Friends of the Lubicon
PO Box 444 Stn D,
Etobicoke ON M9A 4X4
Tel: (416) 763-7500
Email: fol (at) tao (dot) ca
www.lubicon.ca
October 14, 2005
Below is a news article about Lubicon Nation's upcoming presentation to a United Nations human rights committee in Geneva asking the UN to press Canada to resolve its long-standing land rights dispute before year's end.
The Lubicon's written submission to the United Nations is available here.
The written submission to the UN human rights committee is made prior to the oral Lubicon presentation to the UN. A Lubicon delegation will address the committee on October 17, 2005.
Edmonton Sun
October 14, 2005
By Darcy Henton, Legislature Bureau
Alberta's Lubicon Lake First Nation is off to Geneva to ask the United Nations to press Canada to resolve its long-standing land claim before year's end.
A two-member delegation will appear before the UN's human rights committee Monday to ask that it once again find Canada in violation of the band's human rights, said Lubicon spokesman Kevin Thomas.
"The Lubicon are basically telling the United Nations committee that it's been 15 years since they ruled Canada was in violation of their human rights and Canada still hasn't resolved the situation," said Thomas.
"They haven't even negotiated with them for the past two years."
Lubicon band councillor Alphonse Ominayak, 50, brother to Chief Bernard Ominayak, will ask the UN to again call on Canada to resolve the claim, which has been dragging on since 1939, he said.
The committee is likely to be annoyed that after having been promised a resolution 15 years ago, the case is again before it, Thomas said.
"The committee has already asked Canada to respond to this issue," he said.
"Canada is being called on the carpet Monday."
Thomas said Lubicon members live in "absolute poverty" at Little Buffalo Lake, northeast of Peace River, while they wait for justice.
"They don't even have running water in their homes. and in the meantime about $13 billion of oil and gas resources have been stolen from them," he said.
Lubicon adviser Fred Lennarson, who will accompany Ominayak to Geneva and on to Munich, Zurich and Italy to meet with supporters, called the government's failure to resolve the claim "a shameful situation."
He said former Alberta premier Don Getty tried to resolve the claim in 1988, but the deal fell apart.
The Lubicon plan to tell the UN that they are under a new threat as a result of a heavy oil project that the province has approved on the band's traditional territory.
Surge Energy Global (Canada) Ltd. plans to drill an exploratory well that could result in 512 additional wells on the lands the Lubicon claim, 300 km north of Edmonton.
fol-request at masses.tao.ca