Photo courtesy of Miistakis Institute.

A woman in a coral windbreaker peeks through cattails on the periphery of a marsh, her rubber boots camouflaged by vegetation and mud as she strains, clipboard in hand, to detect signs of amphibian life. A frog hops into a beam of sunlight through the dense flora and she marks a tick on her clipboard. She takes a picture, records her observations, and continues strolling along the wetland.

The woman is one of 82 citizen scientists volunteering with Call of the Wetland, a Calgary-based project that measures amphibian activity in local wetlands to better understand urban ecosystems and, by extension, inform developers before they build on sensitive lands. The group will monitor 60 of Calgary’s 4,000 wetlands from April to August over the next three years.

The presence or absence of amphibians “can tell you a lot about the water quality and general health of the ecosystem,” says Lea Randall, a conservation research population ecologist with the Calgary Zoo.

“[They] are among the first species to disappear when ecosystems are unhealthy or fragmented and thus can be important first indicators that an ecosystem is losing biodiversity,” she says. Currently, there are six amphibian species in the Calgary area, three of which are labelled at-risk. The biggest threat to these species, and wetlands in general, is development.

Canada has a poor track-record of protecting or even documenting wetlands. Local governments long considered wetlands to be wastelands, and a number of them in southern Canada were drained or filled for agriculture or development. About 90 percent of pre-settlement wetlands have been lost in Calgary. Today, many wetlands, particularly small ones called ephemeral wetlands, are threatened by development simply because there’s no record of where they are.

“That’s a huge issue, because we have dry years where ephemeral wetlands don’t show up, and then if they’re not mapped, it’s awfully difficult when you’re making decisions about development,” says Tracy Lee, senior project manager at the Miistakis Institute, a natural resource and land management non-profit organization and a coordinator for Call of the Wetland.

The City of Calgary plans to use the citizen scientists’ database to inform where developments are permitted without destroying sensitive ecologies.

“I think Call of the Wetland will draw attention to [wetlands] as an important feature in the landscape, and will hopefully create a culture of caring about them,” says Lee. “If you have people that are knowledgeable and care about something, then it has a voice.”

Sign for the North Dufferin Agricultural and Community Task Force protesting the Melancthon Quarry. Photo courtesy NDACT.

Carl Cosack wonders who is standing on guard for his piece of Ontario. The 52-year-old rancher manages a herd of black angus cows and 30 horses, making him one of Ontario’s last traditional trail hands and proud owner of one of the province’s few remaining amateur ranches (don’t call it a “dude ranch”). Thanks to a bid to build one of the world’s largest limestone quarries in his backyard, Cosack can also add “activist” and “lobbyist” to the mix.

Cosack is vice-chair of the North Dufferin Agricultural and Community Task Force, whose main goal—along with trying to effect larger policy change—is to oppose the Highland Companies’ application for a 2,316 acre quarry in Melancthon Township, about 60 km north of Brampton. Many in the area never saw it coming. Highland, a group of investors backed by the US$23-billion Boston-based hedge fund Baupost, bought the first farms in Melancthon Township in 2006, under the name Headwater Farms. Starting out as potato farmers, the company soon accumulated 8,500 acres—then came the quarry application. “People in the area just started asking questions,” Cosack says. Mostly: Who’s going to stop it?

Highland’s land includes parcels of farmland classified as Honeywood Silt Loam—some of the finest agricultural soil in Canada. That’s a key point for Leo Blydorp, director and policy advisor of the Dufferin Federation of Agriculture. The idea that Canada is a vast and underdeveloped land mass is wrong, he adds. In fact, 89 percent of Canada’s land mass is unsuitable for agricultural use, he says, and only 0.5 percent of Canada’s agricultural land is in the top class. More than half of that is in Ontario. “We continue to lose prime agriculture land at an alarming rate in Canada,” says Blydorp, “and in Ontario specifically.”

Then there’s the water. The proposed quarry is at the headwater of several major rivers that run in different directions into the remainder of the urbanized south. “They’re talking about managing 600 million litres of water a day,” says Cosack—the daily usage equivalent to 2.7 million Ontarians. Likely, it’s these concerns, and others, that prompted the Ontario government to call for a full environmental assessment of the project in September (although some feel it had more to do with election timing).

Kate Jordan, spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment, says the EA process will give concerned residents like Cosack a more formal opportunity to get educated, and involved. “There will be much more complex studies and more information,” she adds. The process also encourages every concerned Ontarian to speak up. Which would be nice, says Cosack. After all, he’s got a ranch to run.

Remnants of a clear cut logging operation near Grassy Narrows, Ontario. Photo by Jon Schledewitz.

On a cold December day nine years ago, a group of young people from the Grassy Narrows First Nation lay down in front of a line of logging trucks on a snow-covered road.

Chrissy Swain, now 32, recalls that day at Slant Lake, about an hour north of Kenora, Ontario, which set off what has become Canada’s longest-standing logging blockade. “Back then youth didn’t have a voice,” Swain says. “But people started taking us more seriously when we started the blockade.”

For a long time, Grassy Narrows was accustomed to not being heard. In the 1950s, new hydro dams flooded the low-lying river valleys the First Nation had lived in, driving away the fur-bearing animals and submerging wild rice beds and sacred spiritual sites. In the early 1960s, the Canadian federal government moved the small Grassy Narrows community away from the river to a new location on a small stagnant lake off the highway to Kenora, where Chrissy Swain and her friends grew up. The 1970s brought more devastating news: the nearby Dryden pulp and paper mill was pumping mercury into the water. It eradicated the local fishing industry, leaving the community poor and sick. Hunting and trapping came to replace fishing, but in the 1990s, the provincial government of Mike Harris opened the area to clear-cut logging, which quickly drove out moose and other animals on which the community relied.

Chrissy Swain’s grandfather was one of many people affected by mercury poisoning on the Grassy Narrows and White Dog reserves. Today he shakes uncontrollably and can barely walk. Swain was just 16 when she began to realize things weren’t as they should be in her community and decided to take action. Though Swain would share in spiritual ceremonies, pick wild berries, fish and hunt, she yearned for a traditional Anishinabe life of living off the land. “I lost out on that part of my identity,” she tells me.

Decades of neglect and abuse by two levels of government have left a grim legacy, in the form of joblessness, drug and alcohol abuse, and physical and sexual violence, all of which afflict Grassy Narrows still. But a number of factors have recently come together that offer hope. One of these is a recent legal decision that could protect the land from harmful industry activity that affects aboriginal hunting and trapping. The precedent doesn’t just herald an opportunity to regenerate a devastated natural environment—it has the potential to turn the entire relationship between Canada’s First Nations and federal government upside down.

