SUDBURY—The University of Sudbury’s half-day ‘It’s a Fracking Conference,’ organized by the Department of Indigenous Studies and held March 26 at the University of Sudbury’s Canisus Hall, brought panelists from across Turtle Island and beyond to place a focus on First Nations issues with the controversial oil and gas extraction technology.
Conference organizer Dr. Michael Hankard said he felt it was important to gather a panel that could highlight First Nations perspectives on the issue. He said he was very pleased with how the conference came together, considering the short turnaround time involved. “I had a very short period of time in which to put the conference together,” he said.
Dr. Hankard said that it was unfortunate that the conference did not have representation from the oil and gas industry, but that he hoped to rectify that gulf of information in a future gathering. “I don’t know anybody in the fracking industry,” he said, pointing out that the panelists were assembled through his own contacts in the First Nations community. “I did speak briefly with someone from the MNR (Ministry of Natural Resources),” but the tight time frame precluded ministry representation. “Down the road I hope to revisit the issue and make it a broader symposium,” he said. “It would be very informative to bring in people from many different walks of life. The more people we get talking to and looking for different solutions to the problem, the better.”
In the event, the ‘It’s a Fracking Conference’ did manage to provide a good representation of the issue from First Nations perspectives and provided a detailed overview of environmental concerns, said Dr. Hankard.
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Dr. Hankard, an assistant professor in the University of Sudbury’s Department of Indigenous Studies, moderated the conference. He was assisted at the podium by Steven Clark, one of the students in his program.
The conference began with a smudging ceremony and preparation of a spirit plate (the conference started with a lunchtime feast) by elder Jerry Otowadjiwon. Elder Otowadjiwon delivered a prayer invoking “open ears and open hearts.”
In his opening remarks Dr. Hankard acknowledged the support of the University of Sudbury in hosting the conference and for providing the space and facilities. He noted that in the common interactions between First Nations and resource extraction corporations, “indigenous peoples are left to pick up the pieces after the corporations have moved on,” he said. Dr. Hankard expressed his hope that the attendees would “listen, reflect and take away,” a greater knowledge of First Nations concerns about fracking and intrusive methods of resource extraction in their traditional territories.
The first panelist to address the small audience (taking place within the essay crunch of the last weeks of university study, the number of students attending the conference was relatively slight) was Tina Eshkawkogan of the Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve. Ms. Eshkawkogan and her husband Josh host a Laurentian University study course on living off the land on their Manitoulin Island property each year. She delivered a talk on the ‘Water Teachings’ of indigenous peoples. While two assistants brought around small cups of water, Ms. Eshkawkogan channeled the instructions of the Water Spirit for those taking part. She said that the First Nations’ position on the medicine wheel requires the Anishinaabe to teach the other races about stewardship of the land.
The source of problems with water lies not in fracking, but grows from the root consequences of “greed and grief.”
“Water is the lifeblood of Mother Earth,” she said. “Water is the medicine for greed and grief. Water is God’s gift to live. Water is everywhere on earth, for everyone and everything.”
God does not hate, said Ms. Eshkawkogan. “God does not punish people.”
She advised those taking part in the water ceremony to reflect on the issues in their lives and hearts that were causing them distress and blocking them from fulfilling their lives and to “let go.”
“We are spiritual beings having a spiritual experience,” she said. “If you want the water to be clean, heal yourself.”
She intoned “we ask the Creator God, whatever you call him, for healing. Grandmother Water Spirit is his helper.” She said that those taking part in the ceremony should ask Grandmother Water Spirit to take away greed and grief. “As we heal, we heal Mother Earth,” she said.
The next panelists to address the conference were Carrie Peter and Chris Sabas, two members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams who brought eyewitness accounts from the Mi’kmaq fracking protests in New Brunswick.
Ms. Peters explained the role of Christian Peacemaker Teams is not only to talk up the path of peace, but to “walk the walk” and to “work in the world to try and bring that to fruition.”
The Christian Peacemaker Teams downplay the “Christian” in their name to focus more on finding ways to peace between groups in the world. A large part of that role is often accomplished simply by bearing witness to the world about what is taking place in less connected parts of the globe. “There is no such thing as the voiceless,” she quoted from Booker Prize Award winning Indian author Arundhati Roy. “There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”
“We don’t speak for anybody,” continued Ms. Peters. “We don’t go in thinking we know what is happening or what the solutions to an issue are. We go in where we have been invited.” Ms. Peters noted that the Christian Peacemaker Teams have seen success come from simply bearing witness to the activities of corporations in remote parts of the world, giving an example from Iraq where villagers were blocked from harvesting their vineyards by an oil company which had made a deal with the government without consulting the people. The resulting global outcry focussed attention on the oil company and brought them to the table with the Iraqi villagers to find a more equitable solution.
