Invited paper prepared for Domestic Space, Domestic Practice: Exploring the Materiality of Home, the inaugural symposium of the Material Culture Institute, University of Alberta, 20 April 2007.

“A world we have lost”: the plural society of Fort Chipewyan. Presented as part of “Many Tender Ties: A Forum in Honour of Sylvia Van Kirk,” for Canadian Historic Association, 28-30 May 2007, Saskatoon, SK.

Deconstructing Canadian subarctic grasslands. Presented as part of “Grassland Construction, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction: Global Perspectives,” a session at the European Environmental History Conference, Amsterdam, 5-9 June 2007.

Telling the story of Canada: the roles of the fur trade. Presented at “Research as Resistance,” a symposium organized by the Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, 22-24 August 2007. Revised paper based on paper delivered in 2004 at the Rupert’s Land Conference.

Building a new society in western Canada: the world of the early fur trade. Invited paper for David Thompson: New Perspectives, New Knowledge, a symposium organized by the Glenbow Museum, 26-27 Oct. 2007. 118

Lost women: Native wives in Orkney and Lewis. Presented as part of “Negotiating Identities: Aboriginal Women’s Stories of Northwestern America,” a session for the American Society for Ethnohistory annual conference, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 7-10 Nov. 2007.

2006 The government foot in the door: beginnings of state regulation in the Fort Chipewyan- Fort Smith Region. The 9th North American Fur Trade Conference and 12th Rupert’s Land Colloquium, St. Louis, Mo., 24-28 May 2006. (Earlier version presented at the School of Native Studies Annual Research Day, University of Alberta, 1 April 2005.)

Visioning Thanadelthur. The American Society for Ethnohistory Annual Meeting, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1-4 Nov. 2006.

2005 Building national history: how should we talk about Canada’s past? Presentation for “Philosophers Café,” University of Alberta Office of Public Affairs, 3 Dec. 2005.

2004 Telling the story of Canada: the roles of the fur trade. Rupert’s Land Studies Colloquium 2004. Kenora, Ontario, 24-30 May 2004.

2003, 2004, 2005 The narratives at the heart: stereotypes and stories about Aboriginal peoples and their place in Canadian history. With slides and artifacts. Greater Edmonton Teachers' Convention Association, Edmonton. Feb. 28, 2003. Revised for the Bonnyville Support Staff Conference, Bonnyville, 13 Feb. 2004 and 18 Feb. 2005.

2003 British identities and Canadian Aboriginal identities: evolving in tandem. British World Conference II, British Identities, University of Calgary, 10-12 July 2003.

Popularizing contact: Thanadelthur, the Sacagawea of the North. American Society for Ethnohistory Annual Meeting, Riverside, California, 5-9 Nov. 2003.

2002 Popularizing contact: the many faces of Thanadelthur. Presented at Worlds in Collision: Critically Analyzing Aboriginal and European Contact Narratives, a colloquium at Dunsmuir Lodge, University of Victoria, B.C., 22-23 Feb. 2002.

Competing Narratives: Barriers between Indigenous Peoples and the Canadian State. Indigenous Peoples and the Modern State, Claremont Graduate University, California, 5- 7 April 2002. This paper was revised for a conference proceedings. A revised version was presented as an invited keynote address at Re-Visioning Canada Workshop: Integrating the History of Aboriginal/Non-Aboriginal Relations, University of Toronto, 27-28 Sept. 2002.

Imposing tax: taxation in the Northwest Territories and Aboriginal fears in the Treaty Eight region. Co-authored with Gordon Drever. Presented as part of “'A promise by any other name...': Treaty No. 8 and Taxation,” at the 10th Rupert's Land Colloquium, 9-12 119

April 2002, Mansfield College, University of Oxford.

Deconstructing Barbie! A popular lecture invited by the University of Alberta Museums and Collections Service, delivered 10 Feb. 2002.

2001 Expanding the boundaries: studying Dene kinship. Presented as part of “Dene Kinship and Ethnohistory,” at the 100th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropology Association, 28 Nov. - 2 Dec. 2001, Washington, D.C.

2000 Scenes from an exhibit: “From the Far North”: Treaty No. 8 and the northern collecting of Dr. O. C. Edwards. A curatorial lecture invited by the Friends of the University of Alberta Museums, 23 Jan. 2000.

Canadian nation-building: a pretty name for internal colonialism. Presented at Nation Building, British Association for Canadian Studies 25th Annual Conference, 11-14 April 2000, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Presentation as part of a panel, “Representing Aboriginal Histories and Cultures at Historic Sites and Museums.” Canadian Indigenous/Native Studies Association Annual Meeting and Conference, 28-31 May 2000, Edmonton. Co-presenters were Flora Beardy, Robert Coutts, and Michael Payne.

Genealogical studies in community-based research. Presented at the Canadian Indigenous/Native Studies Association Annual Conference, as part of a session on “Genealogical Research and Methods,” 29-31 May 2000, Edmonton.

1999 Overcoming the differences between treaty and scrip. For the 1899 Centennial Conference, a conference in commemoration of the initial signing of Treaty No. 8 and the distribution of scrip in 1899, Grouard, Alberta, 17-19 June 1999.

Treaty No. 8 and issues of taxation. Co-authored with Gordon Drever. Prepared for Akaitcho Tribal Council, Lesser Slave Lake Indian Regional Council, Athabasca Tribal Council, and Kee Tas Kee Now Tribal Council, 30 April 1999. (Expert report)

1998 Smith's Landing/Fort Fitzgerald: an economic history. Prepared for the Smith's Landing First Nation, 23 October 1998.

Building partnerships: Canadian museums, Aboriginal peoples, and the spirit and intent of the Task Force on Museums and First Peoples. With Arthur J. Sciorra. For the annual meeting of the Canadian Association for the Conservation of Cultural Property, Whitehorse, Yukon, 29-31 May 1998.

Northern Métis, Treaties No. 8 and No. 11, and the issuance of scrip. For the Rupert's Land Colloquium 1998, Winnipeg, 4-7 June 1998. 120

The communities: after European contact. Description of the human communities of the Wood Buffalo National Park region, for a handbook about the park, edited by Ross Wein. (Accepted for the handbook, which was never completed.)

1997 From buffalo to beef: the emergence of a Blackfoot cattle industry. For The Fur Trade Era: The Influence of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade on the Development of the American West, Museum of the Mountain Man, Pinedale, Wyoming, 11-13 Sept. 1997.

1996 Orkneymen and Lewismen: distinctive cultures and identities in the Canadian fur trade. For Scots and Aboriginal Culture, a Scottish Studies Colloquium, University of Guelph, 22-24 March 1996. A revised version was given at the Rupert's Land Research Centre Colloquium, Whitehorse, 1-4 June 1996.

Native homelands as cultural landscapes: decentering the wilderness paradigm. For the Sacred Lands conference, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, 24-26 Oct. 1996.

1995 The invisible parkland: rethinking the Plains and Subarctic culture areas. For the 53rd Plains Anthropological Conference, Laramie, Wyoming, 18-21 Oct. 1995.

Native peoples and cultural renewal. For Managing Change: Drawing on the Dynamics of Cultural Traditions, a session developed by Anne M. Lambert and Patricia A. McCormack as part of the Canadian Home Economics Conference, Beyond Tradition, Edmonton, 9-11 July 1995.

1994 James and Isabella Thomson: a Lewis family in the Canadian fur trade. For the Sixth Biennial Rupert's Land Research Centre Colloquium, Edmonton, 25-27 May l994.

The smokescreen of technology: the mixed economy of Fort Chipewyan and the persistence of Aboriginal cultures. For the School of Native Studies, 21 Jan. 1994.

The invisible parkland: ethnohistoric considerations. For Diversity on your Doorstep, a program presented by the Beaver Hills Ecological Network, as part of the Beaverhills Lake-Fall Migration Celebration, Tofield, Alberta, 24 Sept. 1994.

Peigan horse traditions and ranching: persistence and change in Peigan cultural patterns. With Willard Yellowface. For the Plains Indian Seminar at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming, 30 Sept. - 2 Oct. 1994.

The Indian trade of the northern Rockies as reflected in the collections of the Provincial Museum of Alberta and the Glenbow. For the Western History Association Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 20-23 Oct. 1994.

The Athabasca influenza epidemic of 1835. For the Chacmool Conference, Calgary, 10- 13 Nov. 1994. Revised version delivered 24 Jan. 1995, as part of the Issues in the North 121

lectures series, sponsored by the Canadian Circumpolar Institute.

1993 Linking bush and town: the mixed economy of the Aboriginal peoples of Fort Chipewyan. For the 8th International Abashiri Symposium on Peoples and Cultures of the North, Peoples and Cultures of the Boreal Forest, Hokkaido Museum of Northern Peoples, Abashiri City, Hokkaido, Japan, 11-12 Nov. l993. l992 The bison of Wood Buffalo National Park and their future. For the Sierra Club of Alberta, Calgary, 8 Jan. l992.

Bringing home wives. Native Hudson's Bay families in Orkney, Scotland. For the Department of History, University of Winnipeg, 5 Feb. l992.

The expansion of the state into the Fort Chipewyan region. For a Department of Geography Colloquium, University of Alberta, 31 Jan. 1992 and a Department of History Graduate Seminar, University of Winnipeg, 5 Feb. l992.

Two solitudes: museum displays and Indians in the fur trade. For a session, “Inventing Fur Trade Traditions,” organized by Patricia A. McCormack and Robert Coutts, for the Fifth Biennial Rupert's Land Colloquium, Winnipeg, 6-9 Feb. l992.

Indian cowboys: mythologies of the west and museum collecting. For a Department of Textiles and Clothing class in the History of Native Clothing, University of Alberta, 18 Feb. l992.

The Canol Pipeline and northern Alberta. For the Alaska Highway Conference, Edmonton, 5-6 June l992.

Native trapping in northern Alberta. For a seminar at the Glenbow Museum in conjunction with the exhibit Trapline Lifeline, Calgary, 13 June l992.

Alexander Mackenzie, the Scot. For Ten Great Days, a celebration of Alexander Mackenzie's arrival at Peace River in l792, Peace River, Alberta, 30-31 Aug. l992.

The Blackfoot and the fur trade. For Meet Me on the Green: The Rocky Mountain Fur Trade, a symposium organized by the Museum of the Mountain Man, Pinedale, Wyoming, 10-12 Sept. l992.

Perceptions of place: Natives and Europeans of the fur trade era. For the Alberta Museums Association Conference, Medicine Hat, Alberta, 29-31 Oct. l992.

Expanding state regulatory systems and their impacts on northern and Native peoples. For Symposium on Contemporary and Historical Issues in Legal Pluralism: Prairie and Northern Canada, organized by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Law in 122

Society Program, Winnipeg, 7-8 Nov. l992.

Blackfoot horse traditions and modern museum collection. For a special session, Contemporary Collecting: The Production of New Collections for the Future, organized by Patricia A. McCormack and invited by the Council for Museum Anthropology for the 91st Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, 2-6 Dec. l992.

l99l Reconstituting a Natoas bundle: a Provincial Museum of Alberta-Peigan collaboration. For the Task Force on Museums and First Peoples.

Working with Native communities. Seminar prepared for Parks Canada research staff, Winnipeg.

Evolving Blackfoot dress styles and their representation in museum collections. For It's a Material World, an Interdisciplinary Material Culture Lecture Series at the University of Alberta.

The Canadian fur trade: the Orkney connection. For Focus on the Forks, a conference on the historical significance of the forks region, Winnipeg, April, l991.

With Ruth McConnell. The Ethnology Oblate Collections at the Provincial Museum of Alberta. For the Oblate Conference, Edmonton, 22-23 July l99l. l990 Northern boats. Paper on Native lake skiffs and their possible Orkney origin. For the Orkney Museum Service; delivered in three Orkney towns, September l990.

Saving Canada's wild bison: the political economy of bison management in Wood Buffalo National Park. For The Wood Bison Issue, a Circumpolar Lecture Series of the Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta, 7 Dec. l990.

The Orkney Islands and the Canadian fur trade and Native communities. For Partnerships: Museums and Native Living Cultures, Alberta Museums Association Professional Development Series, Edmonton, 3-4 Dec. l990. l989 From their labor: a material slant to ethnohistorical research. For the American Society for Ethnohistory Conference, Chicago, 2-5 Nov. l989.

Reviving contemporary collecting: the Fort Chipewyan collection at the Provincial Museum of Alberta. For a special session, Collecting the Objects of Others, at the 88th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.C., 15-19 Nov. l989.

"That's a piece of junk": issues in contemporary subarctic collecting. For Out of the 123

North: A Symposium on the Native Arts and Material Culture of the Canadian and Alaskan North, Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, 20-21 Oct. l989.

Working with the community: a dialectical approach to exhibit development. Prepared for Canada's Native Community and Museums: A New Dialogue and New Initiatives, a seminar in the Alberta Museums Association's Professional Development Series, Calgary, 7-9 April l989

l988 Surrounded by Crees: Chipewyan persistence in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta. For an invitational session on Variations in Chipewyan Thought and Behavior, 87th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Phoenix, 16-20 Nov. l988.

Hub of the North: Fort Chipewyan l788-l988. For the Rupertsland Colloquium, Winnipeg and Churchill, 29 June - 3 July l988, and also delivered as a public lecture at the Provincial Museum of Alberta.

Government comes to Fort Chipewyan: expansion of the state into the heart of the fur trade country. For the Fort Chipewyan-Fort Vermilion Bicentennial Conference, Edmonton, 23-24 Sept. l988.

l987 Fort Chipewyan and community development. For Nurturing Community, a conference on community development organized by the Edmonton Social Planning Council, 27-29 April 1987. l986 Rooted in the past: the modern community of Fort Chipewyan. For the Boreal Institute for Northern Studies 25th anniversary conference, Knowing the North.

1982 Fur trade society to class society: the development of ethnic stratification at Fort Chipewyan, Alberta. For the Canadian Ethnology Society meetings, Vancouver, B.C.

Skookum Jim (Keish); an historical brief. For the Yukon Educational Television Society, Whitehorse. l981 Leroy Napoleon "Jack" McQuesten; an historical brief. For the Yukon Educational Television Society, Whitehorse.

William Ogilvie; an historical brief. For the Yukon Educational Television Society, Whitehorse.

1979 The Cree Band land entitlement in Wood Buffalo National Park: history and issues. For the Edmonton Chapter of the National and Provincial Parks Association of Canada.

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES 124

Referee

Grant applications Canadian Circumpolar Institute, the Boreal Institute for Northern Studies, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and other institutions as requested.

Publications Book manuscripts: University of Oklahoma Press, University of Nebraska Press, University of Washington Press, UBC Press, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Harcourt Brace, NeWest Press, Canadian Circumpolar Institute, Crabtree Publishing Company. Journal manuscripts: Ethnohistory, Canadian Ethnic Studies, American Indian Culture and Research Journal.

External faculty referee Promotion from Assistant to Associate Professor, University of Winnipeg, 2004

Management/Supervision Courses (Govt. of Alberta) Supervision Managing the Difficult Employee

Professional Development Courses

2007 2007 PRE-conference and National Conference, “Empowering Research Participants, 16- 18 Feb. 2007, Ottawa.

2005 2005 National Conference, National Council on Ethics in Human Research, 5-6 March 2005, Ottawa, and the associated Pre-Conference, 4 March 2005.

2004 Training in Research Ethics, Social and Behavioral Sciences and Humanities, 22 Feb. 2004. National Council on Ethics in Human Research.

2003 Innovative Instructors Institute, University of Alberta. Stream One: Effective Electronic Presentations (PowerPoint). 28 April-2 May.

Committees and Advisory Boards

2009-present Director, Alberta Equestrian Federation

2007-10 Advisory Council, The Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies at the University of Winnipeg

2003-present Advisory Board of Material History Review 125

2003-06 Member of the Aid to Scholarly Publications (ASP) Committee, on behalf of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

1997-99 Treaty 8/Scrip Conference Steering Committee, Program Committee, Publicity Committee

1992-93 Steering Committee and Research Sub-committee, Frog Lake Historic Site Project

l99l Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize Committee for the American Society for Ethnohistory

l985-91 Fort Chipewyan-Fort Vermilion Bicentennial Conference Committee and Research Grant Committee

l987-98 Prairie Forum Editorial Board

l988-89 Alberta Museums Association Standards Committee

l985-89 Canadian Studies Committee

Societies

1986-90 President, Boreal Circle Society

1983 Board member, MacBride Museum Society

1980-82 President, Yukon Historical and Museums Association • Ex-officio board member 1982-84, Vice-president 1979-80 • Honorary Life Membership awarded 1983

Miscellaneous

On-going: • Guest lectures, colloquia, and workshops for University of Alberta staff and students. • Responses to numerous requests for information and assistance from University staff and students, lawyers, and the general public.

Academic consultant: • Radio, television, and films: Death of a Delta (Tom Radford, Filmwest l972), Coppermine (NFB l992), Indian America series (l992), and Honour of the Crown (Tom Radford, NFB 2001). • Popular books: The Buffalo Hunters (Time-Life, 1993) and Native North American Foods and Recipes (Crabtree Publishing Company, 2006). 126

For Treaty Eight First Nations of Alberta, Education Commission Project: served as resource person for curriculum development project, 2005, 2008.

For Wood Buffalo National Park: participated in Cultural Resource Management Workshops (18-20 July 1999, Fort Smith; 18-19 Oct. 2002, Fort Chipewyan) and an Ecological Integrity Workshop (11-14 March 1999, Fort Smith). Cooperative work with park administration is on- going.

For Teacher and Teacher Aid Conventions (Edmonton and Bonneville): presentations about stereotypes of “Indian-ness” and Canadian history.

For Daniel Wolf, author of The Rebels: An Outlaw Motorcycle Club (University of Toronto Press, 1991): extensive editorial assistance.