Years of mercury poisoning and clear-cutting “put them into a corner where they had to take a serious stand on both those issues,” explains Treaty 3 Grand Chief Diane Kelly. Chief Kelly is the leader selected by national assembly to preside over the 140,000-square-kilometre treaty territory encompassing two First Nations in Manitoba and 26 in northwestern Ontario, including Grassy Narrows. She says Grassy Narrows is facing these challenges head on. “The people of Grassy Narrows have been really diligent in standing up for their rights.”

The way Chrissy Swain sees it, standing up for those rights is just part of providing for her children, like any working Canadian mother. She’s been bringing her three kids to demonstrations and blockades since they were babies. Since 2008, Swain has led annual walks to raise awareness about indigenous and environmental justice. The first was over 1,800 kilometres from Grassy Narrows to Toronto, ending in a “Sovereignty Sleepover” at Queen’s Park attended by hundreds of First Nations leaders and activists across Ontario. Her last walk took her to a sun dance in Manitoba. “It was only a 300 kilometre walk,” she says casually.

Over the years the community has used every tactic in the book to stop industrial clear-cut logging: roving blockades of logging roads and highways, boycotts, rallies, speaking tours, and a high-profile court case. In the last few years, this persistence has started to pay off. Forestry giant Abitibi-Bowater surrendered its forestry license in 2008 and large-scale clear-cuts have stopped for now. Domtar (the largest paper producer in North America) and Boise have also committed not to source wood from Grassy Narrows traditional territory. More recently, a major legal victory for the small reserve of 900 residents asserts aboriginal hunting and trapping rights override the Province’s right to resources in the Keewatin Lands, a 50,000 square kilometre area in the Boreal Forest.

Grassy Narrows trappers Joseph Fobister, Andrew Keewatin, and now-deceased Willie Keewatin brought the suit in 1999 to judicial review, leading to a case in the Ontario Superior Court. “It’s quite simple,” explains 55-year-old trapper Joseph Fobister. “My right to hunt and fish are protected by treaty. When clearcut logging happens, it takes away that right.” The judge awarded them legal costs before trial, saying the issue was in the public interest and hadn’t been considered in any previous case.

“We’re not against logging. We’re just against bad logging,” says trapper Fobister. In the ’60s, he says he had good rapport with loggers, often catching rides to his family trap-line with them. Now, “there’s nothing for me to trap.” When he was young, unmarketable trees and debris were left. Today it’s a different story. “Everything is gone when you go there now.”

After years of waiting, the reserve finally got the chance to present its evidence in nearly eight months of hearings. On August 16, 2011 Justice Mary-Anne Sanderson ruled in favour of Grassy Narrows in a lengthy 300-page judgment. Ontario cannot infringe on aboriginal rights to hunt and trap enshrined in the Treaty 3 agreement signed in 1873 with the federal government, the judge said.

Joseph Fobister was choking back tears when he heard the news. “My first thought was ‘justice at last.’ It’s been a long 10 years waiting for something to happen,” he tells me following a press conference at Queen’s Park. Grassy Narrows Band Council Chief Simon Fobister is also elated: “This time the Indians won.”

A protest by members of the Grassy Narrows First Nation. Photo by Jon Schledewitz.

Trapping isn’t the only concern over clear-cut logging. Research suggests clear-cut logging practices can increase mercury levels in the soil. This past September Chief Fobister led a Grassy Narrows delegation to Japan to raise awareness about the health effects of mercury. Mercury poisoning, called Minamata disease, was named after the Japanese city where the first case was observed, after chemical company Chisso dumped waste water into the local bay. While on a trip to Japan, Chief Fobister screened the film The Scars of Mercury, a documentary about the findings of Japanese doctor Masazumi Harada, a leading specialist in mercury poisoning. Harada has been closely studying the situation in Grassy Narrows since the ’70s. In 2010, following his fifth visit to the reserve, Dr. Harada reported the impacts of mercury poisoning are worse now, despite mercury levels having decreased. Today pregnant women are still passing this mercury to to their fetuses and babies are being born already suffering Minamata disease.

When I visited Grassy Narrows in 2006, clan mother Judy Da Silva drove me in the back of her pickup truck out to a clear-cut where she picked wild herbs and berries and hunted and trapped as a kid. A large expanse of dust and baby evergreen saplings now stands where the old mixed forest used to. Da Silva, a tireless activist, could often be found sitting near the fire at the Slant Lake blockade, while her children skipped rocks on the lake or explored the bush behind the log cabins. Now her daughter Taina, 17, is taking up the cause, giving a public talk for the first time at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education while visiting Toronto this past summer. It’s the steadfast commitment of clan mothers like Judy Da Silva that continues to inspire the next generation of activists today.

“They have given a really strong foundation that has resulted in what we see today in this decision,” says Clayton Thomas-Muller. A tar sands campaigner with the Indigenous Environmental Network, Thomas-Muller grew up as a Mathais Colomb Cree in Winnipeg, joining the Native Youth Movement at 17 where he began working with Grassy Narrows.

Thomas-Muller says the case of Grassy Narrows represents a sophisticated new strategy: a collaboration between environmental and economic justice movements, NGOs, and indigenous solidarity groups across North America, using a variety of tactics, including civil disobedience, education campaigning, and legal challenges. “What Grassy [Narrows] represents is one of those catalyst moments in our contemporary history between Indian and white relations in this country.”

“Not only was it a decision for the people of Grassy, but it was a victory for all First Nations across Canada,” he says. Resource extraction industries have disproportionately affected the health and livelihoods of First Nations communities across the country. Whether it is the tar sands in Alberta that Thomas-Muller is now focused on fighting, or the mining, hydroelectric, or timber industries, native communities are on the front lines almost everywhere in Canada. Changing the calculus of how First Nations can control what industry can do on their lands is huge.

Robert Janes, the lawyer representing Grassy Narrows trappers, agrees that the decision has pretty big implications for First Nations across Canada. “This case doesn’t just apply to logging. It indirectly applies to all major resource development that could interfere with their treaty rights.” That includes mining, hydroelectric dams, transmission lines, and more. People in Grassy Narrows are hoping the court ruling will be a spark that ignites change across Ontario, says Janes, like the 1970s decision over hydro that led to the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement being signed with the Cree nation and the Quebec and federal governments.

“The courts have become more and more direct and prescriptive in their decisions because they too are becoming frustrated that the governments aren’t following certain court decisions,” says Russell Diabo, a First Nations policy consultant who has worked closely with the Algonquins of Barriere Lake in Quebec. “If that trend continues I think it’s going to become harder for the executive branches of the government to ignore.”

Forest near Grassy Narrows First Nation adjacent to a clear cut site. Photo by Jon Schledewitz.

The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources has appealed the case to the Ontario Court of Appeal and Robert Janes says that the case will likely be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. This could drag out the issue for another five years. Janes believes that the government wants to preserve the status quo with regards to logging, but the likelihood of reaching a negotiated solution, the desired outcome for Grassy Narrows, will depend on the newly elected provincial government.

