CANADA ENERGY REGULATOR RÉGIE DE L’ÉNERGIE DU CANADA
Hearing / L'audience GH-001-2019
NOVA Gas Transmission Ltd. Edson Mainline Expansion Project
NOVA Gas Transmission Ltd. Projet d’agrandissement du réseau principal à Edson
VOLUME 2
Hearing held at L’audience tenue à
Holiday Inn and Suites 33 Petrolia Drive Red Deer, Alberta
January 22, 2020 Le 22 janvier 2020
International Reporting Inc. Ottawa, Ontario (613) 748-6043
© Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada 2020 © Sa Majesté du Chef du Canada 2020 as represented by the Canada Energy Regulator représentée par la Régie de l’énergie du Canada
This publication is the recorded verbatim transcript Cette publication est un compte rendu textuel des and, as such, is taped and transcribed in either of the délibérations et, en tant que tel, est enregistrée et official languages, depending on the languages transcrite dans l’une ou l’autre des deux langues spoken by the participant at the public hearing. officielles, compte tenu de la langue utilisée par le participant à l’audience publique.
Printed in Canada Imprimé au Canada
Transcript
HEARING / L’AUDIENCE GH-001-2019
IN THE MATTER OF NOVA Gas Transmission Ltd. Edson Mainline Expansion Project
HEARING LOCATION/LIEU DE L’AUDIENCE
Hearing held in Red Deer, Alberta, Wednesday, January 22, 2020 Audience tenue à Red Deer (Alberta), mercredi, le 22 janvier 2020
COMMISSION PANEL/COMITÉ D'AUDIENCE DE LA COMMISSION
Stephania Luciuk Presiding Commissioner/Commissaire présidant l’audience
Wilma Jacknife Commissioner/Commissaire
Damien Côté Commissioner/Commissaire
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APPEARANCES/COMPARUTIONS (i)
Applicant/Demandeur
NOVA Gas Transmission Ltd. - Mr. Matthew Ducharme - Mr. Justin Fontaine - Ms. Carrie Dunn - Mr. Matt Quail - Mr. Matthew Watson
Intervenors/Intervenants
Environment and Climate Change Canada - Ms. Cari-Lynn Epp
Piikani Nation Mr. Ira Provost Elder Pat Provost Elder Shirlee Crow Shoe Elder Marvin Murray
Canada Energy Regulator/Régie de l’énergie du Canada - Ms. Christine Beauchemin
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TABLE OF CONTENTS/TABLE DES MATIÈRES (i)
Description Paragraph No./No. de paragraphe
Opening remarks by the Presiding Commissioner 984
Piikani Nation Mr. Ira Provost Elder Pat Provost Elder Shirlee Crow Shoe Elder Marvin Murray
Oral Indigenous Knowledge presentation 1102
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LIST OF EXHIBITS/LISTE DES PIÈCES
No. Description Paragraph No./No. de paragraphe
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UNDERTAKINGS/ENGAGEMENTS
No. Description Paragraph No./No. de paragraphe
Transcript GH-001-2019 Opening remarks
--- Upon commencing at 9:17 a.m./L’audience débute à 9h17
984. THE PRESIDING COMMISSIONER: Good morning, everybody.
985. My name is Stephania Luciuk and I am the Chair of the Panel who will be hearing the oral Indigenous knowledge portion of the application by NOVA Gas Transmission with respect to its Edson Mainline Expansion Project.
986. This is hearing number GH-001-2019.
987. We'd like to begin the hearing this morning with an opening prayer, and I would ask everybody to rise and join.
988. MR. IRA PROVOST: (Native word). Okay. I'm just going to traditionally call up on our elder to say the prayer. (Speaking in Native language).
989. ELDER PAT PROVOST: Good morning, everyone. Since we're -- I was presented with this tobacco, traditionally, when you present an elder with tobacco, you always ask for something. You ask for the prayer, but what is it when you gather us together like this, and this being your lodge or your tipi, and you bring us here to pray? What are you asking for?
990. Like, when we pray, then we have to pray about whatever it is, because you don’t just hand out tobacco without knowing what -- traditionally, what it stands for.
991. So are you asking for a better relationship? Are you asking for this pipeline to go smoothly and everybody to be happy and what are the things you'd like to see so we can pray for that?
992. Some of these things, you have to ask questions about before we start doing them. So it's just traditionally, you would ask me to pray for something that you're seeking.
993. THE PRESIDING COMMISSIONER: I'll invite my other Panel Members to add to that, because we are all here together. And certainly, the offering on my part was to ask for the opportunity to hear your oral Indigenous knowledge, to be able to be the recipient of your sharing of stories.
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994. And with respect to the prayer, in my tradition and what I am here doing today, certainly, I hope that your prayer will seek to help all of us here today to listen and inquire and understand what you’ve come to share. And I think for my part, that is what I understand my responsibility to be here today.
995. And so that is what I hope to convey in offering the tobacco, and that is what I would certainly ask for in your prayers, that I hope that you will lead us in.
996. But as I said, I'll invite my Panel Members as well to add to that, because we are all here doing or carrying out our role, not just as a Panel, but also as individuals. So I'll invite them if they would like to add to that as well.
997. COMMISSIONER CÔTÉ: When I offer tobacco, similar to my colleague, I recognize first the journey that you’ve taken to come here today. I recognize and I welcome an opportunity to listen and to learn. This sharing hopefully is done in a respectful way in receiving it and that we could establish at the beginning, the ongoing trust.
998. I know that’s a journey rather than a moment, and I hope that we can demonstrate an ability to walk a step on that journey.
999. So I'm here, honoured by your presence, honoured by the fact that we have this moment to receive and to learn and to listen. And when I offer tobacco, I'm asking respectfully for the sharing and the opportunity to learn and to listen.
1000. COMMISSIONER JACKNIFE: Good morning. I offer the tobacco; I guess it's on behalf of the Canada Energy Regulator and this process that we are endeavouring to hear from many parties on a Project. And I would just offer that the tobacco represents an offering of place where you feel safe to present your stories and your knowledge, your traditional knowledge toward this Project, and it's for all the people in the room, for the relationship that we are trying to build. Thank you.
1001. ELDER PAT PROVOST: Okay. Before I start my prayer, also, this tobacco, when you presented it to us, in the past, tobacco, when it was presented, it was given to the leader of our societies or the leader that was leading this ceremony. And that tobacco was put into a pipe and prayed upon. That was the most sacred thing we can ever -- as Natives, when we smoke that pipe, we knew we had to be truthful.
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1002. So when we take this pipe, that means at this point, we're equals. We've been sharing our land with you people for over 100 years, 200 years. And now we're trying to be a partner in jobs, to be part of this construction work that some of these projects. And we've been pleading for them for quite a few years.
1003. After we meet, after the meeting's over, that’s it for us. We go home and then we come back to another meeting.
1004. So let -- I sincerely ask you guys to be truthful and honest, that you are prepared to listen to our stories. They're not just stories. These are the hardships that we've been through that we're sharing today.
1005. So with that, I'll say a prayer and ask the Creator to bless this meeting and that everything that is said here and done today would be to the benefit of both parties.
--- (OPENING PRAYER)
1006. THE PRESIDING COMMISSIONER: Thank you, and thank you for taking time to ask us to clarify and to share more information about what we were doing.
1007. Before we go any further, I also wanted to note that we were advised and we became aware of the passing of Jason Goodstriker. It was shared with me some of his roles, including being a respected member of the Blood Tribe, and his former role as Alberta Regional Chief for Assembly of First Nations.
1008. Before we start the more formal processes today, I wanted to invite a moment of silence.
1009. Is there anything you wanted to add with respect to that before we carry on with that?
1010. Then I’d ask us all just to take a moment to honour Jason Goodstriker as I said, who passed recently.
--- MOMENT OF SILENCE TO HONOUR JASON GOODSTRIKER
1011. THE PRESIDING COMMISSIONER: Okay.
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1012. As I noted, my name is Stephania Luciuk. The Commission, on behalf of the Panel, I’d like to acknowledge that the land that we are gathering on today is located in the place of Treaty 7 and Treaty 6 regions. This area is the traditional territory of the Niitsitapi Blackfoot, including Siksika, the Piikani, and the Kainai peoples. That’s Tsuut’ina, Stoney Nakoda, Cree, Saulteaux, and Métis peoples.
1013. Thank you for travelling to be here with us today for these proceedings.
1014. As I said at the beginning, we are here to hear oral Indigenous knowledge regarding the Edson Mainline Project, which is proposed by NOVA Gas Transmission Ltd., which I will refer to as NGTL today.
1015. Before we go into the formal process of sharing oral Indigenous knowledge, I’d just like to take a few moments and discuss how the session will proceed. First, I would like to go through introductions with everybody participating today. Second, I have some information that I have been asked to share about logistics, our schedule today, the venue that we are in, and then after that, we will proceed with the presentations.
1016. So as I said, my name is Stephania Luciuk. I am one of the Commissioners of the Canada Energy Regulator. I’ll ask my colleagues to introduce themselves.
1017. COMMISSIONER JACKNIFE: Good morning. My name is Wilma Jacknife. I’m from Cold Lake First Nation. I am Cree and my community is Dene Cree. I live in the community and I work remotely for the Canada Energy Regulator as one of its Commissioners.
1018. Thank you.
1019. COMMISSIONER CÔTÉ: Good morning. My name is Damien Côté. I am also one of the Commissioners. I live in Calgary now, but I was in Québec previously.
1020. THE PRESIDING COMMISSIONER: I would now invite the Piikani presenters to introduce themselves, and it would help us if you would identify who is an elder, who is a knowledge Keeper, and we can then identify
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and refer in the correct and respectful way to each of the presenters.
1021. MR. IRA PROVOST: Okay. (Speaking in Native language).
1022. Good morning, everyone. My name is Ira Provost. I’m Consultation Manager for the Piikani Nation.
1023. An elder doesn’t consider themselves an elder, but I’m very involved in ceremony and I guess would be what you would call a knowledge holder. And I perform ceremony with others in the community of Piikani.
1024. And I’ll leave it there for now.
1025. ELDER PAT PROVOST: (Speaking in Native language). My name is Pat Provost. I’m from Piikani and my -- also a Horn member, same as Ira. Ira has gone to the Horn Society. I’ve been through the Horn Society. And I’ve been a medicine pipe holder.
1026. And I’m also a current leader of the Brave Dog Society, which we started back in the ‘70s. We had lost our -- all our ceremonies to the boarding school era and all that punishment and everything that was stripped of us.
1027. I guess thinking about my life, I think one of the things I have to give credit to, is that I survived the boarding school.
1028. And there we were taught not to speak. Everything we did had to be done in silence. And the only place was on the play yards. From the day we got up -- from the time we got up, we controlled all through the day by the dominant society, dominant race. And for many years we’ve all been silenced by that.
