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Oilsands company attempts to silence former Mikisew Chief
News Articles | Slave River Journal | Shawn Bell | March 23, 2010
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A former Mikisew Cree First Nation chief (MCFN) went public last week about the pressure his band faced from an oilsands company to fire him last November.
George Poitras admitted he resigned his position as consultation coordinator for MCFN’s Industry and Government relations in December 2009, fearing industry repercussions for MCFN if he wasn’t terminated from the position
Executives from the oilsands company, which Poitras would not name, flew to Fort Chipewyan in November 2009 demanding MCFN end Poitras’ employment with the band, following the August 2009 “bloody oil” tour Poitras helped organize in England.
When MCFN refused, Poitras said members of the band lost their positions with the company and MCFN contracts with the company were terminated.
“Because of this very successful campaign in the UK, one of the oil company’s 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 traveled internationally, on Mikisew time, and that by doing so I generated so much negative publicity on the tarsands industry,” Poitras wrote in an email. “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 company’s ‘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 company’s site within weeks.”
Over the past three years Poitras has been one of the Fort Chipewyan-based First Nation’s most vocal critics of the effects Alberta’s oilsands developments have on people downstream.
But the “bloody oil” tour was apparently too much for at least one oilsands company to handle. During the trip to the UK, Poitras wrote a guest editorial in The Guardian newspaper where he stated concerns that oilsands operations are killing his people, and called on BP Oil and Royal Bank of Scotland to pull out of Canada’s oilsands.
Poitras insists his international travel and activist work was done on his own time.
Even so, MCFN asked Poitras to refrain from speaking to the media following the meeting with the oilsands executives.
“I left (MCFN) because I would not be silenced,” Poitras said.
It remains to be seen if the oilsands company’s attempts to discredit Poitras by having him removed from his position with MCFN will be successful.
But one thing is certain – Poitras now has more time for activism, extra time he assured will be used to continue pressure against oilsands development.
“I’m now taking on the campaign full-time,” Poitras said on the day he returned from his latest trip to England, for the UK premier of the film Dirty Oil.
Tagged with: first nations, mikisew cree, slave river journal
