Athabasca Tribal Council

Environment

Environmental Affairs Department

Our primary goals in the Environment Department are:

To work together to develop effective strategies to resolve the identified environmental issues related to regional industrial development on our traditional lands.

To promote, maintain and protect the integrity of our relationship with Mother Earth, the land, water, ice, and resources.

To “watch the land” as we’ve done for thousands of years learning it’s many lessons, adapting to it’s many changes.

To learn from our elders
To teach our youth
To share with all Nations

Current and Developing Programs

Community Based Monitoring (CBM) - Established as a Key Concern Area (KCA) in 2005 and in 2008 is poised to be launched into each community.

First Nations utuilizing a combination of TEK and Western Science to Monitor traditional lands- to document any observed changes – to ensure protection of the environment, traditional livelhoods and treaty rights for today and in future.
Each community will train their youth in traditional and western science principals. These youth will work alongside elders and will become Guardians of the land.

What is Traditional Ecological knowledge (TEK) – hot link to TEK @ http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-9321-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

Cumulative Effects Assessment – A Key Concern Area (KCA) presented in 2007 currently in development

A Cumulative Effects Assessment can be described as a comprehensive analysis of all the manmade and natural process’s and to determne their combined effect on the systems of nature. For example the industry in this area require vast amounts of water which they take from the Athabasca River. (a man made impact) During the heat of the summer a great deal of water evaporates. (a natural impact) Looking at all things helps us determine if there is a negative effect of all this manmade and natural phenomenon.

Reclamation - A Key Concern Area presented in 2007 and is currently under development

Reclamation is simpler to understand, it can be compared with your spring or fall hunting camp. But on a much larger scale. When you’re all done and moving on it’s important to know your fires out, your garbage has been picked up etc. Well when industry is done, they’ve taken all the tarsands from the ground, and dug their huge pit’s and removed massive forests, when they’re all done it’s important that they put it all back they way they found it. First Nations want to be more involved with how this is done. They want to make sure that is safe and won’t continue to contaminate the earth and water into the future.

Access Management - A Key Concern Area presented in 2007 and currently under development

With all the development comes people and equipment. They build roads and trails, delivering more people more often into the lands that were once inaccessible. It is affecting our ancestral sites, our traditional hunting and food gathering sites. We need to have some say into how these areas are being protected and possibly play a role in that protection

Ecosystem Component of Human Health – A Key Concern Area presented in 2007 and currently under development

With development comes change. Some changes on the land have a direct effect on our health. The program will investigate the environment for specific components contaminants, those things that have the potential to cause illness. An example would be some contaminant that is ending up in our food supply, our fish, moose, or plant life. We’re hoping to provide assurance to people that these

Photo gallery of Dene and Cree people learning and living on the land.