1029. It’s a privilege and honour to be sitting here in front of you, to be able to speak and to allow us to talk about our life, because none of our ways were ever documented the right way. Our history was never documented. It’s always one-sided. We’re terrorists and we’re killing off settlers, and we’re just defending our lands.
1030. We didn’t know back then that we could apply to Germany to come and help us, because we didn’t know a lot of things. We just ended up.
1031. And for us guys in Piikani -- Prison Pasture 147, which is
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overpopulated now.
1032. So one of the reasons why we’re here is to try to be involved in some of the activity that goes on in our traditional territory so our people back home can have jobs and provide for their families. And we’re hoping and relying on you guys that what we’re sharing today, you can have some sympathy for us and give us your support, because we prayed and you offered tobacco, you know, you have to follow up on that, what was presented today.
1033. I’m just hoping that this is a good meeting and we can go back home and feel like we’ve been heard, that we’ve been listened to, and that you understand us.
1034. Because we’ve been through a lot before we came here. You know, there’s not too many of us that survived the boarding school. Some of us survived to get out of there, but our lives are so messed up.
1035. A lot of my friends had short lives because of that, the treatment that we went through, the loss of identity, the loss of our culture, the loss of our parents, grandparents guiding us, giving us guidance through life.
1036. Everything was forced on us. The beatings. And not only us in boarding schools, but the kids that were placed out in homes. A lot of times they were placed and they were just so people can make extra money for their families.
1037. So we weren’t raised to invest our money. We weren’t raised to look at forming companies. When we got out of boarding school, we just completed an eight-year sentence and then we started working as labourers. Back then there was a lot of demand for us to haul in bales, and fencing, and chasing cows, and doing all the farm work and all that. But when it was over, we went back home.
1038. We didn’t how to save money, how to invest it and have money working for you. These things I’m beginning to realize and I’m just waking up to them.
1039. Hopefully one of these days we’ll be treated as equals and learn to -- and benefit from our traditional territory.
1040. You know, I’ve walked over -- about 15 years with consultation from B.C. right into Manitoba. And our sites are visible all over, our ceremonies. In
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all these towns, you look at them; the reason why they’re there, it’s because that’s where we camped. Those were our traditional camping grounds.
1041. That’s why Ponoka is supposed to be Ponoká. There was Calgary, Mohkintsis.
1042. Those were the places we camped. And when the European contact -- that’s where they settled their battlement, their forts. And we helped them survive the winters just only to be sent away from there later as it was being settled. And that’s why the reserves were put up, to lock us in there. So we never had a voice.
1043. Today we have a voice. We’re sitting here and speaking and telling our story, and hoping that it’s heard properly.
1044. I brought this here with me today. It was given to me by a lady. I ran a pipe ceremony in Edmonton. After it was over, she came to me and she asked me, she said, “That pipe you have, is that a Blackfoot pipe?”
1045. And I said, “Yes.”
1046. She said, “My grandfather found a pipe similar to yours in Manitoba. I don’t know, it would have to be over 100 years ago. And this pipe was found in Manitoba in a field.”
1047. It shows that we’re all over Canada, up north, all over there, all over Canada. There’s no borders or limitations where we were camping. But after European contact, our numbers were cut way down. And then we started getting pushed in certain directions to where we are today.
1048. And our numbers are so low that back in -- I don’t know if it was in ‘40s, they were thinking of taking us out of our reserve and placing us on a different reserve and taking over the land that we call home today.
1049. And all those ceremonies -- and this here, is how we survived. By this pipe. Our strong belief in Creator, that we smoke these pipes.
1050. And today we still gather for all night smokes where we bring our pipes together. Sometimes almost 30 pipes. And we smoke them all night, praying for the Creator to take pity on us, to help us through these -- the tests that we’re going through today.
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1051. Especially the biggest one now is the opioid crisis. That didn’t come from us. It was brought to us.
1052. And that’s why I talked about earlier, that when the tobacco was presented, it was put in a pipe like this and it was smoked. And that’s our connection to the Creator.
1053. When we do -- when we’ve done that, there was no way that it can -- that they can go smoking it, say they’re going to do something, then do the opposite after. It just wasn’t a good thing for the person that does that. That’s why they took our ceremonies away from us, because they realized our strength was within the ceremonies. That’s how we survived.
1054. So that’s just a little bit of, part of our culture that -- I thought I’d bring it up so you’d have a little understanding of who we are and where we came from. Because we’re sitting here, we’re all survivors, you know.
1055. Just talking to my friend here, next to me, talking about his days when he was taken away in that ‘60s scoop and he thought he was going to home where he was going to be loved but he wasn’t, because a lot controlling and punishment that carried on.
1056. There’s several -- there’s stories like that all over our people; went to boarding schools. I survived that boarding school. You know, I didn’t survive it. I had post-traumatic stress, I suffered from wicked anxiety attacks. I never knew where they came from, for almost 10 years before I really got to understand what was going on. I went to see a doctor and he told me, he said, “Geez, Pat, you got all the symptoms of post-traumatic stress.” It’s how badly damaged our people were. We’re always in a survival mode.
1057. Yeah.
1058. ELDER MARVIN MURRAY: Okay. (Speaking in Native language).
1059. My name is (speaking in Native language) in Blackfoot. That means, light coming to you. My slave name -- and I use that, Marvin Murray, that’s on my driver’s license -- that wasn’t given to me by my family, that was given to me by White people, so that’s why I refer to it as my slave name.
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1060. I’m a knowledge holder of the area that we’re talking about. I’m a hunter and owner of my own outfitting and guiding company on the reserve called Blackfoot Outfitters. I’ve been dealing with the government now for the last 20 years in order to get our hunting and guiding organization on the reserve. And I’ve hunted all through our Blackfoot territory and our Piikani area that we’re, right now, talking about.
1061. I’ve had many camps in the area and I come here honoured to be here with my people and to be able to represent my Nation.
1062. ELDER SHIRLEE CROW SHOE: Okay. (Speaking in Native language).
1063. My friends, that is the language my people spoke. They spoke that in that language because the language was given to us by what we refer to as the source of all kind and in Blackfoot, he’s known as (Native word).
1064. I was -- and I guess I’ll translate, I said, Greetings. I’m glad to see every one of you. I am known as Ancient Buffalo Stone, and I am from Piikani. Piikani is my homeland and also here, which they call Red Deer, but we call it Ponoká’sísaahtaa, which is, you know, the Elk River.
1065. I also said that the source of all kind is Iihtsipáítapiiyo’pa, gave us (speaking in Native language).
1066. I am glad to be here again. It’s another opportunity for me to share the stories that I can relate back to my seven times great grandfather. I never knew him, but he was fortunate, or we were fortunate, I should put it, that he was included in a story book called The Old North Trail, and so that gave us an opportunity today with the younger generation to be able to see a portrait of this gentleman that I’m talking about.
1067. And with that, I’m an advocator for the Blackfoot language. I am a Blackfoot language teacher, and I’m still work as an Elder Advisor in, you know, different institutes such as, the University of Lethbridge, University of Alberta, University of Calgary. So I’m quite affiliated with all these different places and that and I guess where are my affiliation with them is the knowledge that was handed down to me. That oral knowledge that was passed down so that we could still carry it on.
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1068. I am amazed that we have now entered the year 2020. A hundred and some years ago, our people, my people, Piikani, you know, they were restricted of going into their territory. And the territory started North, what we called Ponoká’sísaahtaa, the North Saskatchewan River, that’s (Native word). And then it went east, (Native word) to (Native word) is what we called the Great Sand Hills. It went south to (Native word) which is the Yellowstone, and then of course, we have the (Native word), is the boundary, is the border of our (Native word), the territory that we were given to us by the source of all kind, Iihtsipáítapiiyo’pa.
1069. We have survived and carried through many ordeals in life and yet 2020, we can still give you a population. Piikani is, there’s 3,800 Piikani in it. So it’s really -- I feel good about it. I also feel good that we can utilize technology -- the technology of this mic, the technology that we have in this world that we’re living, that we can take that and use it to, you know, retain our language.
1070. Because our languages are rapidly disappearing. Disappearing meaning that they’re not going to be completely gone. Disappearing meaning that they’re not as spoken anymore as in my mid-age, my childhood, and that. There's a tremendous loss there. And I'm -- you know, and I feel fortunate to be able to speak to you in the language of my ancestors and that, to be able to name places like Ponoká'sísaahtaa, the Elk River is what we called it. But you know, it's called, I guess, Red Deer.
1071. Anyway, thank you and I didn’t mean to introduce myself that long. But just to give you a brief overview who I am. Thank you.
1072. THE PRESIDING COMMISSIONER: I'm going to move to NGTL and invite NGTL to introduce themselves as well.
1073. I wanted to note and before we go any further that the opening prayer that we shared earlier this morning and discussions with the Piikani presenters, that serves as the affirmation that will be used in the proceeding today. And I think with the introductions, we've already begun some of the sharing of information, so I thought I would take a moment and for the record note that that affirmation was accepted at the outset of the proceeding.
IRA PROVOST, Affirmed: PAT PROVOST, Affirmed:
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SHIRLEE CROW SHOE, Affirmed: MARVIN MURRAY, Affirmed:
1074. THE PRESIDING COMMISSIONER: So with that, I would invite NGTL to introduce those that are here with us today.
1075. MR. DUCHARME: Thank you, Madam Chair.
1076. Good morning, everyone. My name is Matthew Ducharme. I'm in- house legal counsel at NGTL and TC Energy.
1077. With me today is Justin Fontaine from the firm of Osler.
1078. Next to Justin is Carrie Dunn, who's on the Indigenous Relations team of the Edson Mainline Project.
1079. Immediately behind Carrie is Matt Quail, who's also on the Indigenous Relations team, and to Matt Quail's right is Matthew Watson, who is the Project Manager for the Edson Mainline Project. Thank you.
1080. THE PRESIDING COMMISSIONER: Thank you. And I will check whether this morning we have any intervenors attending.
1081. MS. EPP: Yes, it's Cari-Lyn Epp with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
1082. THE PRESIDING COMMISSIONER: I do not see anyone else in the room, so that completes the introductions of the parties.
1083. I'd like to take a moment and also identify the Canada Energy Regulator staff who are here with us today. They are wearing silver nametags so they can be easily identified and over the course of the morning, if you have any questions, you can feel free to approach them.
1084. Suzanne Brown is our Hearing Manager for this proceeding. At the back, we have Monika McPeake, who is our IT support.
1085. We also have Christine Beauchemin, who is our Commission legal counsel for this proceeding; Natalia Churilova, our Process Advisor -- maybe -- oh, she's at the back of the room as well; Jo-Anne McDonald, our Indigenous
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Engagement Specialist; and Rachel Savoie, our Regulatory Officer. And she'll also be assisting if there are any exhibits that we want to see on the screen.
1086. The Court Reporter today is Dale Waterman.
1087. With respect to the venue, I mentioned I have a few housekeeping matters. In the event that there's an emergency or there is an alarm and we have to evacuate, I would ask everybody to exit through the same doors that we came through.
