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DENINU KU'E/FORT RESOLUTION
A team of 15 workers hired by the Deninue K'uFirst Nation's development corporation are earning a reputation for high-quality craftsmanship, according to some geologists in the NWT.

Rosy Bjornson, Deninu Ku'e First Nation resource management co-ordinator, displays the core boxes members created for the Nechalacho Rare Earth Element Project during a recent visit to the camp at Thor Lake. - Daron Letts/NNSL photo

The workers have been building core sample boxes for exploration projects since about 2007, and after investing in a portable sawmill and other new equipment in the last two years with funding from the GNWT departments of Industry, Tourism and Investment and Environment and Natural Resources, the business is diversifying and expanding.

"In Deninu Ku'e we have no employment, so we're making employment by doing these core boxes," said Deninu Ku'e First Nation Chief Louis Balsillie, adding he worked at the lumber mill near Fort Resolution from age 15 to 27, before it closed in 1987. "After it shut down, there was no morale in the community. We've been employing people and what I see is a morale pickup."

Stephen Cuthbert, general manager with Deninu Ku'e Development Corporation, estimates the workers have produced more 60,000 core boxes for various exploration camps since 2007, including Avalon Rare Metals' Nechalacho Rare Earth Element Project, De Beers' Gahcho Kue Diamond Mine Project, Tamerlane Ventures Inc.'s Pine Point Pilot Project – including work on property N204 – and Arctic Star Exploration Corp.'s Lac de Gras diamond project.

"We work around what the company wants and we can make any kind of size they need," said Rosy Bjornson, Deninu Ku'e First Nation resource management co-ordinator. "Their big seller is that they're sturdy."

Four of the workers are contracted to fill an order, but for the largest requests, such as when Avalon asked for 5,000 boxes, two teams of four work day and night shifts to complete the job by deadline.

The last order for core boxes was from Avalon about three months ago.

"I just wish that we could produce more boxes for the mines," Balsillie said, adding an impact benefit agreement with Avalon's Nechalacho Project and negotiations with De Beers' Gahcho Kue project are positive developments that may lead to more substantial orders in the near future.

In between orders for core boxes, Deninu Ku'e creates other products, such as fence panels, lumber, Conibear traps, and custom flower boxes, which are sold locally and in Hay River.

"We could make anything, I guess," Bjornson said. "We just need a market for it."

A team of consultants from FPInnovations in Edmonton is scheduled to visit the Deninu Ku'e workshop later this summer to suggest ways to make the production process more efficient and cost effective, Cuthbert said, adding the First Nation brought in a lumber mill technician from Wood-Mizer Canada in B.C. to train workers on the new sawmill for six weeks this past spring.

"Now I have a person who is really trained to the fullest, and that's Lewis Edjericon," Balsillie said. "He does the whole nine yards."

Edjericon, 25, and three other workers used the new equipment to build a four-metre-by-seven-metre log cabin on Mission Island next to the community earlier this year. The building will house events for the annual DKFN Culture Week celebrations, which are scheduled from Aug. 23-31.

"It was a good experience," Edjericon said. "When we finished that cabin I was happy I was done and I walked inside and it was all painted and it felt awesome."

Edjericon plans to build two more cabins for the community on Mission Island when the First Nation can get enough funding.

Deninu Ku'e is ready to take orders for custom log cabin kits this fall, Balsillie said, adding core boxes remain the sawmill project's bread and butter, which is why the recent drought of orders has slowed the operation down this summer.

Margo Edjericon has been building core boxes for about three years.

"It's an awesome job," she said, adding she enjoys returning home after work each day, having worked in mine camps years ago. "'I've got a lot of experience. I know how to use all the tools. Everything is falling into place. I just wish we had more orders so we could start up again."

Other Deninu Ku'e workers trained on the equipment include Raymond Sayine, Raymond Giroux, John David Sayine, Shawn McKay, Harold Browning, Craig Sanderson, Donovan Collins, Raymond Beaulieu, Fred Lafferty, and Greg Lafferty.

Chris Pedersen, Avalon's senior geologist with the Nechalacho project, said the core boxes produced by Deninu Ku'e are second to none.

"They're the Cadillac core boxes of any I've seen," he said.

The workers screw the boxes together, whereas the camp's previous Manitoba supplier used staples, making Deninu Ku'e boxes stronger and longer lasting, he said.

"Core boxes traditionally are stored outside, so they're exposed to the elements. We're spending millions of dollars collecting this core so we'd like to have some kind of system where it's going to last a few years," Pedersen said. "Traditionally, a lot of core boxes fall apart after three or four years in the field. We expect these to last a lot longer."

The core boxes are essential to the project because they help geologists to catalogue all the samples, Pedersen said, much the same way a researcher would file documents in a library archive.

According to geological data gleaned from the growing catalogue of drill cores at Thor Lake, the Deninu Ku'e First Nation may be supplying core boxes to the camp for years to come.

"When you put all the samples together and you have everything plotted digitally, it tells us that this project is going to go for a very long time," Pedersen said.

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