Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/30780
Environmental activist Faith Gemmill (left); oil pipeline across the tundra on Alaska’s North Slope forests and strip-mining the soil, it also leaves behind enormous toxic lakes—visible from space—that have been linked to abnormally high rates of cancer among residents of nearby communities. “The First Nations folks right downstream from the huge oil proj- ect in Alberta are definitely sick, and get more and more sick all the time,” says Mossett, who has seen firsthand the public-health impacts of tar-sands oil production. “There are pictures of all of these deformities in fish—cancers, pus,” she explains. “In the moose, they are finding so many cancers. In women, there are reproductive problems.” The human impacts of tar-sands oil production is terribly understudied, but a 2009 report by the Alberta Cancer Board confirmed that cancer rates in the Fort Chipewyan commu- nity, downstream from the Alberta mining project, were 30 percent higher than average. Another study, conducted in 2007, revealed danger- ously high levels of arsenic, aluminum, mercury and other toxins in Fort Chipewyan’s water, sediment and fish. The pipeline that carries tar-sands oil into the U.S., moreover, crosses numerous indigenous territories, threatening those lands and water supplies with increasingly common www.msmagazine.com oil spills. What’s more, plans are un- derway to triple tar-sands oil refining and transportation by 2015. It’s no coincidence that the com- munities most endangered by oil production are indigenous, accord- ing to Caitlin Sislin, the North America director of Women’s Earth Alliance. “People of color and low-income communities are systematically tar- geted for fossil-fuel development and waste dumping,” she explains. “Feder- al laws often ease the way for mining and toxic dumping on tribal lands, re- sulting in widespread contamination and public-health impacts.” A bulk of the battle, then, is build- ing up the political power of indige- nous communities, ensuring that they have the resources necessary to com- bat big business and bad public policy. “We are trying to build the capaci- ty of community leaders who are on the frontlines of these issues so that they can address these issues them- selves,” Gemmill says. Her organiza- tion trains community members who are confronted with massive industri- al projects and provides them with le- gal assistance and political support. Women’s Earth Alliance similarly links indigenous women leaders with legal and policy advocates who can, pro-bono, help them fight extractive industry, waste dumping and fossil- fuel production on sacred sites. “We’re not inventing or imposing any solutions,” says Sislin. “Instead, we are responding to the vision artic- ulated by women leaders like Faith and do our best to bring advocacy re- sources to support the realization of those visions. Our work is about bridging that access gap.” While these collaborative efforts have produced great victories—from the halting of Shell’s offshore-drilling project to the recent delay of an ex- pansive pipeline that would carry tar- sands oil across six states—there is much work left to be done. And the duty of indigenous women to under- take that work, says Gemmill, runs even deeper than simple community obligation. “As a woman and a mother I have a sacred responsibility to uphold and nurture life,” she says. “And as an in- digenous woman, I strongly object to the notion that our children’s future can be compromised for short-term economic gain. …I will do everything in my power to protect and preserve that future.” n CATHERINE TRAYWICK is a con- tributing editor at Hyphen magazine and will attend UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in the fall. SPRING 2011 | 45 GEMMILL: PAMELA A. MILLER; TUNDRA: THE ASAHI SHIMBUN PREMIUM/GETTY IMAGES