After a long legacy of government decisions that negatively affected the community, including residential schools, hydro flooding, mercury poisoning, relocation, and now the destruction of their forests from clear-cut logging, it’s easy to see why people in Grassy Narrows are taking a wait-and-see approach.

Andrew Keewatin, who initiated the legal case over a decade ago, is also skeptical. “It will be interesting to see if they’ll honour the decision now,” he says. “Most likely they’ll try to find a way around it.” Keewatin, known as “Shoon” in Grassy Narrows, teaches traditional practices to the reserve’s young people, such as building log cabins, snowshoe making, fishing, and trapping. “Trapping is no longer a means of livelihood for people on the reserve. It’s more of a favourite pastime,” he says. Life on welfare has taught trappers to limit their activity to the reserve, he explains. But he is looking towards the future. He notes that the Trappers Council is looking into ways of selling furs directly to tourists and that some businesses in South Korea have shown some interest in buying their otter furs.

How will this court ruling affect people on the front lines in Grassy Narrows? “We’re still going to be here,” says Swain, insisting the blockade will persist even after the ruling. “I’m still going to stand up for my children,” she says. “I’m teaching them, too, so that after I go they can use their voice.” What does she think about the court ruling? “It’s not a victory yet,” says Swain, explaining it’s a step forward, but there’s still a lot more work to do.

As the logging blockade enters its 10th year, Grassy Narrows First Nation is continuing to assert its sovereignty. This fall, the activists started issuing a toll on the blockaded logging road—many Americans visit the Lake of the Woods area, a popular tourist camping destination, driving past the log cabins and wig-wams at the blockade. When it comes to plans for the future, Swain isn’t short of them. She suggests that instead of the government issuing licences to campers on their lands, Grassy Narrows could set up their own camps. She also hopes they could someday take over jurisdiction from the Ministry of Natural Resources, regulating poaching and other activities on their land to create their own jobs. She says change is slow, but she sees it happening. “We’re trying to take back everything that was taken from us.”

Fort Chipewyan residents are increasingly afraid to consume the fish pulled from Lake Athabasca.

Canada’s oil sands are the largest and most environmentally destructive industrial project in the world. So far, oil sands development has eliminated 602 square kilometers of Boreal forest and emits 29.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gasses annually. The process involves strip-mining bitumen, a tar-like, sandy earth also known as “tar sands,” then processing it into various petroleum products. This process produces 1.8 billion litres of liquid toxic waste every day, which is stored in man-made “tailings ponds.” These ponds currently hold enough toxic waste to fill 2.2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The First Nations community of Fort Chipewyan is located 300 kilometres downstream from the oil sands. In 2006, Fort Chipewyan’s family physician, Dr. John O’Connor, reported that alarmingly high rates of rare and aggressive cancers were killing local residents. As of 2010, band elders reported that cancer had become the leading cause of death in the community. Fear and grief consume Fort Chipewyan as fishermen are finding tumour-laden fish in Lake Athabasca and residents continue to lose their friends and family to cancer.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers continues to tell Canada and the world that there are no lasting impacts upon human health or the environment from the oil sands. Conflicting statements from CAPP, the Government of Alberta, scientists, environmentalists, non-governmental organizations and First Nations people have led to widespread public confusion over the true effects of the operation. Meanwhile, the people of Fort Chipewyan continue to die. Those who survive are afraid to consume the moose, fish and water that have sustained their families for generations.

Pollution from tailings ponds.

Tailings ponds line both sides of the Athabasca River near the oil sands—their toxic contents held back by man-made sand dikes that are hundreds of feet tall. A 2008 study by Environmental Defence showed that the tailings ponds were leaking 11 million litres of liquid into the surrounding environment every day. The Athabasca River runs past the oil sands, through Lake Athabasca, past several indigenous communities including Fort Chipewyan, and eventually empties into the Arctic Ocean.

Cherie Wanderingspirit worries about her children's health.

The abandoned Holy Angels Residential School in Fort Chipewyan.

Young people in Fort Chipewyan are increasingly disconnected from their traditional culture.

Like many Fort Chipewyan parents, Cherie Wanderingspirit (above) is worried about her children’s health. Today’s younger generations in Fort Chipewyan not only face the threat of cancer, but also live with the social trauma passed down to them by family members who lived at Fort Chipewyan’s Holy Angels Residential School (above) which closed in 1974. The torture and sexual abuse endured by the aboriginal children who attended the school have left lasting wounds upon the social and cultural fabric of Fort Chipewyan. Substance abuse, sexual assault, depression, and suicide are ongoing problems within the community. As a result, young people here are largely disconnected from their traditional First Nations culture. Rather than leaning to hunt, fish and trap, the youth (above) are often more interested in video games and urban fashion.

A willow branch marks the passage from Lake Athabasca into the Athabasca Delta.

Other than working in the oil sands, commercial fishing is one of the last ways to make a living in Fort Chipewyan.

Lake Athabasca fish being smoked.

Fish that can't be sold are thrown to the sled dogs.

A young willow branch (above) stuck into the mud by a boater, marks the deepest passage from Lake Athabasca into the Athabasca Delta. Fort Chipewyan’s band elders are concerned that water being taken from the Athabasca River to process bitumen into oil is contributing to declining water levels. Tar sands processing requires almost four barrels of water for every barrel of crude produced; Alberta Energy projects production will reach 3 million barrels of oil per day by 2018. Aside from employment in the oil sands, commercial fishing is one of Fort Chipewyan’s last viable means of making a living. Over the last five years, more and more fish with golf-ball-sized tumours, double tails, and other abnormalities have been caught in Lake Athabasca by commercial fishermen. In 2010, fishermen in Fort Chipewyan were unable to sell any fish commercially due to growing concerns over contamination from pollution, according to Lionel Lepine, the traditional environmental knowledge coordinator for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. Most of the fish caught during 2010 were smoked  or thrown to sled dogs.

Band elder Wilfred Marcel lost his daughter to cancer in 2003. She was 30 years old.

After more than forty years of chiefs and band elders complaining about the effects of pollution from the oil sands and tailings ponds, it took the publicly stated opinion of Dr. John O’Connor and independent environmental assessments by Dr. David Schindler and Dr. Kevin Timoney to finally draw media and public attention to Fort Chipewyan’s health and environmental concerns. The chief and council of Fort Chipewyan have called upon the Canadian government for an independent public health inquiry for over a decade. In that time, hundreds of Fort Chipewyan’s residents have died of unexplained cancers. Band elder Wilfred Marcel (above) lost his daughter Stephanie to cancer in 2003. She was 30 years old.

