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Oil sands exec threatens Mikisew Cree

By George Poitras

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Hello friends.

I’m slowly re-emerging from the hiatus of my previous email campaign.

Many of you know that I voluntarily left the Mikisew Cree First Nation at the end of November 2009. What some of you don’t know are the circumstances surrounding my abrupt decision for the same.

Well, it turned out that our lobby efforts in the United Kingdom in August 2009, which many have characterized as our “Bloody Oil” campaign, generated so much international media attention. We dubbed it the “Bloody Oil” campaign because by that time it was apparent that tarsands oil companies in collaboration with the Alberta and Canadian governments were nowhere near offering any genuine assistance to the community of Fort Chipewyan in finding resolutions to many of our environmental and health issues. So hence, Bloody Oil in the hands of the oil companies and negligent governments.

Because of this very successful campaign in the UK, one of the oil companies executives flew to Fort Chipewyan and attempted to force the hand of my First Nation to “silence or terminate” my employment with the Mikisew because they didn’t like that I travelled internationally, on Mikisew time, and that by doing so I generated so much negative publicity on the tarsands industry.

Apparently we are not to speak publicly if we observe water quality issues, health impacts, or worse our people dying too frequently of cancers. This they said, was not consistent with the companies “vision” and that if Mikisew didn’t support their vision there would be repercussions. And there were repercussions. Many Mikisew employees lost their jobs on this particular companies site within weeks.

I chose to leave because I would not be silenced.

Today I have relocated from Fort McMurray and am taking on the activism work full time. Many of you may know that whilst I was with the Mikisew, my day time job had nothing to do with the advocacy work that I did on behalf of Fort Chipewyan. Despite the companies suggestion that I travelled and did the activism work on Mikisew time, it was actually all on my vacation time, outside of work hours, etc. All the advocacy work that I embarked on in the past four years while in Fort McMurray was on my personal and voluntary time.

I’m happy to be back and look forward to advancing Fort Chipewyan’s issues even stronger. See here for the news of the day!