INUVIK
There may not be any oil and gas activity in the Beaufort Delta now but the Gwich'in Tribal Council thinks that if and when there is, people should be ready for it.

Training consultant Keith Carr, left, chat with participants after a presentation on fracking last week in the Sun Dog room at the Midnight Sun Complex. - Sarah Ladik/NNSL photo

To that end, the tribal council organized a series of community visits with an instructor from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) in Calgary to talk about fracking.

While attendance was low at the session in Inuvik last week, with only a few community members turning out, organizers said the exercise was still worthy.

"We wanted to give people the opportunity to learn about the process," said Gwich'in Tribal Council lands analyst Tas-Tsi Catholique, explaining that after surveying several Gwich'in communities on the subject, the tribal council found that most people's information was coming from secondary sources - like friends and the Internet - and historical knowledge of what has been done in the region before.

"There was a strong direction to give these presentations to the public. What I've been doing for the last year is asking people, trying to find out how does one find a non-biased point of view," Catholique said.

Instructor Keith Carr makes no bones about his lengthy career in oil and gas development but also makes sure to talk about the challenges the industry poses to communities and the environment in his presentations.

Top of the list are the impacts of massively increased traffic to often-remote communities, and the contamination of groundwater.

"It's important to get ready," Carr said.

"It's not, 'If,' it's, 'When.' No other jurisdiction was ready for what hit them. You've got to make sure you're looking around the world - it's easy to get wrapped up in our small world."

Carr also noted that governments typically cave to public pressure either way, and that his role is to present both sides - the good and the bad - of fracking.

"The oil and gas industry responds to demand," he said.

"This is a pristine environment. You have to make sure you preserve that. Maybe it won't be this generation that has to make the decision, but it might be the next, and there will be compromises to be made."

Garth Greskiw is the new director of lands and resources at the Gwich'in Tribal Council. He said there is no need to re-invent the wheel in the Beaufort-Delta because many other communities have faced similar challenges.

"What First Nations really have on our side is networking," he said, noting that the Gwich'in nation has a lot of structures already set up to tackle development issues because of the land claim process.

"We can't pay each other's bills but we can support each other with a collective consciousness."

While there may be no development on the horizon in the area, Catholique said this is a key time to help people understand some of the questions they may be asked to answer in the coming years and decades.

"That was the whole approach to this," he said.

"Hopefully, we can bring individuals a little understanding and create a discussion."

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.