1088. We have a muster point, which is the Harley Davidson next to the hotel, and I would ask that everyone meet at the west doors of that building, take a roll call of your group, and ensure that everybody has been evacuated. And if somebody is not accounted for, I'd ask that you draw it to the attention of our Hearing Manager or one of the staff.
1089. And for security reasons, I would ask that you not leave bags unattended in the hearing room. And certainly, if there's any concerns, please feel free to approach any of the CER staff.
1090. This morning we are in our second day of the hearings scheduled in Red Deer for oral Indigenous knowledge sharing. It is our intention to sit until approximately noon, with a mid-morning break where there's an appropriate time for a pause.
1091. Should you wish to take a break earlier or you would like the proceedings to recess, just please bring that to my attention.
1092. The oral Indigenous knowledge shared today will be transcribed and will be part of our hearing record. And I'll also note that a live stream of what is going on today is being broadcast via the CER's website.
1093. If you have not done so but you wish for any knowledge shared to be treated as confidential, please let us know. We will stop the proceeding before gong any further and address that request and take the measures that may be appropriate and requested to ensure confidentiality.
1094. Once completed today, there will also be an electronic transcript of the proceedings made available on the CER website under the Edson Mainline Expansion Project home page on that website.
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge
1095. On my behalf and on the part of the Panel and the Commission, I'd like to reaffirm that we understand that Piikani has an oral tradition for sharing knowledge from generation to generation and that this knowledge cannot always be adequately shared in writing.
1096. We appreciate and are honoured that you have chosen to be here with us today to share aspects of that traditional knowledge with us, and about your relationships to and uses of traditional territories that may be affected by this Project.
1097. It is a privilege for us to hear this knowledge, and thank you, as I said, for helping us to better understand how these matters may be affected by the Project.
1098. Having completed the affirmation, we are now ready to proceed.
1099. One thing that I would note, these microphones are a little bit fussy. Only one can be on at a time, and they don’t always come on very quickly, so I would encourage you to wait until you see the red light so that we ensure that everything is recorded and heard throughout the hearing. And it's also helpful if you speak closer to the microphone than further away.
1100. I note that the presenters have already begun introductions. We welcome further knowledge during your presentations, but also, introductory information about your background, why in particular you are presenting on behalf of your Nation and as the person sharing knowledge with us today.
1101. So with that, I don’t see any hands up or anybody indicating any preliminary questions or matters that need to be addressed. The Panel is ready to proceed. And so with that, I would invite the presenters to proceed.
--- ORAL PRESENTATION BY/REPRÉSENTATION ORALE PAR PIIKANI NATION:
1102. MR. IRA PROVOST: Good morning. My name is Ira Provost, like I said earlier, very honoured to be here. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time. I want to thank the Canada Energy Regulator for this opportunity to speak on behalf of my Nation.
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge 1103. Before I begin into my presentation, into the information that I want to present, I just -- I do want to comment really quickly to the process thus taken so far. I want to applaud the CER in taking further steps to recognize Indigenous knowledge.
1104. I think we, as Indigenous Nations, have really struggled -- and we all know this -- to legitimize our knowledge as knowledge that’s equal to Western science. We've had a continual struggle that still continues to exist, where a lot of the people who are involved in traditional knowledge and then trying to find ways to incorporate it into practice have found it challenging.
1105. I get that and I understand that, and again, I applaud the changes that are being made in real time to try to acknowledge and the knowledge that we hold, because it's not just text book. It's not just something that we read on the page. It's something that we live.
1106. The tobacco that you presented this morning has a lot of meaning to us. In the past and still today, as Pat said earlier, we would have -- we would smoke the pipe and we would share it between us. And that pipe represents laying a foundation of understanding and of truth that needs to pass both ways.
1107. With this tobacco, whether you fully understand it or not, you’ve created that same pact, a covenant with this group of people, to say that, “We will not -- will be honest. We will be truthful. And we will carry out all that we intended to be.”
1108. The tobacco means different things to different people, but I do thank Pat for clarifying that with you.
1109. When you come to us, a prayer isn’t just a salutation, a prayer is life giving, a prayer is meaningful.
1110. So with that I thank you. I do accept this tobacco from you.
1111. What I will do with this tobacco is just outside of Red Deer, the Blackfoot have put a marker to mark our territory. And I helped construct that marker. I’m going to go and make an offering there with this tobacco today.
1112. So thank you for that.
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge 1113. Today I’m here to discuss the Edson project that is -- the gas line that’s going -- that’s being projected with NGTL.
1114. I want to affirm and state it as a knowledge holder, as a manager on -- from our Nation representing our chief and council, representing our community and the members who can’t be here today, to tell you that this project sits on Piikani territory.
1115. I would also tell you that our chief, Stan Grier, is very -- is a very astute gentleman who speaks well and is very learned about our history and our knowledge. He would correct you anytime that you say Blackfoot or Piikani traditional territory. It is not traditional territory. It’s territory. Meaning that the tradition is a connotation of the past, as though it’s not in the -- it’s not in use today and it’s rather -- and we’re going to have to share with you today that that’s not the case.
1116. We have -- we’ve always been members of this area. You can read through the written information, which you will. You can read the historical commentary of early explorers such as David Thompson coming through the area and encountering Piegan people, as he called them at that time.
1117. And like Shirlee mentioned, we were put on this land by Iihtsipáítapiiyo'pa, by the source of all things, by the Creator.
1118. And we understand that this project will and has impacted our rights, our Aboriginal and Treaty rights. And it will continue to do so.
1119. I want to acknowledge, first off, as well, that we are only half way through presenting the information that we need to do in order to a quality study. We understand that our testimony is just purely knowledge here today. We’ve done information on a study, thorough study in the Edson area to this point. But of course, because of the time of year, it’s not complete.
1120. So what you’re reading in front of you with a written submission is partly done. Really, it just scratched the surface.
1121. We also acknowledge that I want the Canadian Energy Regulator to understand that the Piikani Nation understands this process as flawed, for the reason that we’re looking at a small piece of pipe on a longer line. We know that it’s not -- it should not be this piecemeal approach that NGTL and TC Energy is
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge taking to address the concerns.
1122. What we’re going to talk about today and the project that we’re being impacted upon is not just this one little stretch of line. It’s a bigger project and should be judged as such, as a larger project that we all know is going to occur.
1123. And we know -- we acknowledge that that’s happening, of course, to expediate the process of getting this done. We don’t agree with that.
1124. However, at the same time, what you’re going to hear today is an understanding of who we are on this land in the past and in today. This project that is coming through the area will impact the Piikani people today. And like all Nations and all stakeholders that have an interest in this area and beyond, all we are asking is to be treated equally, to have fair access to further development, revenue sharing, developing partnerships to continue this.
1125. I also want to say that our chief -- and I’ve said this in other hearings, and I’ll say it again in future hearings. Our chief is not opposed to development. We understand the Alberta economy. We understand how important it is to create jobs, to create that type of future. But at the same time, a member of your stakeholder group should not be treated less than, but treated equally as.
1126. The impact of the NGTL project, the Edson Project, will and has had an impact on the Piikani way of life. In our written submission, there were ample forms of evidence that have shown that. And today we’re going to talk again more about some of these pieces as we go through.
1127. I’m going to stop right there, but I will speak again. I’m going to turn it over to our elders and then to our knowledge holder at the end to have a turn to speak.
1128. So I turn to Pat now. Oh, we’ll turn to Shirlee.
1129. ELDER SHIRLEE CROW SHOE: You know, as I was growing up, I would hear stories. And these are stories. In books and other terminology, they’re called myths and legends. But to me they’re stories because they actually happened and that.
1130. We have a lot of our stories that leave some kind of geographical landmark. And so, you know, I guess in a way, to using the word to justify, you
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge know, those stories, you know, those are seen. There’s always a scientific theory why that geographical site is, you know, there. But to me, they’re always, you know, stories of our -- from our ancestors.
1131. Our stories go back right to, I guess what I call the beginning, where there was a being that sat there and all of a sudden, he had seen this dust or, you know, floating -- you know, floating by.
1132. So he went out, he reached to it, and he formed that mass into his own image.
1133. These are some of the stories that we -- that when they’re told to us, you know, some other storytellers, famous storytellers, George Bird Grinnell and them, they don’t get the details, and that. So in this mass, he created his first creation. So that’s how far back we can trace to, you know, to our stories.
1134. And some of them really fascinate me and I’m just going to, just kind of bounce here and there or, you know, just to -- timewise, some of our stories go for a long time and of course, you know, this society, we don’t have enough time.
1135. One of the other stories that fascinate me is when our people went up into the sky, into the outer space. You know, if you look at the astronauts that fly out into Mars, and that, they made that special opening to come back to earth. And we had the same thing. The same thing is told in our stories about, you know, that hole that they needed to re-enter, and that.
1136. So these, when I hear the stories and what my limited knowledge of the Western world, I often think, you know, yes, we could take our stories and we could take the Western understanding or the Western acknowledgement and parallel them to each other.
1137. You know, I feel privileged in the last few years, that I’ve had opportunity to sit in front of a group of people and that and to be able to tell them who I am, what makes me Piikani.
1138. So, you know, I like those opportunities. Yes, we’re still struggling. We struggled and we’re still struggling today, but yet, we have that initiative in us that we keep going.
1139. And that’s why I keep making reference to the year 2020. And when
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge the year 2000 came, I was standing by a gate in the land in Montana, watching the fireworks being, you know, to welcome the new year, and that was that big issue that the world was going to come to a standstill. There was nothing that was going to work, and that. I even had contacts with a doctor friend of ours and he went and he must have purchased four generators, because all this thing was going to come to a stop in 2000.
1140. Two thousand (2000) came, 2000 went. Now it’s 2020. And you know, we are still quite fortunate, all of us in here that are from Piikani and from other Nations, that we have our stories to help us for our identity of who we are.
1141. Now, just making reference back, you know, just looking at that map, and that, and thinking back. You know, my grandmother would oft talk about her grandfather and her grandfather telling her about a trail that our people used hundreds and hundreds of years. And that trail, it starts in Mexico, which comes all the way, you know, probably on the east side of the Rockies when they start, all the way up north.
1142. Now, I was surprised when I went on the internet, good old internet, and I googled the Old North Trail, and what it said to me, that was the roadway that was still used by the First Nations, that was the pathway from Siberia to this part of -- to North America. And it was, you know, people have walked that trail. Why that trail was so meaningful to me is that my, probably I could say, my eight times great grandfather -- Running Wolf was his Blackfoot name, that was one of his Blackfoot names.
1143. He actually did travel to the land of the dark-skinned people, which were the Mexicans, and that. He was fortunate to be gifted a Spanish conquistador vest, and that. So he brought it back, and that, and our people seen him, and that, and therefore he got the name, Iron Shirt.
