Royal Dutch Shell's threat to the Stikine area continues

New Water Act may help protect endangered Sacred Headwaters

By Karen Tam Wu

The last Sunday of September marks Rivers Day, the day when people around the world celebrate one of the planet’s greatest resources — our rivers. This Rivers Day in British Columbia, however, may be one to mourn.

In May of [2014], the headwaters of the Skeena, Nass and Stikine Rivers, an area known as the Sacred Headwaters, were declared the most endangered rivers in our province. Royal Dutch Shell’s plan to drill for coal-bed methane (CBM) is the biggest threat to three of our greatest salmon rivers.

During his keynote address at the World Energy Congress in Montreal last week, Royal Dutch Shell CEO Peter Voser extolled the virtues of unconventional sources of natural gas as the answer to worldwide hunger for energy, and he claimed the risks associated with extraction were worthwhile. Voser dismissed public concern about the impact of hydraulic fracturing, a technique used to drill for natural gas, on freshwater resources. Voser called for relaxing of regulations to allow natural gas development to “reach its potential.”

Seen somewhat as the messiah who can lead the world to B.C.‘s wealth of natural gas, Bill Bennett, B.C. minister of energy, mines and petroleum resources, became an instant celebrity at the congress.

Given Bennett and Voser’s comments last week, it sounds like B.C. is going full speed ahead in the natural gas business. While some risks of development may be mitigated, ecologically unique and sensitive areas, such as the Sacred Headwaters, should never be endangered in the first place.

The Sacred Headwaters is an intricate complex of lakes and streams, amid delicate alpine meadows, lush with alpine shrubs and flowers. The Skeena is the second longest river in the province and the second-most productive salmon-bearing river in North America. Subjecting an area so abundant with pure freshwater to gas extraction and the subsequent impacts on the local and downstream communities, wildlife and fish that depend on the rivers — the arteries of the landscape — is cause for grief.

Well pads, pipelines and roads associated with CBM would transform this picturesque landscape into an industrial checkerboard. Burying our heads in the sand would only review an equal, if not worse horror underground.

 

READ MORE: HERE

 

Telegraph Creek:

.

Maps of Experience: The Anchoring of Land to Story in Secwepemc Discourse

By Andie Diane Palmer

In many North American indigenous cultures, history and stories are passed down, not by the written word, but by oral tradition. In Maps of Experience, Andie Diane Palmer draws on stories recorded during travels through Secwepemc ? or Shuswap ? hunting and gathering territory with members of the Alkali Lake Reserve in Interior British Columbia. Palmer examines how the various kinds of talk allow knowledge to be carried forward, reconstituted, reflected upon, enriched, and ultimately relocated by and for new interlocutors in new experiences and places.

Maps of Experience demonstrates how the Secwepemc engagement in the traditional practices of hunting and gathering create shared lived experiences between individuals, while recreating a known social context in which existing knowledge of the land may be effectively shared and acted upon. When the narratives of fellow travellers are pooled through discursive exchange, they serve as what can be considered a ?map of experience,? providing the basis of shared understanding and social relationship to territory. Palmer?s analysis of ways of listening and conveying information within the Alkali Lake community brings new insights into indigenous language and culture, as well as to the study of oral history, ethnohistory, experimental ethnography, and discourse analysis.

More: Here
.

Ethnographies for British Columbia Native Cultures

.
From Tad McIlwraith:

Anderson, Margaret and Marjorie Halpin, editors. 2000. Potlatch at Gitsegukla: William Beynon’s 1945 Field Notebooks. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Atleo, Richard. 2004. Tsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview. Vancouver: UBC Press.

Blackman, Margaret B., with Florence Edenshaw Davidson. 1992. During My Time: Florence Edenshaw Davidson, A Haida Woman. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Blackstock, Michael. 2001. Faces in the Forest: First Nations Art Created on Living Trees. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.

Boas, Franz. 1975. Kwakiutl Ethnography. Helen Codere, editor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Brody, Hugh. 1981/1988. Maps and Dreams: Indians and the British Columbia Frontier.Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre.

Culhane Speck, Dara. 1987. An Error in Judgement: The Politics of Medical Care in an Indian-White Community.Vancouver: Talonbooks.

Daly, Richard. 2005. Our Box was Full: An Ethnography for the Delgamuukw Plaintiffs. Vancouver: UBC Press.

Dinwoodie, David. 2002. Reserve Memories: The Power of the Past in a Chilcotin Community.Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Furniss, Elizabeth. 1999. The Burden of History: Colonialism and the Frontier Myth in a Rural Canadian Community.Vancouver: UBC Press.

Kramer, Jennifer. 2006. Switchbacks: Art, Ownership, and Nuxalk National Identity.Vancouver: UBC Press.

McDonald, James A. (2003) People of the Robin: The Tsimshian of Kitsumkalum. CCI Press

Mills, Antonia. 1994. Eagle Down Is Our Law: Witsuwit’en Law, Feasts, and Land Claims. Vancouver: UBC Press.

Palmer, Andie. 2005. Maps of Experience: The Anchoring of Land to Story in Secwepemc Discourse.Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Pryce, Paula. 1999. Keeping the Lakes’ Way: Reburial and Re-creation of a Moral World among an Invisible People.Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Ridington, Robin. 1988. Trail to Heaven: Knowledge and Narrative in a Northern Native Community. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

Roth, Christopher. 2008. Becoming Tsimshian: The Social Life of Names .Seattle: University of Washington Press.
.