Manitoba Hydro

Manitoba Hydro

Pimicikamak Cree Nation has a unique treaty relationship with Manitoba Hydro. Treaty #12, informally known as the Northern Flood Agreement, was signed in 1977. Canada and the Province of Manitoba are also parties to the NFA.

The NFA was intended to enable PCN and other Cree peoples of Northern Manitoba to survive and thrive while Manitoba Hydro constructed and operated a hydro-electric mega-project in their traditional lands - without Cree consent. The project created widespread environmental devastation in 3 million acres of PCN traditional lands and destroyed the Cree subsistence economy.

This was and is a continuing violation of our human rights.

Since 1977, the governments of Canada and Manitoba and Manitoba Hydro have taken the benefits of the mega-project - about $20 billion to date - and done little to give effect to their NFA responsibilities. When compelled by legal action to take their responsibilities seriously, they sought to extinguish them. From 1985 to 1998, the governments and Manitoba Hydro used duress to starve our people into submission, in a largely successful effort to buy out NFA treaty rights.

Pimicikamak Cree Nation seeks joint action on public policy objectives of the NFA, not money. In 1997, Pimicikamak citizens collectively refused to participate in a referendum on a C$110 million buy-out proposal. Such referendums are illegal under Pimicikamak law. This law can be changed only by consensus of each of the Executive Council, the Council of Elders, the Women's Council, and citizens in Assembly.

Today, Pimicikamak Cree Nation stands alone in requiring the governments and Manitoba Hydro to give effect to the spirit and intent of the NFA - and has been severely punished for this stand. Its people live in enforced poverty - impoverished even compared to the third-world conditions that are standard for aboriginal peoples in Canada.

Recently the governments and Manitoba Hydro appear to have accepted that they must implement the NFA according to its spirit and intent. Pimicikamak Cree Nation believes that all parties stand to benefit from this approach.

What does this approach mean? The NFA calls for joint action on, for example:

Mitigatory and remedial works to minimize loss of life, and environmental and cultural damage;
Supporting and replacing the damaged traditional subsistence economy;
Community land to make up for prime shoreline land used by the project;
Priority in land use and resources within Pimicikamak traditional lands;
Environmental clean-up;
Implementation of government policies;
Training and employment on the project;
Joint action to eradicate mass poverty and unemployment.;

Only in the last resort does the NFA mandate monetary compensation.

In 1998, the governments and Manitoba Hydro began to meet with Pimicikamak Cree Nation to discuss NFA implementation. So far it is mostly talk about an implementation process. Manitoba Hydro has begun to clean up a small part of one of its environmental slums - the Jenpeg forebay. Discussion has begun on another - Sipiwesk Lake (the Kelsey forebay).

Manitoba Hydro has been building its mega-project on the backs of the environment and the Cree peoples whose traditional lands they share. Our traditional lands, known for their wilderness beauty and rich wildlife, are now an environmental slum. Cleaning up the environmental damage, to the extent possible, will cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Pimicikamak Cree Nation's policy on further Hydro development is: "No more until you clean up the mess!"