1144. So you know, these are the stories and the information that tells us that we have been here since time immemorial. And you know, we’ve -- those are just some of the short stories. There’s, you know -- of that, we were also given information about some of the resources that were put there for us, and that we utilized and that we, you know, prior to the treaty in 1877, we lived in this territory that I identified, the North Saskatchewan, East Saskatchewan, down to the Yellowstone and the Rocky Mountain Front.
1145. At that time, we lived in clans, and that. We lived in clans and that’s
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge where we all got to travel. We stayed away into our different territories because we had to maintain that country for our people, and these clans were the ones that, I guess, make reference to a travelled a seasonal round. In this seasonal round, they would collect all their material, all the stuff that they needed, and that. And then they would come together, all unite back, and then again they’ll go off.
1146. It’s interesting how they had progressed. But then came that where, you know, the confinement. The confinement restricted our people from visiting and being and living, and being part of their, you know, the areas and that.
1147. So it’s -- you know, and then we lost a lot of stories too through that, you know, because of the connection they have with their land. You know, a lot of that became a loss. You know, the stories and that behind that area became lost.
1148. Rocky Mountain House was another, I guess, well-visited place by the Piikani because that was a -- that was, you know, the place where they welcomed, you know, the early explorers that came through and that. And they were, you know, able to set up forts and that where they could do their trading and that.
1149. So just having that knowledge, that, you know, that was that. And just looking at that map, and you can see, you know, “Oh, I wonder what they -- you know, I wonder what the stories were behind this area. You know, behind, you know, this place and that.”
1150. But, you know, unfortunately, you know, some of them became -- had become lost because of the restriction that we were -- that we had encountered.
1151. You know, it’s sometimes sad to talk about. But, you know, again, you know, we need to tell our story and that. We need to tell Canada and the world who are the Piikani, you know. Why are you called Piikani? Why, you know, why are you here and that?
1152. So I guess with that, I’ll stop and let my fellow colleagues here have something to say. And I might think of something else. I want to tell you everything, but I just, you know, so much that you have to remember.
1153. Thank you.
1154. ELDER PAT PROVOST: I’m just trying to get a thought process
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge going. There’s so many different areas that I have concern with.
1155. I guess we’ll start off with how life was on the reserve before the introduction of welfare. And I was part of that life, when everybody worked hard with what little we had. But we’re always controlled by the Indian agents and the government, people in authority.
1156. When we left boarding school, we didn’t leave behind the authority. It just became larger. The Indian agents on the reserve lived in mansions. The different people that worked in the administration all had big houses, big mansions. Almost like you see in the movies, with the coloured people and plantations. All the plantation owners lived in big houses, drove new vehicles, and were a controlling factor over us.
1157. I’ve seen different Indian agents come and go. One in particular, I think he might have even -- he would have even paid to have that job because he had so much control over punishing us that he played the role of RCMP, riding around, trying to arrest us for various things, speeding. Anything. You name it. There’s always -- he was a real dictator.
1158. Those are some of the things that we had to endure.
1159. And our people were very hard workers. You know, we’re labeled as lazy, drunks, welfare people today. Back in the day before welfare, there were numbers up around towards Okotoks and Nanton, all through that area. That’s where we ran our cattle. My Grandpa Nap, he used to work there.
1160. And I seen a report back in the ‘30s that said the Piegans are flourishing in the agricultural field as farmers and ranchers. They’re very hard workers and very consistent.
1161. So we -- our cattle were all through that area. And all of a sudden, we were locked down in this reserve. And little did we realize what it was. You know, some of us, our minds was, when this government gave us this land to live on; well, we’re getting this pasture, we’re protected.
1162. But it was a device. It was where we get everything taken away from us.
1163. You know, when my -- I was visiting my dad in the hospital before we
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge lost him from cancer. There was an elder in there and he had -- he was sick also and the sickness he had, he wasn’t going to live very long, but there he was walking around.
1164. I met him one night. And I knew the guy. And his biggest worry was, “Gee, where am I going to get a job when I get out of here? I have to go work.” That was his worry, “I have to go to work.”
1165. You know, that’s how hard our people worked to feed their families. Just like everybody else that’s sitting in this room. We’re all sitting here to get a wage, go home, and provide for our families, pay the bills and put food on our table. And some guys have more, some guys have less.
1166. But one of the things, one of our survivor skills -- and it’s still there today through the elders teaching us -- be happy with what you have. If you’ve had something to eat today and you’ve got a place to sleep, give thanks to the Creator that he has given us this, however small a piece that was given to us. That was our survival.
1167. Not only that, our other way of surviving was through humour. You know, sometimes we got pushed back into a corner so deep that we have no place to go and we laughed. We laughed. You know, we laughed at our situation, but we have to give thanks that we're still alive. We didn’t try to own 10 sections of land and run all the cattle and have all the jobs and all the money.
1168. When we go into a ceremony, we all sit down and we -- with the food that’s brought in, we pray with it and we give thanks to the Creator to providing us with food. And when we pray with that food, we ask the Creator to be there for us so that our families can also have a lot of food to live on, our kids to go to school and to graduate and to understand the White man's law, the laws that have controlled us all these years.
1169. Because as we speak today, every word we say is documented. In our ways, we didn’t do that. It was just a man with his word, that what he said that day, that’s the way it was going to be.
1170. At some of these meetings and ceremonies, when we meet, when it's all over, the elder that’s running it would say, "Okay. (Speaking in Native language). That’s the way it's going to be."
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge 1171. So when we left that meeting, because he said that, we knew that was the way it was going to be.
1172. Sometimes when we come to these meetings, we're kind of misled by that, because especially for me, I've been to a lot of ceremonies and I've been through where a man is his word. So when you sit up there and you say, "Well, we're doing the best I can," and when it's all over, you'll tell us, "Okay. (Speaking in Native language). That’s the way it's going to be." We have to believe you because you gave us the tobacco to pray with.
1173. But it gets frustrating when you get home and then you find out, well, that’s not the way it's going to be, that sometimes these are just procedures that you have to go through to say that you consulted with the Piegans on this day, that we were given the opportunity to speak and to voice our concerns. And that’s what we're doing, hoping that there's going to be a difference.
1174. Because you know, whenever we're faced with a challenge, whether it be of sickness, health, or in our cases, with starvation, we make a vow to Creator and in that vow, we could maybe tell the Creator, "Well, we're going to build an Okan this year and give thanks to you and to ask you for your help."
1175. You know, these vows were very strong and sacred and they always were answered, the prayers were always answered.
1176. One of the stories I remember hearing, one of the first when we started building the Okan, the Sun Dance lodges, that story was always being told. And along the river, our family was camped. And there was an overnight flood that came through the -- down the river and hit our camp and washed all the people away into the bushes and down the river.
1177. And one of the people that was in that flood was an old lady, a Sun Dance woman, and she cried out to the Creator, "Take pity on my people and we'll build you an Okan this summer. So let our people all make it through this flood."
1178. So I guess when the flood was over, all the people were accounted for. It was told to us to show us the significance of a Sun Dance. So we've used that on several occasions. But now, that way of life is being threatened by a dam west of us.
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge 1179. I put up a Sun Dance this summer, and because of that dam and the way it's regulated and the disrespect that the government and people in authority have for us, they have a blind eye and a deaf ear to all our concerns that in another two years, we're not going to have a river bottom. We're not going to have the trees and all the stuff that we need because a Brave Dog member and leader of the Brave Dogs, it's my job to find a location that holds all the stuff that we need for the Sun Dance. And I've brought that concern up several times.
1180. But you know, sometimes a person has to go to extremes to be heard, because we don’t have the seats of authority that you guys have. We have to start learning how to use your system and your laws to work for us.
1181. We could have a demonstration. We could camp and do all that stuff, but the ultimate power lies in the hands of the White people to disperse the people from there and get charged for it and get sent to jail for it. And all we're doing is trying to protect what we have, what little we have, because you know, it only takes 15 minutes or not even that -- 10 minutes to cross our reserve. It takes three and a half hours to get here and that’s pushing it too, you know. That’s travelling fast.
1182. And I've seen all the sites in these areas. And I think about that then when our people lived in harmony with nature and the animals. And we always recognized those animals. There are songs, the songs that they gave us, and they gave us their life so that we can survive.
1183. We have a Beaver Bundle Ceremony that takes place every spring and fall, and then there, we recognize all the animals and we dance to their dance and to their songs, because that’s how we lived. We lived with the animals.
1184. And maybe that’s why when the first, the very first day I went to boarding school, the nun explained to us why we were there, and she said, "The Creator --" she didn’t call Him the Creator -- "Jesus Christ sent us here, because you guys are all like animals. You got no direction, you got nothing. So we were sent here to save you and to introduce you to the --" their Creator so that our lives would be better.
1185. So they forced us to sit hours upon hours on our knees, praying.
1186. You know, I run a horse therapy program. And working with them horses and how they -- the horses are, the horse spirit is if you look at it, if you
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge force learn anybody, if you force them to learn something, they will never catch it fully. They will never -- some of them will never use it. If you force a horse to work for you, that horse will rebel at some point. He'll have enough of being punished.
1187. But if you teach them with respect to take one step forward with you and work together, that horse will work with you for a long time and have a really good understanding of what it is you’re teaching. Because every step he takes, you pet him and you assure him that he’s going in the right direction.
1188. Same with our kids. You know, I work with kids that are falling between the cracks in school and they’ve lost their focus, their self-esteem in who they are, because at some point the punishment is being used on them for them to learn. But when you teach them they’re just as -- they’re equal to everybody and that every time they learn something, you stop and give them praise, and praise them up, and tell them how good a job they did, even if it’s just one step, and you build on that. You build on that and you develop a working a relationship with those kids, students.
1189. One of the things I look back is, we were just like a bunch of wild horses who were forced to learn whatever it is that we were being taught. That’s like today when we sit across from you, we don’t have that same educated voice that you have. We don’t fully understand because it wasn’t -- the teachings that were forced on us, it wasn’t who we were.
1190. And all the history that we were taught in them schools was never about us. We were always villains in our history. We’re always rebellious, and uprisings that the good guys, the RCMP, had to go out there, arrest us, and control us, and lock us up and starve us, to teach us a lesson. And all this time, we were just trying to provide for our families the way we had provided all through the years.
1191. But we have survived all that, and those are -- I don’t know how I can relay the message to you. And the only way I could do that is to talk about some of the damages that were done to us. But today, you know, it’s changing. Our young people are getting educated and are starting to understand that we are equals.
1192. And that’s why I have respect for this lady up here, to see a Native woman sitting up there, showing that you can do the job just as good as the next
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge person. You know, it’s leadership like that and people like you, that challenge these systems and be successful at it, that can teach our young people that they’re equals.
1193. And from all the negative things that were being told to us through our young days of growing up, that really wasn’t who we were, because going through school, we were never taught anything about economics or anything like that. We just got us through the eight years of school, and some people were smart, they were catching on to the system that was controlling us, and continued going to school.