The cemetery in Fort Chipewyan. Hundreds of residents have died of unexplained cancers.

From “Studies in Sea Ice” (2009) by Roberta Holden. Image courtesy the artist.

Vast, impressionistic, and haunting in its sparseness, Roberta Holden’s landscape photography calls to mind the dark, faraway corners of memory and dreams. Taken from days in the Arctic, over the frozen oceans near Greenland, and during the long nights in Morocco, Holden’s work evokes nostalgia for landscapes untouched by human development—a phenomenon many of us have never experienced. Despite the fact that her work focuses on international subjects, her photographs feel distinctly Canadian in their quiet study of our connectedness with the natural environment and the unspoken effects of the land on us.

Holden, now 33, spent her childhood on a sailboat. her parents sailed frequently up the coast of British Columbia, often stopping in remote locations to hike and work. Taking breaks from life at sea, they would dock the boat in Vancouver’s Coal Harbour and spend seasons harvesting wild rice in rural Manitoba as part of a family business. Until she was 14, Holden worked in the rural landscapes she now documents in her work.

“I think a lot of traditional landscape art tends to romanticize the natural environment. And of course there are a lot of experiences where you can sit back and just appreciate the environment,” she says. “But when you’re actually living and working with the land, it’s just an everyday experience that takes more of the senses than just sitting back and gazing upon it. It’s not just a passive, peaceful thing to look upon, but there’s a struggle in just surviving the day-to-day hardships of the landscape.” Tensions of ancestry, colonialism, barren spaces and the vulnerability of a planet facing the effects of climate change play out in Holden’s most recent touring exhibitions, “Studies in Sea Ice” and “The Stillness of Motion: Changing Polar Landscapes.” Studies in Sea Ice is a series of archival images taken in 2009 by helicopter off the northwest coast of Greenland, a region that has undergone a significant warming trend in the past decade. The Stillness of Motion is a series of black and white images shot in Arctic Canada and Antarctica in 2007 and 2008. The series explores the intersections between humans and the landscapes they inhabit.

Both series have been part of six exhibitions in the Vancouver area during the first three months of 2011. In that time, Holden travelled for the second time to Morocco on a five-month photography trip, where she honed her skills as as photojournalist. As someone who hates having her own picture taken, she can identify with people who don’t like being photographed, an understanding which informs the way she interacts with her subjects.

“It’s taken a little longer to be able to bring a camera out in situations that didn’t create a barrier between people,” she says. “That’s what I see as a problem with a lot of photojournalism that focuses on different cultures.

There’s often a lot of that objectifying of people because you bring a camera to a situation.”

Holden brought her camera to a peaceful protest in Marrakech in late February after which the military ordered that she delete all but two images. Both of them depict a human barricade of soldiers.

Holden’s encounter in Marrakech stands in direct opposition to what she hopes to achieve in her photography—to break away from uni-directional, us-versus-them narratives and, in so doing, illuminate social justice issues, political tensions, and the grey spaces in between. “It’s more of a visceral experience,” she says of her work. “Something felt and not just seen.”

An imminent court case could be an important step toward enshrining environmental rights in Canada's constitution. Original Creative Commons photo by Flickr user EuroMagic.

Over the last 40 years, 90 countries have amended their constitutions to include the right to a healthy environment. Portugal was the first in 1976, and since then scores have followed, from Argentina to Zambia. But not Canada.

What we have is the 1999 Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Under that law, polluters found in violation can be fined up to $1 million a day, sentenced to three years in jail, or both. Unfortunately, CEPA’s overall efficacy is dubious. Consider environmental lawyer and author David R. Boyd’s comparison: fines levied under CEPA from 1988 to 2005 totalled $2,224,302; in 2009, the Toronto Public Library collected $2,685,067 in overdue book fines. “It is absolutely vital for us in the years ahead to amend our constitution to reflect the right to a healthy environment,” says Boyd. Doing so prompts many notable environmental improvements and, better yet, allows people to hold governments accountable—that’s key considering who most often suffers environmental burdens.

Take Sarnia, home of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation. Canada’s first oil refinery opened there around 1871. Today, Sarnia is home to 40 percent of Canada’s petrochemical industrial operations. Within 25 kilometres of the Aamjiwnaang reserve, there are more than 60 industrial facilities, about 46 of them on the Canadian side of the border. Among these are three of the top 10 air polluters in Ontario. In 2005, these facilities emitted almost 132,000 tonnes of air pollutants.

“If people had a constitutional right to live in a healthy environment,” says Boyd, “a government or court would have stood up and said it is unjust to continue piling pollution onto these people.” Instead, in 2010, two members of Sarnia’s Aamjiwnaang First Nation launched a lawsuit against Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment; the case goes to court next year. The two members of the Aamjiwnaang assert that by permitting a recent 25 percent increase in production at a Suncor refinery, the government has violated Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: the right to life, liberty and the security of the person. Lawyers also cite a violation of equality rights under Section 15 of the Charter, saying the Aamjiwnaang bear a disproportionate environmental burden.

However, according to Ecojustice lawyer Justin Duncan, who is arguing the case, if the constitutional right to a healthy environment already existed, “we would be arguing about the amount of pollution and comparing that to existing laws.” In other words, without an explicit constitutional right, it takes judicial gymnastics to justify environmental protection. Responsibilities also remain ambiguous, Duncan adds, making it difficult to enforce regulations or respond to modern environmental challenges. Talk about murky waters.

Photographs by José Luis Aranda

The Wirikuta mountain range in the Chihuahua desert in central Mexico. Photo by José Luis Aranda.

Under a heavy afternoon sun, the desert landscape in central Mexico lays long into the horizon, interrupted only by railroad tracks, roadrunners racing beside cars, and every once in a while, a cluster of houses and shops. But towards what some consider the sacred heart of the desert, new features begin to emerge: new age hippies and fellow travellers compete for rides on the side of the road, and in the distance, a dramatic mountain range rises from the plane.

Stretching from Arizona to San Luis Potosí, the Chihuahuan desert wraps around two of Mexico’s largest mountain ranges, laying claim to over 450,000 square kilometers of territory. While at first glance the topography might appear dry and barren, it is in fact home to a fifth of the world’s species of cacti, as well as a host of birds and other creatures.

But there’s one plant in particular that’s an essential part of the region’s draw: peyote. A small, circular cactus, divided into sections that look like a light green cross section of a mandarin orange, it pushes its way out from under the hard dry earth, sometimes into the direct sun, other times under the sparing shade of gobernadora plants.

In the southern reaches of the Chihuahuan desert is an area known as Wirikuta, a sacred site for the Huichol people. Every year, hundreds of Huichol people, whose name for themselves in their own language is Wixáritari, leave their communities in Jalisco, Nayarit and other parts of Mexico and begin a pilgrimage to Wirikuta.

