In what we can only hope was a slip of the tongue, the MLA from Great Slave Lake recently said she was concerned about land being sacrificed for parks that could be better used for resource development.
In a review of the 2022 2023 operating budget for ITI earlier this month, Katrina Nokleby said she worried that the economy was being hindered by people in departments pushing personal agendas and shouting down the voice of the business community. She added that “I don’t think that our land should be sacrificed for parks and tied up in that manner… We can have protected areas without tying up resource extraction or resource potentials.”
To her credit, Ms. Nokleby said that the voice of the Indigenous governments should be one of the main determining factors, but talk of using land from protected areas for resource development alarms anyone concerned about the environment and climate change.
This was particularly worrisome coming from someone who represented the Northwest Territories at the COP26 conference in Glasgow last November and able to hear some of the most knowledgeable people in the world discussing the state of our planet and saw thousands of people marching fearful about our uncertain future. Having witnessed that, it is surprising that anyone would advocate “sacrificing” protected areas for resource development.
In a recent interview on CBC, Bill McKibben, American environmentalist, teacher and co-founder of 350.org said that next to the invasion of the Ukraine and the horrific humanitarian crisis were those countries (and provinces) trying to use the new demand for oil from sources other than Russia for their personal gain. While there is no doubt that reducing and eliminating the demand for Russian oil means that other sources have to be found, his point was that more than ever, we need to be looking at energy alternatives and become more sustainable within our own borders. That means we need to be focusing more on wind turbines (such as those installed near Inuvik) wood pellets and solar power, just to name a few examples of the growing options becoming available. These can no longer be alternatives, but the status quo.
Further, in another interview with an Indigenous professor at the University of Lethbridge, we learned that the “ancestors” commonly referred to in first nations prayers also refers to the land and everything that lives on it because without it, we would die. The ancestors, he explained, are the soil, the rocks, the trees, all plant life and animal forms which in turn, allow us to live. When we destroy the land, our mother, we destroy ourselves.
We can no longer use terms like sacrificing the land because we are not sacrificing it; we are killing it.
As best said by Chief Seattle when told that President Washington wanted to buy land then, “Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people…. We are part of the earth and it is part of us… The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family. …The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. … So, you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother. If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. …Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.
This we know: the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”
We cannot sacrifice land anymore especially in protected areas of which fewer and fewer pockets remain. In the end, it will be the land that saves us; not business interests.