1194. You know, I wanted to go to school and I wanted to get my education, but my dad kept me home from school to do his work for him. As a matter of fact, at one time I even asked to go back to a boarding school so I could learn; get my education. My dad heard about it and he -- I got the balling of my life. I was called ungrateful and everything, that I couldn’t work for him after all the years of him providing for me. That he raised me up to help him and to provide for him in return.
1195. I envy all these guys who have education and pull out their laptops and communicate all over the place. But what I don’t have, a rich education. You know, I went back to school and did my Grade 12, but my life was outside.
1196. What I don’t have in education, I have in spiritual education. I’ve gone through a lot of transfers and I’ve sat at a lot of ceremonies and I understand that part of being educated. And if we lose it, we’re going to go back to being helpless. We’ll have nothing to make vows to and to help us in our time of need.
1197. So I’m still -- since the ‘70s, I started my journey and it’s still going. I’m still a student of our ceremonies. There’s some ceremonies that I haven’t challenged yet, but I’m on my way there. When I started out, I totally couldn’t speak Blackfoot and I totally couldn’t sing any songs. But through the strength and the power of these elders, today I’m opening medicine pipes and singing all the songs because I dedicated myself to it. And I seen the need for it because every spring when these pipes open, I see the people coming, asking for help, and we pray for them and we bless them and we paint them. A lot of them come back to give thanks because what they had asked for, came to be.
1198. I had a little, my little great grandson was given a week to live, so my son told me to go up and paint him. So I went up and we made a vow for him to
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge dance with the pipe, and that kid’s over a year old today. They said, his kidneys aren’t functioning, he was premature, nothing’s working, and he’s just suffering being on this life support. And one of the things that the Elders told me, they said, these doctors, they’re not the Creator. The Creator’s the one that’s going to take the life and it’s the one that’s going to choose if you are -- if it’s your time.
1199. But also these people, these young people, kids like that, were put here to show us the strength of our ceremonies and the strength of our connection with the Creator. And the strength to give us the strength to want to live. Now, that little guy, you know, he’s going to grow up to be strong, but he showed my family, the strength of (Native word), the prayers.
1200. You never underestimate -- you know, there’s a lot of testimonies about people that came to dance with those pipes and were given a death sentence, and survived, and still are today.
1201. I know one young guy, when I first started out, his grandmother brought him to get painted. She said that she was told that he wasn’t going to live long. The guy’s grown up today, he’s working and he has a family. I’ve witnessed a lot of these things in my life and my connection with the ceremonies.
1202. And today, we’re here asking to be part of these projects that go on, and we probably won’t get them, you know, but through our ceremonies, we’ll just give thanks for what we have. That we don’t have all the benefits of the jobs, and the money that it makes, and how we can provide, but we’ll just keep going.
1203. You know, I spend a lot of my time in the town site, you know, on our reserve with people there. And those are the best times I had because they’re going there and there’s joking, and teasing, and laughing. And people laugh at the hardship they’re having. They laugh and they give thanks if they were able to have a sandwich that day.
1204. Those are the people that I represent. I try to speak for them.
1205. We’re going through an opioid epidemic right now like everybody else. I go to a lot of ceremonies through all the different reserves and it’s the same thing at every ceremony. There’s a family getting beat up by all those pills that are wrecking their lives. They don’t know how to handle them because it wasn’t part of who we were. It wasn’t part of our life.
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge 1206. But it is quite a battle. But we never give up. We just keep taking one step at a time.
1207. You know, all of a sudden, every other day there’s another death, overdose. But there’s nothing we can do. We just have to keep praying.
1208. One of the things that we -- well, one of the things I think about is a lot of these people have good jobs. Like a lot of the guys in the townsite have proven themselves as the best firefighters, because it’s the only job they get where they come home with a paycheque and buy the stuff that their families need.
1209. You know, some of these guys that have been there for, like, 25 years, and they wait all winter for that job.
1210. That’s why we come and we ask for jobs, so that our people can provide for their families. Because when bills and everything starts stacking up, you know, people escape to alcohol. And now it’s these pills, which are a stronger thing to be addicted to than the alcohol that we survived. And how we survived with alcohol is our people started slowing down and going back to joining societies and going to ceremonies and praying.
1211. So we’re sitting here with two totally different lifestyles. You know, one before European contact, nobody owned the land; we had territories where we hunted on and we lived together and we shared everything. If it was a successful hunt, there was no family that went without. One family had all the meat and one family with nothing, because it never happened like that because we shared everything. We shared all the hardships.
1212. You know, when we were getting whipped all the time in the boarding school, we had a contest going for who wasn’t going to cry when they got whipped. And it only upset the guy that was whipping us and he whipped us harder because we didn’t realize that there were some people that were -- liked to torture young kids who were getting jobs at these boarding schools and they got their jollies out of seeing us suffering, crying, and in pain. But when we didn’t cry, it upset them more because they didn’t get their jollies. But we all talked about it after.
1213. It was just little things like that that we did to test ourselves and to endure pain and endure hardships. Because you all have little kids and can you imagine if you had your little kids in our trust and you had a Native guy walking
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge around whipping them and you had no control over that?
1214. I told that to an RCMP one time because there was a lot of going around and the RCMPs were bullying us.
1215. I said, “You know, if you had been abused for eight years, and you got out and you had no direction and nothing to fall back on or anything -- and you couldn’t speak, for eight years you had to walk around in silence, so when you got out of boarding school, the alcohol loosened up your tongue and you’re able to communicate with people and express how you felt.”
1216. And I told him, “And these people that turned to alcohol just to escape all that are here in town. “
1217. And the RCMP, you get all your training, you go to training, got to be in shape, all physical shape. So you take that physical shape and you practice on us, the people that are drunk and can’t defend themselves.
1218. And all the punishment we went through all those years, you think you have to come and punish us more by flopping us around and practising your holds where you’re just about breaking our arms or our legs? Flopping us around, locking us up in jail, starving us, humiliating us? Do you we think we need that after what we went through?
1219. What if I trained your kids and they came to be alcoholics like that? And then after they became adults and I was an RCMP and I went and I arrested them and I abused them some more to prove how strong I am and how I have to control?
1220. Because a lot of them were RCMP people that did that, they’re scared little kids that were controlled, maybe, and they needed to use that on us Natives because if we retaliate, it’s just more punishment.
1221. I know it’s out of line, a little bit out of line for why we’re here, but sometimes you have to learn where you came from to understand who you are. A lot of us didn’t understand who we were after we got out of the boarding schools. We didn’t understand why we were acting like that. We didn’t understand our behaviour.
1222. It all goes back to that dominant people that looked over us and
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge controlled us. Those are the realities of it.
1223. Okay.
1224. THE PRESIDING COMMISSIONER: May I interrupt for a moment? I just wanted to check in with the Panel.
1225. At this point in time, we’ve been going for about a couple of hours and I propose that we take a break, subject to any concerns with that, and just to allow everybody to be sort of refreshed after about 15 minutes and continue to listen.
1226. But I’m open to other submissions if there’s a preference to proceed?
1227. MR. IRA PROVOST: Thank you. I prefer to proceed.
1228. ELDER MARVIN MURRAY: Okay. I’m grateful to be here today on behalf of the Piikani Nation, my people.
1229. I’d just like to clarify why I’m here. First of all, I’m a hereditary hunter for my people on the reserve. It’s grown into a business for myself. I own my own outfitting and guiding company now.
1230. I deal with the non-Aboriginal clients from all over the world that come to our reserve to hunt deer, elk, cougars. And those are the three allocations that I hunt.,
1231. I’ve hunted throughout Piikani land through -- for all my life. And I’m a Blackfoot Piercing Warrior and I own my own pipe. And my hunting goes back years. I’ve been hunting since I was eight years old, and like I told the group last night, that was 10 years ago.
1232. I’ve hunted throughout all of our territory. One of the things that I learned when I was younger was that things happen in fours. Four is a very sacred number to us. If we look at the world, we have four seasons, four directions, four different races, colours in the world.
1233. Within Piikani, there are four major river tributaries that flow through our land, the first one being the Old Man River; the second one being the Bow River; third one, the North Saskatchewan; and the fourth one being the Brazeau River.
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge
1234. Within these four rivers, there’s tributaries that flow out of the mountains. All of these tributaries are fed from glaciers of fresh water. These glaciers have been here forever. They were given to us by Creator to sustain us with water, and with that water comes all of the things that go downstream from that glacier.
1235. When you look at a glacier, there are no living plants. There are organisms and stuff within the ice, but there are no plants or trees. As you move away from the glacier, you’ll see that there’s a sub-alpine, an alpine, and then we start getting into trees, grass, medicines, wildlife, animals, and birds.
1236. Further down that tributary, we’ll find what we call the underwater people; fish, salamanders, frogs, amphibians of that sort. All of these animals have been placed within Piikani territory for our purpose, to survive. That includes the trees, the moss, everything that we have there was created so that we could live in harmony with nature.
1237. I’ve hunted on all of these tributaries, and I’ve seen all of the country within them. On the Brazeau, the main tributary that flows into it is the Blackstone River. It’s north of Nordegg, and it comes from a great big glacier in Banff National Park. The Brazeau comes from a great big glacier which is located in Jasper National Park.
1238. All of these tributaries are within the Piikani area of our homeland. Our people have been sustained by these river drainages and until European contact, they flowed freely. Within the last hundred years, every one of those river tributaries have been dammed. Just recently, ours, the Old Man River, was the last one to get dammed and its created irrigation for the rest of Southern Alberta, which would be a desert.
1239. The consultation with the government and Piikanis was very limited at that time and we had no outcome as to say yea or nay. I remember as a child, fishing that river and having Arctic grayling all the time in that river. To this day, there are no more Arctic grayling. I remember fishing in the Brazeau River. Arctic grayling were abundant, but when the Brazeau dam was built, they disappeared too.
1240. We have to remember also that there are native animals within our territory. Creator didn’t just make one moose. He made three different kinds of
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge moose, the first one being the Shiras moose, which is in the southern part of our territory, in the States; the Canadian moose, which is up in this area; and then the Yukon-Alaskan moose, which is up in the Arctic.
1241. That being said, the Canadian moose was one of the largest moose within our territory. Those were the moose that we would hunt because it gave us the most amount of meat. Moose always live along river systems, muskeg, swamps; that’s where their food is. When the Brazeau dam was built, that wildlife disappeared from that area. It just didn’t happen anymore. You would not see herds of moose.
1242. When I was a kid, we used to see herds of moose up at the Brazeau -- 15, 20. Now, that’s unheard of. It was covered with elk. We have to remember that there’s four different kinds of elk; there’s a Tule elk, the Rocky Mountain elk, the Manitobian elk, and the Roosevelt elk. Of those four species, the Rocky Mountain elk are the ones that are found within our territory.
