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
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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. |