“For us it’s like a temple,” says Marciano de la Cruz Lopez of Wirikuta. He’s one of the few Huichols making a home in the small, mining-cum-tourist town of Real de Catorce.

Wirikuta’s 140,000 hectare site was recognized by the state government as a Natural Protected Area and Sacred Site in 2000. It also includes a 146-kilometre path through the landscape named the Historic Route of the Wixárika People. In 1998, UNESCO declared Wirikuta as one of the world’s 14 natural sacred sites in need of protection.

“It’s a sacred site where we can leave our offerings when we do ceremonies there in the mountains, or when the pilgrims come,” says de la Cruz. “It means everything to us, as Huichol people.”

Alberto Hernandez Gonzales, a Huichol guardian of Wirikuta. Photo by José Luis Aranda.

The Huichols are among the few indigenous groups in Mexico who were never successfully converted to Catholicism by Spanish colonizers, and their fidelity to their traditions is celebrated throughout the country. “I congratulate all of you, the traditional governors, the Wixárica union from the ceremonial centres of Jalisco, Durango and Nayarit, to all of you, for defending these holy places, these marvellous places,” President Felipe Calderón said in a 2008 speech, while dressed in a traditional Huichol pullover and feathered hat.

Huichols believe that Cerro del Quemado, the stunning mountain range that rises from Wirikuta, is the birthplace of the sun and of all life. At the mountain’s summit is a structure where the Huichols leave offerings of thanks as part of their ceremonies: feathers, arrows, water from sacred springs, and other precious objects.

But this historic spiritual site is now at risk, its ancient landscape threatened by modern industry. And for the Huichol people, the stakes couldn’t be higher: the prospect of mining for silver under their holy mountain not only endangers the safety of their water supply; it represents a spiritual affront. Imagine drilling for oil under the Vatican, or bulldozing Eden to make room for a golf course.

Miners working at the former La Luz mine owned by First Majestic Silver. Photo by José Luis Aranda.

First Majestic Silver, a Vancouver-based mining company, holds a series of concessions that overlap with Wirikuta, and the company’s plans to develop the mine have already been controversial locally and around the world.

First Majestic already owns three producing silver mines, in Durango, Coahuila, and Jalisco, and is preparing to bring a fourth mine online. The project at Real de Catorce is the earliest-stage project the company owns, and they have yet to begin the permit process. If First Majestic receives all the permits needed—which have not yet been acquired—they expect to start producing silver at the property in 2014. Technical studies carried out by the previous owners of the concessions at Real de Catorce indicate that mining the silver laden tailings left over from historic mines combined with opening up new mine shafts in Real de Catorce could net 33 million ounces of silver, as well as substantial quantities of lead and zinc. The company says they’ll employ at least 600 locals by the time production begins, and the mine could operate for as many as 15 years.

The common thread that unites the company and many of those opposed to the project is something that’s sorely lacking in the region: water.

“There’s a limited amount of water here,” says Humberto Fernandez, owner of the Hotel Real, perhaps the most prestigious accommodation in Real de Catorce. “The aquifer here is disappearing,” he says. We met Fernandez and his wife Cornelia over lunch in the restaurant of the hotel that he’s owned and operated for almost 35 years. From the right angle, with his grey hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a green corduroy shirt and a peyote charm on his necklace, Fernandez bears a slight resemblance to Fidel Castro, and he talks a mean streak, too.

“Water is the main cause for concern that we’ve noticed among the local population,” he says, sitting straight up in his chair and talking over a steaming plate of pasta. “There’s been weeks without any water in the village.”

The local aquifer providing what scarce water there is in the region, is classified as “over-exploited” by the National Water Commission. The water problem isn’t new: when the local mines were operating at full tilt in the 19th century, there wasn’t enough water to run a mill in Real de Catorce.

“The water supply is still in the planning phase,” says Todd Anthony, head of First Majestic’s investor relations department, from his office in Vancouver. “but its not going to disrupt any supply to the local community there. We’ve got other plans in mind,” he says. He refused to elaborate on what those possible alternatives might be, however.

Interior of the former Santa Ana mine. Photo by José Luis Aranda.

The anti-mining fight in Wirikuta and Real de Catorce is far from the first flashpoint of resistance against Canadian mining companies in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí. In fact, it is in many ways mirrors a struggle that has been going on in the equally picturesque village of San Pedro. Also a colonial mining town, the Cerro de San Pedro was of such importance in the region that it is featured to this day in the centre of the state’s official emblem.

Except the Cerro de San Pedro hardly exists anymore. Over the past four years, the hill has been blown to pieces and trucked to a cyanide treatment plant. Instead of rising like a tiny, stand alone colonial mecca half an hour by car from the city of San Luis Potosí, San Pedro today is surrounded by growling dump trucks and mountains of cyanide treated waste rock, by-products of a large scale, open pit silver and gold mine operated by Vancouver-based New Gold.

The abundance of new mining projects popping up across Mexico have generated enough problems throughout the country to prompt the creation of a Special Commission for Mining Conflicts in the national congress. Anti-mining activists and industry groups alike trace surge in investment in the mining sector back to the North America Free Trade Agreement.

“To facilitate what’s happening now, the pillaging of our country and the arrival to our country of a large quantity of companies— especially mining companies—it was necessary to have a working free trade agreement,” says Mario Martínez, a spry septuagenarian anti-mining activist from San Luis Potosí. Among the key changes in legislation NAFTA wrought were adjustments to Article 27 of Mexico’s constitution, which defines the legal framework for the ownership of land and the use of natural resources.

But Enrique Flores, an engineer working with First Majestic Silver, says things have changed for the better in the world of mining. I caught up with him on the company-owned hacienda in the village of La Luz, which lies just a few kilometres outside of Real de Catorce. He was animated and talkative, having just returned from a workshop at the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City on Corporate Social Responsibility.

“Mining investment is made for profit, but at the same time it provides work for people, and raises the standard of living here,” says Flores, who took the time to show me images of the proposed mining project, pointing out on a map where the company is going to work, and how. “For example, in the case of Canadian mining companies, the government of Canada follows very closely what their companies are doing in other countries,” he says.

But though corporate social responsibility and Canadian government oversight might sound like progress, there are no binding international standards through which Canadian mining companies can be held accountable for their actions around the world, says Jennifer Moore from Canadian mining watchdog group MiningWatch Canada.

This fact didn’t seem to ruffle Flores, who took me on a tour through the historic Santa Ana mine. A few dozen locals are already working for First Majestic to transform the abandoned mine into a museum—part of the company’s promise of long-term jobs to the community. Deep inside the hills, the cool, dark mineshaft widened in places and exposed large galleries that once featured the most upto-date technology in the country. In other places, traces of more primitive mining were visible, sometimes overlaid with red spray paint indicating that there’s still silver in the walls after all these years.