1243. At one time they were a prairie animal, and again, they were pushed back into the mountains. They had surrendered their prairie because of overpopulation and the creation of homes, cities, towns, and now -- they’re under scrutiny right now, because we have a limited amount of elk within our country.
1244. When I was a kid, we used to camp right on the Brazeau River. Right where that pipeline is; we used to see it. Not knowing what it was or what kind of effect it had had, but learning in future years, that yes, the Arctic grayling disappeared. So what does Environment do, they introduce non-native fish to our river system. The Rainbow Trout is not a native fish to Canada; it’s from Europe. The Brown Trout is not a native fish to Canada; it’s from Germany.
1245. They call a Bull Trout a trout, but it’s not a trout, it’s a char. It comes from the Arctic; it’s a family member of the char, the Arctic char. It’s not a trout. Those are under protection, now. We cannot keep them. We cannot fish them. And that’s because of oil exploration, gas exploration, logging, and everything else that has accumulated over the years and these fish just can’t live within it.
1246. The pollution that’s created from dams, the disruption that’s caused from pipelines, gas lines, cutlines that are created to house these projects, cause soil sedimentation in our rivers that kill our fish. With that being said, the animals that are on top of this land are getting poisoned from gases that are released within their own habitat; their drinking water, their grass, their native
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge food that they eat.
1247. The area that is around the Brazeau area is mostly forested area. As a Piikani member, I used to go up there and collect birchwood because in the southern portion of the province, there is no birchwood. In the northern part, there is.
1248. The northern part, we used to collect what is called a brat root or licorice root, and it grew in swamps that was in the forest there. We also used to collect wild turnips, wild onions, sweetgrass, sweet pine, and a special type of fungus -- it grew only on trees in the north -- that we used for smudges. Those are our traditional medicines that helped us when we were sick and sustained us when we were hungry.
1249. A lot of that is gone now. You can't find wild onions or turnips or anything like that along those right-of-ways of a gas pipeline.
1250. We've been up there since the beginning of time. The Piikani Nation, at one time, was the largest Nation within the Blackfoot Confederacy. And with the border, the U.S. border going through this imaginary line that nobody can see anyways, they’ve separated our people. We still have the southern Piikanis in Browning, but they were under U.S. government laws and they got a reserve.
1251. The northern Piikanis were placed on a little reserve where we are situated right now and given a timber limit to collect our own firewood and our own tipi poles.
1252. It is still there today, but if you look at the borders of the reserve, they're all jagged. They are not considered true reserves any more because of the fact that a lot of it is gone; it was taken away from us.
1253. Within our hunting area, my hunting area, Rocky Mountain House was a major, major point for me to start hunting. I would always go to the Elk River, the Elk Valley, south towards Cow Lake, set up my first camp at Cow Lake, hunt for three or four days from Cow Lake into Prairie Creek. We had camps up there on the Ram River, Ram Falls, and then we would go north up towards the Brazeau. And we would camp for two months at a time in the winter time.
1254. Usually January, February were the months that I would hunt and I would leave with just enough gas in my truck and jerry cans to sustain me, which
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge would mean that I would have to set up a camp and go on foot to hunt these areas. And they always produced animals, always.
1255. As more pipelines came through the Brazeau, the animals naturally disappeared. They were pushed west into uncharted land. The area that is west of Rocky Mountain House, Ram Falls and the Ram River, were given those names because there was bighorn sheep there at one time. Now, you'll never find a bighorn sheep in that area. It's all been pushed away.
1256. Our hunting areas stretch all the way from Hinton right down what they call the eastern slopes right now, the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in the Province of Alberta, that went all of the way right down -- right to the Yellowstone River. And within that area, there was many camps. We had many camps along that area, in Hinton, south into Jasper. All of these big lakes that you see at Jasper, Maligne Lake, those were visited by our people, that we had camps there.
1257. The reason that the mountains were so important to us was in the winter time, it produced wood for fires, water for us to drink, and wildlife to sustain us for food, and like I said earlier, the other vegetation that we used. There was wild rice in those swamps that we used to collect. All of those things sustained us. We didn’t have bread. We didn’t have Cheez Whiz or butter or anything like that. We lived off the land.
1258. THE PRESIDING COMMISSIONER: Sir, I apologize again for interrupting, but I've been passed a note and a second note that’s in terms of the recording and the broadcast, we need to take a pause for a moment because it's going to reset on a certain time limit which will stop our broadcast on the web.
1259. It won't take very long to reset and I apologize. I would have suggested a break before we started the presentation, but I wasn’t aware that we had this coming up as a cut off.
1260. So I'm going to suggest that we pause and that we resume at 35 after 11:00 so that we have a short break, not too much of a cut off, and then Mr. Murray, I'd like to pick up where we've left off from there.
--- Upon recessing at 11:22 a.m./L’audience est suspendue à 11h22 --- Upon resuming at 11:39 a.m./L’audience est reprise à 11h39
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge IRA PROVOST: Resumed PAT PROVOST: Resumed SHIRLEE CROW SHOE: Resumed MARVIN MURRAY: Resumed
1261. THE PRESIDING COMMISSIONER: Okay. Welcome back after a short break.
1262. To those on the webcast, we are resuming the Edson Project oral Indigenous knowledge with the Piikani First Nation.
1263. I believe the webcast has been reset such that we should be able to continue now, and I understand that the preference is now to continue through to conclusion, which we'll do.
1264. And with that, I'd invite Mr. Murray to resume.
1265. ELDER MARVIN MURRAY: As I was saying, in the past, everything in our Nation runs on fours, and like I stated earlier, the four major river tributaries that are running through Piikani land was the Old Man, the Bow, the North Saskatchewan, and the Brazeau River.
1266. Within those four, there are many tributaries that run into them and eventually, the North Saskatchewan runs into the Saskatchewan River right through Blackfoot territory, Piikani territory, and into the Hudson's Bay.
1267. The area that we're talking about up by Edson was a very fundamental hunting area for myself. I would camp at the Brazeau and also at a lake just north of there called Wolf Lake. There was abundance amounts of moose up there that we would hunt in the winter time. I would camp up there for two months at a time and stay up there during the winter. Usually during January and February were the best times to hunt up there.
1268. And we would travel all along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, all the way down to the border of southern Alberta.
1269. One of the key things that I would like to say is that as a outfitter and a hunting guide, it's been very, very hard to acquire the licensing and the authenticity through myself to be recognized as an outfitter and a guide.
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge 1270. With that being said, I would also like to note that it's very hard for myself to be able to go out and be able to hunt and guide in these areas, in Piikani area, because they're off the reserve. I'm limited to only hunting within our reserve boundaries and there is no recognition from the government as to having first cull or even to be recognized as a hunting guide within the Piikani territory.
1271. Within that territory, there's quite a few non-Native hunters and guides out there. An example of that is our Rocky Mountain sheep. In the area of Edson, the world record sheep came from Cadomin. It was killed 15 years ago and the province puts up a provincial lottery through Fish and Wildlife where they have a trophy sheep auction. And under this auction, international hunters can bid on these -- on the one tag. And what that means is that the highest bidder will get that tag. It's a trophy tag for sheep and it can be hunted anywhere in Alberta. And the season usually runs right from August til the end of December, so they have six months more or less to hunt these sheep.
1272. First Nations have never been involved or even consulted in the fact that this is Piikani land and we should be having first consultation under our own territory to be able to regulate these hunts. The last hunt that was bid on, the tag went for $1.2 million and it was given to an outfitter from the Edson area. That year, the hunter never got his ram.
1273. The following year, the same hunter bid on the same tag at 1.5 million and shot what was then the world record.
1274. Our bighorn sheep population is declining, not only from the fact of overhunting, but from trophy hunting and also from the province shipping our sheep to different states in the United States.
1275. And as I’ve said, the world record came from our Piikani territory.
1276. Now, one of our sheep that were shipped to North Dakota last year became the new world record.
1277. So Alberta doesn’t have that status anymore. North Dakota, which has no mountains, has no valleys, has bighorn sheep living in river drainages that only mule deer at one time lived.
1278. The Brazeau River and the area west of Rocky Mountain House has always been our hunting area. There’s numerous sites and camps along that area,
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge teepee rings, vision quest mountains, sweat lodges, and gathering areas along all of those four river drainages.
1279. With that being said, my brother the grizzly bear is having a tough time living there. The province has put a moratorium on them because the numbers have declined down to double digits. And as people know, what we can’t see or hear, we don’t care about.
1280. That’s how I feel as an outfitter and a hunter. I think that the Piikani Nation should be able to govern their own hunting and outfitting and representing not only our Nation, but our province, as caretakers of the land, and to be consulted first before any decisions are made, whether it be on wildlife, river systems, the flora and fauna, and all of the things that we need as First Nations to sustain ourselves.
1281. I’ve been hunting up there, like I’ve said, for years. I take my family up there fishing. I fly fish a lot. All of those rivers are fly fishing -- beautiful fly- fishing areas. It’s uninhabited in that area. A lot of people don’t go up there because of the limited amount of access.
1282. But along the pipelines, there’s an access road always. But what I found is that we aren’t allowed in those areas because of that pipeline. Those areas were prime hunting areas, as I’ve explained, and now we aren’t allowed in there, which isn’t right.
1283. I’ve been chased out by government people, by the Fish and Wildlife, by oil companies, by people who stop me on the road and ask me what I’m doing there. And my response is, “What are you doing here? Who are you? This is my land. This is where I hunt and I feed my children and my family.”
1284. When we go up there winter hunting, we’re not only hunting for myself and my family. I hunt for the whole Nation. I get the meat processed. I keep all the hides. I get them processed into leather. The school benefits from it. My elders benefit from them.
1285. I just finished purchasing two deep freezers for our elders that I keep at the elder’s lodge. Those are continuously stocked with wild game. Anybody can come there and take what they need.
1286. And like I said, the Brazeau produces the biggest amount of moose
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge and the largest body of moose. And that’s why I go there to hunt them, because you get the most pound for the animal. Without having access to this area, not only I suffer, but my whole Nation suffers under the fact that now I’m locked out of an area that I’ve been hunting since I was a kid.
1287. The Prairie Creek area west of Rocky Mountain House, right at a place called Strachan was, when I was younger, that was the beginning of the forestry.
1288. Now as Treaty Natives, we’re only allowed to hunt within Crown land. Well, our Crown land is disappearing. At one time it was at Strachan. And now you have to drive 30 miles west in order to hit Crown land. Everything is owned, leased by non-Natives.
1289. I’ve been charged for hunting out of season, trespassing on my own traditional lands where I hunted as a youngster. I fought it in court and I lost in court. And to be humiliated like that in a court of law, being told that you can’t hunt a certain animal, I’m bewildered by it.
1290. I could understand if it was a cow with a brand. But it’s not. It’s a moose with no brand. It’s an elk with no brand. Nobody owns that wildlife. They were given to us purposefully for food. Cloven-hoofed animals were put on this territory for our sustainability. Cows weren’t there first. The wildlife was put there first.
