Day 5: A boat trip in the boreal forest

boat-trip

I wake to the sound of buffalo grunting outside my window.

It’s my last day before the long trek home tomorrow. This morning we’re filming an interview with an elder here at the lodge to document the threats to the Beaver Lake Cree’s way of life by tar sand developments. We’ll be using this footage on our campaign website.

This afternoon we’re heading out onto Beaver Lake with Len and his grandson to explore some of the surrounding boreal forest that’s under threat.

We’re joined by Donny, a Beaver Lake Cree elder, and the BBC and press journalists. Before we start the interview, Donny burns some sweetgrass and prays in Cree to bless the proceedings – he also blesses everyone present with the smoke.

As the elders and chiefs did yesterday, Donny talks about how the forest, the air and the water are not as good as they used to be. He reminisces about caribou and elk within the Beaver Lake Cree’s ancestral lands, a sight that’s becoming increasingly rare.

He recalls how people used to drink from muskeg but nobody trusts the groundwater anymore – it tastes wrong and makes people feel ill, he says. He tells us about the hunting and how increasingly animals such as moose are being found to be sick when cut open – it’s bad meat, he says, you cannot eat it.

As with many of the elders we’ve met, he’s also worried about the long-term survival of his culture, traditions and quality of life for future generations. It’s very sad, but he sees hope in the legal challenge.

We spend the rest of the day on Beaver Lake. We explore the inlets and forest surrounding the lake in the hope of seeing beaver and moose — – and it’s not long before we see the beaver.

There are beaver lodges dotted all around the lake, and as we approach them beavers pop up near the boat to see what’s going on. Some swim quite close to have a look at us before using their broad tails to slap the surface of the water. This is a warning to other beavers in the area that there is danger about.

The lake and surrounding forest is beautiful. It’s virtually pristine forest and we see white-tailed deer, muskrat and a variety of birdlife, but no moose, although we do hear one in the distance.

Len tells us it would only take a seismic line or two through the area to have a huge effect, never mind an in-situ tar sands development with all its associated infrastructure.

If that were to happen – and it may, as there have been licenses granted here – that would be it for much of the wonderful wildlife I’ve witnessed over the last couple of days.

As we head back we catch a glorious sunset and the forest comes alive with evening song. This is such a beautiful place – it’s hard to imagine it could end up like Cold Lake with seismic lines cutting up the forest and in-situ tar sand developments polluting and scarring the landscape.

It feels fragile, it feels threatened – and it is.

Tomorrow we head home. What a few days it’s been, from thoroughly depressing to completely exhilarating.

We could easily be defeatist and say the tar sands are already too advanced to stop, but I look around at this beautiful landscape and its wildlife and I feel so strongly that the devastation I’ve seen simply can’t be allowed to happen here.

The tar sands can’t be allowed to expand anywhere. We can and must stop them. They have absolutely no role to play in the low-carbon environmentally friendly future we and our Beaver Lake Cree friends need. I feel more determined than ever to help stop this madness.

If you want to help do something about it too, please get involved with our Toxic Fuels campaign or consider fund raising or donating to the Beaver Lake Cree ’s legal fighting fund.

Posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 in Campaigns, Customers Who Care, Tar Sands, Toxic Fuels

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2 Comments. What do you think?

Your comments

  1. This is another example of america/ns and canada of telling the world to do one thing whilst it still looks inward to its hypocritical self Until the world can convince backward republican americans they are part of this planet and have reponsibility for it, there is very little hope that the oil barons will lose their power over peoples minds

    by catherine walters at 11:37 am on October 22nd, 2009

  2. Just reading about your visit to my home of Beaver Lake. I am sorry I did not get to meet any of your group from the U.K. but I would like to say, as a member of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation and the daughter of Chief Lameman, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR HELPING MY PEOPLE and all people who care about our environment on this planet.

    by Tina Lameman at 10:21 pm on March 8th, 2010

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