I have come to the conclusion that, from an environmental perspective, it is possible to build a pipeline and an energy corridor along the Mackenzie Valley that stretches south of the Mackenzie Delta to the Alberta border. Unlike northern Yukon, no significant wildlife populations would be threatened and no wilderness areas would be injured. Under the Proven Area Agreement, Imperial Oil has been appointed as the Project Operator and has been given full control over the development and operation of the Proven Area and will assume all annual upfront costs, charges and expenses incurred for the development and production of the Proven Area. As a project partner, the Canadian government will receive one-third of the region`s gross production shares. Europe, History — Introduction History of European peoples and cultures from prehistory to the present day. Europe is a more ambiguous term than most geographical expressions. Its etymology is doubtful, as is the physical extent of the area it designates. Universal disparities between the Dene and the government`s interpretation of Treaty 11 came to light in the late 1960s when a gas pipeline through the Mackenzie Valley was first proposed. In 1966, the Indian Brotherhood of the Northwest Territories launched an oral history project to determine dene understanding of the Treaty 11 process. On March 24, 1973, sixteen Dene Chiefs made a legal claim of interest in an area of more than one million square kilometres and made a reservation for registration under the Land Titles Act.

Nearly six months later, Justice William G. Morrow concluded that the Dene did have Indigenous rights in the area. This warning meant that no development could continue until land title had been determined. Fort Good Hope and Tulita were both established in the early 19th century as fur trading and mission posts conveniently located along the Mackenzie River Transportation Route. Norman Wells, as the name suggests, is a predominantly non-Indigenous and Métis community founded as a result of the “discovery” of oil in 1919 (although indigenous peoples in the area may have known this long before). Deline developed as a semi-permanent community on Great Bear Lake, near the mouth of the Great Bear River, in the 1940s and 1950s, with the expansion of the Port Radium uranium mine. The community achieved consistency with the closure of the mine in 1960, when Dene residents were forced by Port Radium to move to Deline. Colville Lake was founded in 1962 as part of a movement to revive traditional fishing practices associated with the establishment of a Roman Catholic mission. The Sahtu Dene and Métis of the three districts are now entitled to 41,437 square kilometres of settlement land, of which 1,838 square kilometres, or 22.5 per cent, involve the possession of underground resources (oil and minerals).

Sahtu Dene and Métis lands were selected based on a variety of criteria, including spiritual sites, traditional land use and harvest areas, and some countries with resource revenue potential. In addition, a number of special harvest areas have been set aside for land claim beneficiaries. District boundaries were roughly defined based on the central land use areas of today`s Dene and Métis communities in the Sahtu region. Although the nomadic Dene have harvested in these areas for generations, permanent settlements have been established relatively recently in response to the expansion of the fur trade and, subsequently, the development of the petroleum and mining industries in the region. As the non-native population grew and wildlife became scarcer, it became increasingly difficult to maintain an entirely terrestrial livelihood. When the federal government finally realized its responsibility for the well-being of northern Indigenous peoples, they were encouraged to move into centres set up for practical service management. Land use patterns have changed somewhat to accommodate a new hybrid lifestyle that combines the city and the bush. The federal government, signed in 1944, granted Imperial Oil the exclusive right to drill and produce oil and gas in the region for three consecutive 21-year terms. This Agreement shall be in force until 2008. Regional and district boundaries are necessarily provisional to some extent, as there is overlap in traditional land use areas; There were no fixed boundaries in the old clan territory system.

While this issue affects all Aboriginal people in three northern territories, it is particularly complex for the Sahtu as they are centrally located and share borders with Yukon First Nations in the west. Gwich`in, Inuvialuit and Nunavummiut (the people of Nunavut); the Dogrib of the Northern Slave Region, covered by Treaty 11 in the east, and the Deh Cho First Nation in the south. At the time of the Berger Inquiry, George Barnaby of Fort Good Hope was an elected member of the Territorial Council representing the Mackenzie and Big Dipper region. He resigned during his tenure and was later elected Vice-President of the Indian Brotherhood of the Northwest Territories (now the Dene Nation). He became one of the main proponents of the Denendeh Comprehensive Land Claims Agreement. The Sahtu Renewable Resources Board was the only organization actually created by the land claim. The other two councils were created five years later (1998) by the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. This law introduced an integrated land and water management system across regional borders, based on existing land rights agreements.

The Gwich`in Resource Management Boards were also established by legislation, as were the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board and the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board. As the name suggests, the latter two councils are responsible for the Mackenzie Valley, including the Sahtu region. The idea of establishing land titles and boundaries dates back to 1920, shortly after the first oil jet was struck at Norman Wells. The nascent Northwest Territories Council began planning for the development of oil and gas reserves. But indigenous peoples have not ceded their rights to the territory. When it was pointed out that oil and gas licences in this area existed outside the law, the Department of Indian Affairs undertook to conclude contract 11. The Crown considered this in the summer of 1921 on a short trip through communities along the Mackenzie River. According to the treaty document, the Dene and Métis peoples ceded their title to 599,000 square kilometres, stretching from the 60th parallel to the Arctic Ocean in the north and from the Mackenzie Mountains in the east to Great Slave Lake. Oral testimonies show that the Dene did not see the treaty as an annihilation of ownership of their traditional lands. The land claim also provides for the negotiation of self-government agreements with the federal and regional governments. Deline was the first Sahtu community to enter into negotiations and a Memorandum of Understanding was signed on 23 August 2003. The federal government has recognized unperformed contracts throughout the Northwest Territories and has established mechanisms for land claim negotiations.

The first settlement was closed in 1984 with the Inuvialuit. The Dene and Métis came together and made a single land claim to Denendeh. In 1988, an agreement in principle was reached on this claim. However, the agreement collapsed on a number of issues. The Gwich`in communities withdrew from the process, soon followed by the Sahtu communities. In 1991, the Gwich`in Comprehensive Land Claims Agreement was signed. The Sahtu Dene and Métis Comprehensive Land Claims Agreement was concluded in 1993. In 1974, the federal government established a commission to investigate the “terms and conditions that should be imposed” with respect to the pipeline project. Judge Thomas Berger led the investigation. Over a three-year period, Berger traveled through the western Arctic in an unprecedented consultation process involving more than a thousand witnesses. When the Berger survey arrived in the Sahtu region, people had the opportunity for the first time to express their opinions on the impact of such a large development on their land and their lives. .