MEMBERSHIPS

American Anthropological Association American Ethnology Society American Society for Environmental History American Society for Ethnohistory Canadian Historical Association Council for Museum Anthropology International Association for Impact Assessment Rupert's Land Research Centre Yukon Historical and Museums Association

INTERESTS

Equestrian sports Snowshoeing and dog walking Herb gardening and pickling Oil sands development contributes polycyclic aromatic compounds to the Athabasca River and its tributaries

Erin N. Kellya, Jeffrey W. Shortb, David W. Schindlera,1, Peter V. Hodsonc, Mingsheng Maa, Alvin K. Kwana, and Barbra L. Fortina

aDepartment of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2E9; bOceana, 175 South Franklin Street, Suite 422, Juneau, Alaska 99801; and cDepartment of Biology and School of Environmental Studies, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada K7L 3N6

Contributed by David W. Schindler, October 23, 2009 (sent for review September 21, 2009) For over a decade, the contribution of oil sands mining and processing We conducted an independent, detailed, and accessible assess- to the pollution of the Athabasca River has been controversial. We ment of the loadings of polycyclic aromatic compounds (PAC) to show that the oil sands development is a greater source of contam- the north-flowing Athabasca River, its tributaries, the Athabasca ination than previously realized. In 2008, within 50 km of oil sands Delta, and Lake Athabasca (Fig. 1). In February to March and June upgrading facilities, the loading to the snowpack of airborne partic- to August 2008, we sampled water using polyethylene membrane ulates was 11,400 T over 4 months and included 391 kg of polycyclic devices (PMDs). In March, the accumulated snowpack was sam- aromatic compounds (PAC), equivalent to 600 T of bitumen, while 168 pled at most sites. Athabasca River sites were selected upstream and kg of dissolved PAC was also deposited. Dissolved PAC concentrations downstream of oil sands mining and processing activity. Upstream in tributaries to the Athabasca increased from 0.009 ␮g/L upstream of and downstream sites near oil sands development are directly oil sands development to 0.023 ␮g/L in winter and to 0.202 ␮g/L in exposed to erosion of the McMurray geologic formation (McMF), summer downstream. In the Athabasca, dissolved PAC concentrations where most oil sands occur (13). were mostly <0.025 ␮g/L in winter and 0.030 ␮g/L in summer, except Three sites along each of four impacted tributaries were selected near oil sands upgrading facilities and tailings ponds in winter using 2006 Landsat imagery. The first was located upstream of oil (0.031–0.083 ␮g/L) and downstream of new development in summer sands development and the McMF, the second midstream within (0.063–0.135 ␮g/L). In the Athabasca and its tributaries, development the McMF but upstream of mining activity, and the third near within the past 2 years was related to elevated dissolved PAC stream mouths at the confluence with the Athabasca, downstream concentrations that were likely toxic to fish embryos. In melted snow, of development and downstream or within the McMF. Comparable ␮ dissolved PAC concentrations were up to 4.8 g/L, thus, spring sites were chosen on two reference tributaries unaffected by snowmelt and washout during rain events are important unknowns. industry. In the summer, additional stream mouth sites, with and These results indicate that major changes are needed to the way that without upstream development, were included to increase statistical environmental impacts of oil sands development are monitored and power. managed. After sampling, 2008 Landsat imagery revealed marked changes in the extent of oil sands development since 2006. Some tributary ͉ ͉ ͉ airborne deposition oil sands processing water contamination sites could be compared as planned, but some midstream and ͉ hydrocarbons oil sands mining stream mouth sites unaffected in 2006 were affected by new development in 2008. To assess the impacts of this new develop- he Alberta oil sands consist of water, sand, and bitumen, a ment, the change in development between 2006 and 2008 was Theavy and viscous hydrocarbon, that is recovered by surface categorized visually from Landsat imagery as nil–small (N-S) and mining or by in situ steam injection. To produce crude oil, bitumen medium–large (M-L). This gave four classes of new development: must be extracted with hot water and upgraded by using heat, midstream/N-S, midstream /M-L, stream mouth /N-S, and stream pressure, and catalysts (1). Production of bitumen increased from mouth /M-L. To compare the relative importance of natural erosion 482,000 to 1.3 million barrels per day from 1995 to 2008 (2, 3). The and mining on PAC mobilization, PAC concentrations in water 2 area disturbed by mine operations was 530 km in 2007, and the area were regressed against the proportion of the catchment within the 2 of tailings ponds surpassed 130 km in 2008 (1, 4). Oil sands McMF, overall land disturbance, and land disturbed by oil sands production by both mining and in situ methods will increase rapidly, mining in 2008. These comparisons were made for all tributaries with projected output ranging from 2.0 to 2.9 million barrels per day combined and separately for the Athabasca. by 2020 (5). Samples were analyzed for PAC (sum of parent and alkylated Some residents of downstream Fort Chipewyan are convinced homologues of two-, three- and four- ring polycyclic aromatic that the oil sands industry is responsible for higher than expected hydrocarbonsϩ dibenzothiophene). Melted snow was analyzed for cancer rates (6). However, government, industry and related agen- the mass of particulate and associated PAC retained on 0.45-␮m cies, relying in part on the joint Regional Aquatic Monitoring glass fiber filters and for dissolved PAC in filtrate. Because PMDs Program (RAMP), report that effects are minimal, that natural accumulate only dissolved PAC from water (14), equivalent water sources cause elevated contaminant concentrations in the Atha- concentrations were calculated from PAC concentrations in PMDs, basca and its tributaries (7), and that human health and the environment are not at risk from oil sands development (8–10), see Controversy Background Information in SI Text. Author contributions: E.N.K., J.W.S., D.W.S., and P.V.H. designed research; E.N.K., M.M., Since 1997, the RAMP, funded by industry and directed by a A.K.K., and B.L.F. performed research; E.N.K. and J.W.S. analyzed data; and E.N.K., J.W.S., multistakeholder committee, has monitored aquatic ecosystems D.W.S., and P.V.H. wrote the paper. near the oil sands development (11). However, it lacks scientific The authors declare no conflict of interest. oversight, and a peer review severely criticized its ability to detect Freely available online through the PNAS open access option. effects (12). RAMP data are not publicly available, and the 1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected]. methods used to analyze, interpret, and report the data are not This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/ entirely transparent. 0912050106/DCSupplemental.

22346–22351 ͉ PNAS ͉ December 29, 2009 ͉ vol. 106 ͉ no. 52 www.pnas.org͞cgi͞doi͞10.1073͞pnas.0912050106 Results Particulates and PAC in Snow. Substantial deposition of airborne particulates was discovered within 50 km of the Suncor and Syncrude upgrading facilities, near AR6 (Fig. 2 and Fig. S1). Particulate deposition exponentially declined from 19 g/m2 at AR6, near the upgrading facilities, to Ͻ0.35 g/m2 at sites Ͼ50 km distant (particulates ϭ 10.6 ϫ eϪ0.0714*x g/m2, x ϭ km from AR6, r2 ϭ 0.71, P Ͻ 0.0001, n ϭ 23; Fig. S2A). Integrating over a 50-km radius indicates deposition of 11,400 metric T of particulates during Ϸ4 months of snowfall. Most particulates collected at AR6 consisted of oil sands bitu- men. An oil slick formed on the surface of melted snow (Fig. S3), and the PAC distribution was similar to the four oil sands samples, i.e., dominated by dibenzothiophenes, phenanthrenes/anthracenes, fluoranthenes/pyrenes, and benzanthracenes/chrysenes (Fig. S4 A and B). Compared with the oil sands, PAC in the snow particulates were slightly enriched in naphthalenes and unsubstituted four- to five-ring PAC, suggesting admixture with volatile and combustion- derived PAC [i.e., dominated by less-substituted four or more-ring PAC (15)]. Using a measured mean ratio of 0.000649 Ϯ 0.000168 (see Analytical and Statistical Method Details in SI Text) for total PAC to bitumen in oil sands, the 0.414 mg of PAC per gram of particulate in AR6 snow was equivalent to 64% bitumen. The proportion of PAC in snow particulates declined rapidly with distance from AR6, indicating that bitumen was deposited closer to the source than particulates (Fig. 3). Measured PAC deposition declined exponentially (PAC ϭ 1.06 ϫ eϪ0.130*x mg/m2, r2 ϭ 0.76, P Ͻ 0.0001, n ϭ 23; Fig. S2B) from 7.87 mg/m2 at AR6, near the upgrading facilities, to 0.011 mg/m2 or less at sites over 50-km distant. This is equivalent to deposition of 391 kg of PAC within a 50-km radius of AR6 over 4 months, or 600 T of bitumen. Fig. 1. Study Area Map. Sites: blue, Athabasca River; black, tributaries (AR17U, Deposition of PAC declined significantly more rapidly with dis- unnamed creek; AR17D, unnamed creek; HOR, Horse River; CLCR, Clarke Creek; tance from AR6 than particulates (t test, P Ͻ 0.01), suggesting POP, Poplar Creek, BE, Beaver River; ST, Steepbank River; MCC, McLean Creek; association of bitumen PAC with heavier or denser particles. MACK, MacKay River; EL, Ells River; JOC, Jocelyn Creek; MU, Muskeg River; FR, Dissolved PAC in the filtrate from melted snow also declined Firebag River; FOR, Fort Creek; TR, Tar River; CALR, Calumet River; EYC, Eymund- with distance from AR6 (Fig. 3), and were dominated by fluorenes, son Creek; 1, upstream; 2, midstream; 3, stream mouth). Landsat 5 image is a false dibenzothiophenes, and phenanthrenes/anthracenes, consistent color composite, where blue is water, green is vegetation, and pink is nonveg- with partitioning into air or water of more volatile and soluble PAC etated and/or developed areas. Squares represent existing and approved oil C sands projects. in bitumen (Fig. S4 ). Dissolved PAC deposition declined expo- nentially with distance from AR6 (dissolved PAC ϭ 0.148 ϫ eϪ0.0691*x mg/m2, r2 ϭ 0.59, P Ͻ 0.0001, n ϭ 23; Fig. S2C), with a assuming equilibrium between PMDs and ambient water concen- similar decay constant (Ϫ0.0691) as particulates (Ϫ0.0714; P Ͼ 0.8). trations after Ϸ30-day deployment. Further details are provided in Integrating over a 50-km radius gives 168 kg of dissolved PAC Methods and Analytical and Statistical Method Details in SI Text. accumulated during 4 months. Dissolved PAC concentrations in SCIENCES ␮ Fig. 2. White 0.45- m Whatman GF/F filters after 900 mL of melted snow from each site was filtered. Yellow, distance between sites; blue, communities; red, existing ENVIRONMENTAL and approved surface mining projects.

Kelly et al. PNAS ͉ December 29, 2009 ͉ vol. 106 ͉ no. 52 ͉ 22347 Fig. 3. Particulate and dissolved PAC loading (mg/m2) in accumulated snowpack, March 2008. (A) Athabasca River, Athabasca Delta, and Lake Athabasca. (B) Tar River. (C) Joslyn Creek. (D) Ells River. (E) Beaver River. (F) Firebag River. (G) Muskeg River. (H) Steepbank River. Bolded font indicates existing and approved projects (Syncrude: Mildred Lake and Aurora, Suncor: Millennium, Steepbank and Firebag In-situ, Petro Canada Dover-MacKay River In-situ, Husky Oil Sunrise In-situ, TOTAL/Deer Creek In-situ, Shell: Albian Sands/Muskeg River and Jackpine, CNRL: Horizon, Imperial Oil: Kearl, Petro Canada/UTS: Fort Hills). Mildred Lake spans AR16 to AR7, whereas Steepbank and Millennium span AR16 to AR6, as indicated by arrows. Upgrading facilities are near AR6. melted snow declined from 4.8 ␮g/L at AR6 to Ͻ0.27 ␮g/L at sites from upstream to downstream and were greater in summer than Ͼ50 km away, and exceeded 0.7 ␮g/L at 9 of 10 sites within 22 km winter (Fig. 4A). Mean concentrations increased from 0.009 of AR6. ␮g/L at upstream sites in both winter and summer to 0.023 Ϯ 0.0059 ␮g/L and 0.202 Ϯ 0.160 ␮g/L at stream mouth sites, PAC in Tributaries. Dissolved PAC concentrations in the six respectively, similar to melted snow. Differences among sites tributaries sampled during winter and summer mostly increased along tributaries were highly significant (two-way ANOVA, ln

Fig. 4. Estimated winter and summer dissolved PAC concentrations (␮g/L). (A) Tributaries. (B) Midstream and stream mouth tributary sites in relation to ‘‘new’’ development (change in development from 2006 to 2008), n ϭ 5–8. Athabasca River, Athabasca Delta, and Lake Athabasca (C) Winter. (D) Summer. * indicates samples contaminated by diesel fuel (see Analytical and Statistical Method Details in SI Text), not included in calculations; McMF, McMurray Formation; N, north. Error bars are standard error of the mean.

22348 ͉ www.pnas.org͞cgi͞doi͞10.1073͞pnas.0912050106 Kelly et al. transformed, P ϭ 0.004), but not between seasons (P ϭ 0.91). them as sources and corresponds to a similarity between patterns of The power to detect seasonal differences was low (␤ ϭ 0.05), so PAC congeners in particulates and oil sands (Fig. S4 A and B). The a seasonal effect could not be discounted. The greater trend of enrichment of snow particulates by the more volatile PAC and by increasing PAC downstream in summer compared with winter five-ring PAC (e.g., benzo[a]pyrene) is typical of PAC volatilized by (Fig. 4A) was nearly significant (interaction P ϭ 0.095) at only heat or particulates produced by combustion. The dominance of moderate power (␤ ϭ 0.30). oily material in snow from AR6 also suggests a separate organic This analysis included all upstream, midstream, and downstream bitumen phase in stack emissions that is present as droplets larger tributary sites, regardless of development. Almost all development and less buoyant than average particulates, and precipitates near the was near the stream mouth on some tributaries, with insignificant source. Alternatively, the heavier particles might be bitumen- development near midstream or upstream sites. Analyzing only contaminated dust eroded by wind from mine sites (Fig. S7), but these tributaries, no significant increase in PAC concentrations this was inconsistent with the high organic content of particulates between upstream and midstream sites was found (Fig. S5A). Thus, near AR6. Although mining can mobilize dust, deposition would when development was insignificant, flow of water through the likely be localized and site-specific, and further study is needed to McMF did not significantly affect PAC concentrations, indicating establish detailed loadings. that natural sources are not solely responsible for increased con- The similar deposition patterns of particulates and dissolved centrations of PAC midstream or at stream mouths. PAC in melted snow (Fig. S2 A and C) suggests that dissolved Increasing PAC concentrations from upstream to downstream in PAC did not leach from particulates, but was scavenged from the the tributaries (Fig. 4A and Fig. S5A) could reflect increasing atmosphere. Snow samples were filtered within an hour of contributions from natural erosion of the McMF, greater distur- thawing, leaving little time for PAC dissolution. More likely, bance from development, or both. Little of the variability in summer PAC dissolved in the snowmelt were readily desorbed from PAC concentrations of tributaries was explained by the proportion non-bitumen particulates or scavenged from vapor-phase PAC of McMF, total surface land disturbance, or oil sands mining by ice nuclei in plumes of condensing steam from stack emis- 2 ϭ 2 ϭ disturbance in watersheds (rMcMF 0.009, rdisturbance 0.003, sions, as occurs with metals (16). 2 ϭ Ͼ ϭ roil sands 0.000; P 0.69, df 19). The oil sands industry is a known source of air pollutants. Snow In contrast, when midstream and stream mouth sites were surveys in 1978 and 1981 identified elevated metal deposition via grouped, PAC concentrations were strongly associated with new flyash particulates 25 km north and south, and 10 km east and west land disturbance or mining activity expansion from 2006 to 2008. of Suncor and Syncrude upgrading facilities (16, 17). In 1978, 96% Mean PAC concentrations increased 2-fold from 0.012 Ϯ 0.0012 at of particulates were deposited within 25 km of the stacks (17), but N-S sites to 0.027 Ϯ 0.0052 ␮g/L at M-L sites in winter, and 8-fold PAC deposition was not measured. From 2005 to 2007, the mean from 0.024 Ϯ 0.0055 to 0.197 Ϯ 0.0738 ␮g/L in summer (Fig. 4B). annual release of particulates measured by Suncor and estimated by Season and disturbance effects were highly significant (two-way Syncrude (stack and fugitive emissions) was 6037 Ϯ 927 T (18). In ANOVA, ln transformed, P Ͻ 0.004), and the season and distur- contrast, during the 4 months before sampling in 2008, emissions bance interaction was nearly significant (P ϭ 0.065, ␤ ϭ 0.36). The were almost twice as large at 11,400 T and contaminated an area power to detect the seasonal effect was ␤ Ͼ 0.85, much greater than nearly 2-fold larger, with only Ϸ60% of particulates falling within for the previous test (␤ ϭ 0.05). Comparing only midstream or a 25-km radius. Assuming similar deposition rates during the year stream-mouth sites leads to essentially the same conclusions (Fig. implies a total annual particulate deposition of Ϸ34,000 T. This is S5 B and C). Thus, seasonal differences in PAC concentrations are nearly five times current reported emissions, and similar to annual likely real, and increased PAC concentrations in both winter and deposition rates of 32,594 T in 1978 (19), before precipitators were summer result from land disturbance by oil sands development installed. The discrepancy may be due to dust from mining (Fig. S7) between 2006 and 2008. or somewhat elevated loading estimates that were based on a circle Approximately 75% of PAC homologues accumulated by PMDs around AR6, despite somewhat greater particulate deposition deployed at the M-L sites consisted of three-ring PAC, dominated north/south of upgrading facilities than east/west (16). The close by alkyl-substituted dibenzothiophenes, phenanthrenes/an- association of deposition with proximity to the upgrading facilities thracenes and fluorenes, with the remainder mostly four-ring PAC suggests that they are the primary source. including alkyl-substituted fluoranthenes/pyrenes and benzan- Airborne PAC from oil sands development conveys a consider- thracenes/chrysenes and negligible naphthalenes (Fig. S4D). En- able burden to the surrounding watershed. Historical stack dis- richment of three-ring PAC in PMDs compared with oil sands (Fig. charges of particulates rich in aluminum (Al) (16, 17), and a strong S4A) is consistent with greater solubility of three- vs. four-ring correlation between Al and PAC concentrations in snow (r ϭ 0.94, PAC. The near absence of naphthalenes in PMDs is also consistent P Ͻ 0.001), suggest that large amounts of particulate PAC have with low concentrations of these PAC in bitumen (Fig. S4A). been discharged since the onset of oil sands production in the 1960s. If deposition rates are constant throughout the year, the estimated Athabasca River, Athabasca Delta, and Lake Athabasca. Dissolved annual release of PAC is now Ϸ1,200 kg associated with Ϸ1,800 T PAC concentrations were usually low at most sites on the Athabasca of bitumen particulates, and another 500 kg of dissolved PAC. This River, Athabasca Delta, and Lake Athabasca, but often greater amount of bitumen released in a pulse would be equivalent to a during summer (Fig. 4 C and D). In winter, concentrations were major oil spill, repeated annually. mostly Ͻ0.025 ␮g/L, except at sites near oil sands upgrading Given that particulate deposition rates in the 1970s before facilities and tailings ponds which ranged from 0.031 to 0.083 ␮g/L installation of stack precipitators (19) were as great as today, this (Fig. 4C). In summer, PAC concentrations in the Athabasca were situation has likely persisted for 30–40 years. As a result, current usually Ͻ0.030 ␮g/L. Upstream and within oil sands development, background PAC concentrations in surface soils, vegetation, snow, concentrations were unrelated to the proportion of McMF, total and runoff over a broad area of boreal forest may be greater than surface land disturbance, and oil sands mining disturbance true background concentrations contributed naturally by oil sands 2 ϭ 2 ϭ 2 ϭ Ͼ ϭ (rMcMF 0.137, rdisturbance 0.006, roil sands 0.085; P 0.33, df in the region. Although RAMP collects snow for hydrologic 8). However, immediately downstream of new development, con- monitoring (11), pollutant concentrations are not reported. In the centrations ranged from 0.063 to 0.135 ␮g/L (Fig. S6). early 1980s, snow sampling was recommended in northeastern Alberta and adjacent areas of Saskatchewan and the Northwest Discussion Territories to assess the effects of air emissions from expanding oil SCIENCES

