Fort Chipewyan is an isolated northern community of some 1200 residents. For thousands of years, the First Nations people living in the area have relied on their traditional ecological and cultural knowledge to live off of the surrounding land. Historically, the health of the people has relied on the health of the environment - a delicate relationship that is now being destroyed by industrial operations in the area. Since the 1960s, the surrounding environment has been desecrated by hydro electric dams, pulp and paper mills, clear cutting and uranium mines. Today, Fort Chipewyan finds itself downstream from the most environmentally destructive industrial project in North America - the Alberta Tar Sands.
After over a decade of rare and fatal cancers and other unexplainable illness sweeping the community, many Fort Chipewyan residents now feel as if they are being subjected to a cultural genocide. A strong sense of grief hangs heavy in the heart of Fort Chipewyan as the people, the land and the culture are all beginning to waste away. Many of those who remain feel that the only options for survival are to either move away or work for the oil industry and abandon their traditional ways of life.
