Blog

Want to help, do something different and win some cash?

Thanks to everyone who entered our auction for the exclusive, hard backed poster of Dirty Oil, signed by narrator NEVE CAMPBELL.

We had some VERY generous bids but the winner pledged a whopping £500 with all the proceeds going to support the Beaver Lake Cree's legal battle.
 
If you want to learn more about the Beaver Lake Cree and make your own donation, please go to the Take Action section of toxicfuels.com

Thanks again to everyone who entered.

This is just a little note of how I feel and how proud I am of my father to take on this tremendous fight for us. He is amazing! I love him very much.

My father is Chief Al Lameman and we on our reserve (Beaver Lake) are all very concerned about what is happening up here.

I have been watching our leaders fight the government on this issue since it began. The arrogance of the Canadian government and oil companies here is unbelievable. They truly believe that we are so insignificant that they call our fight frivolous and a waste of time and money.

We need and appreciate people like yourselves around the globe to become aware of what this is doing to our people and our land. Only when it affects them personally will they care unless they are shamed into it.

I myself have worked in the oil sands and I can tell you, I would get headaches and nosebleeds from the air my first few days in the camps up there. That is how polluted it is.

I've just been reading about The Co-operative's visit to my home of Beaver Lake. I am sorry I did not get to meet any of your group from the UK but I would like to say, as a member of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation and the daughter of Chief Lameman, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR HELPING MY PEOPLE and all people who care about our environment on this planet.

Tina Lameman
Beaver Lake Cree Nation

For more details of the Beaver Lake Cree's legal battle see http://toxicfuels.com/take-action/fund-the-legal-battle/

As a film distributor specialising in social issue films and with a history of collaboration with The Co-operative, Dogwoof is proud to support the Toxic Fuels Campaign.

Raising awareness for the Beaver Lake Cree legal battle and the catastrophic effects of tar-sand oil production is a matter of urgency, one addressed by three powerful documentaries which could shift concern into the limelight before industrial action irrevocably damages the land and its native people.

Dogwoof, together with The Co-operative, believe in the good of film to trigger change and employ strategies with social purposes at their core to get films seen around the UK and Ireland.

“Film is amongst the most powerful mediums through which change can be ushered”, says Dogwoof CEO Andy Whittaker. “Together with The Co-Operative we have a history of releasing powerful films that draw attention to vital issues. Last year Burma VJ served to highlight the terrible domestic situation within Burma better than innumerable news reports that had previously only scratched the surface. It raised awareness, helped to engage an international audience, and was rewarded with an Oscar Nomination for Best Documentary. The trilogy of Toxic Fuels films, starting with Dirty Oil, will continue this tradition.”  

Petropolis, H2Oil and Dirty Oil are a poignant trilogy with a serious message, one which can spur the viewer into action and create support for a grave cause with international concern. The three films poetically contextualise the issue; portraying the shocking scale of damage on the landscape and representing some of the many individuals at risk.

www.dogwoof.com

Across the United States, oil refineries are seeking permits to expand their facilities to process heavy crude oil from the tar sands. Processing tar sands oil will mean more asthma and respiratory diseases, more cancer, and more cardiovascular problems. Many local communities are opposing the expansions.

In Canada, the toxic burden on communities near the tar sands is already enormous. In addition to direct human exposure, oil contamination in the local watershed has led to arsenic in moose meat—a dietary staple for First Nations peoples—up to 33 times acceptable levels. Drinking water has also been contaminated.

The alternative is simple: we need to break our addiction to oil and fossil fuels. We could be on the road to a new energy future if we simply redirect the investment capital slated for the tar sands into sustainable alternatives. Heightened investments in clean energy also mean the creation of new green jobs. We need to stop investing in dirty fossil fuels and start funding the future.

Brant Olson, Rainforest Action Network
http://ran.org/tarsands

"There is enough normal oil out there to deliver climate catastrophe. Tar sands production is 3-5 times more polluting than normal oil. If we allow Canada's extraction to go ahead, we have no chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. The project also involves stealing the lands and poisoning the waters of First Nation Canadians, and destroying an area of boreal forest the size of England & Wales. Tar sands are the front line in the fight to save the millions of lives that climate change endangers.

For People & Planet, a student-led organisation campaigning to defend social and environmental justice, tar sands extraction is completely incompatible with the low-carbon future that our young activists need and are fighting to achieve."

Louise Hazan, People & Planet Climate Change Campaigns Manager

The Beaver Lake Cree Nation launched its court case back in 2008 to stop the terrible advance of the tar sands into their traditional hunting lands. They have seen the rapid spread of resource development over the last few decades, but nothing has really had the same impetus, the same raw horse-power, as the quest for goo – backed by the economic powerhouse of the world's largest multinational oil companies.

I've been out on the land with Beaver Lake Elders who shake their heads sadly when they see the destruction of the bogs and forests and the shiny spider-web of the pipelines. I've watched Chief Lameman, choked, trying to speak to a crowd of people after seeing a film about the Cree peoples who live along the Athabasca River and the impacts of the tar sands on them. I have heard him express his feelings about the tar sands as something that "does not just threaten our Cree way of life, it threatens all of our lives. We feel we are looking at the end of things." Even when I talk with people who work in the industry and ask them about the tar sands, oil rig workers, helicopter pilots, truck drivers, they grow silent, they look down, they know, and everyone knows, that something very wrong is being done to the land. They know there is Shame here, writ large.

Chief Al Lameman and the Beaver Lake Cree Nation have brought a lawsuit aimed at protecting the treaty rights they are guaranteed under Canada's Constitution. In law in Canada, the treaty rights of a First Nation must be protected and assured forever. In order for the Beaver Lake Cree's treaty rights to hunt and fish to remain meaningful, there must be sufficient habitat for there to be a surplus of animals that thrive, such that the rights can be practiced. And this is not just some statute, this is the highest law in the land. The forest must be protected to allow their treaty rights to exist. The Beaver Lake Cree say that so much industrial activity is happening, that so much of the forest and rivers and streams of their territory is being ripped up, fragmented and polluted, that they can no longer practice the rights they were promised such a short time ago.

Drew Mildon, Woodward & Company
Legal Counsel to the Beaver Lake Cree Nation