The increased deposition of particulates and PAC in snow close to sands development (16, 17). The absence of such a program has ENVIRONMENTAL the Suncor and Syncrude upgrading facilities clearly implicates made it progressively more difficult to separate pollution inputs

Kelly et al. PNAS ͉ December 29, 2009 ͉ vol. 106 ͉ no. 52 ͉ 22349 from rising background contamination. With more oil sands de- centrations of dissolved PAC as the Athabasca flows to Lake velopment projects approved and proposed, including new and Athabasca and Fort Chipewyan. expanded upgrading facilities, the increased deposition of airborne PAC will further raise regional ‘‘background’’ concentrations. Conclusions Tributaries impacted by oil sands development indicate a second Due to substantial loadings of airborne PAC, the oil sands industry major flux of PAC to receiving waters. Recent disturbances (new is a far greater source of regional PAC contamination than previ- roads, deforestation, encampments, exploration, mining) expose ously realized. Despite previous recommendations (17), there is no and distribute fresh bitumen to wind and soil erosion and enhance apparent detailed monitoring of PAC fluxes via wet and dry bitumen transport to surface waters, which leach out the most deposition in the winter or summer, when similar or greater available PAC. The lack of correlation between PAC concentra- contributions are likely. Monitoring of air, the snowpack, spring tions in water and the extent of older development suggests that snowmelt, and summer rain and vegetation is essential to identify disturbed areas eventually stabilize. However, the lack of correla- and control sources of PAC and their potential environmental and tion may also reflect increasing background PAC concentrations. human health impacts. A second important source of PAC is At sites distant from upgrading facilities and unaffected by land landscape disturbance. Surprisingly, impacts are related primarily to disturbance, the regional background of total dissolved PAC in recent disturbance (Ͻ2 y), which suggests that revegetation or surface waters is Ϸ0.015 ␮g/L, closely comparable with concentra- erosion controls mitigate long-term loadings. tions in remote Canadian Arctic rivers (20). In contrast, at the most Controls on waterborne PAC are critical because concentrations impacted stream mouths, PAC concentrations were 10- to nearly at tributary mouths and at one site on the Athabasca are already ϭ ␮ 50-fold greater (e.g., EL3, PAC 0.682 g/L), similar to concen- within the range toxic to fish embryos. However, the impacts on the ␮ trations toxic to fish embryos [as low as 0.4 g/L (21)]. The PAC in Athabasca ecosystem of mining wastewater, snowmelt, or contam- oil sands, snow, and water were dominated by homologues of inated groundwater remain enigmatic due to high seasonal vari- three-ringed alkyl phenanthrenes, alkyl dibenzothiophenes, and ability of flow and dilution capacity. alkyl fluorenes, PAC most closely associated with embryotoxicity of Our study confirms the serious defects of the RAMP (12). More crude oil (22, 23). Embryos of fathead minnows (Pimephales than 10 years of inconsistent sampling design, inadequate statistical promelas) and white sucker (Catostomus commersoni), species power, and monitoring-insensitive responses have missed major native to the Athabasca watershed, showed higher rates of mortal- sources of PAC to the Athabasca watershed. Most importantly, ity, reduced rates of growth, and signs of pathology typical of PAC ␮ RAMP claims that PAC concentrations are within baseline con- toxicity when exposed to as little as 0.01–0.1 g/L of alkyl phenan- ditions and of natural origin have fostered the perception that threne in oil sands leachates (calculated from refs. 24 and 25). PAC high-intensity mining and processing have no serious environmen- can also limit fish production through endocrine disruption. Com- tal impacts. The existing RAMP must be redesigned with more pared with reference fish, gonads of slimy sculpin (Cottus cognatus) scientific and technical oversight to better detect and track PAC and pearl dace (Margariscus margarita) collected near active oil discharges and effects. Oversight by an independent board of sands processing were less capable of synthesizing sex steroids (26). experts would make better use of monitoring resources and ensure PAC may contribute to a greater prevalence of abnormal juvenile that data are available for independent scrutiny and analyses. The and adult fish captured in the Athabasca near and downstream of scale and intensity of oil sands development and the complexity of oil sands mining (11, 27). PAC transport and fate in the Athabasca watershed demand the During spring, the snowmelt pulse could increase PAC concen- highest quality of scientific effort. trations in tributaries to those toxic to both aquatic and terrestrial organisms (28, 29). Dissolved PAC would be immediately available Methods to biota but particulate PAC may be taken up by filter feeders or Study Design. Seventeen sites were chosen on the main stem Athabasca, the partition into water for uptake by fish across gills. Residual particles Delta, and Lake Athabasca, from south of Fort McMurray (upstream of develop- may also accumulate on the forest floor with organic material or in ment) to Fort Chipewyan (downstream of development) (Fig. 1). The Athabasca underlying soils, causing PAC to leach more gradually into surface River is exposed to the McMF 50 km upstream of Fort McMurray and is present waters, adding to the overall PAC burden. within its banks to Eymundson Creek (38). Of the 24 fish species resident in the Athabasca and its tributaries Tributaries draining from the east (Steepbank, Muskeg, and Firebag Rivers) (30), 19 spawn in the spring or early summer (31). Embryos of these and west (Beaver, Ells, and Tar Rivers), including reference rivers (Firebag and Ells species are likely present when PAC concentrations are greatest. If Rivers) and those impacted by oil sands development (Steepbank, Muskeg, Bea- located in shallow tributaries receiving PAC-enriched snowmelt, ver, and Tar Rivers), and the Horse River stream mouth, were sampled in winter embryos may also experience photo-enhanced toxicity (32). Newly and summer (Fig. 1). Nine other stream mouth sites (AR17down, AR17up, Clarke, hatched whitefish embryos exposed to sublethal concentrations of Poplar, McLean, Fort, and Eymundson Creeks and MacKay and Calumet Rivers) retene (alkyl phenanthrene) died when coexposed to visible and were sampled only in summer. GIS analyses were performed by using ArcGIS 9 ArcMap version 9.2 (39), to UV light (33). Toxicity may also increase if PAC and metals delineate catchments, extract disturbance and geologic data, and calculate dis- associated with oil sands act synergistically, as observed for Daphnia tances between AR6 and other snow sampling sites (see Analytical and Statistical magna (34). Method Details in SI Text for details). Dissolved PAC did not persist as far as the Athabasca River Delta and Ft. Chipewyan, at least during the seasons sampled. However, Field Sampling. In March, snow was collected from 12 sites on the Athabasca PAC-contaminated sediments in the Athabasca Delta and Lake River, Athabasca Delta, and Lake Athabasca and from 19 tributary sites. Samples Athabasca (35, 36) are consistent with long-range atmospheric and were collected close to the middle of the river, and replicated at MU1. At each site, fluvial transport of particulate PAC. Our sampling did not include the depth and weight of five snow cores were recorded to calculate snow density, the intervening spring snowmelt, which would release a pulse of snow water equivalents, and PAC areal deposition rates. For PAC, an integrated PAC up to 50 km from oil sands upgrading facilities into nearby sample of the snowpack was melted and vigorously stirred, and a subsample ␮ tributaries and the Athabasca. Although this should increase PAC (775–4,000 mL) was filtered through a 0.45- m muffled Whatman GF/F filter. The concentrations in tributaries, it might not be detected in the main filter was frozen, and the filtrate was decanted, spiked with a suite of perdeu- terated hydrocarbon surrogate standards in 0.5 mL of acetone, shaken, extracted stem because of high-volume dilution by uncontaminated snowmelt twice with 100 mLl of DCM, and stored at Ϫ20 °C. from areas upstream of oil sands mining. PAC may also be removed PMDs were deployed in the Athabasca and its tributaries for Ϸ30 days to from the water column by microbial degradation and adsorption to passively monitor dissolved PAH in summer and winter and provide a time- organic matter that settles out of the water column (37). These integrated measure of dissolved PAH (14). PMDs were cleaned by sonication dilution and removal processes likely account for declining con- successively with dichloromethane (DCM), put in DCM-cleaned metal holders,

22350 ͉ www.pnas.org͞cgi͞doi͞10.1073͞pnas.0912050106 Kelly et al. wrapped in DCM-rinsed aluminum foil and stored in heat-sealed Ziploc bags at presented in Analytical and Statistical Method Details in SI Text and Table S1, Ϫ20 °C. At 12 locations on the Athabasca River and the Horse River mouth, two respectively. PMDs were deployed per site, near the river bottom and in surface water. One PMD was deployed near the river bottom at the five other Athabasca sites, and Analytical and Statistical Methods. Details of QA/QC, contamination by diesel all tributary sites. PMDs were retrieved by using global positioning system coor- fuel, PAC source identification, estimation of aqueous PAC concentrations and dinates and a metal detector (winter). Replicate PMDs were deployed within PAC deposition calculations are provided in Analytical and Statistical Method 500 m at sites where PAC were assumed to be high (MU3) or low (EL1). One trip Details in SI Text. blank and five field blanks, handled like deployed PMDs, were included with winter and summer samples. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. Dr. K. Timoney, R. Grandjambe, R. Radmanovich, R. Oil sands samples were collected in summer from the Syncrude lease area, the Ladouceur, S. Laurent, T. Boag, P. Jordan, K. Vladicka-Davies, M. Davies, and H. La east and west bank of the Athabasca River north of Bitumount, and underwater provided assistance with planning and field and/or laboratory work. Parks Can- at the mouth of the Steepbank River. All samples were frozen. ada and the Government of Alberta granted research permits. The Athabasca Chipewyan, Mikisew Cree, and Fort MacKay First Nations and Me´tis provided traditional ecological knowledge and access to traditional territories. Matt Han- Laboratory. PAC were measured at the University of Alberta Biogeochemical neman and Peter Lee (Global Forest Watch) supplied GIS data and defined Analytical Laboratory by using an Agilent 6890N gas chromatograph coupled catchments. Charlene Nielsen completed GIS analyses and created the study area to a 5975 inert XL mass selective detector and 7683B injector (modified refs. 14 map. Reviewer comments improved the manuscript. This work was funded by the and 40). Detailed methods and instrument and method detection limits are the Tides Foundation and the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation.

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Newsted JL, Giesy JP (1987) Predictive models for photoinduced acute toxicity of polycyclic tion, Fort McMurray, AB, Canada), www.health.alberta.ca/newsroom/pub-environmen- aromatic hydrocarbons to Daphnia magna, Strauss (Cladocera, Crustacea). Environ Toxicol tal-health.html. Chem 6:445–461. 11. RAMP (Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program) (2009A) 2008 Final Technical Report 33. Vehniainen ER, Hakkinen J, Oikari A (2003) Photoinduced lethal and sublethal toxicity of (Hatfield Consultants, Kilgour and Associates Ltd., Klohn Crippe Berger Ltd., and Western retene, a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon derived from resin acid, to coregonid larvae. Resource Solutions). Environ Toxicol Chem 22:2995–3000. 12. Ayles GB, Dube´M, Rosenberg D (2004) Oil Sands Regional Aquatic Monitoring Program (RAMP) Scientific Peer Review of the Five Year Report (1997–2001) (Fisheries and Oceans 34. Xie F, et al. 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Wakeham SC, Schaffner C, Giger W (1980) Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in recent lake Report - Task 5: Hydrocarbons/oil sands and heavy oil research and development, Brua RB, sediments I. Compounds having anthropogenic origins. Geochim Cosmochim Acta Cash KL Culp JM. Submitted to the Panel on Energy Research and Development (Environ- 44:415–429. ment Canada, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada). 16. Barrie LA, Kovalick J (1980) A Wintertime Investigation of the Deposition of Pollutants 36. Akre CJ, Headley JV, Conly FM, Peru KM, Dickson LC (2004) Spatial patterns of natural Around an Isolated Power Plant in Northern Alberta. Prepared for the Alberta Oil Sands polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in sediment in the lower Athabasca River. J Environ Sci Environ Res Program by Atmos Environ Service. AOSERP Report 90 (Alberta Oil Sands Health A 39:1163–1176. Environmental Research Program). 37. French-McCay DF (2004) Oil spill impact modeling: Development and validation. Environ 17. Murray WA (1981) The 1981 snowpack survey in the AOSERP study area. Prepared for the Toxicol Chem 23:2441–2456. Alberta Oil Sands Environ Res Program by Promet Enviromental Group. AOSERP Report 38. Conly FM, Crosley RW, Headley JV (2002) Characterizing sediment sources and natural 125 (Alberta Oil Sands Environmental Research Program). hydrocarbon inputs in the lower Athabasca River, Canada. Environ Eng Sci 1:187–199. 18. National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) (2009) www.ec.gc.ca/inrp-npri/. 39. ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute (2006) ArcGIS: Release 9.2 (Environmental 19. Allan R, Jackson TA (1978) Heavy metals in bottom sediments of the mainstem Athabasca Systems Research Institute, 1999–2006, Redlands, CA), www.esri.com. River system in the AOSERP study area. Prepared for the Alberta Oil Sands Environ Res 40. 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34 (Alberta Oil Sands Environmental Research Program). SCIENCES ENVIRONMENTAL

Kelly et al. PNAS ͉ December 29, 2009 ͉ vol. 106 ͉ no. 52 ͉ 22351 Supporting Information

Kelly et al. 10.1073/pnas.0912050106 SI Text operations were having an impact’’ (14). Tailings ponds leak Controversy Background Information. Large-scale commercial oil pollutants into soil, groundwater and surface water (15, 6), but sands mining near the Athabasca River began in the late 1960s (1), industry and the government suggest that quantities are insignifi- approximately 250 km upstream of the northern Alberta commu- cant (6), despite recent reports that leakage rates are 11 million nity of Fort Chipewyan. Residents have since reported long-term L/day (16). declines in the populations of many fish and wildlife species and in The Regional Aquatic Monitoring Program (RAMP) has been the quality of water and fish obtained from the river, its delta and responsible for studying the effects of oil sands mining on the Lake Athabasca (2, 3), part of lands guaranteed to indigenous Athabasca River and its tributaries since 1997, and results have inhabitants by Canada under Treaty 8 of 1899. consistently suggested that impacts on water quality are negligible Concerns about the health of residents emerged well over a to low, or within regional baseline conditions (e.g., ref. 1). The 2008 decade ago with recommendations in the 1990s for ongoing mon- RAMP community update, based on 2006 RAMP data, stated that itoring of environmental and human health throughout the north- ‘‘there were no detectable regional changes in aquatic resources ern river basins [Northern River Basins Study (4)]. A companion related to oil sands development… only localized, site specific study, on the health of Albertans residing in the Peace and exceptions’’ (17). The only potential anthropogenic effect on water Athabasca River basins, specifically recommended inclusion of Fort quality noted within the Athabasca River, its delta, or tributaries Chipewyan’s Nunee Health Authority in environmental health followed an approved diversion of the Tar River (17). studies because of ‘‘their unique interest in environmental contam- The RAMP is industry-funded and includes representatives of inants resulting from their geographic location and consumption of industry, government, local and aboriginal communities and envi- foods from local sources’’ (5). Recommended monitoring included ronmental organizations. The program was highly criticized by a measuring fish, wildlife, human exposure, and human health out- peer review of the program’s five year report (1997–2001), which comes related to local contaminants of concern (4, 5). described the number of monitoring sites as inadequate, identified In 2006, local physician Dr. John O’Connor reported an unusual sampling practices that could ultimately neither measure nor detect incidence of rare cancers, thyroid problems, and other diseases impacts and stated that the program design could not assess related to immune impairment in Fort Chipewyan (3, 6). A cumulative impacts on water quality (18). The reviewers also ‘‘felt subsequent study suggested that cancer rates in Fort Chipewyan there was a serious problem related to scientific leadership, that were comparable with Alberta provincial averages, although the individual components of the plan seemed to be designed, operated incidence of hypertension, renal failure, diabetes, and lupus was and analyzed independent of other components, that there was no elevated (7). However, a more recent detailed study indicated that overall regional plan, that clear questions were not addressed in the the overall cancer rate and incidence of blood and lymphatic system monitoring and that there were significant shortfalls with respect to cancers, grouped biliary tract cancers, and soft tissue cancers in Fort statistical design of the individual components.’’ Elsewhere, ‘‘the Chipewyan were higher than expected (8). Residents attribute problems with the report are found in lack of details of methods, increased cancer rates to environmental contamination from in- failure to describe rationales for program changes, examples of dustrial sources, including oil sands development (3, 8). The degree inappropriate statistical analysis, and unsupported conclusions’’ to which oil sands development contributes to chemical contami- (18). The review was never made public, and RAMP raw data are nants in the Athabasca River and its tributaries, and to the health considered to be proprietary and are not readily available for of people in the region, remains highly controversial. further analysis and critical review. Oil sands contain a broad array of the chemicals typical of The Nunee Health Authority contracted a review of available petroleum, including three- to five-ringed polycyclic aromatic hy- data from 1997 to 2006, which also criticized the RAMP for drocarbons (PAHs) and a variety of trace metals (9–11). Many of inconsistent monitoring, weak data analyses, including bias, errors these constituents are highly toxic, some are carcinogenic, and all and overly conservative interpretations. The review noted a paucity can be distributed widely via gases and dust originating from oil of monitoring data near Fort Chipewyan and western Lake Atha- sand mining and processing. These facilities and in situ operations basca (3). For these reasons, aboriginal and environmental groups can also affect nearby water bodies via land clearing, excessive water have become increasingly critical of RAMP (6), and some have withdrawals, pipeline and road crossings that increase erosion and resigned from the program. sedimentation rates, release and deposition of airborne pollutants, Timoney also concluded that the ‘‘people and biota of the and spills or leaks from operations or tailings ponds (6). Athabasca River Delta and western Lake Athabasca are exposed to Contaminant releases to the Athabasca River have been docu- higher levels of some contaminants than those upstream’’ (6). Of mented. In June 1970, an oil pipeline leak to the Athabasca River primary concern were arsenic, mercury, and PAHs, which appeared disrupted the drinking water supply of Fort MacKay and Fort to be increasing above already high background concentrations Chipewyan and commercial fishing on Lake Athabasca (12). A from 1997 to 2006. The report expressed concern for public health, winter tailings spill under ice in 1981–82 contaminated a large because some medical literature associated chronic exposure to downstream section of the Athabasca River with PAHs, dibenzo- these contaminants with diseases prevalent in Fort Chipewyan (6). thiophenes, phenolics, and other contaminants (13). For example, elevated arsenic concentrations have been associated One difficulty with assessing time trends in many of the contam- with cancers of the bile duct, liver, urinary tract, and skin as well as inants in the Athabasca River is that many of the sensitive analytical vascular diseases and Type 2 diabetes (6). Another analysis of methods in use today were not available in the early years of oil Athabasca River water quality data from 1960 to 2007 revealed sands mining. Also, as rapid development has proceeded, there are decreasing trends in stream flow and increasing turbidity, nutrients few remaining pristine catchments that can serve as reference and concentrations of some metals at Old Fort within the Atha- watersheds within the area where mining is possible. basca Delta, downstream of oil sands development (19). Anthro- In 2003, the Northern Rivers Ecosystem Initiative concluded that pogenic disturbance within the catchment was identified as a natural erosion of oil sands caused slight to moderate impacts to the possible source, but establishing causal links would require further Athabasca River, but found ‘‘no evidence that industrial oil sands study (19).

