Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
At one time, the little blue cabin on the shores of the Athabasca River was brimming with life: a mother, a father and their 15 children coming together to hunt and gather, share family meals and tackle the many chores. “We prayed as a family, we picked berries as a family,” recalls 71-year-old Alice Rigney, whose childhood was spent in the two-bedroom structure in a place called Jackfish, a northeastern Alberta fishing spot.
When the Mikisew Cree First Nation grew tired of warning elected officials that the Peace-Athabasca Delta in northern Alberta was slowly drying up, they went international in a bid to find help. That’s how a group of United Nations monitors came to be seated in a community hall in the remote community of Fort Chipewyan last weekend, going over the nation’s list of concerns for Wood Buffalo National Park, the site of one of the largest freshwater deltas in the world and and home to endangered whooping cranes and the continent’s largest wild bison population.
The chief of Smith's Landing First Nation near Fort Smith, N.W.T, is calling on the territorial government to speak out against a northern Alberta mining project. "The government of the Northwest Territories is strangely silent … on the oil sands projects," Chief Gerry Cheezie said. Cheezie said that N.W.T. Premier Caroline Cochrane should be hosting meetings with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney to make sure the Indigenous communities living within the Mackenzie water system will not be affected by the controversial $20.6 billion Teck Frontier mining project that is proposed for a site 110 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, Alta.
