September 27, 2013 Ms. Courtney Trevis, Panel co-Manager Site C Review Panel Secretariat Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency 22nd Floor, 160 Elgin Street Ottawa, ON K1A 0H3 Email: [email protected] Mr. Brian Murphy, Panel co-Manager Site C Review Panel Secretariat British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office 4th Floor, 836 Yates Street PO Box 9426 Stn Prov Govt Victoria, BC V8W 9V1 Email: [email protected] By email Dear Ms. Trevis and Mr. Murphy: RE: McLeod Indian Band Community Baseline Profile Report, Community Baseline Amendment Report and EIS Integration Summary Amendment Table Please find attached the following reports. 1. McLeod Indian Band Community Baseline Profile Report 2. McLeod Lake Indian Band Community Baseline Amendment Report, and 3. McLeod Lake Indian Band EIS Integration Summary Amendment Table On September 9, 2013, McLeod Lake Indian Band submitted the “McLeod Lake Indian Band Baseline Profile” (MLIB Community Baseline Profile) for consideration in the Site C Clean Energy Project (the Project) environmental assessment. BC Hydro received the report after it had submitted the Amended EIS to the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency on August 2, 2013. Because the report was received later than anticipated, a placeholder was included in EIS Volume 3 Appendix B Part 5 stating that, “the McLeod Lake Indian Band Community Baseline Report and EIS Integration Summary Table will be submitted at a later date in the environmental assessment process. The information received from the report will be reviewed against applicable sections of the Environmental Impact Statement and additional information will be provided as needed.” BC Hydro has prepared the following two documents as part of the review and consideration of the MLIB Community Baseline Profile: McLeod Lake Indian Band EIS Integration Summary Amendment Table (MLIB EIS Integration Table) which presents a table which cross-references the MLIB Community PO Box 49260 Community Consultation Office Email: [email protected] th Vancouver BC V7X 1V5 9948 100 Avenue bchydro.com/sitec Toll-free: 1 877 217 0777 Fort St. John BC V1J 1Y5 Tel: 250 785 3420 -2- Baseline Profile information with baseline information categories and the related section of the EIS, and, the McLeod Lake Indian Band Community Baseline Amendment Report (MLIB Amendment Report) which presents new key issues and concerns and new baseline information by VC. The three reports attached to this cover letter should be included in Volume 3, Appendix B5 in the EIS as amended. It is my understanding that you will post the documents on your website upon receipt. If you have any questions, or require further information, please contact me at Thank you. Sincerely, Danielle Melchior Director, Environmental Assessment and Regulatory Site C Clean Energy Project Encl. 1. McLeod Indian Band Community Baseline Profile Report 2. McLeod Lake Indian Band Community Baseline Amendment Report, and 3. McLeod Lake Indian Band EIS Integration Summary Amendment Table MCLEOD LAKE INDIAN BAND COMMUNITY BASELINE PROFILE JULY, 20131 MLIB Community Profile, July 2013 Contact McLeod Lake Indian Band MLIB Land Referral Office Governance As set out by the Indian Act, our band is governed democratically by an elected Chief and six Councilors. We hold elections every three years and conduct them according to a strict electoral code. Band Administration Our band administration has a staff of 45 full and part time positions, led by a Band Manager and divided into six departments. Our Band Manager is our main contact with Chief and Council and provides oversight and direction to Administration. She is also the Administration’s contact for the Band-owned companies, governments and the public. She is very active with the membership and ensures that their legitimate concerns are met. Our Administration is considered to be a stable and well run organization by Aboriginal Affairs. 2 MLIB Community Profile, July 2013 Departments Information about the following departments can be found at www.mlib.ca. • Education and Training • Health and Social Development • Public Works and Housing • Natural Resources • Finance • Personnel Culture and History Traditional Culture McLeod Lake people are Tse’khene (also spelled Sekani) which means people of the rocks. Traditionally our people have been semi-nomadic. We lived and flourished by hunting and gathering seasonal resources in family groups from multiple landscapes in and around the Rocky Mountain Trench and the upper Peace River region of northeastern British Columbia. Our Tse’khene language belongs to the Beaver-Sarcee-Tse’khene branch of the Athapaskan language family which is spoken by First Nations people in northern