Kelly et al. www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/0912050106 1of11 Recognizing the huge scale of oil sands mining, the extent of Sound, Alaska in 2004 (20). In summer, the relative percent potential impacts, and uncertainties due to inadequate monitoring difference was Ͻ19.8% for duplicates from impacted and reference data, there have been many recommendations for further studies of sites. Dissolved PAC concentrations in trip (winter: 0.055, summer: the sources, transport, fate and effects of contaminants in the 0.036 ␮g/L) and field (winter: 0.050 Ϯ 0.019, summer: 0.050 Ϯ Athabasca system (e.g., refs. 3–6). 0.009) blanks were low in both seasons. In summer, field blanks deployed at impacted sites contained more dissolved PAC than Analytical and Statistical Method Details. GIS analyses. Catchments those from reference sites, indicating that PMDs collected dissolved for each site were created using a 50 m shuttle radar topography PAC from the air. Dissolved PAC concentrations in PMDs de- mission (20) digital model and catchment areas were calculated. ployed at upstream and some midstream sites were lower than field Digital disturbance data were assessed for relevence and a and trip blanks, indicating that ambient stream concentrations were change analysis of forest ecozones within Alberta (1991–2001) so low that PAC initially present in the deployed PMDs leached into (21), Canada access (roads, mines, forest fragments and reser- the sampled water stream, a phenomenon observed elsewhere (25). voirs buffered by 500 m) (22), and the extent of oil sands PAC source identification. Analysis of four samples of oil sands development in 2008 (23) were chosen for further analysis. collected from the east (n ϭ 2, ST3, east bank of the Athabasca Disturbance and geologic formation data (24) were extracted River) and west (n ϭ 2, Syncrude and west bank of the Athabasca within the extent of each catchment and areas were calculated. River) sides of the Athabasca River contained PAC ranging from This process allowed for calculation of the proportion of each 64.9 to 282.5 ␮g/g. Four homologue groups accounted for most of catchment containing McMF, overall surface land disturbance (a the PAC: dibenzothiophenes (28–42%), phenanthrenes/an- relative index), and land disturbance attributable to oil sands thracenes (10–30%), fluoranthenes/pyrenes (13–28%), and benz- mining in 2008. The Firebag River catchment extends outside of anthracenes/chrysenes (9–21%). Ratios of (⌺-dibenzothio- Alberta into Saskatchewan where no comparable disturbance phenes):(⌺-phenanthrenes/anthracenes, or ⌺D:⌺P) Ͼ0.8 and (⌺- and geology data were available, thus, our analysis only included benzanthracenes/chrysenes:⌺-phenanthrenes/anthracenes, or the Alberta portion of the Firebag River. For the same reason, ⌺C:⌺P) Ͼ0.065 were used as indicators of an oil sands source in the catchments for Athabasca River sites do not contain tributaries PMD samples, with the low value of the second ratio reflecting the that originate in Saskatchewan. much lower solubility of benzanthracenes/chrysenes compared with PAC analyses. Filters were dried by desiccator and weighed, and 0.1 phenanthrenes/anthracenes (dibenzothiophenes are somewhat g of oil sands sample was added to a 100 mL centrifuge tube. more soluble than phenanthrenes/anthracenes) (26). We consid- Each PMD, filter and oil sands sample was spiked with d8- ered PMD samples with both ratios lower than these values as Naphthalene, d10-Acenaphthene, d10-Phenanthrene, d12- contaminated with diesel oil, because dibenzothiophenes and benz- Chrysene, and d12-Perylene and extracted with 100 mL 80:20 anthracenes/chrysenes are mostly removed from diesel oil by sulfur (v:v) pentane:dichloromethane in an ultrasonic bath. The extract removal and distillation, respectively. These criteria were only was transferred to a 100 mL round bottom flask, evaporated to applied to PMD samples that contained at least 100 ng of PAC in approximately 8 mL with a rotary evaporator and transferred to the aliquot extracted to avoid misinterpretations due to benzan- a 10 mL K-D contractor tube. The extract was concentrated to thracenes/chrysenes below detection limits. 1 mL under a stream of nitrogen and loaded ontoa1cmID Ratio of PAC to bitumen. The four oil sands samples analyzed for PAC column packed with2gofactivated silica gel (100–200 mesh) at (see PAC source identification) were also analyzed for percent 130 °C. The column was eluted with 8 mL of pentane to obtain organic extractable at the University of Alberta. Oil sands samples the alkane fraction and with 2 mL 80:20 (v/v) pentane:dichlo- were weighed before and after extraction with dichloromethane. romethane and 8 mL 50:50 (v:v) pentane:dichloromethane to The percent organic extractable of the four oil sands samples collect the PAH fraction, which was concentrated under nitro- ranged from 11.3 to 16.9%, with a mean of 14.7%. PAC concen- gen and re-constituted in 1 mL of hexane. Snow extracts were trations and percent organic extractable of the four samples were filtered through 50 grams of sodium sulphate, concentrated as used to calculate the PAC to bitumen ratio of 0.000649 Ϯ 0.000168. above and re-constituted with 1 mL of hexane. An internal The four oil sands samples may not be completely representative of standard of 50 ␮L of 2-fluorobiphenyl was added to all extracts what is mined and processed, but were what was accessible. This for chromatograph with a mass selective detector (GC-MSD) ratio should be relatively insensitive to change from volatility losses. analysis. For each extract, 1.0 ␮L was injected in splitless mode As shown in Fig. S4A, the relative abundances of the more volatile at 320 °C for separation on a 30 m, 0.25 mm ID, 0.5 ␮m film PAC such as the naphthalenes and the parent and methyl- DB-5MS fused silica capillary column (J&W Scientific, Folsom, substituted three-ring PAC are small compared with the more CA). The initial oven temperature was 60 °C for 2 minutes which substituted fluorenes, dibenzothiophenes, phenanthrenes/ increased by 8 °C/min to 300 °C for 10 minutes and the flow rate anthracenes, fluoranthenes/pyrenes and benzanthracenes/ of Helium as the carrier gas was 1.0 mL/min. The PAH were chrysenes. Furthermore, to the extent that volatility losses of PAC detected by selected ion monitoring (SIM) after ionization by a exceed those of the remaining non PAC material in the bitumen, oil 70eV impact source. deposition would be underestimated. QA/QC. Some of the deployed polyethylene membrane devices Estimation of aqueous PAC concentrations. PMD results were presented (PMDs) were lost or vandalized (winter: MU2, AR15 top and as estimated aqueous PAC concentrations, based on the assump- bottom, summer: ST3 and FR3, AR2 top and bottom). To be tion of equilibrium between the two phases. Sampling rates of PAH conservative and not overestimate PAC concentrations, values by semipermeable membrane devices (SPMDs) and PMDs are below method detection limits (Table S1) were not increased to the indistinguishable (27, 28), but PMDs reach equilibrium with am- method detection limit for analyses. Several samples were contam- bient conditions more quickly because their absorptive capacity is inated by diesel oil, as indicated by PAC distributions limited to two- only Ϸ20% that of SPMDs per unit mass (27, 29). Naphthalenes and three-ring homologues and were not included in analyses reach equilibrium with SPMDs in about 10 days, but Ͼ30 days are (winter: EL3, AR14, summer: AR17up, MU3 dup, HOR3 top, required for three- and four-ring PAH (29). We used the equilib- TR2, EL2, FR1, AR18, AR12, concentration range: 0.010 to 0.232 rium assumption because of the faster approach to equilibrium with ␮g/L). This contamination likely arises from brief exposure to high PMDs and because the aqueous concentrations calculated on this diesel concentrations caused by ephemeral spills from boating assumption are underestimates to the extent that equilibrium was activity, pipeline, or storage tank leaks, fuel transfers, unreported not attained. The approach to equilibrium is sensitive to flow across spills, etc. Comparable instances of such contamination were the PMD surface and to the extent of biofouling, so we cannot be evident in a similar study of background PAC in Prince William sure our PMDs reached equilibrium with all of the ambient PAC

Kelly et al. www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/0912050106 2of11 concentrations analyzed. The alternative approach of assuming vide the estimated PAC loading at zero distance, and the slope was linear uptake (29) may have resulted in considerable overestima- the decay constant for the argument of the exponential that Ϫ tion. We calculated PMD–water partition coefficients (Kmw) for multiplies distance (x). Expressing PAC ϭ Ae kx for the relation of each PAC from a regression with corresponding octanol-water PAC loading as a function of distance and integrated over a circle partition coefficients (Kow) provided in Equation 3-6 of Huckins et of radius R ϭ 50 km gave the total deposition within the circle. al. (29), using K s from McGrath et al. (26). Results were ow ANOVA. Aqueous PAC concentrations estimated from correspond- presented as micrograms of PAC/L (parts per billion). ing PMD analyses were natural log-transformed, which satisfied the Area-wide PAC deposition. The natural log of PAC loading (ng/m2) was regressed against distance from AR6, which was calculated by assumptions of normality and equality of variance for the ANOVA using ArcGIS. The estimated intercept was exponentiated to pro- analyses presented.

1. RAMP (Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program) (2009) 2008 Final Technical Report. (Hat- 17. RAMP (Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program), WBEA (Wood Buffalo Environmental field Consultants, Kilgour and Associates Ltd., Klohn Crippe Berger Ltd., and Western Association), CEMA (Cumulative Environmental Management Association) (2008) Joint Resource Solutions). Community Update 2008 Reporting Our Environmental Activities to the Community. 2. Bill L, Cozier J, Surrendi, D (1996) A report of wisdom synthesized from the traditional (RAMP, WBEA and CEMA, Fort McMurray, AB, Canada). knowledge component studies. Synthesis Report 12, Northern River Basins Study (Gov- 18. Ayles GB, Dube´M, Rosenberg D (2004) Oil Sands Regional Aquatic Monitoring Program ernment of Canada, Alberta and Northwest Territories). (RAMP) Scientific Peer Review of the Five Year Report (1997–2001).(Fisheries and Oceans 3. Timoney K (2007) A Study of Water and Sediment Quality as Related to Public Health Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada). Issues, Fort Chipewyan, Alberta. (Treeline Ecological Research, Edmonton, AB, Canada). 19. Hebben T (2009) Analysis of Water Quality Conditions and Trends for the Long-Term River 4. NRBS (Northern River Basins Study) (1996) Northern River Basins Study Report to the Network: Athabasca River, 1960–2007 (Water Policy Branch, Environmental Assurance, Ministers (Government of Canada, Alberta, and Northwest Territories). Alberta Environment, Edmonton, AB, Canada). 5. Alberta Health (1999) Northern River Basins Human Health Monitoring Program Report 20. Jarvis A, Reuter HI, Nelson A, Guevara E (2008) Hole-filled seamless SRTM data V4, (Health Surveillance, Alberta Health, Government of Alberta). International Cantre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) [digital data]. Available at http:// 6. Holroyd P, Simieritsch T (2009) The Waters That Bind Us Transboundary Implications of Oil srtm.csi.cgiar.org. Sands Development (The Pembina Institute, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada). 7. Alberta Health and Wellness (2006) Fort Chipewyan Health Data Analysis (Public Health 21. Global Forest Watch Canada (2009) Recent anthropogenic changes in Alberta’s forest Surveillance and Environmental Health Branch, Public Health Division, Alberta Health and ecozones [digital data]. Available at [email protected]. Wellness, Government of Alberta). 22. Global Forest Watch Canada (2009) Canada_Access_Combined [digital data]. Available 8. Chen Y (2009) Cancer Incidence in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta 1995–2006 (Alberta Cancer at [email protected]. Board, Division of Population Health and Information Surveillance, Alberta Health Ser- 23. Global Forest Watch Canada (2009) Athabasca bituminous sands industrial footprint, vices). 2008: based on unpublished data mapped from Landsat TM Multi-spectral scanner- 9. Akre CJ, Headley JV, Conly FM, Peru KM, Dickson LC (2004) Spatial patterns of natural path 42/Row 20, 10/03/2008 [digital data]. Available at [email protected]. polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in sediment in the lower Athabasca River. J Environ Sci 24. Hamilton WN, Langenberg CW, Price M (2004) Bedrock geology compilation of Alberta Health A 39:1163–1176. (GIS data, polygon features) [digital data]; Energy Resources Conservation Board, Map 10. Colavecchia MV, Backus SM, Hodson PV, Parrott JL (2004) Toxicity of oil sands to early life 027, 1972, Alberta Geological Survey, Alberta Research Council. Digital Data 2004- stages of fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas). Environ Toxicol Chem 23:1709–1718. 0033. Available at http://www.ags.gov.ab.ca/GIS/download_gis.htm. 11. 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Birkholz DA, Hrudey SE, Kimble BJ, Rawluk M, Gray M (1987) Characterization of water 27. Booij K, Hofmans HE, Fischer CV, Van Weelee EM (2003) Temperature dependent uptake soluble components of a waste water oil sample from an oil sands bitumen upgrading rates of nonpolar organic compounds by semi-permeable membrane devices and low- plant. Oil in Freshwater: Chemistry, Biology, Countermeasure Technology, Vandermeulen JH, Hrudey SE (Pergamon Press, New York), p 42–57. density polyethylene membranes. Environ Sci Technol 37:361–366. 14. NREI (Northern Rivers Ecosystem Initiative) (2004) Northern River Ecosystem Initiative Key 28. Carls MG, Holland LG, Short JW, Heintz RA, Rice SD (2004) Monitoring polynuclear Findings (Government of Canada, Alberta, and Northwest Territories). aromatic hydrocarbons in aqueous environmental with passive low-density polyethylene 15. Bendell-Young LI, et al. (2000) Assessing the ecological characteristics of wetlands receiv- membrane devices. Environ Toxicol Chem 23:1416–1424. ing an industrial effluent. Ecol Appl 1:310–322. 29. Huckins JM, et al. (2002) A Guide for the Use of Semi-Permeable Membrane Devices 16. Price M (2008) 11 Million Litres a Day the Tar Sands’ Leaking Legacy (Environmental (SPMDs) as Samplers For Waterborne Hydrophobic Organic Contaminants. Publication Defense, Toronto, ON, Canada). Number 4690 (American Petroleum Institute, 1220 L Street NW, Washington, DC).

Kelly et al. www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/0912050106 3of11 Fig. S1. Site AR6 photographed 26 February 2008. (A) Dirty snow on the Athabasca River (facing south). (B) close-up of surface snow at AR6. (C) Snowpack at AR6. Photographs courtesy of E.N.K.

Kelly et al. www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/0912050106 4of11 Fig. S2. Accumulation of particulate (A), particulate PAC (B), and dissolved PAC (C) in the snowpack as a negative exponential of distance from AR6 (near Syncrude and Suncor upgrader facilities).

Kelly et al. www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/0912050106 5of11 Fig. S3. Melted snow in pots from sites AR1 (unimpacted) (A) and AR6 (near Syncrude and Suncor upgrader facilities) (B, C, and D). Note oil in melted snow from AR6 in B. Oil and dark particulates are noticeable at the bottom of the pot after draining the sample in C. The originally white paper towel used to wipe out the pot is visible in D. Photographs courtesy of E.N.K.

Kelly et al. www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/0912050106 6of11 Fig. S4. Relative concentration of PAC in oil sands (includes oil sand from Syncrude, Steepbank stream mouth, east, and west bank of the Athabasca River) (A), dissolved PAC in snow (B), PAC in snow particulate (includes snow sites AR2, AR16, AR4, AR6, AR7, AR8, BE2, BE3, EL2, EL3, MU1, MU2, MU3, ST1, ST2, ST3, TR2, TR3) (C), and dissolved PAC in water (includes contaminated sites MCC, MACK, CALR, FOR, and EL3 sampled during the summer) (D). Gray vertical bars indicate averages, black bars are ranges.

Kelly et al. www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/0912050106 7of11 Fig. S5. Estimated dissolved PAC concentrations (␮g/L) during winter (W) and summer (S). (A) The Athabasca River tributaries [n ϭ 3 for 1, 2, and 3 (W&S)]. (B) Midstream tributary sites [nil to small: n ϭ 2W, 2S), medium to large: n ϭ 3W, 2S)]. (C) Stream mouth sites [nil to small: n ϭ 4 (W) n ϭ 6 (S), medium to large: n ϭ 2 (W), n ϭ 6 (S)]. (D) the Athabasca River, Athabasca Delta and Lake Athabasca (W&S). *, indicates samples contaminated by diesel fuel. No tributary sites contaminated by diesel fuel were included in figures. McMF, McMurray Formation. Error bars are standard error of the mean. (A) PAC concentrations differed significantly among sites (two-way ANOVA, ln transformation, P ϭ 0.006, ␤ ϭ 0.87), but not season (P ϭ 0.228, ␤ ϭ 0.107). The greater apparent trend of increasing PAC downstream in summer compared with winter was nearly significant (interaction P ϭ 0.057) with only moderate power to detect actual differences with this test (␤ ϭ 0.433). Post hoc testing revealed that PAC concentrations in upstream and midstream sites were not significantly different (P ϭ 0.568), but were significantly lower than at stream mouth sites (P Ͻ 0.009). (B) At midstream sites, disturbance effects and the interaction of season and disturbance were significant (two-way ANOVA, ln transformation, disturbance: P ϭ 0.006, ␤ ϭ 0.946, interaction: P ϭ 0.035, ␤ ϭ 0.583). However the seasonal effect was not significant, but the power of the test was low, likely because of small sample size (P ϭ 0.717, ␤ ϭ 0.050). Post hoc testing revealed that winter and summer PAC concentrations were greater at sites with M-L development, than sites with N-S development (W: P ϭ 0.006, S: P ϭ 0.004). (C) At stream mouth sites, both seasonal and disturbance effects were highly significant (two-way ANOVA, ln transformation, P Ͻ 0.001, ␤ Ͼ 0.976), however, the interaction of season and disturbance was not significant (P ϭ 0.133, ␤ ϭ 0.201). Post hoc testing revealed that winter and summer PAC concentrations were greater at sites with M-L development, than sites with N-S development (W: P ϭ 0.041, S: P Ͻ 0.001).

