“We just need to be included” – from the beginning to end of industry projects
Lynn Smith’s childhood memories are crystal clear. Growing up in Peavine Métis settlement, 56 kilometres north of High Prairie, she and her friends could drink directly from the crisp, clean streams and creeks that criss-crossed the boreal forest. “There was never an issue with it,” she says.
Three decades later, the picture has grown murky.
“Those same creeks and streams either don't exist or they're smelly or their colour is all wrong,” says Smith, now regional planning coordinator with the Peavine consultation department. Residents stick to tap water, processed by the technician at the local treatment plant. “He’s a miracle worker,” says Smith.
What has also changed over the years is Peavine’s economic circumstances. Mainly, the settlement sits on heavy oil deposits that have attracted industry. Like any development, extraction of oil changes the land. While Smith had seen and smelled as much, she’d had no way to quantify it – until she met a NAIT staff member at a public advisory meeting held in the community by a forestry company, sparking an idea for Smith.
“I guess that's where this whole project was born,” she says.
In partnership with applied researchers at the polytechnic, a new project focused on land stewardship may prove essential in striking the balance between growth and sustainability.
Starting in spring 2022, interns from Peavine have travelled to NAIT to analyze soil and water samples for contaminants from sites of concern. Since then, they’ve been followed by four other Métis and First Nations communities that host resource extraction.
The aim isn’t to point fingers, Smith says. She knows the benefits industry brings to her community, and to Alberta as a whole. But she also knows that local activity will increase. Data, Smith hopes, will form the basis of discussions that will help guide development in a sustainable way.
“We just need to be included – from the conception of a project to putting it to bed, and after,” says Smith. “The reason I say that is because we live here.”
An exchange of knowledge
In a clean tech lab at NAIT Applied Research, Wynter Flett, Shayla Gauchier and Sarah Sinclair sit at a bench piled with a few clear plastic bags of sand from Peavine. The three young women were hired by Smith to investigate “cumulative effects” – factors that may contribute to water smelling funny, fewer animals in hunting grounds, smaller fish in lakes, and other environmental changes.
They’re still learning, working under the guidance of research assistant Aldo Fumigalli (Nanosystems Engineering Technology '23). But they’re also leading.
The Peavine team directs the work in response to needs identified by residents. “[We’re] being the voice for our community,” says Flett. After a season of gathering samples, including what’s in those bags (“I swear Peavine was built on sand,” jokes Sinclair), they’ll make decisions about how to proceed with testing and what to do with the results.
“We work alongside them, walk them through it as many times as they need, until they feel comfortable doing it independently,” says Fumigalli.
It’s also been an exchange; NAIT staff have learned too. Jeremy Wakaruk, environmental research associate for Indigenous-led projects, who oversees the work, recalls trips to Peavine to help gather samples. Sometimes, Elders would accompany the team, sharing traditional ways of knowing and leading ceremonial practices before collecting.
“There’s a lot of trading knowledge, in that sense,” says Wakaruk, “and understanding more [about] how we can help.”
"It's their sovereign data that they do with as they want."
In the lab, that takes the form of guiding researchers – from Peavine and, more recently, Kikino Métis Settlement, Sucker Creek First Nation, Ermineskin Cree Nation and Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation – toward their goals.
“It's their sovereign data that they do with as they want and they own it fully,” says Wakaruk. “We don't even look at it if they don't ask us to.”
That data is loaded with significance. In a practical sense, says Gauchier, it’s an entry point into discussions with industry. “We have our own results that we can compare to the company’s results,” she says. “Going from how it was back in the day and not knowing, to what we know now is empowering.”
And it’s a pathway to collaboration. “If [the data] matches, great,” says Flett. “But if it doesn’t, we’ll go from there and figure it out.”
Each of the women recognizes what’s at stake in figuring things out. Flett, for example, is a mom. “I want the best for my kids, if I can help in some way,” she says.
Activity is close enough to Sinclair’s property that she can see and hear it from her house. She doesn’t deny her concerns about the future, “but what we’re doing now is hopefully going to help us. Having that data,” she adds, “makes me at ease a little.”
Data to “sustain treaty”
For Carol Wildcat, consultation director of industrial relations for Ermineskin Cree Nation, that data plays a role in maintaining not just the integrity of the land but the connection between it, history and culture. “The work that we do here is to sustain treaty,” she says. It’s being advanced by a partnership with NAIT similar to Peavine’s.
As the Government of Canada puts it, “Treaties provide a framework for living together and sharing the land Indigenous peoples traditionally occupied. These agreements provide foundations for ongoing cooperation and partnership as we move forward together to advance reconciliation.”
Wildcat, whose Cree name translates as Keeper of Mother Earth’s Laws, believes those agreements are weakening at Ermineskin. The First Nation is a part of Maskwacîs, a community roughly 100 kilometres south of Edmonton that also hosts oil and gas activity.
But the land has also traditionally served as a provider to the people who live there, she explains, comparing it to both grocery store and pharmacy.
“We started noticing we have to go farther and farther for our medicines,” Wildcat says. “We have to go farther and farther away for clean food. We have to go farther and farther away for clean water.”
Like Smith, she wants to quantify those changes with measurements. And she hopes that will lead to making the land available to the community the way it was to generations past. She sees herself as a steward of the land, but also entrusted with more than preserving it.
“I think our work here is more than just science.”
“I think our work here is more than just science,” Wildcat says. “It's also trying to regroup, trying to remember who we are. I can do camps and stuff like that, but if I don't have a [place] to bring kids to, it just becomes fluff. I don’t want fluff. I want those kids to go out on the land and really learn who they are. And maybe they'll find themselves.”
Or find other benefits. Before coming to her job with Peavine, Flett didn’t know what it entailed – or the effects it might have on her well-being.
“Being outside, you don’t realize how good it is for your mental health,” she says. “The more I learned, the more interesting [the work] got and the more important I realized it was for our community.
“It was a learning process,” Flett adds. “And I got to love it.”
Endless possibilities
There is no end to the possibilities for the data. Wildcat envisions a kind of cumulative effects map for land use planning. Lynn Smith sees the value of such a tool in predictive modelling of effects of future industrial activities. (In fact, NAIT applied researchers are now working on a kind of atlas.)
There may also be economic opportunities. Smith would one day like to see a lab at the settlement run by staff including the young women who currently travel to Edmonton to analyze samples. She imagines contracting out services to other Indigenous communities, and dreams of developing the business model even further.
“Eventually, I wouldn't mind franchising across Canada,” says Smith.
There’s reason for optimism. The scientific community is taking note, with requests coming for the young Peavine staff to present findings at conferences and meetings across the country. And the communities’ own investments in the work are being augmented by support from industry and government, including the Suncor Energy Foundation and Alberta Innovates.
There’s the resilience of the land itself as a foundation to build on.
Then there’s the resilience of the land itself as a foundation to build on. At Ermineskin, Wildcat has recently seen sandhill cranes, a local rarity she says, and frisbee-sized footprints of bears thought to have become scarce.
“We didn't see the grizzly, but it was fresh,” she says. “They were there.”
Flett, too, sees cause for hope, and expects Peavine’s project to grow beyond the capacity of the current staff. With Smith noting there’s already more work than the team can handle, Flett believes that there may soon be room for others to join the effort, and in time carry it forward.
As much as she enjoys it, “[we] can’t be 80 years old, walking in the bush,” says Flett with a laugh. “We need to recruit some of our younger generation.”
Until then, she adds, “we’ll be there for our people.”