‘It’s like, we are thankful. But in the other way…they are just killing us too’: community members’ perspectives of the extractives industry’s funding of recreational and cultural programmes in Fort McKay, Alberta

ABSTRACT

The growing role of the extractives industry in providing funding for recreational and cultural programmes in exchange for access to Indigenous lands raises some important questions about the impact this has on local community members. Informed by tenets of postcolonial theory and a community-based participatory research methodology, we worked with individuals in a small Indigenous community, Fort McKay, Alberta, Canada, to learn about their perspectives of the role of industry in funding their recreational and cultural programmes. Our findings revealed that while many were grateful for this funding, they also felt that industry had a responsibility to fund these programmes to offset the negative impacts industry had on their traditional territories. Further, they felt that the provision of these programmes does not fully address the loss of access to traditional cultural practices. While proponents of the extractives industry promote funding as a way to increase Indigenous self-determination, our findings show that increased self-determination through such arrangements is limited.

RÉSUMÉ

Le rôle croissant de l’industrie extractive dans le financement de programmes récréatifs et culturels en échange de l’accès aux terres autochtones soulève d’importantes questions relatives à l’incidence de ce fait sur les membres de la communauté. Sous l’optique des principes de la théorie postcoloniale et de la méthodologie de recherche participative basée sur la communauté, nous avons travaillé avec une petite communauté autochtone de Fort McKay, en Alberta, au Canada, pour connaître leur point de vue sur le rôle de l’industrie dans le financement de leurs programmes culturels. Nos conclusions révèlent que bien que de nombreuses personnes voient ce financement d’un bon œil, elles estiment aussi que l’industrie avait la responsabilité de financer des programmes destinés à compenser les impacts négatifs de l’industrie sur leurs territoires traditionnels. Par ailleurs, elles ont estimé que la mise en place de ces programmes ne compense pas complètement la perte d’accès aux pratiques traditionnelles. Tandis que les défenseurs de l’industrie extractive militent en faveur d’un financement comme moyen d’accroissement de l’autodétermination des populations autochtones, nos résultats indiquent que l’amélioration de l’autodétermination par ces moyens est limitée.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-determination
• development
• neoliberalism
• cultural practices

MOTS CLÉS:

• autodétermination
• développement
• néolibéralisme
• pratiques culturelles

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, we would like to thank the Sustainability Department of Fort McKay First Nation for assisting us throughout the entirety of this research project, including providing generous feedback on this research paper. Special thanks goes out to Karla Buffalo, Alvero Pinto, and Gail Matchullis. We would also like to thank Simon Adams for all his help with setting up the community research. We would like to give our appreciation to all the residents of Fort McKay for facilitating and participating in this research, we could not have done this without you. We would also like to thank Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding this project. Finally, we would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The number denotes different parcels of ‘reserve’ land set aside by the Federal government for the benefit and use of a First Nation.

2. http://aptnnews.ca/2015/06/22/fort-mckay-first-nation-survived-past-looking-towards-future-part-1/.

3. Compared to Alberta more generally, where the unemployment rate is 9%, and median total income per household is $93,835.

4. OCAP® is a registered trademark of the First Nations Information Governance Centre (FNIGC), www.FNIGC.ca/OCAP.

5. A plain language review of recreational and cultural programmes in the community was also submitted to the Sustainability Department, an applied outcome that its staff requested to help to evaluate this programming in the community.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.