Kelly et al. www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/0912050106 8of11 Fig. S6. New industrial development along the eastern bank of the Athabasca River, Ϸ8 km upstream of AR15, on August 12, 2008. Photograph courtesy of E.N.K.

Kelly et al. www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/0912050106 9of11 Fig. S7. ‘‘Winter haze’’ and erosion of ‘‘dust’’ from oil sands mining activity on February 26, 2008. Photograph courtesy of Dr. Kevin Timoney.

Kelly et al. www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/0912050106 10 of 11 Table S1. Instrument and methods detection limits for PAC analyses Instrument detection Method detection limit Method detection limit for Method detection limit Target analyte limit, ␮g/L for snow, ng/L* PMD, ng/g of strip† for oil sand, ng/g

Naphthalene 0.42 0.05 0.36 4.16 C1 naphthalene 0.42 0.05 0.36 4.16 C2 naphthalene 0.42 0.05 0.36 4.16 C3 naphthalene 0.42 0.05 0.36 4.16 C4 naphthalene 0.42 0.05 0.36 4.16 Biphenyl 0.21 0.03 0.18 2.13 Acenaphthylene 0.19 0.02 0.17 1.93 Acenaphtene 0.71 0.09 0.61 7.10 Fluorene 0.53 0.07 0.45 5.26 C1 fluorene 0.53 0.07 0.45 5.26 C2 fluorene 0.53 0.07 0.45 5.26 C3 fluorene 0.53 0.07 0.45 5.26 C4 fluorene 0.53 0.07 0.45 5.26 Dibenzothiophene 0.30 0.04 0.26 2.97 C1 dibenzothiophene 0.30 0.04 0.26 2.97 C2 dibenzothiophene 0.30 0.04 0.26 2.97 C3 dibenzothiophene 0.30 0.04 0.26 2.97 C4 dibenzothiophene 0.30 0.04 0.26 2.97 Phenanthrene 0.22 0.03 0.19 2.20 C1 phenanthrene/anthracene 0.22 0.03 0.19 2.20 C2 phenanthrene/anthracene 0.22 0.03 0.19 2.20 C3 phenanthrene/anthracene 0.22 0.03 0.19 2.20 C4 phenanthrene/anthracene 0.22 0.03 0.19 2.20 Anthracene 0.38 0.05 0.32 3.77 Fluoranthene 0.26 0.03 0.22 2.59 Pyrene 0.32 0.04 0.27 3.17 C1 fluoranthenes/pyrenes 0.32 0.04 0.27 3.17 C2 fluoranthenes/pyrenes 0.32 0.04 0.27 3.17 C3 fluoranthenes/pyrenes 0.32 0.04 0.27 3.17 C4 fluoranthenes/pyrenes 0.32 0.04 0.27 3.17 Benzanthracene 0.63 0.08 0.54 6.27 Chrysene 0.66 0.08 0.57 6.59 C1 chrysene 0.66 0.08 0.57 6.59 C2 chrysene 0.66 0.08 0.57 6.59 C3 chrysene 0.66 0.08 0.57 6.59 C4 chrysene 0.66 0.08 0.57 6.59 Benzofluoranthene 0.47 0.06 0.40 4.69 Benzo[k]fluoranthene 0.74 0.09 0.63 7.35 Benzopyrene 0.74 0.09 0.64 7.40 Indeno[1,2,3-c,d]pyrene 1.30 0.16 1.12 13.03 Dibenzo[a,h]anthracene 0.37 0.05 0.32 3.73 Benzo[g,h,i]perylene 0.64 0.08 0.55 6.40

*Snow MDL was calculated based on the extraction of4Lofsnow. †The PMD MDL was calculated based on the mean weight of 1/2 a polyethylene strip.

Kelly et al. www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/0912050106 11 of 11 Spring, 2010 A whitefish with a large tumor, taken with gill net by Fort Chipewyan residents 2 A severely deformed whitefish gill netted near Fort Chipewyan 3 A whitefish with a deformed snout taken near Fort Chipewyan 4 A burbot with a tumor taken by gillnet near Fort Chipewyan 5 A deformed whitefish with severe skin lesions taken by gillnet near Fort Chipewyan 6 A deformed whitefish taken by gillnet near Fort Chipewyan 7 A severely deformed fish 8

As Long As The Rivers Flow:

Athabasca River Use, Knowledge and Change

MCFN Community Report August 16, 2010

Craig Candler, Rachel Olson, Steve DeRoy and the Firelight Group Research Cooperative, with the Mikisew Cree First Nation

As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010

As Long As The Rivers Flow:

Athabasca River Knowledge, Use and Change MCFN Community Report August 16, 2010

Text and figures prepared by: Dr. Craig Candler (Ph.D.), the Firelight Group Research Cooperative

Rachel Olson (Ph.D. candidate), the Firelight Group Research Cooperative

Maps prepared by:

Steven DeRoy (GIS Specialist), the Firelight Group Research Cooperative

Internal Peer Review by:

Dr. Ginger Gibson (Ph.D.), the Firelight Group Research Cooperative

Submitted to: Mikisew Cree First Nation

Disclaimer

The information contained in this report is provided for use by the Mikisew Cree First Nation (MCFN) and is based on limited research conducted as part of the Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Study. This report is based on the understandings of the authors, and is not a complete depiction of the dynamic and living system of use and knowledge maintained by MCFN elders and members. The information contained herein should not be construed as to define, limit, or otherwise constrain the Treaty and aboriginal rights of Mikisew Cree First Nation or other First Nations or aboriginal peoples.

www.thefirelightgroup.com 2 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 “… We assured them that the treaty would not lead to any forced interference with their mode of life…”

David Laird, J.H.Ross, J.A.J. McKenna, Report of Commissioners for Treaty No. 8, 22nd September, 1899 … The promises the Queen made to us, many of the people have lost. The commissioner representing the Queen who was here to make the treaty payment picked up a blade of grass and said, "In the future, this will never be taken away from you. Don't have any wrong ideas about it. You will always have it. As long as the sun walks and the rivers flow. The way you are making a living in the bush will never be restricted." That was told to us by the Queen from overseas, Queen Victoria. But now the white man is so dishonest. We have lost many things…

Transcript of interview with MCFN elder, Louis Boucher, age 82, an MCFN member and witness to the signing of Treaty No. 8, conducted in Cree by Richard Lightening on February 6, 1974.

www.thefirelightgroup.com 3 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 Table of Contents MAP 1: STUDY AREA ...... 5 MAP 2: REPORTED NAVIGATIONAL INCIDENTS AND HAZARDS ...... 6 MAP 3: REPORTED INSTANCES OF LOST USE DUE TO WATER LEVEL ...... 7 MAP 4: REPORTED INSTANCES OF LOST USE DUE TO WATER QUALITY ...... 8 MAP 5: WATERSHEDS AND RIVER AREAS WITH NO BOAT ACCESS AT EXTREME LOW WATER LEVELS .... 9 MAP 6: AREA OF LOST OR INHIBITED USE AT EXTREME LOW WATER LEVELS ...... 10 1. INTRODUCTION ...... 11 2. BACKGROUND ...... 11 2.1. TREATY NO. 8: A LIVING DOCUMENT ...... 12 2.2. STUDY GOALS AND CONTEXT ...... 13 2.3. WATER-BASED ACCESS AND PREFERRED MODE OF PRACTICE ...... 14 3. METHODS ...... 15 3.1. PARTICIPANT PROFILES ...... 15 4. RESULTS ...... 16 4.1. FLOODING AND SEASONAL CYCLES ...... 17 4.2. NAVIGATIONAL HAZARDS AND INCIDENTS ...... 18 4.3. WATER QUALITY AND INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION ...... 19 4.4. SUBSISTENCE NAVIGATION AND ACCESS ...... 21 5. DEFINING ABORIGINAL BASE FLOW (ABF) AND ABORIGINAL EXTREME FLOW (AXF) ...... 24 6. RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 26

Appendix 1: MCFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Project Interview Guide

Appendix 2: MCFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Project Interview and Mapping Methods

Appendix 3: MCFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Project Informed Consent Document

www.thefirelightgroup.com 4 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 Map 1: Study Area

www.thefirelightgroup.com 5 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 Map 2: Reported Navigational Incidents and Hazards

www.thefirelightgroup.com 6 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 Map 3: Reported Instances of Lost Use due to Water Level

www.thefirelightgroup.com 7 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 Map 4: Reported Instances of Lost Use due to Water Quality

www.thefirelightgroup.com 8 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 Map 5: Navigable Watersheds and River Areas with No Access at Extreme Low Water Levels, via Boat Access

www.thefirelightgroup.com 9 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 Map 6: Area of Lost or Inhibited Use at Extreme Low Water Levels

www.thefirelightgroup.com 10 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010

1. Introduction This report is based on limited research conducted for the Mikisew Cree First Nation (MCFN) as part of the Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Study (the Study). The report focuses on MCFN knowledge of the Athabasca River, how it has changed over past decades, and how MCFN use of the river has changed as a result. Key issues raised by MCFN participants in the study include issues of lower water levels and reduced water quality. Section 2 of this report provides a background and context regarding the study, and the key questions that inform it. This includes a brief discussion of Treaty No. 8, and the importance of boat transportation for MCFN peoples. Section 3 provides a summary of methods. Section 4 provides the results of the study, including a description of maps, and includes perceptions of ecological change on the Athabasca River, discussion of the challenges low water levels in the Athabasca River present for navigation and access to large portions of MCFN territory, and lost use along the Athabasca river because of concerns regarding concerns of contamination related to oil sands operations. Section 5 proposes two thresholds (an aboriginal base flow, and an aboriginal extreme flow) for use in understanding the effects of water levels and the ability of MCFN members to access their territories, and recommends steps for implementing and refining management. Section 6 provides recommendations for implementation of thresholds. This report is based on the understandings of the authors, and is not intended to be a full or complete depiction of the dynamic and living system of use and knowledge maintained by MCFN elders and members.

2. Background This report is based on MCFN specific information resulting from an Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) study (the Study) conducted in Spring 2010. The study addresses knowledge of the Athabasca River, use of the Athabasca River by MCFN community members, and possible effects of river change on the practice of aboriginal rights. The ACFN and MCFN, acting jointly, engaged The Firelight Group Research Cooperative to assist with the Study. The primary goal was to provide an evidence-based, written submission designed to effectively inform consultation with the Crown regarding plans for managing industrial water withdrawals from the Athabasca River. The results of the Study suggest that, for both the Cree and Dene peoples of the ACFN and MCFN, the Athabasca River continues to be central to their lives, their ability to access their www.thefirelightgroup.com 11 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 territories, and their conception of themselves as aboriginal peoples, despite historical change. The Study has also demonstrated, and mapped, how reductions in the quantity and quality of the Athabasca River’s flow are having adverse effects on the ability of MCFN members to access territories, and to practice their aboriginal and Treaty rights, including hunting, trapping, fishing, and related activities. Adverse effects are particularly evident where the preferred manner, or location, of exercising rights involves access to territories by boat, or where the right relies upon confidence in the quality, or safety, of foods or other resources procured on traditional lands influenced by industrial use.

2.1. Treaty No. 8: A Living Document The Cree and Dene speaking peoples of Fort Chipewyan signed Treaty No. 8 in 1899. The Treaty confirms the rights of First Nation peoples, including those of the Mikisew Cree First Nation (MCFN), and those of the Canadian crown, in relation to lands covered by the Treaty and is recognized and affirmed every year through payment of Treaty monies by the Canadian government. Amongst many other promises that the Crown made on entering into Treaty No. 8, the Crown’s own negotiators confirm, shortly after signing, that, “We had to solemnly assure them [First Nations] that only such laws as to hunting and fishing as were in the interest of the Indians and were found necessary in order to protect the fish and fur-bearing animals would be made, and that they would be as free to hunt and fish after the treaty as they would be if they never entered into it.” (Laird, Ross and McKenna, Report of Commissioners for Treaty No. 8, 1899, emphasis added). The Athabasca River occupies a central role in the culture and economy of the aboriginal peoples of the Fort Chipewyan area (including the ACFN and MCFN), and is critical to the ability of these First Nations to hunt, trap, fish, and otherwise practice their aboriginal and treaty rights in a preferred manner. Largely because of the role of the river in transportation, the unique transportation needs of ACFN and MCFN hunters and river users, and the long history of aboriginal rights practice on the river, delta, and adjoining tributaries, meaningful exercise of aboriginal and treaty rights, including hunting, trapping, fishing, and other rights, within a large portion of ACFN and MCFN traditional lands, relies upon the quality and quantity of water in the Athabasca River. One MCFN participant in the Study described the importance of the Athabasca River this way:

“…It’s pretty important to me because we do lots of hunting in that river, not only for ducks, for moose and we do lots of fishing also. It’s for our livelihood, living out of it, it’s not the commercial, you go out there to feed your kids, to feed the family and then Athabasca River is really important for us. I’ve been doing that for many years and I still do it. And now, the moose is not fit to eat, the fish is not fit to eat,

www.thefirelightgroup.com 12 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 even ducks. What else are we to live on now? There’s not anything fit to eat.” (M03)

Another participant described the importance of the river, succinctly, as:

“…it is the passage to go to the hunting grounds and two is to go and stock up on groceries in Fort McMurray, that’s important.” (M09) At the time of Treaty, the Crown was well aware of the extent of resources that lay beneath the area encompassed by Treaty No. 8. In 1888, the director of the geological survey of Canada, Dr. Robert Bell, confirmed, "the existence in the Athabaska and Mackenzie valleys of the most extensive petroleum field in America, if not in the world… it is probable this great petroleum field will assume an enormous value in the near future and will rank among Canada’s chief assets.” (quoted in Hein 2000: 2-3). Ten years later, Treaty No. 8 was signed. Almost seventy years later, in late 1960’s, the first large scale oil sands mining operation (what would become Suncor) opened north of Fort McMurray. Existing and planned future industrial scale oil sands operations also depend heavily on the flow of the Athabasca River. 2.2. Study Goals and Context The primary goals of the Study were to effectively and respectfully involve the key elders and knowledge holders of the ACFN and MCFN to:  Complete a preliminary submission regarding navigation concerns, and their relationship to the practice of treaty rights.  Complete a final non-confidential report, and customized reports for ACFN and for MCFN containing confidential information, and summarizing the results of a more comprehensive study of Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge, including navigation concerns, but also addressing broader water quality and quantity issues related to the practice of treaty rights on the Athabasca, and how those may be impacted by the Phase 2 Framework. Key topics addressed in the study include perceived changes in the river, including quantity and quality of waters that have resulted in, or contributed to, changed patterns of community use. The role of the river as a transportation corridor for accessing traditional lands, and for traveling between Fort Chipeywan and Fort McMurray was a key focus of this study. The implications of change in this corridor, including limited access, reduced quality of lands or waters for subsistence use, and erosion of opportunities for cultural transmission are considered.

www.thefirelightgroup.com 13 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 2.3. Water-based Access and Preferred Mode of Practice Figures 1 and 2, below, show the first and last times participants used the Athabasca River. The majority of study participants first used the river when they were less than fifteen years old, and had last used it within a year of the time of interview. This provides an indication of how important boating and water based access is to the MCFN mode of life. In Spring, Summer and Fall (the primary seasons for hunting, fishing, and subsistence procurement), boat access is still the only option for moving between Fort Chipewyan and seasonal camps and villages, Indian Reserves, and core MCFN territories along the Athabasca delta, the river itself, and its tributaries. Water-based access by boat is particularly important in accessing lands and habitation areas inside Wood Buffalo National Park. Boat is also the preferred mode of practicing aboriginal and Treaty rights, including hunting, trapping, and fishing, even where road access is possible. The ecology of the delta and Athabasca river means that, at good water levels, a web of interconnected waterways exists that can be used to ‘go anywhere’ in the delta area. At good water levels, tributaries to the Athabasca River also allow access deep into adjacent watersheds. Moose, the preferred game sought by most MCFN hunters, tend to congregate near water in summer months, so boats make for an ideal means of locating, shooting, and carrying the many hundreds of pounds of meat that results from a successful kill. Boats also allow for procurement of fish or other resources adjacent to river banks, and allow MCFN members to access territories without disturbance from industrial traffic associated with many of the roads closer to Fort McMurray and the oil sands developments. These advantages, combined with MCFN member’s familiarity with water navigation for subsistence, and associated creek, rivers and water based knowledge, help explain why boat access is the preferred means by which MCFN members choose to exercise rights such as hunting, trapping, and fishing. While navigation for the purpose of transport may tend to follow the most direct channel available between two points, subsistence-based boat navigation, and particularly hunting, by MCFN river users relies upon access to smaller side channels of the Athabasca River, and adjoining tributaries. MCFN participants explained that moose and other game prefer to be near rivers and streams as the water provides relief from biting insects, and a refuge from carnivores like wolves. However, moose also tend to avoid banks facing the main channel of the Athabasca because of regular boat traffic and noise along the main channel. Because of this, the best hunting locations tend to be those accessible by boat, but away from the main channel of the Athabasca River including along side channels, tributaries, and on the far side of islands away from the main channel. As discussed below, these smaller channels and tributaries are especially vulnerable to loss of access due to low water levels. Road access to the Athabasca Delta area, and Fort Chipewyan, is limited to ice road, and is only possible in winter. Permanent road access (from Fort McMurray) is possible in some southern

www.thefirelightgroup.com 14 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 portions of the MCFN territory, as well as more southern areas. However, even in these cases, boat is frequently the preferred mode for hunting and practicing other rights, particularly for members resident in Fort Chipewyan.

3. Methods Data collection for the Study was primarily interview based. Interviews were conducted with individuals, included documentation of prior informed consent, and used a standardized interview guide (see Appendix 1) designed to meet the needs of the study and to provide a consistent, but flexible, framework for soliciting and recording responses. Map data was collected on acetate overlays using standardized map coding on custom 1: 50,000 maps incorporating satellite imagery, and based on standard techniques (Tobias 2010). Interviews were recorded on digital audio recorder, and through interview notes captured on interview forms, or notebook. Questions were designed to gain an understanding of perceived river change, and to collect data that was location specific (point, line, or polygon) where possible, and temporally grounded (season and year was recorded where possible). The study was designed so that disaggregation of community data (MCFN or ACFN) and individual participant data was possible. The study area focused on lands and waters within an area 5km on either side of the Athabasca River from Fort McMurray north to Fort Chipewyan, and the Athabasca River was defined to include all those areas influenced by the flow of the Athabasca River, including delta lakes and areas, such as Lake Clare and Lake Mamawi (see Map 1). A more complete account of the Study methods, including the digitization and mapping process, can be found in Appendix 2. A copy of the informed consent form used can be found in Appendix 3. After preliminary analysis and synthesis of the information gathered, community engagement meetings were held in Fort Chipewyan in early July 2010. Leadership, participants, and members of the MCFN Traditional Knowledge Committee were invited. At this meeting information on the preliminary study results, as well as information on the P2 Framework and P2FC recommendations were presented for consideration and input. 3.1. Participant Profiles Thirteen MCFN elders and frequent river users were interviewed for the Study in May 2010. This included one individual who is considered a member of the MCFN by marriage and affiliation, but is not currently registered on the MCFN band list. The age of the participants ranged from 32 to 75 years old, with the average age being 58. All interviews were conducted in English. Consistent with an understanding that river navigation is primarily a male role, all MCFN participants, except for one, were male. The one female participant lives on the Athabasca River with her family. All MCFN participants are long term and active river users,

www.thefirelightgroup.com 15 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 with the majority having been active on the river within the past 5 years. Eight reported first using the Athabasca River when they were less than fifteen years old (see Figure 1), and eight reported using the river within the past year (see Figure 2).

