User:Sydles9/sandbox

Draft for "Indigenous Issues" section of Keystone Pipeline
The existing Keystone Pipeline is located within 50 kilometres of over 150 Indigenous communities in Canada, and TransCanada has facilities on 12 First Nation reserves. Over 100 miles of the pipeline pass through Native American tribal reservations, and nearly 100 Native American communities are within 30 miles of TransCanada facilities. Many Native Americans and Indigenous Canadians are opposed to the Keystone XL project for various reasons, including possible damage to sacred sites, pollution, and water contamination which could lead to health risks among their communities.

On Sept 19th 2011, a number of Native American and Native Canadian leaders were arrested for protesting the Keystone XL outside the White House. According to Debra White Plum, a Lakota activist, Indigenous peoples "...have thousands of ancient and historical cultural resources that would be destroyed across [their] treaty lands." TransCanada's Pipeline Permit Application to the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission states project impacts which include potential physical disturbance, demolition or removal of "prehistoric or historic achaeological sites, districts, buildings, structures, objects, and locations with traditional cultural value to Native Americans and other groups."

Indigenous communities are also concerned with health risks posed by the extension of the Keystone pipeline. Locally caught fish and untreated surface water would be at risk for contamination through tar sands oil production, and are central to the diets of many indigenous peoples. Earl Hately, an environmental activist who has worked with countless tribes said, "Natives in Canada live downstream from toxic tar sands mines and they are experiencing spikes in colon, liver, blood and rare bile-duct cancers which the Canadian government and oil companies simply ignore. And now they want to pipe these tar sands through the heart of Indian country, bulldozing grave sites and ripping out our heritage.”

TransCanada has developed an Aboriginal Relations policy in order to confront some of these conflicts. This policy "recognizes the legal, social and economic realities of Aboriginal communities...[and] is based upon the principles of trust, respect and responsibility." In 2004, TransCanada Pipelines Ltd. made a major donation to the University of Toronto "to promote education and research in the health of the Aboriginal population." One of their proposed solutions is the Aboriginal Human Resource Strategy, which was developed to facilitate aboriginal employment and to provide "opportunities for Aboriginal businesses to participate in both the construction of new facilities and the ongoing maintenance of existing facilities"