Humberto Fernandez, owner of the Hotel Real and opponent of First Majestic Silver's mining plans. Photo by José Luis Aranda.

Just how sacred is Wirikuta? “Wixárika culture is about living for ceremony, because that is the form of life, there is no other form of living,” says Javier Ignacio Martínez Sánchez, an anthropologist originally from Chiapas who has lived in the heart of Wirikuta, for more than a decade. “It breaks your heart to see how they dance, to see the corn that they come and leave here, or the blood of the deer, how much it took to go hunt it, how much it all takes,” he says.

Martínez cuts an eccentric figure: he pays the rent on the tiny adobe igloo in which he lives by giving massages, and his only possessions are a bed surrounded by musical instruments, a few neat stacks of books, an empty plastic cooler, and a smattering of feathers and other ceremonial items.

With a masters’ thesis on the use of peyote under his belt, Martínez has worked hard to integrate himself into desert society, and to help build links between the Huichol pilgrims and the communal owners of the land they must travel. He’s the first to point out that Huichols’ annual trek through the desert also carries great significance for others living in the area.“The [landowners] here already made the link between the presence of the Huichols and the arrival of the rains,” says Martínez from his perch on the edge of his bed. “They say that when the pilgrims arrive on foot, it meant that there would be a good harvest.”

The use of peyote at the end of the pilgrimage is of supreme importance to the Huichols, who are considered the guardians of the spiritual tradition of peyote use. Only after weeks of fasting and celibacy and a long walk through the desert armed with the blood of a freshly sacrificed deer, can the mythic cactus—more often referred to as “medicine,” or hikuri in the Wixárika language—be consumed.

The fact that there’s mineral wealth under such a special site didn’t come as a surprise to Marciano de la Cruz’s wife, Yolanda. “The shamans always said that where there are sacred things, there are mines,” she interjected, looking up for just a moment from the intricate combination of thread and beads between her fingers.

“Our medicine is like a teacher, because it teaches us many things,” says de la Cruz. While we talked, Yolanda continued with her beading, while his children shifted their attention between a plastic bowling set on the floor and a cartoon on the family’s small television set.

De la Cruz is also among those concerned about impacts on the water from the proposed mining operation, but for a more particular reason. “Here there’s not much water, they say it takes lots of water to wash the rocks in mining, for silver, after they do that the water can run underground and it can contaminate our medicine,” he says. “And then we’re going to eat the medicine, and it could affect us.”

The Huichol people are, of course, not the only ones to take advantage of the powers of peyote. The cactus, which contains the psychedelic alkaloid mescaline, is used by Indigenous peoples throughout the northern part of the hemisphere. The Native American Church is a registered organization in the US whose members have the right to use and transport peyote.

But its use by non-Indigenous people throughout the 1960s and 70s might just be that which has brought the most attention to the sacred plant. Peyote was a cornerstone of the beat generation’s hallucinogenic trips, inspiring part of Allen Ginsberg’s epic Howl, and figuring into the writings of other such as William S. Burroughs and Ken Kesey. Rock stars got in on the game too: Jim Morrison, legendary front man for the popular American rock band The Doors, was known to experiment with peyote.

The cultural legacy of psychedelic art influenced by mescaline still resonates today. Tourists from around the world, inspired by the far-out message of the beat writers, flock to the desert, and to Wirikuta, to sample the effects of the button-like cactus on their own consciousness.

Sol Rak is one such visitor to the region, who has made the trek from his home in Chiapas more than 10 times in order to participate in ceremonies in the mountains that separate Real de Catorce from the desert below. “I love going to Quemado,” says Rak, who travels with fire sticks and a Temascal drum.

But mass cutting and overuse of peyote by outsiders has led to its near extinction in some regions, and it’s forced the Huichol people to set up a system to oversee who enters and leaves Wirikuta.

One of these Huichol look outs is a simple cement house on the edge of Las Margaritas, where Alberto Hernandez Gonzales lives with his wife and two teenage sons. “My job is to be here watching to make sure there is no pillaging [of peyote],” says Hernandez, whose Huichol name is Mukieri Kuayumania, which means “from the feather of an unknown bird.”

The first time we tried to meet with Hernandez he was dead tired, having done a 24 kilometer patrol of the area on foot. He was appointed to the post for a three-year term by a community assembly in his home village. And though he says he’s managed to stop some peyote thieves from entering Wirikuta, he quickly adds that he and guardians like him are severely lacking in resources. There’s only three of them working when there should be six, he says, and he doesn’t even have a mule upon whose back he could more easily safeguard the area.

Under a strong wind that moved through the plastic notches hanging from Hernandez’s traditional hat, he recounted the five points of the Huichol universe from a notebook containing carefully written notes.

“We really need to take care of these sites, they are the historical patrimony of our ancestors,” says Hernandez, referring to the threat posed by First Majestic Silver. “The Wixárika communities don’t want these places to be destroyed.”

Flores, speaking on behalf of the mining company, says First Majestic will do its best to leave the Huichol’s sacred sites alone. “The company is, what do you call it, promising to respect the ceremonial centres of the Huichols,” he says. “In fact in a meeting with the Huichol gentlemen we’re going to propose that they take over this part, and we won’t touch it,” says Flores, pointing his finger onto a section of the map that includes part of Wirikuta.

But company’s claims that they won’t touch Cerro Quemado and will work underground instead of open pit mining don’t comfort Hernandez, who likens Wirikuta to his own body.

“The mountain, in any case, is ourselves,” he says. “Right now we’re alive because we are complete. If someone comes along and splits my stomach open and rips out my insides, I’m no longer alive.”

The Earth Rangers Centre in Woodbridge, Ontario.

In 2001, when Earth Rangers was planning for its new facility, the mandate its members gave to the engineers and architects was that they wanted a building with the lowest environmental impact possible, a building on the cutting edge of eco-friendliness. Ten years later, the Earth Rangers Centre is one of the most energy efficient buildings in Canada and boasts some of the world’s leading architectural and technological innovations for reducing energy use.

Earth Rangers is a not-for-profit organization that works with children to “bring back the wild,” as their mission statement says. Rangers travel to schools, attend community events, and host 130,000 visitors at their Centre annually, working to educate kids on how they can coexist with the environment, protect animals and their habitats, and understand and preserve nature for years to come.

The Earth Rangers Centre features a theatre, interactive displays, and wildlife enclosures. But visitors to the Centre can learn almost as much about protecting the environment from the structure itself as they can from the demonstrations and workshops held there. Located at the Kortright Centre for Conservation in Woodbridge, Ontario, the Centre was designed to be as sustainable and energy efficient as possible. Windows are placed so as to let in the most natural light possible. The windows are also filled with argon gas, providing extra insulation, and there are several huge solar panels outside the building, which yield enough energy to power a third of the Centre’s electrical needs, the equivalent of 10 average Canadian homes.