1291. Those animals clothe us. We use them in ceremonies. I feed the Horn Society yearly with the animals that I bring from home, from that home. I get it processed, I give it to the leaders of the Horn Society for their meals, their ceremonies. I give the hides to the people that need moccasins or drums.
1292. So all of my stuff that I do during hunting season is valued and it goes down a great big line of people that count on myself and the people that are with me to help me.
1293. I’m trying to teach our younger generation now, you know, there’s more to life than your cellphone, your video games. And once they get out there, they’re hooked. They’re hooked on the natural beauty. The days are short because there are so many activities that they can be involved in. And those kinds of ways of life have to be sustained within our Nation.
1294. A pipeline that runs through our hunting grounds and forbids us from
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge being able to continue on with the ways that have been going on for thousands of years closes a great big door. It closes a door to me that says, “What do I do next? Where do I go next? Who do I see? Why do I feel alienated from a place that I consider my home?”
1295. We also have to remember that the Piikani Nation was huge. The other tribes within that were allies of us. We protected them. We protected Nakota. We protected the Stoneys. They speak a different dialect than our people. They speak a dialect from the southern states. Sarcee speaks Dene Tha'. That comes from the Arctic.
1296. These people that are living within Piikani territory are our allies. We protected them. They were invited to the Treaty 7 because Piikani allowed that to happen. And we have to recognize the fact that the Piikani were the largest. Just because Kainai is a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy does not mean that they are the largest or the most powerful.
1297. Piikani was always the most largest. Like my elders said, the Brave Dogs came from Piikani. They were the police of our whole territory.
1298. Siksika is the same. They were a tribe within the Blackfoot confederacy; they speak our language, but they were not the biggest Nation, the biggest tribe. Piikani has always been the biggest. And that has to be recognized.
1299. And because of the border, because of small pox, because of the U.S. government, it is what it is today.
1300. I will continue on hunting and guiding for the rest of my life. That’s a part of my history and my life. My grandfather did it. He came up to Rocky Mountain House. He hunted all of this area. And when I talk about my grandfather, it makes me realize my identity to the past is not that long ago.
1301. My great-great-great grandfather was Crow Eagle. He was at the signing of Treaty 7. His grandfather was Brings Down the Sun.
1302. Brings Down the Sun’s burial spot is at the top of the hill where I live. So I’m reminded of this every day, how small in time we really are and how close we really are to our Mother Earth. And it was given to us to sustain us and to live in harmony with nature.
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge 1303. As I was saying earlier about the fish, because of all of this exploration and modernization, a lot of our fish species have been annihilated. There are no more Arctic grayling. There are no more cutthroat trout. All of these fish are protected now.
1304. Now we’re starting to see hybrid fish. They call it a cutty-bow. It’s a cutthroat/rainbow cross. Rainbow were introduced from Europe as a sport fish. As I said, brown trout were brought here from Germany.
1305. But these are carnivores. They’re used to having pollutants in their body, mercury, and all of the other ailments that come with fish. And they’ve been able to sustain themselves and override these things that are happening.
1306. When a river bottom is disrupted, that creates mercury, it creates contamination.
1307. And for all of the smaller underwater people that we don’t see, the minnows, the tadpoles, the salamanders, the snakes, we don’t even see them, what it’s causing.
1308. We need to have more consultation with the government. We need to have more consultation with the oil companies and the gas companies. And they need to put priority in having that consultation first with the First Nations that occupy this land. And that is Piikani Nation. Like I said, we’re allies of all of the other tribes within there.
1309. And we are the keepers of the land and we should be consulted first. Or else we’re going to end up with no wildlife, no forestry. Our forestry is getting pushed back further and further and our young people don’t even know the boundaries.
1310. Where I hunt down in southern Alberta, the provincial government has created a park. They didn’t tell us anything, consult with First Nations as far as our hunting rights go. We’re losing our hunting rights. We’re losing the ability to go out on the land and to fish and to hunt.
1311. There’s regulations now that are in small print that a lot of my people don’t understand. A lot of people have been getting charged for fishing in river systems such as the Brazeau, such as Ram Falls, Ram River. All of those aren’t in the forestry anymore. At one time they were.
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge
1312. Prairie Creek was abundant with fish. They used to flow into Cow Lake. That was a perfect place to hunt elk and moose. Now you will not see any of them. You will not see the native cutthroat. You will not see the bull trout there.
1313. And the North Saskatchewan River is one of the most highly polluted rivers now in Alberta and in Canada. They found traces of drugs and stuff. You know, it’s sickening. There’s an alert on that you can’t have fish -- eat fish, consume fish out of the North Saskatchewan.
1314. Pregnant women can’t eat it because it will kill them, it will kill the baby.
1315. So these are some of the things that we have to recognize and we have to balance. And I think one of the priorities is to have Native consultation with those people that are living on the land, like myself, that know what is there.
1316. It’s so easy to sit back and read books and magazines of all of the wildlife and to drive on Highway 1 or Highway 16 to the parks and see nothing but the highway and then get up there and, you know, they don’t see what is out there. And in order for us to do that, we have to be out there.
1317. I’m out there. I see what’s happening.
1318. Those areas that we’re talking about were Piikani owned, always. Always ruled. Always looked after. The balance was never unbalanced. We didn’t take more than what we needed. We didn’t overfish. We didn’t kill. We didn’t contaminate. We gave offerings before we even went hunting. We smudged our guns, our bodies, our hearts, purified them so that we know that when we are hunting these animals, we are taking a life, but we’re giving a life too. We’re giving a life to our people, our children.
1319. I’m very passionate about the outdoors. And I’ve been told a lot of stories about our animals.
1320. Ten (10) years ago I was approached by one of the leaders of the Horn Society and I was given the right to hunt, to be able to touch blood. And with that honour came a responsibility of my own to be able to provide for people that wanted to have wild game. And that’s what I do today.
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge
1321. I’ve introduced young people into it. My kids are involved. I have friends that never ate wild game that are eating wild game now. And as a hunter and a fisherman, we need to have those sites. We need to be recognized that we are the caregivers and the landowners of the land and we protect it.
1322. We need to have more input on what’s going on with our gas companies and their affiliation. Like they were saying that this little chunk of pipeline is just a little chunk. It runs all the way from Edson, Grande Prairie, all the way down into the States. Where was the consultation in that? None.
1323. So I’m grateful that today we can come together here, and I hope and pray that we can work together.
1324. Thank you.
1325. MR. IRA PROVOST: Thank you, Marvin; thank you, Pat; thank you, Shirlee, for your words. I just want to begin to draw to a close here, but as I do, I just want to acknowledge Pat and Marvin for their referencing to our traditional knowledge and their stories. Stories take so much to tell and to share, and you’ll tend to sometimes think that the stories aren’t relevant or they're not talking about a specific project area, but in fact, they’re a lot more relevant than we all know.
1326. According to the Canadian Energy Regulator website, there is a strategy that is having the Energy Regulator strengthen and maintain stakeholder relationships and you’re doing this through a number of things. Implementing Cultural Competency Framework, including but not limited to the training of staff on UNDRIP. With UNDRIP, I want to point to the Articles 25 through 28.
1327. So 25, if we listen to the Articles, Article 25 states:
“Indigenous people have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned…occupied and used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources…to uphold their responsibilities to future generations in this regard.”
1328. This is precisely what we talked about here this morning. Article 26 goes on to talk about having our rights, as Piikani, to the territories and the
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge resources. I’ll leave the others to read at your leisure.
1329. We’re all trying to figure out UNDRIP, I know, because I work with many agencies across many ministries and sectors. It’s important to, as we sit together, try to commonly understand what “meaningful” means. What does meaningful mean to the CER? What does meaningful mean to NGTL? What does meaningful mean to Piikani?
1330. For us, it means understanding, it means taking the time, taking the energy to sit with us. In other projects -- and I respect process; I respect the understanding of what we’re doing here today. However, it’s very limited, my interaction with you, when our Elders here share their hearts with you, they believe it’s for a reason. They want dialogue, they want a back and forth. Meaningful doesn’t mean a one-sided conversation.
1331. Heard a great phrase the other day, a conversation isn’t just waiting for your turn to talk. It really is about engaging and understanding. And among our many conditions that we’ve clearly outlined in here, is a want for that with NGTL -- is a want for that, to have that ongoing relationship and to make sure that we’re fully understanding what it is we want to achieve.
1332. For Piikani to fully support this Project we have conditions and I’d like to reiterate some.
1333. We would like full consideration of Piikani knowledge in land use studies and to the baseline and impact assessment, and so, our full ecological, social, economic, and cultural impacts can be understood and relevant to us. And that’s what these Articles talk about; they talk about the connection. The state, Canada, has an obligation to help us define what those things are. Please read Articles 26 and 27. They mean a great deal to Indigenous people, to the Piikani.
1334. As such, the Piikani Nation is actually quite a progressive nation where we have our own monitoring program. We have designed and developed our own biocultural monitoring program, and its sole purpose is the preservation of our culture and our way of life, to store and collect information for future generations to assess when the time comes.
1335. Piikani, like Marvin says, like we’ve all stated here today, we need binding agreements to be included in contracting, business procurement, revenue- sharing, like I said earlier, partnerships, joint ventures, capacity for skills
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge development to access all levels of employment.
1336. And like I said, we’re not done. We began our study of the Edson area just this past late fall. When we got out to the -- we were able to do a site visit or schedule with our time to do a site visit in November, and obviously we had a really early snow this year, so a lot of the ground was covered up.
1337. As such, on the particular day when we got out there, we made arrangements well beforehand to go with NGTL’s advisors, Stantec, to be taken out to the site area so that we can do our work. Our techs, on that day, were led out to the site area and once we got to the site area, the consultant, Stantec, left the key to the equipment back in her hotel room that day, so we didn’t get out to there to actually, you know, see the area.
1338. Day 2 comes, and when we get out there, our techs are usually greeted by the landowners and provided access. Day number 2, there was no such welcoming of the area.
1339. So needless to say, our initial assessment was very flawed. I hope Stantec doesn’t bill NGTL for those days, because service didn’t occur. That’s quite -- actually, that’s Stantec.
1340. So with that, like I said, I’ll now reiterate, we want equality and it’s not something that we’re asking for the moon. If you look at that picture that NGTL has provided for you on that screen, how much of those -- that map of Alberta is marked in red, with NGTL assets. We know that the gas flying through those lines are creating a lot of revenue for this province, for the company.
1341. What we’re asking for today, at the bare minimum, is just to maintain our ability to access those areas and to understand and help people like our members, with Marvin, maintain their livelihood and way of life.
1342. I’m a former member of the Horn Society, my son was a member of the society, my daughter is a holy lady, she’s called the (Native word) woman of our tribe. My daughter is a (Native word). And we all rely on the resources that we get, nowadays, whenever we can get it. Like Marvin said, our Crown lands for access in these places is shrinking.
