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1899 and After

Lubicon Land

Article Feature By Barbara Dacks

   
Chief Bernard Ominayak For the 500 or so Lubicon Lake Cree in north-central Alberta, their land is their heritage, their legacy. They have lived, hunted, trapped, and fished on it for generations. They never signed away their rights to it.

The Canadian government commissioners who negotiated Treaty 8 with northern Alberta Indians back in 1899 followed the Athabasca and Peace rivers and missed the "isolated community." Since then, the land has simply become part of the Crown land in the province, without the governments of Canada and Alberta settling the Lubicon claim to it.

For the last 20 years, petroleum companies and forestry giants have stripped natural resources off the oil and timber-rich Lubicon land without the band's consent and without paying them royalties. Meanwhile, development has shattered their traditional way of life in the bush.

Read or print off the entire article in Microsoft Word!

For more information on the Lubicon check out the links below:

Lubicon Protest articles:  A selection of articles dealing with the Lubicon Protests during the 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary, Alberta.

The Lubicon of Northern Alberta: An article from NativeNet that relates to the history of the Lubicon land dispute.

The Lubicon Archive:  Additional information on the history of the Land dispute with links to official documentation.

Friends of the Lubicon: More information on the history of the Lubicon dispute from the Friends of the Lubicon group.

Resisting Destruction: Provides a timeline of events throughout the Lubicon Cree struggle to settle their land claims

Reprinted from with permission from the author and Legacy: Alberta's Heritage Magazine. 

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