Underground "Earth Tubes" at the Earth Rangers Centre. The network of conduits passively cools air in summer and heats it in winter.

But those are some of the building’s more pedestrian features. There is also a ventilation system comprised of a series of concrete tunnels, known as “earth tubes,” buried three metres underground. Fans are used to draw outdoor air into the building. The genius of the earth tubes is that, at their depth, ground temperature remains around a static 12 degrees Celsius, all year-round. This means that, while traveling the length of the tubes, hot summer air is gradually cooled, and cold winter air is warmed, before it reaches the Centre, reducing the need to heat or cool the building using generated energy. As the stale air inside the building heats up, it rises to the ceiling and is drawn back into the central exhaust system, where most of it is recycled into the Centre.

It’s innovations like these earth tubes — the largest of their kind in North America — that have won the Centre some acclaim in the building community.

The efforts of Earth Rangers were recognized in 2006, when the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) awarded the Centre with LEED Gold status in the New Constructions category. Although the facility was not built with LEED in mind, the Earth Rangers Centre Manager, Andy Schonberger, explains that, upon the building’s completion, the Earth Rangers realized it met enough of the CaGBC’s criteria to score highly on the LEED scale. They also realized it was worth getting the added publicity of a LEED Gold designation, especially for a charity organization eager to reach more people.

Earth Rangers hasn’t stopped there, though. In the five years since the Centre’s LEED Gold achievement, many modifications have been made to the Centre’s infrastructure and maintenance, increasing its efficiency even further.

“We’ve had a lot of partners help us out with various technologies, and different ways of actually operating the building, sequences of operation, and hardware too [such as] new lighting technologies,” says Schonberger. “A little bit here, a little bit there, we’ve been able to conserve because we’ve continuously been tweaking systems.”

Rooftop solar panels provide about a third of the building's power.

This tweaking has amounted to a pretty hefty increase in efficiency. Originally built to be 67 percent more efficient than the minimum levels mandated by national building codes, the Centre has, in the past year, operated at 90 percent more efficiency than that minimum level. Encouraged by this increase, Earth Rangers has applied for LEED Platinum status for Existing Structures, the highest available ranking in that category.

One of the most significant additions to the Centre’s efficiency came in the form of its radiant heating and cooling system, comprised of 22 kilometres of tubes installed into the structure’s concrete floors and ceilings, and leading to underground wells outside. A mixture of water and glycol, warmed and cooled by the moderate ground temperature, is pumped through those tubes, radiating heat into the building in winter, and drawing heat away from the building in summer. There is also refrigeration equipment outside the Centre to supplement the heating and cooling as needed. The entire process is three times as energy efficient as a boiler would be at heating, and four times as efficient as a cooling tower for cooling.

Further reducing the amount of energy needed to heat and cool the Centre is the building’s thermal mass insulation, which is staggering both in its scale and its effectiveness. Behind the walls of the Earth Rangers Centre are 3,000 cubic metres of concrete, the immense volume of which makes heat transfer and temperature changes a very slow process.

Schoenberger remembers an incident two Christmasses ago when the Centre’s boiler, which was later replaced by the radiant heating tubes, went offline, leaving the building completely unheated. “The temperature [outside] was below zero,” says Schonberger. “But those three days that the boiler was off we only lost two degrees in temperature, just because there’s so much concrete mass. It’s a giant thermal battery, basically.”

The combination of earth tube ventilation, radiant heating, and thermal mass insulation is a prime example of what Schonberger credits with the Centre efficiency success: many different parts complementing each other. It is the integration of many different technologies and the efforts of many people, from designers, to engineers, to installers, that make the Centre so energy efficient. Not that energy efficiency is the only efficiency that concerns Earth Rangers. “It’s energy efficiency, it’s water efficiency. We really meant to minimize our environmental impact,” Schonberger says. Which is why there are also on-site waste water treatment facilities, which recycle between two thirds and three quarters of the water flushed down the Centre’s drains, cleaning it so it can be reused in irrigating the Earth Rangers’ gardens, cleaning out animal enclosures, and watering the plants on the centre’s green roof.

The green roof insulates the building, keeping it cooler in summer and warmer in winter.

It’s all part of Earth Rangers’ staff practicing what they preach which, for an organization whose mission is to teach and motivate kids to become the environmental stewards of Canada’s future, means doing everything possible to protect the environment. The members of Earth Rangers see their Centre as the embodiment of their eco-friendly values.

And while much of the Centre’s efficiency derives from complicated technologies and massive design innovations, Schonberger insists that anyone and everyone can do their part to be more energy efficient and help the environment.

“You can start with very, very simple things, just in what you buy, and how much you recycle, and what you compost. There’s a hundred different things you can do in your home,” he says. “[Energy efficiency] is not one simple thing. It’s every single action we do.”

All images some rights reserved by the Earth Rangers Centre. More available on Flickr.

Gideon Forman. Photo by Robin Hart Hiltz.

That Gideon Forman is an activist should come as no surprise. The child of New York peace activists, he spent his 1960s childhood handing out leaflets around his Greenwich Village home.

What is surprising is that this wiry man in his 40s has become one of Canada’s best environmental strategists and led a group of doctors into a head-on battle with a powerful chemical lobby—and won.

Forman is executive director of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, a small group of environmentalist doctors. At least it was small. Since he took the job less than five years ago, membership has ballooned from 450 to over 5,000. Why the surge? Quite simply, the group set out on an ambitious and high-profile campaign for public health—not about hospital funding or the number of doctors in Canada, but about preventing the sorts of pollution that harm public health.

“The idea of doctors protecting the environment makes sense to people,” Forman says. “Also there’s been huge interest in the pesticides campaign.”

Forman left New York’s hippie enclave and moved north when he was just eight years old. It was the era of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and socialized health care. Canada sounded good to his peacenik parents, and the family left crowded Manhattan for the cleaner streets of Toronto. As he grew up, he followed his parents’ example and got involved in the peace movement. It was there that Forman’s greatest asset came to light. He’s able to see connections between groups and causes and bring together as allies groups that never collaborated before. With the Canadian Peace Alliance in the early 1990s, that meant reaching out to social justice groups involved in East Timor.

As that decade came to an end, Forman was working with Strategic Communications, a company that specializes in campaign strategy and fundraising for unions, charities, and non-profits. It was progressive work, but Forman craved the chance to focus on one campaign that mattered. After a decade at Strategic Communications, he was finding the work “too diffuse,” he says. “I was working on the Canadian Cancer Society, World Wildlife Fund, and gun control, and a bunch of stuff. I really wanted to specialize […] I really wanted to throw myself into one thing. Increasingly in my late 30s, the environment became my passion.”