1343. Is it the responsibility of this Project here today? Maybe not. But it is a contributing factor to the overall impact to our lands, to our rights, and to our
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge resources. It plays a certain part. You can be sure of that, because that was discussed here today.
1344. So with the amount of impact that you see on that map, in all the red, it is impacting our lands, certainly. It wasn’t talked about here today, but you know, nutrition and health is very important to our people. Like many First Nations, the norm on a reserve is the lack of good nutrition.
1345. Canada's Food Guide, the new one, as well, talks about wild game as being an important part of a well-balanced diet. The best thing you can do for your health is to return to that wild game. But if you can't access it, how can we help our community maintain proper health, which, if we had that access to those areas through our hunting, through people like Marvin, for our community, which he, in fact, does bring back to the community, will help our community's health, reduce dependency on a healthcare system with treatments for diabetes.
1346. I can tell you right now, on the Piikani reserve, I work there daily and there's not much food choices. You got the packaged, processed foods up at the local convenience store, and that’s it. And our people are eating that, having to eat that, being restricted to, as Pat says, the little prison that we're put into, little pasture that the "reserve", reserved land that we're forced on for many years.
1347. So I want to thank you very much for your time. I believe that we've said all that we have, but -- and again, I leave you right now saying that we're not complete. We have more information to submit, and will, as we move forward.
1348. I want to thank you all for your time. I do want to thank NGTL for their time to be here today. I want to thank the Energy Regulator and all the support staff here. And ultimately, thank my elders and knowledge keepers for their time as well, taking the time out of their busy day, and the community members here who are here for support.
1349. And if there's any other questions, I'm happy to answer them now.
1350. THE PRESIDING COMMISSIONER: Thank you. I believe there may be some questions. I'll turn to my colleagues on the Panel.
1351. COMMISSIONER CÔTÉ: Thank you for sharing. Thank you to the entire Panel. I took a lot of notes. I was listening with a great deal of intensity.
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge 1352. There's a few clarification questions that I'd like to ask, I think, to various people.
1353. Mr. Provost, I'll say to the extent you're comfortable answering, please feel free to do so. If you also wish to do some in writing subsequently, that’s fine too. But if there's anything that goes too far or too deep, I want you to be comfortable choosing what you wish to answer.
1354. As a general question, I heard -- I think this was from Mr. Murray, Elder Murray -- in regards to animals, and it's abundantly clear that you spent a great deal of your life on the land and you know it incredibly well, where the animals are and also the medicines, the plants, and the fish. And you also spoke to the fact that there's -- I think I heard you suggest there's a lot less than before, they're harder to find, you have to go to different places.
1355. I'm always curious to know if because you’ve observed this for quite a long time, if there was a moment in time -- I'm not looking for a date -- but just a period where you saw a big shift, where you went from seeing maybe a lot to maybe a lot less? And just broadly, if that was 10 years, 20 years, 5 years, a month, just learning more from you.
1356. ELDER MARVIN MURRAY: The biggest shift I saw was probably in the early 1980s. I would have to say from 1984 til 1990 was the biggest shift. Before that, during that time, there was access throughout the whole eastern slopes, and a lot of lease roads, gas pipeline roads, were open. And I'm not sure what happened within that time, but the animals, because of maybe overpopulation or activity due to gas exploration, moved deeper into the mountains and to uninhabited areas where limited access was. So we would have to go in on horseback and be able to create another avenue of harvesting them.
1357. COMMISSIONER CÔTÉ: Thank you. And maybe still too, you mentioned access just now, but you also did -- I think I heard you -- I'm not sure you used the word "chased away" but something along those lines at various locations. And you referred to the variety of industries or sources of that lack of access.
1358. I was wondering, we have a map in front of us. I don't know how precise it is, but I was curious to know if what you described was in particular areas or if it's pretty much anywhere, and if it was -- if it is in an area, if you could show it on the map? I don't know if we have a pointer. Yeah, if you see it on a
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge map?
1359. ELDER MARVIN MURRAY: Yeah. Exactly right where the Brazeau River crosses -- where the pipeline crosses Brazeau River was one of our main campgrounds. There's a road that runs east and west there and one that also comes through Wolf Lake. Those areas in there were -- we hunted a lot in that area and there was a lot of confrontation with a lot of oil companies and personnel that were either working there or just security there that weren’t allowing us to hunt.
1360. COMMISSIONER CÔTÉ: Thank you for the clarification. Very helpful.
1361. A question for Mr. Provost. I heard you say -- and again, I may be paraphrasing, so apologies -- something like, "Some people have waited 25 years for the job that they have." I think something along those lines, so a very long time.
1362. It made me curious, in the community, if you could speak to employment more generally, because this is pretty significant, but maybe the types of jobs that people have, if most -- how many people have jobs, anything along those lines, I'd be curious to ---
1363. ELDER PAT PROVOST: I guess mainly back in the eighties and late seventies, there was a lot of make-work projects, government-funded jobs just by repairing, which was minimum wages, but it put food on our tables, seasonal jobs. It was no -- the only time you had jobs that were year-round was if you worked in administration, schools, Social Services, and that. Other than that, that 25 years I talked about was the seasonal jobs the firefighters had.
1364. And I think in Piikani, we were recognized as having the best firefighters since they trained and prepared themselves for that job, and they stayed out there. And the stories I heard by the living conditions are very tough, you know? It's just not for anybody to go out there and work as a firefighter.
1365. But because they got -- they received some good healthy cheques with it and they were able to maybe purchase a vehicle or something that will help them throughout the year, paying bills, and repairing their houses, and stuff like that.
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge 1366. But now we -- you know, I see that some of the jobs that are out there, they’re inherited down from grandfathers to dads to sons that take over and continuously hold those jobs.
1367. Whereas for us to get a chance at getting contracts or being part of that, it just doesn’t happen. Because I’ve asked, and they’ve said, “Well you guys aren’t trained for that. Maybe we’ll give you a monitoring job.”
1368. But we are capable. The guys have been trained professionally in different areas, carpentry, welding, and that, have proven themselves to be good hard workers. About 10 or 15 people that go to Fort McMurray have been there for many years because of their hard work and their consistency.
1369. We do have all of that. But still we are labeled as, “Oh, they’ll just work for one paycheque and then we won’t see them again.”
1370. But, you know, sometimes when our workers go out there, they have to deal with racism and different -- being treated as second class citizens and that. But because they need to provide for their families, they stick out the job and they work. But we’d like to have an opportunity to be part of these pipelines with the construction work. We are capable of doing it if we’re given the chance.
1371. Thank you.
1372. COMMISSIONER CÔTÉ: My last question is to the other Mr. Provost.
1373. You, in some of your last remarks, you spoke about your own monitoring program.
1374. I was curious to understand to what degree, if at all, some of what you collect from that program is also something you share with the likes of NGTL in processes like this?
1375. So I guess that’s the question.
1376. MR. IRA PROVOST: Okay. Thank you. Very good question.
1377. Yes. So we have a biocultural monitoring program. Like I said, it’s a very comprehensive program. We have a database system that maintains the data
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge for us in the community. It’s operated by our office. And what we do is we collect all materials on any given TLU project in that system.
1378. We then have the ability to produce a report back either to a proponent or to a company who -- and/or government who would either request that, and we would determine what we share and what we don’t. It’s, yes, available to, with limitations, to the public.
1379. So -- and some of the work is in the written evidence, so you can see some of the formatting a little bit.
1380. COMMISSIONER CÔTÉ: Thank you.
1381. COMMISSIONER JACKNIFE: First I’d like to say thank you to each of you for travelling here and sharing what you did. I learned -- as I always do in these situations, I learned a lot. So I want to say thanks for that.
1382. I have some clarification points. The first one is for Shirlee.
1383. I would just like to confirm, and I know this will show up in your written materials, but I’d like if you can confirm with me the place names of your territory? I got the Elk River and I have the Yellowstone, but the mountains to the west.
1384. ELDER SHIRLEE CROW SHOE: The North Saskatchewan.
1385. COMMISSIONER JACKNIFE: Is it the North Saskatchewan?
1386. ELDER SHIRLEE CROW SHOE: Yeah.
1387. COMMISSIONER JACKNIFE: To the north?
1388. ELDER SHIRLEE CROW SHOE: Yeah. Close to Edmonton. Its source is north of Edson.
1389. THE PRESIDING CHAIRPERSON: Sorry. We have one microphone on here and we didn’t -- I don’t think the record was able to capture that.
1390. ELDER SHIRLEE CROW SHOE: Okay. The North
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge Saskatchewan, which we would call them Ponoká'sísaahtaa. And then along -- it could be further, but I’ve always been heard as the Big Sand Hills, Omahksaptsiko, on the east, and then down into the Yellowstone, Otahkoíítahtaa, and then, of course, you know, the Miistákisti, the Rocky Mountains, you know. And that’s the boundaries of the territory.
1391. The Ponoká'sísaahtaa, the Elk River, is the one that flows right through Red Deer here. And so that’s what we’ve, you known -- it was told to us, and that there was a story that goes with that, why it was called, you know, Elk River. Okay?
1392. COMMISSIONER JACKNIFE: Thank you very much.
1393. Second is a comment, I guess, to Elder Pat Provost.
1394. I just want to acknowledge the recognition and the comment that you made earlier. And I’ll do my best. And I have a very quick question for Mr. Provost.
1395. Earlier you said that, “The Piikani Nation is not against development. We want to be part of the -- we want to receive some benefit.”
1396. Will this be showing up in your written -- the report that you referenced earlier?
1397. MR. IRA PROVOST: Thank you. I believe that it has. And there will be other parts to it as well, but yes, I believe that a lot of these conditions are in the written report.
1398. COMMISSIONER JACKNIFE: Thank you very much.
1399. THE PRESIDING COMMISSIONER: I don’t see any further questions from my colleagues.
1400. I understand that your evidence and your sharing is complete.
1401. With that, that brings us to the end of the proceeding today.
1402. Again, on behalf of my colleagues, on behalf of the Commission, I thank the Piikani presenters for travelling here today, and for sharing your
Transcript GH-001-2019 Piikani Nation Oral Indigenous Knowledge Indigenous knowledge.
1403. I also thank all others in attendance, the parties that have travelled, the intervenors, all those who are here to listen.
1404. I wish safe travels back to everyone, back to your respective communities.
1405. This brings to an end the Red Deer sessions for the sharing of Indigenous knowledge. We do have sessions scheduled in Edmonton from the 25th to the 27th of February 2020. And as everybody has already seen, there is a previous letter with the procedural update that explains the process for further questions that may come out of these proceedings.
1406. And as I said, with that, that concludes our proceeding today.
1407. Thank you all.
--- Upon adjourning at 12:34 p.m./L’audience est ajournée à 12h34
Transcript GH-001-2019