B.C. First Nation asks UN body to count cultural losses in spill compensation formula

Delegates from a First Nation along British Columbia’s coast will lobby an international maritime body headquartered in the United Kingdom to change the compensation formula for oil spills.

Chief Marilyn Slett, elected chief of the Heiltsuk Nation in northwestern B.C., will be in London on Tuesday to address the International Maritime Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations.

The IMO sets global standards for the safety, security and environmental performance of international shipping, and Slett says she will ask the organization’s legal committee to include Indigenous cultural losses.

Slett points specifically to the events that happened almost exactly a decade ago, when the tug Nathan E. Stewart hauling a tank barge ran aground some 10 nautical miles west of Bella Bella, B.C.

The hull of the tug eventually breached, releasing about 110,000 litres of diesel oil into the environment. The tug eventually sank, but crews managed to recover the barge.

Slett says the spill resulted in the loss of a site of knowledge transmission and of high cultural value, and the incident showed that maritime laws covering oil spills were made without Indigenous peoples and without a mechanism for compensating them for their cultural losses.

“So, it goes really to the fabric of our way of life,” she says. “We are deeply connected to our territory. Our culture comes alive in our lands and in our waters, and this spill took that away, and will never be the same again.”

Slett, who will be in the United Kingdom from April 13 to 17, will also speak to Canada’s High Commissioner in the United Kingdom, former federal Liberal cabinet minister Bill Blair, to follow up on previous discussions with Blair’s predecessor Ralph Goodale.

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She says the delegates will be pointing to Canada’s status as a signatory of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and its presence on the legal committee, as reasons for supporting their advocacy.

The IMO’s legal committee has representatives from all 176 states that are full members of the organization, including Canada.

Defining Indigenous cultural losses is not straightforward, however.

“That’s a really big question, and it’s very broad, because it’s really about how we are as healthy people,” Slett says, adding she hasn’t heard anything concrete from Canada, and that the process itself could take a long time given global complexities.

“It’s going to be a process, but we are also committed to making sure that our voices are heard,” she says.

Damage from the barge spill might still be ongoing.

The Heiltsuk Nation says in a statement it is still waiting for compensation and restoration work from the spill to commence, with over $23 million in estimated recovery costs.

The statement specifically points to what it calls “a recent explosion” in the population of invasive European green crabs. They are “now threatening to wipe out the clam fishery,” it says.

This will be Slett’s second trip to London to lobby for changes. She says she went there two years ago and met with some of the member countries, including Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil.

Her trip also comes almost exactly three months after she and other leaders of coastal First Nations met with Prime Minister Mark Carney in Prince Rupert, B.C., to reiterate their opposition to a memorandum of understanding between Ottawa and Alberta signed last fall.

That agreement includes language that could lead to a pipeline carrying bitumen from northern Alberta to B.C.’s northern coast for shipping to Asian markets.

Carney has also said that the pipeline will not happen without a private proponent under the agreement, which has set July 1 as the deadline for Alberta to submit a proposal to Ottawa’s Major Projects Office for review.

Any future pipeline would also require changes to the federal tanker ban which prohibits oil tankers carrying more than 12,500 metric tons of crude oil or persistent oil products as cargo from stopping, loading, or unloading at ports or marine installations along B.C.’s northern coast.

The area runs from the Canada-U.S. border in the north, down to the point on British Columbia’s mainland across from the northern tip of Vancouver Island, and includes Haida Gwaii.

Slett says she and other First Nation leaders continue to monitor the situation around the MOU between Ottawa and Alberta and says First Nation leaders acknowledged that Carney has “prioritized building a resilient economy.”

She says they have also told him they would like to work with him on shared priorities. But without a resilient economy, she says First Nations cannot protect their way of life.

“There’s a lot of things that we can do,” she says. “But we depend on a healthy ecosystem and a healthy ocean for our sustenance, for our way of life, and also for our economy.”

“How can we trust Canada on a new pipeline, when Canada has failed to adequately respond to previous spills? We are reaching 10 years of the Nathan E. Stewart (event) and we are still pushing for justice,” she says.

“That’s a long time and adding super tankers on the top of the existing traffic is not something we will ever support.”