TUKTOYAKTUK - A Tuktoyaktuk woman is fighting a major oil company over a parking lot that was built over her mother's grave.

Annie Emaghok is 75, and has spent her whole life in the region of Tuktoyaktuk.

Adam Emaghok said Lucas Point was formerly named Katoviakyok. He is against further development of the region, and said his wife has been upset by the placement of gravel there since 1973. - Philippe Morin/NNSL photo

Along with her husband Adam Emaghok, who is a reindeer herder, she is the mother to nine children, of whom seven are alive today.

Now, the ailing elder might become the centre of a high-profile lawsuit between her family and oil company ConocoPhillips.

The issue is that Emaghok's mother Ida Lucas was buried at Lucas Point in 1945, alongside a five-year-old relative.

Emaghok said those graves were covered with gravel in 1973 by ConocoPhilips' predecessor in the region, Gulf Oil.

She said she feels this is disrespectful, and thinks her family deserves compensation.

"It's my own mother, my flesh and blood, and I've talked about it for years to oil companies and Inuvialuit workers. They look at my mom's body like a piece of garbage, that's how I feel," she said.

Julie Moore, who is a communications advisor for ConocoPhillips, said the company is "in conversation" with the Emaghok family.

But while gravel was indeed installed in the area of the gravesites in 1973 by Gulf, Moore said, ConocoPhillips does not currently occupy Lucas Point.

"There is no activity at Lucas Point, nor are there any plans to use it in the future," she said.

Moore declined to discuss any terms of a settlement, because negotiations are still happening.

'We have been in recent discussions with the family for issues that date back to the 1970s, and we are continuing those conversations. But other than that we're not prepared to offer any further comment at this time," she said.

Asked what she wanted from ConocoPhillips, Emaghok said she wanted compensation and a guarantee the grave would never be disturbed again.

She said she grew up at Lucas Point alongside her family in a simple log cabin, and remembers assisting the burial of her mother in 1945, when she was 13.

At the time, she said, the family had nothing to mark the site but a plywood cross.

She added the family later moved from the site, but kept visiting a few times a year, before the gravel was placed.

"We went every fall, before the gravel was put in. Now we can't find her anymore," she said, claiming that landscaping had made the spot unrecognizable.

"We lived there for years, my parents moved there when I was a little girl. It's my home, it's my place, and my dad put them there. I don't want them to be touched, just because of oil companies around," she said.

Emaghok said she would never agree to have the bodies moved somewhere else, even to a local cemetery.

"I wouldn't feel right about it," she said.

Annie Emaghok's son, Tuktoyaktuk town councillor Billy Emaghok, said the family originally asked ConocoPhillips for 15 to 17 million dollars.

However, he said the oil company insisted the family hire lawyers to review this demand.

Since then, Billy Emaghok said the family has revised its expectations and hired a lawyer, but declined to reveal what types of figures were being discussed at the current time.

Annie Emaghok said her first concern is the respect of her relatives.

When asked if she felt her family deserved to become millionaires over this affair, she said yes.

"How much is it worth to you?" she asked. "What if it was your mother?"

Since the Inuvialuit Land Claim was signed in 1984, local government boards said they do not have the authority to intervene.

Roger Connelly, who is chief operating officer of the Inuvialuit, Regional Corporation, said the organization would not get involved.

"The issue they are referring to, the damage, their case, refers to activities on the land before the ownership was transferred to the Inuvialuit," he said.

"As far as we're concerned, it's an issue between ConocoPhillips and the family involved. That's the way it's been since the start, and it's continuing that way at the present time.

"There is no need and no call for involvement from the Inuvialuit," he said.

Annie Emaghok said she has been looking for a resolution since 1973, and would like to see the case closed within her lifetime.

"I have been waiting 30 years," she said.