Figure 1: When was Figure 2: When was the last time the first time participants used participants used the Athabasca the Athabasca River? River?

In the last year Less than 5 years old In the last five years Between 5-15 years old More than 5 years ago Older than 15 years No response No response

1 3 2 5

2 8 2 3

Many of the MCFN participants had spent much of their lives living on or near the Athabasca River, particularly at ancestral village settlements in the Athabasca River delta or along the banks of the river itself. Many of these areas are still returned to, and seasonally occupied, especially in summer months, though issues of water quality and inhibited access due to low water has resulted in some participants feeling like they can no longer use some areas: “I would go back and live there if it was okay. I want to, but everything is changing. Water is low. I left mid-80s and I didn't bother going back.” (M10).

4. Results The past and continued importance of the Athabasca River for the practice of MCFN aboriginal and Treaty rights is clear from the responses of participants. Figure 3 shows the kinds of reported uses by participants and their families when they were young (defined as younger than twenty), compared with what they and their families use the river for now. It illustrates that use of the river, at least by the sample of those interviewed, is still strong and diverse, and while use has generally declined, it has declined in some use areas more than others. In particular, use for drinking water and trapping seem to have declined more than use for

www.thefirelightgroup.com 16 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 hunting, transportation, and camping. It is important to note that this diagram does not distinguish between practices within the general use categories (such as shifting from subsistence fishing to catch and release), or avoidance of using particular parts of the river in favor of others because of access or quality concerns. It is also important to note that the participant sample selected for elders and active river users. Use trends in other segments of the MCFN community may not follow similar patterns.

Past and Present Use of the Athabasca River 12 10 8 6 4 2 Past uses 0 Present uses

One participant described his use of the river, and its relationship to water levels, as follows: “Well the water was high in them days, you could go anywhere like, a lot of cutouts, you would go in there, side creek and stuff like that, you could go in there, now you can’t do it. Mostly sandbars. And travelers would come by boat … and we used to come every spring, hunting, spring hunt, hunting beaver and stuff like that. But now you can’t use these cuts out, you have to stay in the main channel, the main river… Yeah, you could drink water anywhere them days when I was younger, drinking off the river, and now you can’t do that, you have to carry special water when you go anywhere, any place you go, any place like even the Park area like when you go out in the woods you have to carry your own water. You can’t drink water from anywhere.” (M03) 4.1. Flooding and Seasonal Cycles Based on the MCFN interviews, it is clear that the ability of MCFN member to practice rights, including hunting, trapping, and fishing, has always depended on the seasonal flooding of the Athabasca River. It is also recognized that the Athabasca River is a highly variable natural system with some years of high water, and others of low. The ability of MCFN members to access territories, or practice other rights, may be naturally constrained by the absence of adequate water levels, particularly during ice free seasons when rivers and streams become important transportation corridors. The frequency of annual floods on the Athabasca,

www.thefirelightgroup.com 17 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 particularly in early to mid Spring, is considered critical in maintaining the grass and water ecology of the delta area, and the main and side channels of the Athabasca River itself, as well as contributing to good water quality and healthy wildlife and fur populations. “Prior to 1997 we still had a break-up. What I mean by break-up is the ice would make noise when it went down the river, it would smash stuff, it would be loud. Now it just melts away. We don’t have a break-up. Because we don’t have the water to push it, there’s no force behind it. And that’s what would cause the floods is the massive push and then it would all jam up somewhere and it would flood everything ... because we have no water to flood so it can’t go into the little ponds and all that, all these things are flood zones and that cleans a lot of those basins, all the things settle and then it all drains back in slowly. But nowadays without the flooding well we don’t have that affect any more. Because without the flooding it’s not going over the shore so these little side channels and all these little creek and all that that are on the edges are not getting any water besides rain water or snow so they’re drying up… Natural filter. But with the industry trying to dig up every muskeg we have, scrape it clean, they’re taking away our natural filtering system and they cannot replace it.” (M01) Without exception, respondents reported that the seasonal flow of the Athabasca has changed over their lifetimes, that the trend is for the river to be lower than in the past, and that the reduction in flow is making it more difficult for boat travel or subsistence practice. Many of the participants identified oil sands withdrawals as the most likely cause of reduced water levels on the Athabasca. Many participants also mentioned or described the cumulative effects occurring in delta areas as a result of the combined influence of reduced water flowing from the Peace river watershed, including the W.A.C. Bennett Dam, and reduced water flowing from the Athabasca River. 4.2. Navigational Hazards and Incidents One of the key issues raised by MCFN participants was the difficulty of accessing traditional lands at low river levels because of challenges in navigating the main stream of the Athabasca River between Fort Chipewyan and Fort McMurray, or because of an inability to access smaller creeks and rivers running into the Athabasca due to shallow water: Sometimes, I mean, we hit more sandbars, more work to get down there. You’re beached for about six hours in the middle of the river not going anywhere. (M02) Map 2 shows reported navigational hazards and incidents including sand bars, dangerous rocks, and log jams, and illustrates the predominance of sand bars in many parts of the Athabasca River itself. Use of the Athabasca River by participants was reported frequently in the Athabasca delta area, with use further up stream (south) along the river towards Fort McMurray, including tributaries running into the Athabasca. A lot of places you’ve got to follow the Athabasca River before you can get into where you want to go. That’s important too. If the water is low and stuff and it’s all straight sandbars, well you can’t get to where you want to where you want to go. (M08)

www.thefirelightgroup.com 18 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 While the precise location of sandbars is constantly shifting, particular stretches of the river are known to be particularly bad. Sand bars become more frequent and exposed at low water levels, and seasonal flooding may not reach levels required to clear log jam areas. As such, the obstacles and hazards indicated on Map 2 are mostly associated with low water levels and are considered to be more frequent now than in the past. A total of 37 separate accounts of hazards or incidents (5 points and 32 polygons) were reported and are shown on Map 2. The majority of them (19) were associated with dangerous rocks, however 10 large areas were identified where sand bars are particularly prevalent, and constantly shifting. Most participants considered particular incidents involving hitting sand bars to be ‘too many’ to map, and so mapping of incidents was opportunistic as more focus was given to other portions of the interview. Reported effects of sand bars and hazards include:  lost access to side channels and streams adjoining the River (see maps 5 and 6);  increased travel time and expense due to reduced speed and need for increased care;  increased travel time and expense due to getting stuck on sand bars (including occasional inability to find a channel through);  increased travel time and expense due to avoidance of sand bar areas (including large areas where the Athabasca delta joins Lake Athabasca);  damage to boats, engines, and equipment; and,  safety concerns related to collisions with sand bars or other hazards. Map 3 shows reported specific instances of lost use because of water level. Examples include trying to access cabins and not being able to because of low water, trying to hunt in a particular area, but finding that the water was too low to get in, or wanting to shoot a moose and not doing so because the water level was too low to get the meat out. A large portion of MCFN territories within Wood Buffalo National Park are only accessible through Lake Mamawi, which becomes inaccessible at extreme low water levels, and this map of specific instances of lost use due to water levels reflects the vulnerability of the area to low water levels. It is important to note that locations or lost use on Lake Claire was not mapped in detail due to time constraints. A total of 24 separate accounts of lost use due to water level are represented on Map 3 (18 points and 6 polygons), including 5 instances of lost use of permanent or temporary habitation areas, 12 instances of lost subsistence use, and 7 instances of lost general use. 4.3. Water Quality and Industrial Pollution Beyond water level (and water quantity), confidence in Athabasca River water quality, and ecosystem health more generally, is also essential for the continued meaningful practice of aboriginal and treaty rights by MCFN members, including hunting, trapping, fishing, and other rights, along the Athabasca, in the delta, and along adjoining tributaries. Confidence in the quality of resources harvested from the Athabasca River is a very important factor in changing land use patterns. As shown in Figure 3, the majority of participants indicated that, over their life times, they have seen negative changes in the Athabasca River, or in the resources gathered or hunted from its banks.

www.thefirelightgroup.com 19 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010

Figure 3: Have you seen negative changes in: 15 10 Skipped 5 Don't Know 0 No Yes Water Fish Quality of Quality of Fur Quality Sacred or quality Berries Meat (Moose Spiritual and other) Qualities

Within the interviews, perceptions of declining environmental quality were often explicitly connected to concern regarding oil sands related emissions, and linked to both received risk knowledge from government authorities and other ‘experts’, as well as local or traditional ecological knowledge related to perceived environmental change. Frequently reported water quality indicators included change in the taste and smell of Athabasca River water, presence of unusual foams, or films on the water, and the absence or decline of particular species, including insects, along the Athabasca River. Map 4 shows reported instances of lost use due to concerns regarding quality. Examples include places where a moose was shot, but the meat was left on the land because of some abnormality in the meat, fish caught, but thrown back or fed to dogs because of some perceived quality issue (e.g. deformities, loss of colour, excessive slime). In the vast majority of reported instances, concerns regarding quality were associated with oil sands developments. Map 4 shows a lost use, or avoidance due to quality, along the length of the Athabasca River. A total of 5 separate accounts of lost use due to quality are represented on Map 3 (4 points and 1 polygon), all associated with lost subsistence use. In conjunction with other interview findings, instances of avoidance due to concerns regarding quality suggest that, at least amongst some MCFN land users, a lack of confidence regarding the quality of resources, largely related to perceived oil sands emissions, is having adverse effects on subsistence use and the practice of aboriginal and Treaty rights in and around the Athabasca River. Figure 4 illustrates the level of comfort participants reported with feeding their families from the Athabasca River and its shores. 46% indicated they would not be comfortable feeding their families fish from the Athabasca, with 23% unsure, and 8% indicated that they would not be comfortable feeding their families moose, 15% were uncomfortable regarding berries. All who were asked were uncomfortable giving Athabasca water to drink.

www.thefirelightgroup.com 20 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 Figure 4:

Taken together, figures 3 and 4, and map 4 support an understanding that psychosocial factors, consistent with Health Canada guidance (Health Canada 2005) and related to fear of contaminants from the oil sands production on the Athabasca River and surrounding areas, are resulting in avoidance of traditional foods and resources by MCFN members, especially fish and drinking water, and may be resulting in adverse effects on the meaningful practice of aboriginal and treaty rights along the Athabasca, in the delta, and adjoining tributaries.

4.4. Subsistence Navigation and Access Particular attention was paid to mapping areas where access becomes limited at low and extreme low water levels. The standard of transportation specified in interviews, and on which responses were based, was a fully loaded boat, as after a successful hunt, or outfitting a trapping cabin, with an outboard motor. This is the standard and preferred mode of transportation used by MCFN subsistence river users. Explanations for why outboard motors were the preferred mode of subsistence transport included the cost of gas, the cost of motor repairs and availability of parts, and reliability in the variety of conditions encountered in MCFN territory (including open lake, river, stream, and weedy lakes). Based on interview responses, and later verification through a follow-up meeting with MCFN participants and members, the safe navigational depth (including start-up) for this kind of boat was confirmed to be approximately four feet (1.2m).

www.thefirelightgroup.com 21 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 Map 5 shows, in blue, areas of the Athabasca River, including side channels and confluences with smaller streams, where MCFN members are able to travel at normal high water levels, but that become impassible at extreme low water levels. Extreme low water levels were defined in the interview setting as the lowest that the participant could remember the Athabasca River being. As shown in Figure 5, for many participants (6 of 13), either the time of interview (mid- May 2010), or the previous fall (2009) was reported to be the lowest they could remember the Athabasca River being. Many commented that the Spring 2010 levels were of particular concern as it was a time of year when the waters should be quite high.

Figure 5: When was the Athabasca River the very lowest you can remember? 6 4 2 0 Spring 2010 Fall 2009 Before 2008 Skipped

Map 5 also shows, in red, tributaries to the Athabasca River that are reported to be navigable at normal summer high water for at least a portion of their length, but that become too shallow to navigate at extreme low water. Blue areas indicate reported low water limits (LLW and XLW). Red tributaries were extrapolated using watershed data (see appendix 2). It is particularly important to note that access to large portions of key MCFN territories, including Indian Reserves, and areas around Lake Mamawi, Embarass River, and Lake Claire, is lost at extreme low water levels. One participant noted regarding the Embarass River, and Cree Creek (also known as Mamawi Creek) “…So now they have to go up the Athabasca, which is a long route. Before we used to go through the Embarass here, it was a shortcut, you save almost an hour. Now you’ve got to go the long way around. But there’s cabins and all this stuff too way up in the Embarass, it’s on the Athabasca really, there’s lots of people have some cabins up there that they want to go for summers and stuff. But the water level ,that’s a big important thing for them. If the water drops, they’ll never get to see their cabin. I had a cabin up there, it used to be in a place called Cree Creek. I had a cabin but I used to go from this side. I used to go from Mamawi Lake rightacross and then we used to go into Cree Creek and go to the cabin. The problem was the water started dropping, started dropping and finally I couldn’t make it any more so I had to go around this way, I had to go up the Athabasca and come down the Embarass and so finally the water kept dropping about two, three years more, and then I couldn’t even make it from this side, on the Athabasca and down the

www.thefirelightgroup.com 22 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 Embarass. So what I did was, okay, I can’t get to my cabin no more so I sold it. Because I couldn’t make it. What’s the use having something that I can’t maintain and get to, can’t use any more so somebody else. So I don’t go up there no more. It’s too shallow. So I can see what these people might go through if the Athabasca keeps dropping. They’re going to be giving up their houses and all that stuff too. And next thing you know we will be building up the lake over here. It will take quite a few years before this lake cools down. Stay away up in the rivers. Like I said, it’s true, Embarass is dropping, Athabasca is dropping lots too.” (M07) Other major streams and waterways accessed by MCFN for the practice of Treaty and aboriginal rights, but reported to become inaccessible at extreme low water include, but are not limited to:  Richardson River, which becomes inaccessible at low water near where it joins the Athabasca River, resulting in lost or limited access to territories, including cabins and trap lines, within a large area frequently referred to as the Richardson Backcountry.  Jackfish Creek, and Richardson (Jackfish) Lake which becomes inaccessible at low water near where it joins Richardson Lake, resulting in lost access to hunting, fishing, and cultural sites.  Various waterways in the delta, including within Indian Reserves and extensive areas of Wood Buffalo National Park, including Lake Claire and surrounding area (see Mamawi Lake) become inaccessible at low flow levels.  Mamawi Lake which becomes inaccessible at very low flow levels and in several places resulting in loss of access to a very large territory within Wood Buffalo National Park, including Lake Claire, Birch River and McIvor River. Because of its function as a ‘gateway’ to Lake Claire, Lake Mamawi is of critical concern to MCFN land use patterns.  Numerous side channels of the Athabasca River itself become inaccessible at low flows resulting in lost or impeded access to cabins, trap lines, important hunting areas, and other values.  Firebag River, which becomes inaccessible at low flow levels where it joins the main stream of the Athabasca resulting in loss of access to hunting areas and other values.  Other tributaries to the Athabasca, including Muskeg River and Ells River.

Map 6 takes the same watersheds lost at extreme low water and identified in red in map 5, and applies a 5km buffer (roughly 3.1 miles) in pink. This pink buffered area approximates the distance easily traveled in a day trip from the river or stream, as when hunting or trapping using the river as a base. A 5km buffer (in orange) is also applied along the Athabasca River itself to reflect that boat travel along the Athabasca, and day trips for hunting or other purposes from it, are still possible at extreme low water, but may be more difficult (see map 2), with access to side channels impossible by boat, and access to river banks and shore frequently impaired because of expanses of mud flats or other barriers to land transport due to low water. This map is designed to illustrate, or model, in a general way, the relationship between lost water access

www.thefirelightgroup.com 23 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 and the wider lands and watersheds within which aboriginal and Treaty rights are practiced. It reflects only restrictions to access for subsistence purposes by boat (frequently the preferred or only means) and does not consider the navigable limit of streams at normal summer high water levels, or territories that may be accessed by road or trail.

5. Defining Aboriginal Base Flow (ABF) and Aboriginal Extreme Flow (AXF) One participant, in predicting what the future holds if management of the Athabasca River continues as it has, stated: I don’t know … for me, it would be devastating. I won’t be able to travel on the river for one thing … But it’s hard to imagine, you know, just imagine where you used to travel. All of a sudden it’s land, you can’t travel on it anymore… Even now, you see a big change. How much change there is since I started out living on my own? I used to take a canoe and paddle almost all around the territory, now you can walk where I used to paddle. You can walk. That’s how much the water has changed, all the water’s gone. As for the community, I don’t know, the younger generation I don’t know, unless they happen to change, I don’t think there will be anybody going on the land anymore after this … it’s pretty hard to speak for the next generation or this generation coming but my generation we’re all getting old now so you know our time is almost up. But it is going to be sad to see things go. I know if they take too much water the river’s going to be really, really shallow, especially in the fall. The only time I can see them taking it, if there is a big push, like a big rush coming from the mountains and that, during that high water, if they take it then but if they take it during low water, it’s going to destroy our fishing and everything … I hope I don’t live to see the day. I don’t want to die but I don’t want to see that. (M07) The results of the Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Study suggest two thresholds that define the ability of MCFN members to access their traditional territories, and to practice aboriginal and treaty rights by water. The first threshold, an Aboriginal Base Flow (ABF), reflects a level on the Athabasca River and adjacent streams where MCFN members are able to practice their rights, and access their territories fully. The second threshold, an Aboriginal Extreme Flow (AXF), reflects a level at which widespread and extreme disruption of Treaty and aboriginal rights occurs along the Athabasca river, delta, and tributaries due to a loss of access related to low waters. MCFN participants report that until recent decades, the ABF level was reached frequently and would last for much of the summer. A conservative estimate of this level, based on a normal high spring-summer level as show on a hydrograph for the Lower Athabasca River provided in Ohlson et al. (2010.), would be approximately 1600 m3/s. This is proposed as an initial threshold, subject to monitoring and refinement, for identifying where Treaty and aboriginal rights with regard to navigation, access and water level may be practiced fully.

www.thefirelightgroup.com 24 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 A conservative estimate for the AXF, a flow level where widespread and extreme disruption of Treaty and aboriginal rights occurs, can be arrived at by comparing the timing of the ‘extreme low water’ event reported at the time of interviews (mid-May 2010) with flow measurements at that time. Based on this, the AXF would be approximately 400 m3/s. This is a conservative estimate because, at this flow level, key waterways (including Lake Mamaway) were already inaccessible. While participants indicate that the practice of rights in the delta area has already been irreversibly impacted due to the Bennett Dam on the upper Peace river, and resulting drying of the delta, an AXF of 400m3/s is likely a reasonable initial threshold , subject to refinement and monitoring, for an Aboriginal Extreme Flow (AXF) on the Athabasca River. This level would identify where flow levels are likely to result in widespread and extreme adverse effects on access to territories relied on for the practice of treaty and Aboriginal rights. At flow rates between the ABF and AXF, varying levels of adverse effects to aboriginal use and rights can be anticipated due to water levels. The levels currently set for both the ABF and AXF are preliminary thresholds and may be refined through additional work. Figure 4 provides a visual depiction of the preliminary thresholds.

