Tar Sands tailings poisons muskeg and nearby First Nations community

Tar Sands tailings poisons muskeg and nearby First Nations community | rabble.ca by Ben Powless with pictures.
The trip out to the tar sands tailings pond reminded me of other recent trips to places where indigenous people were trying to survive.

It recalled for me a trip out to the Russian Arctic earlier this year to visit a group of Saami (Indigenous) reindeer herders struggling to maintain their way of life, and also the work I did last year with a group of Amazonian peoples who were trying to stop oil companies and oil spills in the Peruvian jungles.

But in the end this was far worse, even compared with those two dire situations, and it was being promoted by the Canadian and Alberta governments.

We left on a pair of four wheelers in the afternoon, embracing the freezing temperatures and snow for about six hours to gather footage of what I was promised would be a shocking find. And it was -- when we finally arrived on the site of the Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. -- CNRL -- tailings pond (which, at about five-km long and one-km wide, was more of a lake), we saw tailings being released on the opposite shore, flowing out and covering the muskeg and bush underneath. I was accompanied by Mike Orr, a councillor in the community of Fort McKay and avid hunter and trapper, and his daughter.

Here we were, standing on traplines and hunting trails that remain in use by members of the Fort McKay First Nation, as the toxic waste covered many hectares with an oily ooze...