Canada. Our Band has kinship and cultural ties to the other two Tse’khene groups, the Kwadacha First Nation (at Fort Ware), and Tseh Kay Dene First Nation (at Ingenika); and to western Dane-zaa (Beaver) groups such as the West Moberly First Nations and the Halfway River First Nation. European Contact and Colonization Although we had already heard of Europeans and had acquired some steel knives 3 MLIB Community Profile, July 2013 through trade, the first non-Native person our people encountered was Alexander Mackenzie during his journey to the Pacific Ocean in 1793 as he passed through our territory.2 Some of our people recall meeting French fur traders on the upper Parsnip River in the early 1800s and this has become part of our oral history about our first white contact. We fed them moose, caribou, beaver and other foods, as they were starving, and directed them to set up a trading post at McLeod Lake which was already a traditional gathering spot and travel hub for our people. Subsequently in 1805, the French men, representing the Northwest Company, erected a trading post at our traditional Tse’khene settlement at the north end of McLeod Lake by the head of the Pack River.3 Another group of our people, the Yutuwitchan band’s first encounter with white men is also recorded from oral histories told to Diamond Jenness in 1924. The Yutuwitchan band first met white men closer to the Peace River at a creek a little west of Moberly Lake. As Jenness was told, There were five white men and one Tsatene (Beaver) Indian, dragging two toboggans, one laden with food, the other with clothes, knives, files, tobacco, and trade goods of various kinds. The Yutuwichan Indians thought the white men must be Jadjene, “dead men”, because of their colour, and would have fled. But the Beaver Indian, running ahead of his companions, told them that the whites were friendly and wished to trade with them; probably they would give them guns. 4 These oral histories about white contact show that our people were using the full extent of our current traditional territories during the contact period in a traditional manner – following our seasonal rounds in family groups and sharing our experiences of meeting people from distant cultures through oral histories. Our participation in the fur trade extended our seasonal settlement at and around McLeod Lake as well as other trading posts in the region. However, we continued with our seasonal rounds which included trapping in the winter and spring months to harvest fur-bearing animals when their pelts are the thickest. The Omineca Gold Rush which began in 1869, and the Klondike Gold rush which followed it, brought competition for game animals in McLeod Lake territory. The gold rushes also brought competition for trapping areas because some miners had 4 MLIB Community Profile, July 2013 decided to settle and trap for a living instead of going after gold. In 1898, the Klondike Gold Rush brought thousands of prospectors into the Peace River region on their way north. During the fall of that year, some 500 Beaver and Tse’khene peoples refused passage through their territories. Fearing violence, the Government of Canada promised Aboriginal peoples in our region a treaty. Missionaries and Residential School While many of our people became familiar with and adopted the Catholic religion early in their contact history we also continued to maintain Tse’khene indigenous beliefs that were strongly linked to our lands. Our people continued to maintain a balance between themselves and their plant, animal, and spiritual resources. Catholic missionaries came to the interior regions of British Columbia in the 1860s but visits to our territory were not frequent until the 1900s. This missionary contact changed with the cultural assimilation policies that were incorporated into Indian Residential Schools. In 1921, the Lejac Residential School at Fraser Lake was established and run by Oblates. While some of our people did attend this school early on, the Department of Indian Affairs did not force our children to attend the school until the late 1940s and early 1950s. Many of our families refused to comply by remaining on the land with their children. However, this became more and more difficult as trapping became less economically viable. When families were forced to seek seasonal employment to supplement their hunting and gathering, very often their children were seized and taken away to Lejac Residential School first by airplane and later by bus once roads were built. At Lejac Residential school, our people were banned from speaking our language and banned from practicing our Tse’khene cultural traditions. They lived with children from other First Nation communities in BC and were expected to conform