Handley says band played their cards right
Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Apr 18/01) - A meeting between Robert Nault and leaders of a Yukon native band had nothing to do with the band's threat to oppose an Alaska-Yukon pipeline if its land claim is not fast tracked.
The Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development met with Kaska leaders in Whitehorse Wednesday.
The main product of that meeting was a Kaska reversal of their opposition to the pipeline. Final details of an agreement that would pave the way to a resumption of land claim negotiations are now being worked out. Under the agreement, the Kaska agree to drop four court cases lodged against the government in return for a resumption of talks.
DIAND's Yukon director of claims and Indian government said Nault's visit had nothing to do with the threat of stalling an Alaska-Yukon pipeline.
"I think it had more to do with the timing of the Easter Parliamentary break," said Elizabeth Hanson. "It's been a long time since he last met with First Nations here."
Hanson said Nault last met with Kaska leaders in May 2000. The abeyance agreement federal and Kaska leaders are expected to sign was all but concluded a week before Nault's arrival, Hanson said.
Hanson said DIAND has set a deadline of March 2002 for the resolution of the remaining seven outstanding land claims in the Ross River area of the Yukon, Northern British Columbia and the Fort Liard area.
In January Northwest Territories premier Stephen Kakfwi ruffled his Yukon counterpart, Pat Duncan, and other supporters of the Alaska-Yukon pipeline when he advised the Kaska leadership to use the pipeline as a bargaining chip to re-start their land claim negotiations.
NWT Economic Development Minister Joe Handley said the strategy obviously worked.
"They've used this issue as a way of bringing to a head a long outstanding issue on this claim," Handley said. "It worked for the Kaska."
At the time of his meeting with the Kaska, Kakfwi downplayed the exchange, saying it was part of an ongoing dialogue between his Sahtu constituency and the Kaska, who are claiming land adjacent to the Sahtu land claim. Handley said the deal with the Kaska does not clear the way for an Alaska-Yukon line: "There's still a lot to be negotiated."
The GNWT has suggested an Alaska-Yukon line, if it is built first, could flood the North American market with Alaskan gas and threaten construction of a Mackenzie Valley line.
No proposal has been submitted for either pipeline project.
Kakfwi and Handley say the federal government should support the Mackenzie Valley line because Canada has more to gain from the export of Canadian gas than it does from the export of Alaskan gas.