Figure 6. Athabasca River hydrograph1 showing approximate Aboriginal Base Flow (ABF) and Aboriginal Extreme Flow (AXF) thresholds.

1 Hydrograph showing 50 years of flow on the Athabasca River based on weekly average (mean) Ohlson et al. (2010.)

www.thefirelightgroup.com 25 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010

6. Recommendations Given the above findings, and in consideration of the proposed AXF and ABF, it is recommended that the MCFN consider the following recommendations: 1. Encourage the Crown to sit with the MCFN and ACFN prior to the approval of the Phase II Water Framework to jointly determine an Aboriginal Baseline Flow (ABF) for practice of MCFN and ACFN rights and interests, based on the recommendations of this report or otherwise as agreed by the parties jointly. The ABF would be considered to be a reasonable level at which full practice of aboriginal rights on the river, in the delta, and along adjoining tributaries, can be expected to occur. 2. Encourage the Crown to also sit with MCFN and ACFN prior to the approval of the Phase II Water Framework to jointly determine a lower level (the AXF) at which the Aboriginal Baseline Flow (ABF) is exceeded to such a degree that wide spread and extreme disruption of aboriginal rights along the Athabasca river, delta, and tributaries is understood to be likely. It is recommended that this level be based on the recommendations of this report (approximately 400 m³/s), or otherwise as agreed by the parties jointly. 3. Encourage the Crown to sit with the MCFN and the ACFN to establish an Athabasca River Consultation and Accommodation Framework to govern future water management. Such a framework might include the following components:  Should a Crown decision be made to permit any withdrawals of water from the Athabasca River, and that decisions result in or contribute to a water level that causes the ABF to be exceeded, then adverse effects to Treaty rights would be understood to be caused or exacerbated, and a corresponding duty to meaningfully consult, and to adequately accommodate, would arise.  Should the Crown wish to permit any withdrawals of water from the Athabasca River that would cause the AXF threshold (400 m³/s or as otherwise determined) to be exceeded, then it would be recognized that this would be permitting of an activity that is likely to cause or worsen wide spread and extreme disruption of a central aboriginal right along the Athabasca river, delta, and tributaries. It is recommended that such a permission should require the permission of the Crown agent, and permission of authorized authorities of the MCFN and ACFN. 4. For ecological and aboriginal rights reasons, a goal should be set for how frequently the river and delta is allowed to achieve spring flood levels, recognizing that ice dams are often critical components of this flooding. This goal could be integrated within a Traditional Resource Use Plan (TRUP) or other document to guide Athabasca River management into the future. 5. In collaboration with MCFN and ACFN, additional work and action is required to further understand and address water quality issues and concerns, including psychosocial

www.thefirelightgroup.com 26 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 factors, and resulting adverse effects on treaty and aboriginal rights, along the Athabasca River, delta, and adjoining tributaries. In particular, the Crown should work with the MCFN and ACFN to enable the Phase 2 Framework process to meaningfully consider, address, and monitor the relationship between Athabasca River water levels, and water quality, including potential contaminant concentrations at various flow levels and seasons. The importance of such actions is highlighted by a quote from one of the study participants, predicting what the future holds if management of the river continues as it has: “We’ll have nothing, we’ll have no animals, no birds, won’t be able to travel, go anywhere. The whole country is going to dry out. The past twenty years this place really dried out, it’s worse than ever, as long as the oil companies keep taking and taking water out, I don’t know how they are going to bring the water level up. If every year there’s more companies out there and they take so many barrels of water to make one barrel of oil and you have ten different companies out there, how is it going to bring the water level up? They say they are going to bring it up, but how are they going to bring it up if they’re taking that much water out? For us, it’s going to kill everything, not going to have nothing here. Like for me, I could still survive, because I don’t know how many years I have left. But for the younger generation, what are they going to have up here? Nothing. I’ll never believe them saying that they’re going to bring the water level back up and keep it at a certain level, I’ll never believe that unless I see it.“ (M04)

www.thefirelightgroup.com 27 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010 Bibliography

Health Canada 2005. Addressing Psychosocial Factors Through Capacity Building: A Guide for Managers of Contaminated Sites. Ministry of Health.

Hein, Francis J (2000). “Historical Overview of the Fort McMurray Area and Oil Sands Industry in Northeast Alberta” Earth Sciences Report 2000-05. Alberta Geological Survey. Energy and Utilities Board.

Laird, David, J.H Ross, and J.A.J. McKenna (1899) Report of Commissioners to Clifford Sifton, Superintendent General, Department of Indian Affairs, Ottawa, September 22, 1899, in Copy of Treaty No. 8 Made June 21, 1899, and Adhesions, Reports, etc. (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1966).

M01 Transcript of May 17, 2010, Interview from the Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Project. Mikisew Cree First Nation Government and Industry Relations Corporation.

M02 Transcript of May 17, 2010, Interview from the Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Project. Mikisew Cree First Nation Government and Industry Relations Corporation.

M03 Transcript of May 17, 2010, Interview from the Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Project. Mikisew Cree First Nation Government and Industry Relations Corporation.

M04 Transcript of May 18, 2010, Interview from the Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Project. Mikisew Cree First Nation Government and Industry Relations Corporation.

M07 Transcript of May 19, 2010, Interview from the Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Project. Mikisew Cree First Nation Government and Industry Relations Corporation.

M08 Transcript of May 19, 2010, Interview from the Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Project. Mikisew Cree First Nation Government and Industry Relations Corporation.

M09 Transcript of May 20, 2010, Interview from the Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Project. Mikisew Cree First Nation Government and Industry Relations Corporation.

M10 Transcript of May 20, 2010, Interview from the Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Project. Mikisew Cree First Nation Government and Industry Relations Corporation.

www.thefirelightgroup.com 28 As Long as the Rivers Flow MCFN Community Report August 22, 2010

Ohlson D, G Long, T Hatfield (2010). Phase 2 Framework Committee Report. Final report of the Phase 2 Framework Committee.

Tobias, Terry. (2010). Living Proof: the Essential Data-Collection Guide for Indigenous Use-and- Occupancy Map Surveys. Ecotrust Canada and the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs: Vancouver, Canada.

www.thefirelightgroup.com 29

Appendix 1

ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Project Interview Guide

Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Project Interview Guide

Interview Introduction PRE-INTERVIEW CHECK LIST (read with RECORDER ON before every

 ALWAYS Test your recorder and session) microphone by listening through headphones. Today is , 2010. We are sitting  Make sure you have enough note here interviewing for the [ACFN books, pens, and other supplies for OR MCFN] Athabasca River Use and TEK the interview. Project. Thank you for coming.  Make sure you have all of the maps you need laid out and marked with My name is and my co-researcher is Interview ID#, date, interviewer . We’re here at the building in names and participant names. [Ft. McMurray or Ft. Chipewyan]. ______has  If you are using overlays, make sure read and signed the consent forms and we you have marked them all with at have assigned Interview ID # . We are least 3 anchor points and the map going to be recording this interview on a digital number. voice recorder, with notes on this questionnaire,  Make sure the elders or community and using maps. We will be mapping on [MAP members you are interviewing are SHEETS OR DIGITAL] at a scale of 1:__,000. comfortable. Get them a tea or The project area covers [verbal description of coffee, and talk for a while about the project area] . interviews and why we are doing them. Make everyone as relaxed as In this project, MCFN and ACFN are both possible. documenting detailed community use,  Read the consent form to the knowledge, and issues related to the participant and ask them to sign it. Athabasca River and especially changes Let them know that they don’t have experienced on or near the river. The to answer any questions that they information is needed so that the ACFN and don’t want to. MCFN can provide a strongresponse to  Start the tape and begin the government plans for how much water interview. industrywill be able to take from the Athabasca  Let them know that we will be in future years. reporting back to the community and them in the next couple of months. The focus of this study is on the Athabasca River, and in that we include those parts of the Athabasca Delta, and smaller creeks and streams running into the Athabasca, that are

The Firelight Group Page 1 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: affected by changes in how much Athabasca water leveland the quality.

The interview will take about 3 hours to complete and we’ll take a break about an hour and 45 minutes in. There are 4 main sections or types of questions:

• The first section (about half an hour) focuses on your experiences on the river and changes you’ve seen in the river.

• The second section (about an hour), focuses on how water levels and water quality have affected your use. We’ll take a break after this section.

• In the third section, about half an hour, we’ll talk about the main routes you use to travel on the river, and we’ll map some of the main places that you go.

• In the last section, again about half an hour, we’ll want to hear about what you think the results will be for ACFN/MCFN member’s abilities to practice important uses if the government goes forward with their plans.

The first questions are very broad, and others are very detailed. The reason for the detailed questions is so that the ACFN/MCFN can be in a strong position if they need to defend information in court or elsewhere.

Also, if there are things we don’t ask about, but you think we should be raise in our reports to leadership, please let us know.

Mapping Note: Every site should be consistently labelled with a code that indicates site use, site # and source respondent (ex: TX02-M08 where the Mikisew person with ID #08 reports the second mapped place where she has camped in a temporary shelter). This should be followed by the date of the event, if possible [ex: CB02-A08(summer 1985)]. First hand knowledge should be mapped in black ink, Second hand knowledge in blue ink.

The Firelight Group Page 2 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: 1.0 BIOGRAPHICAL AND BACKGROUND QUESTIONS

1.1 What is your full name?

1.2 Where were you born?

1.3 How old are you?

1.4 Where were you raised?

1.5 Are you a member of the ACFN or MCFN?

1.6 Have you ever travelled on the Athabasca River? How old were you the first time? In an average year, how many times a year(ice freesummer or winter)

1.7 When was the last time you travelled it?

2.0 IMPORTANCE OF THE RIVER

Through past meetings and other studies, ACFN / MCFN members have made it clear that the Athabasca River is important, and that changes in it, especially water levels, and water quality, are big concerns.

2.1 In your own words, is the Athabasca River important to you and your family?

2.2 Why or why not?

The Firelight Group Page 3 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: 3.0 COMPARISON AND CHANGE

3.1 When you were young [age <20, anchor to year or event], what was the Athabasca River like?

PROMPTS, IF NEEDED: Water levels? Water quality?

3.2 How did you and Fishing __ Hunting__ Trapping__ Drinking your family use the Water__ Transportation__ Camping__ river then [when you Teaching__Cultural/Spiritual/Wellness ___ were young]? Other___

3.3 How do you and Fishing __ Hunting__ Trapping__ your family use the Drinking Water__ Transportation__ Camping__ river now? Teaching__ Cultural/Spiritual/Wellness ___ Other_____

3.4 How has the 3.5 About when did the 3.6 What do you think Athabasca River change take place? caused the changed since you change? were young?

1.

2.

3

4

The Firelight Group Page 4 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: 3.7 Over your lifetime, would you say Increased__ that use of the Athabasca River Decreased__ by you and your family has: stayed the same___

3.8 Why?

3.9 Over your lifetime, would you say Improved__ that the waters of the Athabasca gotten worse___ River have: or stayed the same___

3.10 Why?

3.11 Have you ever seen any problems or negative changes in:

3.11.1 water quality from the River?Yes No Don’t know

3.11.2 fish caught from the river? Yes No Don’t know

3.11.3 quality of berries, or plants collected in or near the river?Yes No Don’t know

3.11.4 quality of meat (moose or other) hunted on the river? Yes No Don’t know

3.11.5 fur quality trapped along the river? Yes No Don’t know

3.11.6 the spiritual or sacred qualities of the river? Yes NoDon’t know

3.12 Have you ever seen any problems or negative change in anything else related to the river?

3.13 Would you feel comfortable:

3.13.1 Giving your family water to drink from the Athabasca River?

The Firelight Group Page 5 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: Not comfortable not sure yes, comfortable

3.13.2 Feeding your family fish from the Athabasca River? Not comfortable not sure yes, comfortable

3.13.3 Feeding your family berries or other plant foods from the shores of the river?

Not comfortable not sure yes, comfortable

3.13.4 Feeding your family moose meat shot on the shores of the river?

Not comfortablenot sure yes, comfortable 3.13.5 Using water from the Athabasca River in medicines, or ceremonial or spiritual practices (ex. making medicine tea, using in church, using in a sweat lodge)? Not comfortable not sure yes, comfortable

3.14 [If any of the answers above (in 3.10) was ‘not comfortable’ or ‘not sure’,]Why?

3.15 How did you learn to use the Athabasca River and the lands along it?

3.16 Have you been able to pass on your knowledge of the river to younger people in a similar way?

3.17 Why or Why not?

PROMPT, IF NEEDED:

for example, how to use it properly, or the cultural importance of places along it?

The Firelight Group Page 6 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: 3.18 Are you able to share as much moose, or fish, or other resources, harvested from the Athabasca River, as you were able to in the past?

3.19 If not, why not?

3.20 How does your ability to share meat and other resources from the River affect you, and the people who you share with? Who are those people?

3.21 Have changes in the Athabasca River (flow or quality) affected how you or your family feel about living on the land or theriver?

The Firelight Group Page 7 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: 3.22 Have changes in the Athabasca River(either flow or quality) had an affect on what you and your family eat?If so, when did the changes in what you and your family eathappen? Why? Approx. # of meals of wild fish/week 3.22.1 When you were young [<20yrs], (past): about how often (times/ week) did you and your family eat fish caught Approx. # of meals of moose/week (past): on the land? How about moose?

3.22.2 When you were young [<20yrs], how much of that fish meat would Approx. %of subsistence fish caught in have been caught in the Athabasca River (past): Athabasca River (including parts of the delta or other creeks and Approx. % of subsistence moose streams, that are affected by the harvested in Athabasca Delta (past): flow of the Athabasca)? How much of the Moose meat?

3.23 Over this last year, about how Approx. # of meals of wild fish/week often (times/ week) have you and (now): your family eaten wild caught fish? About how often have you eaten Approx. # of meals of wild moose/week wild caught moose? (now):

3.24 Over this last year, about how much of the wild fish that you and your family ate came from the Approx. %of subsistence fish caught in Athabasca River (again, this Athabasca River (now): includes the delta or other creeks and streams, that are affected by Approx. % of subsistence moose the flow of the Athabasca)? About harvested in Athabasca Delta (now): how much of the moose meat?

3.25 Do you think changes in the water level or quality of the Athabasca River have had any effect on your

The Firelight Group Page 8 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: ability, or the ability of your family, to practice your culture? If so, how?

3.26 If you had no concerns about water levels in the Athabasca River, would you use it more? What would you do more of?

3.27 If you had no concerns about water quality in the Athabasca River, would you use it more? What would you do more of?

TIME CHECK! Interview should be at about 40-45 min.

The Firelight Group Page 9 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: 4.0 PERSONAL RESPONSES AND EXPERIENCES

In the previous section, we focused on background information, changes you have seen in the Athabasca River, and the effects those have had on the community. In the next section, we are going to be asking more detailed questions about how those changes have affected you and your practices on the river.

4.1 In general, how have Hunting: changes in the Athabasca river water quality (ex. Trapping: smell, taste, appearance) changed how, or how Fishing: often, you and your family use the river for hunting, Other activities: trapping, fishing, or other activities that are

important to you? If so, how so? Hunting: 4.2 How about water levels:In general, how Trapping: have changes in the Athabasca river water Fishing: levels changed how , or how often, you and your Other activities: family use the river for hunting, trapping, fishing, or other activities that are important to you? If so, how so?

4.3 Other than changes in the river, are there other things that have changed how or how often you and your family use the Athabasca River? If so, What are they?

The Firelight Group Page 10 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings:

4.4 In your experience, dowater levels on the Athabasca affect water quality? For example,when the river is low, isthe water quality in the Athabasca BetterWorseAbout the same better, worse, or about the same?

4.5 When you are on the river, how do you know if the water is good or bad?

PROMPT, IF NEEDED:

ex. things you look for in the water? presence/absence of particular animals? Frogs? Insects? Plants?

4.6 If there are things you look for to know about water quality, do you see them on the Athabasca? When did you start seeing them?

The Firelight Group Page 11 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: 5.0 PREFERRED ACCESS LIMIT VIA RIVER AND RESTRICTIONS BY FLOW

Mapping Note: Mark extent of access via river using a large, transparent polygon labelled with letter code and a number, followed by the community code and the participant ID. PAZ1- M01should be the first area mentioned by the Mikisew member with PIN #01, PAZ2-M01 the second, etc. In most cases, there should only be one PAL per ID#.

PAL01-Mi02

5.1 In your experience, during what months does the Athabasca River have the lowest levels?

5.2 In your experience, during what months is use of the Athabasca River most important for you and your family? Why?

5.3 How deep does river water need to be for you and your family to navigate safely in a fully loaded boat with outboard motor?

5.4 In your experience, at normal low water levels (average September) are there any other parts of the river, or larger territory, where you cannot enter because of sand bars or mudflats, or because water levels are too low or unsafe (based on 5.3 above)?

MAP using Controlled Polygon, and code LLW (Low Limit Water)

The Firelight Group Page 12 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: 5.5 Some of the next questions Benchmark 1 (most recent): involve remembering dates. To help, we want to establish some events in your life that can help Benchmark 2: us figure out the order of things.

Possible Community Benchmarks: Benchmark 3: Present =within 10yrs, c. 1985=new school built, c. 1982= oil spill on the Athabasca, Benchmark 4: c. 1975=Syncrude starts in McMurray, c. 1968=dam on the Peace in BC. Benchmark 5 (oldest): Possible Personal Benchmarks: Birth of first child, moved to X, worked at X.

5.6 In your experience, when was the Athabasca River the very lowest Year and Season: that you can remember? (exact year and season if possible)

5.7 When the river was at its very lowest[reference year], were there any other parts of the river or larger territory, where you could not enter because of low water levels (based on 5.3 above)?

MAP using Controlled Polygon, and code XLW (Extreme Low Water)

5.8 Are there particular places on the river where you have experienced obstacles or hazardscaused bylow water levels, including near misses, that resulted in damage or delay.