He began volunteering with the Toronto Environmental Alliance, working on a city-wide ban on cosmetic pesticides. It was a good fit, and when a job opened up to lead the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment in 2004, he jumped at the chance to head an organization already working on pesticides and other toxic issues.

What he jumped into was a vitriolic battle with doctors and environmentalists on one side and pesticide applicators and chemical companies on another. Public support for a pesticide ban was good, but the campaign needed a little extra push. He came up with a brilliant strategy, and called the Canadian Cancer Society.

Groups like the Canadian Cancer Society traditionally focus on research for cures more than on fighting environmental causes. But as causes of cancer other than smoking became more and more clear, the society became more environmentalist. Forman recognized this and worked to enlist the society’s support. Such a large and reputable group brought significant weight to the fight.

The strategy’s success became evident in London, Ontario, where the city council was set to vote on a pesticide ban. It was going to be a close vote, and the pro-ban camp needed to sway just a few councillors to get it through. Forman met with the local head of the Canadian Cancer Society. Would their members contact their councillors and tell them they wanted the pesticide ban?

“I asked her, could we call their folks and ask them to make this one political act,” he says. She responded that they only had a “small” base of volunteers in the community, perhaps 2,000. Forman’s jaw pretty much hit the floor. A volunteer base of 2,000 in a community is huge for any group. “She said yes. It was going out on a limb for them.”

It worked. The target councillors got more than 300 calls a week.

“That’s huge,” Forman says. “It’s like carpet-bombing for a small community.”

The pesticide ban passed easily. With the help of Forman’s umbrella approach, the Toronto Environmental Alliance, the Canadian Cancer Society, and many other local and national groups have brought about cosmetic pesticide bans in Ontario, P.E.I., New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec. Today the focus is on Edmonton and Calgary, which Forman describes as “the gateway to the West.”

While he’s been wearing the mantle of Captain Pesticide Ban for more than half a decade, he’s not a one-issue wonder. Forman and CAPE are also busy on other issues, particularly climate change and green energy. Bringing the umbrella approach to the table and uniting doctors, nurses, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Lung Association, and other groups, they’re going to be formidable. But what else could Forman do?

“Climate change may be the defining issue of our generation,” he says. “Not being involved in it would be like not being in the Vietnam War issue in the peace movement of the 1960s.”

Site of the now-rejected Kanata gravel mine on land owned by the Elizabeth Metis Nation. Satellite imagery via Google.

A project that would have provided hundreds of Metis with jobs and affordable housing was quashed on Tuesday, with a 7-6 vote by the Edmonton City Council. And though it may not seem so at first glance, that decision was likely for the best. While the project’s benefits were appealing, there were some deeper problems with the proposal, especially its environmental toll. But whether you agree with the Edmonton councillors’ decision or not, the case raises a host of important questions: how to address the pressing social and economic needs of Canada’s aboriginal communities, for instance, and how to balance economic prosperity with environmental sustainability. These are thorny, complicated, politically charged issues, so it’s important to pay attention to decisions like this and how they’re getting made.

Here’s the background: Kanata Metis Cultural Enterprises Ltd., which is owned by the Elizabeth Metis community, proposed a gravel mining operation to be started up on land it bought in 2009.  According to  the  corporation’s proposal, the mine would have been operated for three to five years, created up to 300 jobs for members of the Metis nation, and yielded 1.7 million tonnes of gravel, the profits of which would have been used to fund Metis-focused social programs such as building affordable housing.

Opposition to the mine sprung up because the proposed site was right beside the North Saskatchewan River and, according to local conservationists, better left untouched. The North Saskatchewan River Valley Conservation Society posited that a gravel mine in the river valley could damage nearby wetlands and kick up large amounts of dust, harmful to area residents.

The argument against the mine was bolstered by the fact that the Edmonton Municipal Development Plan of 2010 specifically prohibits the harvesting of resources in the North Saskatchewan River Valley.

The task of the Edmonton City Council was to determine whether an exception could be made to the prohibition. Normally such a decision would be based on the potential value of the proposed project. But this particular case gave councillors much more to think about, as it raised questions about environmental protection, self-government, and aboriginal land rights (The Kanata Metis appeared to have taken on the role of standing in for Metis people across Canada, the term “our people” having been used frequently by proponents of the mine).

At a very basic level, the case could be made that Kanata Metis Cultural Enterprises should be allowed to mine the land because they own it. And although the city has prohibited activities such as mining in that area, the question of land ownership and use is complicated when it involves Aboriginal groups, self-governance being a stated priority of the Canadian government’s relationship with Aboriginal peoples. Although the mining proposal isn’t a cut and dried analogue, aboriginal communities’ autonomy is part of the mix of issues here.

Another major argument in favour of granting the Kanata Metis corporation exclusive mining rights to the area, was that the Metis nation, like many Aboriginals in Canada, are in need of assistance, and owed some form of compensation.

The 2006 census reported that the Metis employment rate amongst adults was 74.6 percent. Although this was a four percent improvement over 2001’s figures, it still placed Metis behind the non-Aboriginal population, whose employment rate was 81.6 percent. The 2006 census also reported that, as of the previous year, the median income for Metis was $5,000 lower than it was for non-Aboriginals. This inequity was even greater in Alberta, where the median Metis income was $6,600 lower than non-Aboriginals’.

Evidently a job-creation project with a focus on Albertan Metis deserves some thought, especially if it is also going to contribute funding to housing and training programs, as the Kanata Metis corporation said the mine would have.

But while the local Metis population would have benefited from the gravel mine, how should that be weighed against the environmental costs?

While campaigning in favour of the mine, Archie Collins, a councillor of the Elizabeth Metis settlement, described the Metis people as “stewards of the land,” a cliché about indigenous peoples often invoked by interested parties, aboriginal or otherwise, that portrays aboriginals as inherently protective and understanding of the earth and environment.

There are already conservation laws to which aboriginals are exempt because of their cultures’ unique relationships to nature. Hunting and fishing regulations, for example, do not apply to aboriginal Canadians, on the grounds that their cultural traditions, which include hunting and fishing, supersede Canadian laws.

Gravel mining, however, is not part of the Metis cultural tradition. It would have been undertaken only as a commercial opportunity, which makes it quite different from the hunting and fishing examples. Collins’s “stewards of the land” image, while romantic, does not exactly jibe with digging up a river’s watershed in search of gravel.

There is no doubt that the Kanata Metis Cultural Enterprises mine would have brought some needed material prosperity for Edmonton-area Metis. There is even less doubt that the Metis — like all Canadian aboriginal peoples — are owed some manner of reparations after a long history of oppression and marginalization. But there are better ways to help than the North Saskatchewan River gravel mine. There are definitely less environmentally damaging options. In the end Edmonton City Council made a tough choice, but it was the right one.