Speech by President Michael Dan
November 22, 2007
…to the Lac Lacroix First Nation Community at the Lac La Croix First Nation Roundhouse November 22, 2007
The world around us is changing in ways that most non-aboriginal people cannot easily grasp. The reason for this is that the western view of the world prevents westerners from seeing the full extent of the problems that we have created. Quite simply put, the industrial revolution that began around 1830, and which was based on the fantasy that there would always be an endless supply of coal, oil, and natural gas, is itself ‘running out of gas’. Take, for example, the case of the United States.
There was once a time when the US was the world’s number one oil producer. Yet today, in spite of all the sophisticated technology that is available to it, oil production in the lower 48 States has never been higher than it was in 1970. So we now have a situation where instead of being a net exporter of oil, the U.S. imports 67% of its oil—and most people don’t know this—the number one exporter of oil to the US is not Saudi Arabia, but Canada. In fact, Canada exports half of the oil and natural gas it produces to our friends to the south, and even more ironically, Canada now uses a significant amount of its own natural gas to make oil to sell to Americans. I am referring here to the tar sands in Alberta, which are an ecological disaster in every possible way.
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