Surrounded on three sides by oilsands operations, the Fort McKay First Nation has benefited tremendously from industrial development — while also experiencing firsthand its environmental consequences.

While the nation has historically supported nearby operations, when Prosper Petroleum proposed a 10,000 barrel per day oilsands project near Moose Lake, an area of sacred cultural value for the people of Fort McKay, the community reached a tipping point.

The nation filed a lawsuit against the province of Alberta on December 3, after years of effort to prevent the proposal from going forward failed to protect the treasured region and the Fort McKay way of life.

The lawsuit contends that, because of significant forestry, mining, oil and gas development and road building, Fort McKay’s ability to practice treaty rights — to hunt, fish, trap and gather medicinal plants — relies almost exclusively on their continued access to the relatively intact landscape surrounding Moose Lake.

As long as the river flows

In 1899, the Fort McKay First Nation became a signatory of Treaty 8, an agreement that promised to preserve the nation’s traditional ways of life “as long the sun shines, the river flows and the grass grows.”

As recently as the 1960s the reserve of Fort McKay had no running water. The people, housed in humble shacks, relied for sustenance on the landscape of Alberta’s northern boreal forest and the Athabasca River — the thread that connected the remote community to the rest of Canada.

This way of life, the Fort McKay say, sustained them for thousands of years.

But as one elder Zackary Powder puts it, “It’s not like it used to be. Everything has changed.”

Today Fort McKay are a nation of about 800 people, situated 65 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, the heart of the Alberta oilsands, one of the largest oil deposits on the planet.

Over time, Fort McKay has witnessed the incredible transformation of the boreal, from a sustainable resource for their traditional livelihood into “overburden” stripped to make way for open-pit mines, tailings ponds and processing plants.

Over the last two decades, vast swaths of Fort McKay traditional territory have been leased to some of the world’s largest energy corporations.

What has brought significant environmental impact has also offered impressive economic returns, rarely afforded to First Nations on reserves.

Today, Fort McKay’s unemployment is near zero; the average household income is $73,500 a year; they have new roads and housing and own the Fort McKay Group of Companies that generates $200 million annually providing services to industry.

Chief Jim Bouchier, first elected in 1986, has held office in the community for 27 of the interim years. He is chairman of the board for the Fort McKay Group of Companies.

“Jim believes the practice and preservation of the Fort McKay First Nation’s traditional ways of life can occur simultaneously alongside continuous and long-term sustainable oil sands development,” Fort McKay’s website states.

It is now in Bouchier’s name that a lawsuit has been filed against Alberta on behalf of the broader Fort McKay community.

Prosper Petroleum’s $440 million Rigel oilsands project would come within two kilometers of the Moose Lake reserve, a remote ancestral territory of unspoiled land with two lakes, Gardiner and Namur, known to the community as Moose Lake and Buffalo Lake.

The community views this land as all that remains of their rights to the wilderness — a lifeline to their culture. Many Fort McKay residents still practice their traditional ways of life here: hunting, fishing, trapping, collecting wild plants and cultivating spiritual practices.

It’s where families take their vacations, where grandfathers pass traditional knowledge to their grandchildren and where people who spent their lives working for oilsands companies build their retirement homes.

Suncor Energy, one of the largest producers in the Alberta oilsands, supports a land-access program which flies band members out to a permanent camp at Moose Lake during the spring and fall hunting seasons.



While Fort McKay has largely worked in partnership with the oilsands industry, they have been fighting to protect Moose Lake for nearly 20 years.

“Fort McKay is fighting for its cultural survival, as one of the largest industrial projects on the planet devours more of our land that has been our home for millennia…We will not stand idly by and let the area be destroyed,” Chief Boucher said in a statement.

The future of Moose Lake is important, not only to Fort McKay, but also as a potential warning to First Nations around the country who seek to work productively with resource development while also maintaining traditional lands and ways of life.



Fort McKay has often had a voice at the table — something many First Nations struggle to obtain.

But when push comes to shove, will that voice be heard?

A half-skinned deer on the L'Hommecourt trapline located next to Imperial Oil's Kearl Oil Sands project. Traplines are partitions of land allocated to individuals and passed down through families for hunting and trapping. Most have cabins and often serve as family getaways into the bush. Many of the region's traplines have been destroyed or disturbed by oilsands operations, with title holders often receiving compensations for the use of the land. Photo: Aaron Vincent Elkaim / The Narwhal