Ms. Sabas, an Iranian now living as a naturalized US citizen in Ithaca, New York, introduced herself as having been “raised a Quaker” but said that she is now studying to be an Anglican priest. She said that the world seems to be bent on “consuming ourselves out of existence.”
‘We have been beaten, we have been killed,” said Ms. Sabas of the Christian Peacemaker Teams. “But it is interesting how corporations listen once they feel threatened (by public exposure of their tactics).”
The Christian Peacemakers Teams were invited into the Mi’kmaq territory due to their work in that community during the so-called Lobster Wars a few years ago.
“We were invited in during intense times,” she said of the team’s arrival in New Brunswick. “Two sets of arrests had already occurred.”
Ms. Sabas described the “thumper trucks” used in seismic testing preliminary to drilling test holes for fracking operations. “They go up and down the highway and they thump the ground, it is like a mini earthquake,” she said. “They do this to get the images they need. You can feel the ground shake.”
Another method of testing involves drilling a small hole and then using the explosive C4 to shake the ground. A number of chemicals are inserted into the ground, she said. “The problem with this is that the corporations will not release the name of the chemicals they are using. They claim that information is proprietary.”
The salt-based substances attract wildlife, like deer and moose, who come and lick the chemical substances.
“The quiet in the forest is unnerving,” continued Ms. Sabas, who visited the remote forest regions where the testing was occurring out of sight of the beaten path. “There is no sound, you didn’t hear a thing,” she said, likening the uncharacteristic silence in the normally vibrant wilderness to Mordor in the Lord of the Rings.
Ms. Sabas went on to describe the interactions between the RCMP and the private security company working on behalf of the corporation and the acts of civil disobedience that took place trying to stop the activity on the unceded territory of the local First Nations.
The First Nations have succeeded in hampering the corporation’s exploratory work to the point that the company has not met its regulatory requirements. “The Christian Peacemaker Teams and Acadians are sure they only have 65 percent of what they need,” she said, noting that one of the great experiences on the ground was the coming together of many different cultures and communities.
Manitoulin environmentalist Mike Wilton, of Algonquin EcoWatch, spoke next, working his way through a series of PowerPoint slides that showed the methods used in fracking and the potential impacts that the drilling and changes in pressures can have on water tables and the natural flow of water courses along the nap of the land.
“Benzine, ethylbenzine, tolene, xylene, naphthalene, polycylic aromatic hydocarbons, methanol, formaldehyde, ethylene glycol, glycol ethers, hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide,” recited Mr. Wilton. “I don’t know what all of these chemicals do, but formaldehyde, that is what they inject into bodies to preserve them, isn’t it? Benzine is something that the Ministry of the Environment won’t allow even tiny parts per million of that chemical to go into the water supply.” Most companies appearing before a congressional committee hearing on the process admit that they use diesel fuel as part of their fracking mixture, he added.
Following Mr. Wilton’s presentation, Indigenous Studies undergraduate student Roy Carlyle spoke to the assembly on ‘Thesis, antithesis: Future of the environment for all my relatives’ by reciting a story involving a raven and an eagle, wherein the two discuss those who are supposed to protect the land and water and how human beings are falling short of their stewardship. “In the indigenous world everything is animate,” said Mr. Carlyle. “If we use it, we lose it. It impacts all our relatives, every other species in the universe. Humans are supposed to be the intelligent ones looking after the rest.”
The final panelist to take the podium was Saul Bomberry, GIS and data technician with the United Chiefs and Councils of Mnidoo Mnising who spoke on the ‘First Nations Policy on Fracking.’ Mr. Bomberry was succinct on the UCCMM policy on fracking on Manitoulin Island. “We are not going to allow it,” he said.
Following the panelist’s presentations, the audience asked questions of the presenters and generally made comments disparaging the concept of fracking and deploring its potential impacts on the environment.
Although there was a sense of foreboding and fatalism in many of the comments, summed up in by a remark by one audience member saying “it’s a bad thing to do, but isn’t it going to happen anyway?”