The Firelight Group Page 13 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: What? When? Where? (Map)

MAP using Controlled Polygon or point, and code (NO lines) ISB= Incident - Sand Bar IMF= Incident - Mud Flat ISH= Incident – Shallows (too shallow to pass) IDR= Incident - Dangerous Rocks ISL= Incident - Snags or Dangerous logs IWH= Incident - Winter or Ice Hazard IRA= Incident - Difficult Rapids IDC= Incident - Dangerous Current

IOH= Incident - Other Hazard (specify in brackets)

5.9 At good water levels (normal July), are there specific hazardsin the river that are more difficult to navigate than others? Where? Why are they challenging.

MAP using Controlled Polygon or point, and code (NO lines) GSB= Good -Sand Bar GMF= Good - Mud Flat GSH= Good - Shallows GDR= Good - Dangerous Rocks GSL= Good - Snags or Dangerous logs GWH= Good - Winter or Ice Hazard GRA= Good - Difficult Rapids GDC= Good - Dangerous Current GOH= Good - Other Hazard (specify in brackets)

5.10 At normal low water levels (September), are there any other

The Firelight Group Page 14 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: specific hazards that become difficult to navigate? Where? Why?

MAP using Controlled Polygon or point, and code (NO lines) LSB= Low - Sand Bar LMF= Low - Mud Flat LSH= Low - Shallows LDR= Low - Dangerous Rocks LSL= Low - Snags or Dangerous logs LWH= Low - Winter or Ice Hazard LRA= Low - Difficult Rapids LDC= Low - Dangerous Current LOH= Low - Other Hazard (specify in brackets)

5.11 At the very lowest water levels you remember, are there any other specific hazards that become difficult to navigate? Where? Why?

MAP using Controlled Polygon or point, and code (NO lines) XSB= Extreme - Sand Bar XMF= Extreme -Mud Flat XSH= Extreme -Shallows XDR= Extreme -Dangerous Rocks XSL=Extreme-Snags or Dangerous logs XWH= Extreme - Winter or Ice Hazard XRA= Extreme -Difficult Rapids XDC= Extreme - Dangerous Current XOH= Extreme - Other Hazard (specify in brackets)

5.12 Are there particular places on the river where you have found water quality (eg.taste, smell,

The Firelight Group Page 15 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: appearance) to be especially good or bad? What? When? Where? Why?

MAP using Controlled Polygon or point, and code (NO lines) QSM= Quality– Smell QOS= Quality – Oil Sheen QVP= Quality – visibility problem QOP= Quality – other problem QGW= Quality – Good Water

5.13 In your experience, are there creeks or tributaries running into the Athabasca where you have noticed exceptional changes in water quality? Where are they? When did you first notice the change?

5.14 In your experience, are there creeks or tributaries running into the Athabasca where you have noticed exceptional changes in water level? Where are they? When did you first notice the change?

5.15 Have you ever wanted to hunt, trap, fish or use the Athabasca but chosen not to because of concerns about low water levels? (eg. wanted to shoot a moose, drink water, establish a camp, or planned to make a trip, or conduct a cultural practice) When? Where? What was the specific concern that led to

The Firelight Group Page 16 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: avoidance? Can we map it?

MAP using point and code ASL (Avoidance on Level)

5.16 Have you ever wanted to hunt, trap, fish or use the Athabasca but chosen not to because of concerns about low water quality? When? What was the specific concern that led to avoidance? Can we map it?

MAP using point and code ASQ (Avoidance on Level)

5.17 Are there particular kinds of animals, fish, plants, or other resourcesyou would like to hunt, trap, fish, or collect in or near the Athabasca River, but that you avoid because of concerns about water quality?

TIME CHECK! Interview should be at about 1hr 45 min.

Congrats, we made it this far! Take a 10 Min Break

The Firelight Group Page 17 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: 6.0 PREFERRED TRAVEL ROUTES

Mapping Note: Mark travel routes using a SOLID line for the main good water route, DASHED line for Normal Low Water Route, and DOTTED line for the Extreme Low Water Route, or make otherwise clear. Code for main Good water route = GWR, Normal Low Water Route = LWR, Extreme Low Water Route = XWR, Winter Trail = WTR with SOLID line in a contrasting colour.

GWR02-A09

6.1 When travelling on the river at good water levels (average July) can you show us what river route you follow? (Map for Fort Chip to Shell Landing, and any destinations off the main flow of river, including delta)

MAP using solid line and code GWR (Low Water Route)

6.2 When travelling on the river at normal low water (average September), would this route be different?If so, how?

MAP using dashed line and code LWR (Low Water Route)

6.3 How about that time when you remember the water being the lowest ever? Did you travel the river then? If so, how was your route down the river different (Map extreme low water route)

The Firelight Group Page 18 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: MAP using dotted line and code XWR (Extreme Water Route)

6.4 If you ever travel the river in winter, can you show us the travel route that you would travel.

MAP using solid line and code WTR (Winter Trail)

The Firelight Group Page 19 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: Can you show us on the map, some of the key places used by you or your family and accessed via the Athabasca River [For each location: time of use (use benchmarks), or frequency of visit, and who was there].

6.5 These include:

6.5.1 Places on the river where you stop regularly as a rest stop.

MAP using point and code ST

6.5.2 Places where you have camped overnight in a tent, lean-to, or other temporary structure.

MAP using point and code TX

6.5.3 Places where you have built or used cabins or other permanent structures.

MAP using point and code PX

6.5.4 Places where you access trails or other travel routes from the river.

MAP using line and point and code TR

6.5.5 Places where people are buried

MAP using point and code BU = Burials

6.5.6 Places where spirit beings live.

MAP using point and codeSP

The Firelight Group Page 20 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: 6.5.7 Special places used for ceremonies (drum dances, sweat lodges.

MAP using point and code CP = ceremonial place.

6.5.8 Places where you have hunted, fished, or collected hard to find animal, fish, plant foods, medicines, or other resources that are hard to find.

MAP using point and code KS= kill site, FS= fishing site, FP= food plant (EG= Eggs), MP=medicine plant

MAP using polygon and code TP= trapping

6.5.9 Teaching areas, or places that have special knowledge or stories associated with them.

MAP using point and code TA

6.5.10 Salt licks, or other unique environmental features

MAP using point and code EN

6.5.11 Areas of particular industrial developments that you feel is important to put on the map (i.e. water intake valves).

MAP using point and code IND

The Firelight Group Page 21 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: 6.6 In your experience, do low water levels in the Athabasca affect animals, plants, fish or other things that you or your family depend on?

6.7 Have you noticed any changes in where animals, for example Moose or muskrat, can be found on the river, or how they use the river? Fish? Plants? (key locations of change may be mapped, if time allows).

6.8 Based on your experience, if more water is taken out of the

Athabasca river each year in the summer and fall, and the water levels are as low or lower, every year, as the lowest they have ever been in the past fifty years,what will change for

- your family?

- your community?

- the territory?

Interview Conclusion

(read after every tape session)

The Firelight Group Page 22 of 23 Prepared for the ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Project Version 2.1 Participant: ID#: Interviewer: Co-interviewer May 14, 2010 Interview Date: Other Recordings: Today is , 2010.

We have just finished interviewing for the [ACFN OR MCFN] Athabasca River Use and TEK Project. Thank you for coming here today.

My name is and I’m here in the building with . We’ve given him/her TUS ID # . We’ve used , , , and maps at 1:50,000 (or other?) scale and a total of tracks on the digital recorder. Notes are recorded in _____ note book.

The Firelight Group Page 23 of 23

Appendix 2

ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Project Interview and Mapping Methods

ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and TEK Study Interview and Mapping Methods

The methods for the study were developed by Dr. Craig Candler and Rachel Olson of the Firelight Group to document detailed community use, knowledge, and issues related to the Athabasca River and especially changes or problems experienced on or near the Athabasca that may be related to water levels, or water quality. The study focused on individual interviews with Athabasca River users and knowledge holders from both ACFN and MCFN. Each interview took approximately two-three hours to complete. Methods were based on standard field practice, combined both quantitative survey questions (closed) and qualitative questions (open-ended). The final component of the method included mapping places and/or areas of observed changes in water level and/or quality and the associated effects of these changes on the continued use of the identified areas for the practice of Aboriginal and Treaty Rights. Tobias (2010) was referred to in preparing the mapping methods.

3.1 Participants

Fourteen ACFN members were interviewed for the study. The selection of participants focused on elders with extensive knowledge of the river, or younger knowledge holders recognized as having knowledge of the river. Efforts were made to involve knowledgeable elders and river users from different families or segments of the communities. The sample was determined by beginning with a set of elders or people known by MCFN-GIRC and ACFN-IRC staff to have extensive experience on the river. From this, opportunistic sampling took place, and identified participants were recruited subject to availability, and willingness to participate in the study. Each participant received an honorarium for their time.

3.2 Study Area

The study area was defined as the Athabasca River, including those parts of the Athabasca Delta, and smaller creeks and streams running into the Athabasca, that are affected by changes in how much water runs in the Athabasca (water level) and the quality of that water. The geographic focus of the study was further defined by a corridor of approximately 5km either side of the Lower Athabasca River, extending downstream from Ft. McMurray and including the Athabasca Delta area, as well as areas of use in the vicinity of Fort Chipewyan that may be influenced by low water levels on the Athabasca. This 5 km buffer provided an approximation of the distance easily travelled, by foot, in a day trip from the river. Where appropriate, areas outside of the study area were documented. The study area was explained to each participant at the beginning of the interview through reference to the maps available at the interview.

www.thefirelightgroup.com 1 3.3. Base Maps Mapping was based on a set of four base maps that covered the study area outlined above. As shown below in Map 1, the base map area extended from Fort McMurray to north of Fort Chipewyan.

Map 1: Extent of Base Map Imagery

www.thefirelightgroup.com 2 The maps were created at a scale 1:50,000 using LANDSAT satellite photos and overlaying relevant NTS base data. Creating the four base maps used the following steps:

3.3.1. Determine required data sets

The GIS software package chosen for all mapping and analysis was ESRI ArcGIS 9.2. This was because ESRI is an industry standard commonly relied upon for professional applications, government data sources are distributed in a common data format (shape files) and ArcGIS can load data from numerous sources.

An overview map was created in ArcGIS highlighting major rivers, waterbodies, town sites, First Nation reserves, and a 1:50,000 NTS reference grid. Using this map, each NTS sheet was labelled to determine which map datasets were required to provide a minimum of 5 kilometres on each side of the Athabasca River.

Data from this overview map came from the following Government of Canada online GIS data repositories:

• National Framework - Hydrology, Drainage Network: ftp://ftp.geogratis.gc.ca/frameworkdata/hydrology/analytical/drainage_ network/canada/

• Atlas of Canada 1,000,000 National Frameworks Data, Canadian Place Names: http://www.geogratis.gc.ca/download/frameworkdata/popplace/

• National Framework Canada Lands Administrative Boundary (CLAB) Level 1 (First Nation reserves): http://www.geogratis.gc.ca/download/frameworkdata/Cda_Lands_Adm_ L1/

• National Topographic System 1:50,000 reference grid: ftp://ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca/pub/index/

3.3.2. Gather necessary base map data:

Using the list of NTS mapsheets, data was downloaded from reliable web based sources, maintained by the Government of Canada and regularly updated. These data files were stored in a filing system that enabled quick retrieval for processing. Data was downloaded from the following websites:

• 1:50,000 National Topographic System Shape File Datasets from http://ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca/pub/bndt/ www.thefirelightgroup.com 3 • 1:50,000 National Topographic System CanImage (Landsat 7 Orthoimages at the 1:50 000 Scale): http://ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca/pub/canimage/

3.3.3. Process data to create seamless layers Using ArcGIS, common themes were merged together to create a seamless geodatabase layer for each feature type. Duplicate labels from the "toponym" layer were removed, mostly where mapsheets were joined together.

The following feature types were merged into a personal geodatabase:

• Contours • Toponym • Water bodies • Water courses

3.3.4. Produce base maps

Using ArcGIS, each map sheet was measured to confirm coverage of the study area and to create seamless base maps. Each map sheet measured 36 inches wide by 72 inches long (3x6 feet), and the scale of each map was 1:50,000. Four maps with both imagery and pre-symbolized linework data were created, along with the Map Title on all sides of each base map, a north arrow in 4 corners of the map and a map scale at each end of the map. Maps were output into a TIFF image format at 300 dpi, and 2 copies of each map were printed at a professional print shop in Winnipeg, MB.

3.4 Interview Process Each participant signed an informed consent form, agreeing to participation in the study. In two instances, signing of the consent form was refused (due to either personal preference or physical disability), and in these cases, the informed consent text was read to the participant on the voice recorder and consent was given orally. Each interview was recorded either continuously on one track of a Sony digital voice recorder or multiple tracks. The number of tracks used in the interview was recorded in the concluding remarks of each interview. Notes were taken during each interview, both in the printed interview guide and in an additional notebook.

3.5 Interview Guide The interview guide was developed by Dr. Craig Candler and Rachel Olson. The guide was reviewed internally through a Firelight Group peer review process, as well as reviewed and discussed by both the ACFN-IRC and the MCFN-GIRC. The guide is divided into four sections. The first section focused on the individual participant’s experiences on the river, observed changes in the river, or observed changes in the community’s relationship with the river. The second section focused on how water levels and water

www.thefirelightgroup.com 4 quality have affected the participant’s use, including travelling in different parts of the river. The third section involved mapping individual’s experiences on the land with regards to navigation and observed changes in the river’s quality and flow. Emphasis was placed on areas in which access was obstructed due to low water levels, as well as the associated uses identified with that particular area. The final section asked participants what they thought the results will be for ACFN/MCFN member’s abilities to practice treaty rights in regards to the proposed Phase II water management framework. The following details some of the key points of each section of the interview guide, and refinements made to the guide through the interview processes.

3.5.1. Section One: Biographical and Background Questions/ Importance of the River/ Comparison and Change

Main Points:

• This section consisted of a combination of quantitative and qualitative questions. Some of these questions were designed with reference to previous studies so that comparison of responses over time might be made.

• Where an interviewer deemed a question repetitive, or if the participant had already responded to that question in a previous answer, the questions were skipped in order to maintain a respectful flow within the interview. Questions regarding culture/spirituality were often skipped depending on the participant’s initial response to spiritual uses or associations with the river (eg. If a participant responded that they had never used the river for “spiritual” purposes, questions 3.2/3.3, all other questions regarding spiritual uses of the river were omitted.).

3.5.2. Section Two: Personal Responses and Experiences

Main Points:

 This first part of this section (questions 4.1, 4.2, 4.3) was often skipped if the interviewer deemed the questions to be repetitive from the previous section.

3.5.3. Section Three: Preferred Access Limit via River and Restrictions by Flow

Main Points:

 Acetates were placed over the four base maps before each interview began. Each acetate was secured using tape, and four anchor points, or crosshairs, were marked on each map in order to support accurate referencing of the data collected.

www.thefirelightgroup.com 5  Red pens were used to mark crosshairs, cross out errors, or make notes to the GIS Analyst during data processing. Black pens were used to mark participant’s individual experiences on the river and the land, and were the most common pen used. Blue pens were used if the participant had been told about certain places or experiences, but did not directly experience the event being recorded.

 Each point, line or polygon marked was associated with a season/month and year where possible.

 Labeling of features (points, lines and polygons) was done in permanent ink using Sharpie ultra-fine pens.

 Interviewers focused on mapping areas that participants tried to access, but were unable to access due to low water levels, and the uses associated with the areas that could not be accessed.

 Incidents, including accidents and equipment damage, were also recorded on, where possible.

 This section of the interview process was flexible and the level of detail collected depended on the participant’s willingness and ability to identify locations on the maps.

3.5.4. Section Four: Conclusion

Main points:

 The concluding question of the survey was refined through clarification from government regarding the likely effects of the proposed water management framework on river levels.

3.6. Post-Interview Data Processing

After the interviews were completed, the data was taken to two locations, the Victoria office of the Firelight Group, as well as the Winnipeg office, for processing.

The recorded digital files were burned onto CDs and transcribed. Transcriptions were made, and additional notes from the interviews were entered into a spread sheet. QSR NVivo was used to support qualitative analysis.

Acetates were sorted and labeled by Interview ID, as well as base map number, and interview inventories were created for each community. The acetates were then double-checked for proper labeling of anchor points, or crosshairs, and each was scanned at the University of Manitoba. Each image was scanned at 300 DPI in a TIFF image format. During the scanning process, the scanned images were transferred to an

www.thefirelightgroup.com 6 external hard drive and deleted off the scanning computer. This resulted in both a hard copy and digital record of each map.

The acetates were digitized using an on-screen method. This involved georeferencing the scanned images using their reference points, overlaid onto an image of the original base map used during data collection. This digitizing process resulted in an ArcGIS geodatabase storing all point and line work, as well as associated attribute tables.

Water limits (code XLW and LLW) where access to a stream adjoining the Athabasca River is restricted were sometimes recorded in the interviews using small polygons. In post processing, these small polygons were converted to points by placing the point in the approximate centre of the polygon drawn on the acetate.

Map 5 is based on the reported locations of barriers to subsistence navigation (codes LLW and XLW) identified and mapped in the interviews. Streams reported to be obstructed by an LLW or XLW were further identified, and their furthest extent highlighted, based on watershed data from sources noted in 3.3.1 above.

Map 6 was developed based on a model of resource use that assumes a 5km extension from streams within sub-watersheds of the Athabasca River reported to be navigable for at least a portion of their length. The 5 km extension of use was based on an estimated distance traveled in a day trip of hunting or trapping by land, beginning at a point on the stream and returning to it. This assumption was reviewed and confirmed in follow-up meetings with ACFN and MCFN elders and river users. A 5km buffer was applied to all streams identified and highlighted in on Map 5. Use of buffers is a common and accepted practice in GIS analysis.

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Appendix 3

ACFN and MCFN Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Project Informed Consent Document

ACFN Athabasca River Use and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Study Declaration of Informed Consent and Permission to use Information

I (name) , on this day (complete date) , give permission for to interview me for the Athabasca River Use and TEK Study.

I understand that the study is being conducted by the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. The purpose of this study is to help plan for and document the rights and interests of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in and around the Athabasca River area, and to inform provincial and federal government decisions regarding the River. By signing below, I indicate my understanding that:

(a) I give my consent to have my words and responses regarding my land use knowledge and my traditional ecological knowledge recorded on maps, in notes, and using audio or video recording equipment.

(b) I am free to not respond to questions that may be asked without penalty.

(c) I am free to end the interview at any time that I wish without penalty.

(d) The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation will maintain intellectual property rights over information and recordings collected through my participation in this interview.

(e) The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation may use the information collected, including audio, video, or pictures, in pursuit of its claims, and for defending and communicating the rights, interests, and titles of its members. This will include, but is not limited to, sharing information for the purposes of environmental assessment and planning for the Phase II Water Management Framework.

(f) The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation will make reasonable efforts to consult me, or my descendents after my death, before using my information for any purposes not indicated above.

For more information, please contact:

Signature of participant Witness

______

PIN #:

The Firelight Group