ERMINESKIN CREE NATION PRELIMINARY INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND USE REPORT: 2021 NGTL AND EDSON MAINLINE EXPANSION PROJECTS April 2019 Foreword, Limitations, and Terms of Use This report discusses the Indigenous Knowledge and Use of Ermineskin Cree Nation members in relation to Nova Gas Transmission Limited’s proposed 2021 NGTL System Expansion and the Edson Mainline Expansion. The report is based on two main sources of information: (1) a review of the existing Ermineskin Cree Nation Indigenous Knowledge and Use database; and (2) oral histories and historical documents that connect Ermineskin Cree Nation to the areas in and around the proposed projects. Because the research and writing for this report was completed in less than two weeks and no Project-specific interviews were conducted, the report does not necessarily represent the full extent of Ermineskin Cree Nation Traditional Knowledge and Use of the Project area. This study should not be considered adequate to assess fully and properly the potential effects of the Project on the Traditional Knowledge and Use and Treaty and Aboriginal rights of Ermineskin Cree Nation and its members or to develop adequate mitigation measures. Ermineskin Cree Nation plans on carrying out a site visit and assessment of the projects in the summer of 2019. This report is the exclusive property of Ermineskin Cree Nation. The information contained in this report are solely for use by the Nova Gas Transmission Limited and the National Energy Board in making decisions related to the 2021 NGTL System Expansion and the Edson Mainline Expansion. The report, extracts of the report, and/or original information from the report may not be used, reproduced, or disseminated by any party without written permission from Ermineskin Cree Nation Chief and council. Nothing in this report should be construed so as to define, limit, or otherwise constrain the Treaty, Constitutional, or legislative rights and interests of Ermineskin Cree Nation and its members. This report is based upon the Traditional Knowledge of Ermineskin Cree Nation and should be understood as a dynamic and living document that is subject to revision and update over time. Ermineskin Cree Nation – 2021 NGTL/Edson Mainline Expansion i Preliminary IKU Report Table of Contents FOREWORD, LIMITATIONS, AND TERMS OF USE ................................................................ I INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES ........................................................................................ 1 METHODOLOGY AND METHODS ........................................................................................... 1 PROJECT DESCRIPTION IN RELATION TO ECN ................................................................... 4 ERMINESKIN CREE NATION HISTORY .................................................................................. 9 IKU INTERSECTIONS................................................................................................................ 15 POTENTIAL PROJECT IMPACTS AND MITIGATION .......................................................... 20 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................. 25 Ermineskin Cree Nation – 2021 NGTL/Edson Mainline Expansion ii Preliminary IKU Report Introduction and Objectives The proposed 2021 NGTL Expansion and the Edson Mainline Expansion projects are situated within the traditional territory of the Ermineskin Cree Nation, whose members continue to travel to, use, and occupy the Project areas to exercise their constitutionally protected Treaty and Aboriginal rights and practice their traditional culture and way of life. In recognition of this fact, Nova Gas Transmission Limited approached Ermineskin Cree Nation to carry out a traditional land use site visit and assessment of the proposed Project Rights-of-Way. This report will provide a brief and preliminary examination of Ermineskin Cree Nation Indigenous Knowledge and Use in the Project areas. Because of the limited time and resources available, moreover, the findings of this report should be considered preliminary and incomplete. Ermineskin Cree Nation will complete a full site visit and assessment in the summer of 2019. Methodology and Methods Studies of Indigenous land use, occupancy, and knowledge go by many names, from Traditional Land and Resource Use Studies and Traditional Use and Occupancy Studies to Traditional Land Use and Ecological Knowledge Studies. These terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but can have important differences. For the sake of clarity and consistency, the term Indigenous Knowledge and Use (IKU) study will be used throughout this report. The modern period of IKU studies in Canada began in the 1970s, spurred by legal challenges, Aboriginal title disputes, and the negotiation of modern treaties. Milton Freeman set the basic model for contemporary IKU studies in his Inuit Land Use and Occupancy Project (ILUOP), which was completed in advance of negotiations of the comprehensive land-claims settlement for Nunavut.i IKU studies quickly carved out a niche in the 1980s as Indigenous peoples sought to defend and advance their rights and interests through legal proceedings, land claims, and regulatory processes. Ermineskin Cree Nation – 2021 NGTL/Edson Mainline Expansion 1 Preliminary IKU Report The standard methods for IKU studies, established by Freeman and his collaborators in the ILUOP, are individual map biographies and community-composite maps.ii Individual map biographies ask participants to locate and map harvesting and related use activities, as well as sites of historic and/or cultural importance and knowledge of local ecologies, such as patterns of animal movement. Individual map biographies are then aggregated into community-composite maps, which help to establish the geographic extent and spatial intensity of community land use. There are important limitations to IKU mapping,iii and one should be careful not to confuse the absence of mapped values for the absence of significance. As one Elder explained: “Well, you know everything's sacred to us no matter where we go. It doesn't matter what we do. Mother Nature is sacred to us.”iv Nevertheless, Indigenous land-use mapping has become a standard component of legal and regulatory proceedings in Canada, as a result of its visual and presentational clarity and perception of scientific validity.v IKU studies can be customized to meet particular requirements and vary in geographic scale and informational depth.vi For scale, IKU studies can be either “Regional” or “Project‐specific”. Regional IKU studies are generally conducted on a much wider scale than project-specific studies. The area for a regional study could be the traditional territory of an Indigenous community or a politically determined area, such as provincial boundaries or regional-planning areas. Project‐specific studies, on the other hand, usually comprise a more limited area, for instance the project footprint or development area, as well as the local and regional study areas within which there are potential impacts to IKU. For informational depth, one can delineate between “Operational”, “Overview”, and “Desktop” studies. Operational‐level studies are the most comprehensive and reliable form of IKU study and are most appropriate for the assessment of potential impacts of industrial projects on Indigenous land use and occupancy and the development of measures to mitigate impacts. These studies generally involve a significant number of map-biography interviews that produce detailed oral histories and map-documentation of traditional land use sites and values and a reliable Ermineskin Cree Nation – 2021 NGTL/Edson Mainline Expansion 2 Preliminary IKU Report representation of IKU in a particular project area. Operational-level studies generally include field verification or ‘ground-truthing’ of the most significant sites and the proposal of project and site-specific mitigation measures, as well as a characterization of the potential effects of a project to IKU and a determination of significance. Overview-level studies are more limited in terms of the number of interviewees and the depth of detail obtained during the interview process. Overview-level studies focus on the most significant sites and values, whether within a regional or project-specific context. Overview- level studies generally take place over a shorter time period and require fewer resources. These studies are used to determine the potential scope of a Project’s impacts on IKU. Overview studies are best used to inform the early-stages of project planning and can identify whether there is a need for more robust, operational-level studies. The Desktop study does not involve project-specific interviews with community harvesters and land users. Instead, the study compares the existing IKU database for a particular community with the shapefiles provided by the proponent for the project study areas. A report is produced on the basis of the number and nature of the intersections of IKU values and the potentially impacted areas. The Desktop study is the least comprehensive and reliable of the IKU study options, in part because such a study assumes and indeed requires methodological consistency in the gathering and inputting of all prior information. Its value is to determine whether the community members have historical and/or current IKU in the project and study areas. The present study is a desktop study. No Project-specific IKU interviews were carried