Keepers of the Water hold final summer gathering in Fort Chipewyan

An unexpected guest to a Keepers of the Water conference in Fort Chipewyan earlier this month garnered attention from across the country.

A two-mouthed goldeye fish was plucked from Lake Athabasca by local children on Aug. 15 during the weekend conference. The fish has what appears to be a second jaw protruding from below its mouth.

The fish may have attracted the attention the conference was looking for, but it also represents the dire situation residents of Fort Chipewyan feel they’re facing. They believe the Athabasca River is carrying industry and oil sands run-off into Lake Athabasca, poisoning the people and animals that inhabit its shores.

“The goal of the conference was to breed awareness that Fort Chip is at the bottom of the barrel and that barrel is slowly filling up with dirty water from industry,” said conference organizer Alice Rigney. “We are the guinea pigs.”

Residents of Fort Chipewyan, a fly-in community north of Fort McMurray, used to refer to the area as Alberta’s best-kept secret. “That secret came out in the worst way imaginable to us, as we bury our people from cancers and higher counts of diseases...” Rigney said. “It has to be something coming down the river and polluting us.”

This was the last of a series of summer conferences that began with a discussion at Old Fort Point in Jasper on July 6. About 300-400 people attended the Fort Chipewyan gathering which ran from Aug. 15-17, including representatives from 18 environmental groups such as Green Peace, the Pembina Institute and the Sierra Club. 

The conference was named Water is Boss, which Jasperite Art Jackson said is an appropriate title. “It’s very true with the native people, they say the water is sacred,” Jackson said. “The whole idea of River Keepers is it promotes the health and well-being of the communities.”

As a member of Keepers of the Water, Jackson said water affects all people and therefore everyone should be concerned. “Jasper people, Albertans, need to keep in tune with what’s going on, and keep the government accountable for coming up with a plan to slowly phase in renewable resources and keep away from this reliance on non-renewable,” he said.

Part of the solution will be putting pressure on the province, which Jackson calls a “very, very poor unaccountable government.”

“Most native groups think seven generations ahead and this government has no more vision than four years,” he said. David Swann, Alberta Liberal environment and aboriginal critic, was the only representative from the provincial government to attend the conference.

Jackson said banding together may allow First Nations to get noticed. “These people have strong power if they use it and hopefully they do,” he said. 

The two-mouthed fish appeared the first day of the conference, which some believe was more than a coincidence. “This fish happened to show up floating right by the dock the day people were supposed to go out to the delta to take a look,” Jackson said. “So it was very unusual, and the natives believe everything happens for a reason, that this is evidence of what they had been talking about.”

Earlier this week the fish was in a freezer still in the possession of the Mikesew Cree First Nation in Fort Chipewyan, while leaders were deciding what should be done with it. Environmental Affairs assistant Ling Wang said experts are being consulted to determine the best course of action, be it a sampling of tissue or a toxicology report.

Though it has made headlines in other parts of Canada, a deformed fish isn’t surprising to residents of Fort Chipewyan. “It’s not really news to the community,” Wang said. She said she wasn’t sure how often animals were found with abnormalities, but that it’s common enough for residents to be “desensitized.”

Dave Ealey, spokesperson for Alberta Sustainable Resource Development said government researchers have only seen photographs of the fish and therefore can’t speculate on what may have happened to it. 

“We don’t know what caused this particular abnormality, it could be a fish with a developmental change or an injury,” Ealey said. “We certainly aren’t convinced that it has to be seen as some sort of mutation.”

Deformities are common in fish, he added. “There is a very high proportion of abnormalities in fish populations compared to most critters,” Ealey said.

Contamination from upstream oil sands developments has been a source of concern since John O’Connor, a doctor assigned to the community, drew public attention to a high incidence of rare cancers in Fort Chipewyan. In five years he saw five cases of bile duct cancer that usually touches just one person in 100,000. Fort Chipewyan has a population of 1,200.

The Alberta Cancer Board is currently working on a collaborative study with the province, the federal government and the Nunee Health Society into whether Fort Chipewyan’s cancer rates are higher than expected. Director of communications Lee Elliott said the Alberta Cancer Board hopes to have the report completed by the Fall, at which time a public report will be released.

The Athabasca River, which originates from the Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park, flows north through the oil sands in Fort McMurray to Lake Athabasca, where Fort Chipewyan lies on the banks. 

“We feel that we are forgotten,” Rigney said. “If this water was flowing the other way, flowing south to Edmonton, would this still happen?”

Fort Chipewyan may be a thousand kilometres from Jasper, but water travels. “We want to create awareness that what’s happening to us will sooner or later happen to you,” she added. ?

-with files from Jack Danylchuk