Peruvian Achuar Tribe Members Visit Canada To Survey Oil Operations: "This Used To Be A Forest?" [View all]

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“This used to be a forest?” Mr. Achui asked. The region now resembles the Sahara – fine sand left behind by evaporated tailings ponds stretching into a treeless horizon. “Where are all the birds?” asked Mr. Miik, genuinely bewildered.

Mr. Deranger explained that the cannons they heard every few seconds were designed to scare birds off, to prevent them landing in the oily ponds that settled like mirages between the dunes.

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The Achuar were no more heartened by seeing Fort McKay, their final stop before their return to Calgary for the Talisman meeting. Mr. Deranger had a friend there named Cecilia Fitzpatrick, the granddaughter of the chief who signed over the band's land with a treaty in 1899. “The government initially put us on the other side of the river,” Ms. Fitzpatrick told the Achuar, gesturing across the Athabasca from her porch. “But it's bog land over there, totally uninhabitable, so we moved here. Our people lived here as squatters for the early years, until the government gave in.”

She offered the group some bottled water, apologizing that the tap water was undrinkable. “There are 22 companies operating all around us,” she went on. The local leadership kept making concessions, while the companies provided annual payments to every resident. “But we'll probably have to move again soon, since the only land we have left to sell is right below our houses.”

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-age-of-extreme-oil-this-used-to-be-a-forest/article2437730/page4/