Every extractive industry deeply affects the relationship between people on the land and their newly manufactured landscape. The incredibly rapid development of the tar sands in Northern Alberta is having a profound affect on the culture, lifestyle and health of the First Nations. Conversely, communities have gained employment, and access to modern health care and services. Is the stability and preservation of a culture better served through attention to traditional lifestyle or to commerce and industry?
This multimedia piece explores this story and the consequences of the Tar Sands development on the First Nations of Northern Alberta. Special thanks to Northern Cree for the music and to all the individuals and groups in Fort McMurray, Fort Chipewyan and Fort McKay that made this possible.
Impacting Indigenous Culture – The Tar Sands of Northern Alberta
very moving, very powerful video! And the photography is both beautiful, and hard to see at the same time. I represent the band, Melodeego, who has been working feverishly the past year with many groups in the US, fighting the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry said tar sands from Alberta to Texas. We recently completed a music video featuring Tim DeChristopher, an activist from Utah who halted an illegal auction of 22,000 acres of land to oil and gas companies through civil disobedience, and now serves 2 years in prison. I wanted to share this with you, one climate activist to another, in hopes that we can inspire each other to keep doing what must be done. Thank you, for your work, and for helping to spread this entirely too under – publicized issue.
Here is the video – Fear Is the Weapon (fear them not) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rswFWRCB3Vk