Appendix 3: Aboriginal Values and Significant Impact Indicators

ENVIRONMENTAL VALUES
IDENTIFIED AS BEING IMPORTANT BY ABORIGINAL PEOPLES

The following list presents the broad range of components and values of the environment that Aboriginal peoples have identified as being important and requiring protection and/or preservation to ensure their current and future social, cultural, spiritual and economic well-being. The following list was generated from information in the case study reviews, literature review and interviews of the research.

Land and Resources

• Abundance, distribution, movement of plants and wildlife
• Aquatic habitat
• Archaeological sites
• Barren Lands
• Beaver
• Burial sites, cremation grounds Cultural/geographic boundary markers
• Caribou
• Carving stone
• Changing patterns of consumption
• Climate
• Clothing needs (Arctic, High Arctic)
• Community water supplies
• Demographic changes
• Drinking water supplies
• Earth (diatomaceous, peat, volcanic ash)
• Eiderdown
• Environmental and biological productivity
• Fish
• Food and clothing requirements
• Forests
• Fox
• Geothermal resources (steam, water, water vapour heated by natural heat)
• Grizzlies
• Harvesting camps
• Harvesting rights
• Health
• Heritage/historic sites
• High water mark for streams
• Housing
• Human Capital
• Hydrology
• Ice beds
• Lakes
• Landfast ice Permafrost
• Lands for future tourism and other economic opportunities
• Lichen
• Maple sugar runs
• Marine Mammals
• Medicinal plants and roots
• Migratory birds (including habitat)
• Minerals (gypsum, sodium chloride)
• Moose
• Mountain sheep
• Musk ox
• Oceanography
• Outpost camps
• Pingos
• Place names
• Planning and management opportunities for wildlife, habitat, land, water
• Polar Bears
• Population growth
• Porcupine
• Preservation of cultural identity
• Preservation of traditional languages, beliefs, histories, cultural knowledge
• Prior development
• Protection of economic and spiritual relationship to land
• Protection/preservation of Arctic wildlife
• Public order (liquor, drug control)
• Quality, diversity and long-term optimum productivity of fish and wildlife populations
• Quantity and quality of water flow
• Raptors (eagles, owls, etc.) and products of (feathers, bones, etc)
• Rare, threatened, endangered species
• Muskrat
• Recreational areas
• Rocks (limestone, marble, flint, gravel, sand, shale, slate)
• Sage, sweet grass
• Scenery
• Shellfish
• Soils (ochre, clay, marl)
• Subsoils
• Survey monuments
• Traditional and current levels, patterns and character of harvesting Nutritional and cultural importance of wildlife
• Traditional native use
• Traditional routes of access
• Traditional systems of wildlife management
• Use and peaceful enjoyment of the land
• Vital, healthy wildlife populations
• Water beds
• Watersheds
• Wells
• Wild rice
• Wildlife and wildlife habitat
• Wolves

Aboriginal Rights

• Ability to exercise inherent Aboriginal and Treaty rights as per the Constitution Act, 1982
• Aboriginal interests in international agreements
• Aboriginal title in traditional territories
• Indian Act by-laws
• Intellectual property
• Land Codes under First Nations Land Management Act Stable land baseLand claims negotiations
• Metis rights and interests are not as fully recognized through legal jurisprudence and claims settlements to the same extent as First Nations and Inuit.
• Ownership and jurisdiction of lands and resources
• Protection of cultural distinctiveness and social well-being of Aboriginal peoples
• Treaty rights

SIGNIFICANT INDICATORS OF NEGATIVE IMPACTS

Aboriginal peoples have described a diversity of changes in, or impacts to the environment that they believe should be considered in EA processes to be significant environmental effects. The following list was generated from information in the case studies, literature and interviews covered by the research.

Harvesting

• Conflicts with harvesting practices and activities
• Disruption of harvesting activities
• Future harvest loss
• Greater distances of travel to hunting grounds
• Inability for youth to participate in their first hunt due to loss of caribou
• Loss of use, opportunity or interference with use of land and resources
• Restricted Access for harvesting and establishing/maintaining camps

Wildlife

• Altered caribou migration patterns (may require more travel)
• Caribou population decline
• Change in behaviour of species (e.g. habituation of bears at project sites due to garbage feeding)
• Damage to wildlife and habitat
• Loss of fish and fish habitat
• Loss of wildlife and wildlife habitat
• Wildlife population decline

Community/Health

• Contamination and degradation of community water supplies
• Cracked wells
• Sickness caused by contaminated animals

Contravenes Legal Standards

• Conflicts with conservation plans or regional land use plans
• Potential to exceed territorial and/or federal air and water quality standards

Ecosystem

• Deterioration of the natural environment
• Detrimental change in current use of land and resources for traditional purposes by Aboriginal persons
• Discharges or release of persistent and/or toxic chemicals, microbiological agents, nutrients
• Disruption of food webs
• Encroachment in areas of potentially high biodiversity
• Foreclosure of future resource use or production
• Habitat damage and /or disturbance
• Habitat fragmentation
• Habitat loss
• Negative effects on historical, archaeological, paleontological or architectural resources
• Negative effects on human health, well-being and quality of life
• Obstruction of migration or passage of wildlife
• Prevalence of acrid, noxious fumes and particles
• Reduction of quantity and/or quality of recreational opportunities or amenities
• Threats to rare and endangered species
• Transboundary ecosystemic or socio-cultural impacts
• Tumour growth on fish and wildlife
• Wildlife and/or fish population declines

Social Fabric/Health

• Abrogating well-established and traditional social obligations and domestic responsibilities
• Decline in use of place names relating to specific territories integral to Aboriginal culture
• Decreased quality and quantity of herbs and medicines − leads to weakened traditional healing practices and an additional strain on traditional health care systems
• Indicators of money management problems (e.g. increased gambling, alcohol and drug abuse, unpaid bills)
• Social indicators (e.g. increased alcohol abuse, criminal convictions, assault, spousal assault)

Economy

• Increased hardship among people who rely on resources as a primary or secondary source of diet and income
• Loss or damage to property or equipment used in wildlife harvesting
• Lost work related to gathering of fur-bearing animals
• Negative impact on the ability of future Dogrib to care for themselves in either the traditional way or cash economy
• Present and future loss of income from wildlife harvesting

Travel

• Interference with rights of navigation
• Interference with passage on water

Water

• Disruption of flow of underground streams
• Muddy, flooded rivers from clear-cut erosions
• Reduced flow of waters
• Reduced quality of waters
• Reduced quantity of waters

Aboriginal and/or Treaty Rights

• Decrease in land base causing adverse effects or negating aboriginal ability to negotiate land claims settlements
• Exclusion in the development, management and protection of Aboriginal and Treaty rights areas
• Infringement to Aboriginal rights where the proposal impairs and undermines the ability of Aboriginal peoples ability to continue with activities such as hunting, trapping, fishing
• Infringement to the Aboriginal right where the proposal imposes undue hardship on the holder of the right; denies the holders of the right their preferred means of exercising the right; and limits the Aboriginal right unreasonably
• Interference with exercise of Aboriginal and Treaty rights
• Interference with the peaceable enjoyment of traditional lands
• Limited access and exercise of aboriginal rights by development
• Long-term alienation
• Loss of opportunity to exercise Aboriginal rights
• Undermining the spiritual base

Other

• Exceeds activity thresholds
• Lack of proposed mitigation
• Unresolved environmental issues

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