"...There are other aspects of the contemporary Canadian resource boom that need to be acknowledged. Given that most of the major resource projects occur in remote regions, the development pressures are often focused on remote Aboriginal communities. Historically, this has meant that ill-prepared, vulnerable settlements bore the brunt of often overwhelming change. With the new legal and political realities, these same development pressures potentially carry significant benefits for thesecommunities. Across the country, communities, regional Indigenous governments, and Aboriginal people generally face significant decisions about their future and the best means for capitalizing on the financial, employment, and business development opportunities.

While the potential of the Canadian resource boom is impressive, Aboriginal leaders and governments understand that each decision about participating in resource development is unlikely to be unanimously accepted. At the community level, each project represents one of the very few chances the people have to reconfigure their place in the national economy. Equally important, commercial resource opportunities are not evenly distributed across the country. Unsurprisingly, this unequal distribution results in some Indigenous communities having impressive commercial opportunities while others, sometimes only a relatively short distance away, have few resource options.

Because the stakes are so high, it is not surprising that considerable unrest remains in Indigenous communities around resource development. There are tensions between outsiders and Aboriginal people, the former typically eager to move the projects forward and the latter suspicious and uncertain about the benefits of such major undertakings. Within some Aboriginal communities, opinion is sharply divided between those favouring the jobs and business opportunities that accompany large-scale projects and those opposed to disruptions of harvesting grounds and nervous about the community-level consequences of major infrastructure, construction, and resource development projects. Prior to the ‘duty to consult and accommodate’ decisions and the many other legal and political changes that have occurred, Aboriginal communities had very good reasons to be concerned about their ability to both influence and benefit from resource activities in their territories. Even now, with considerably more political and legal authority than in the past, many Indigenous communities are not yet convinced that they have the tools they need to ensure that resource development is managed properly and serves community interests. Finding ways to reassure them and to build together on the many successes outlined here will be the biggest challenge facing both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians as they seek to obtain the very highest value for the country’s bountiful natural resource endowment."



CONCLUSION