Jennifer McPhee
Northern News Services

Snowdrift (Nov 04/02) - No graves exist below a runway at Plummer's Great Slave Lake Lodge, according to ground-penetrating radar tests.

The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development commissioned the tests in hopes of settling a dispute between the Lutsel K'e band and Plummer's Great Slave Lake Lodge.

Lutsel K'e elders believe that workers employed by the lodge bulldozed part of a graveyard and moved markers to build a runway extension in the early 1980s. It's a charge the lodge denies.

Despite the tests, Chief Archie Catholique isn't backing down. The results don't prove anything, he said.

"That's their opinion. That's their report," said. "The instrument they used isn't 100 per cent accurate. And they aren't going to find anything there anyways. It was all bulldozed."

Catholique said DIAND cancelled a meeting about the report this week.

"They are telling us to handle it by ourselves now and they want to walk away from it. But that's not going to happen."

He wants all three parties to meet, or the band will take legal action.

"We're going to file a statement of claim based on the disruption of land set aside for a graveyard. They didn't get the consent of our people."

The manager of land administration for DIAND said the department cancelled the meeting because its regional director was called away to Ottawa at the last minute.

Shane Jonker, a spokesperson for the lodge, maintains no graves were ever bulldozed.