Chatelaine_April_May_2019

The entrepreneur building

an alternative energy future

FROM STANDING ROCK to Trans Mountain, it is now, sadly, an

all-too-familiar image: large groups of outraged, despondent

Indigenous protestors united against yet another pipeline that

threatens their land and water. But a story that gets a lot less

exposure —and one that off ers a lot more hope—is that of the

dozens of Indigenous communities building alternatives to

those pipelines.

In 2017, about one-fi fth of the renewable energy projects in

Canada were owned and operated by Indigenous communi-

ties, generating both clean power and jobs. This September,

many of those projects will be the subject of a new 13-part doc-

umentary series called Power to the People, airing on the

Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. The host of the series

is Melina Laboucan-Massimo, a member of the Lubicon Cree

First Nation, a former Greenpeace Canada climate campaigner

and, most recently, a Climate Change Fellow at the David

Suzuki Foundation. If Laboucan-Massimo wasn’t hosting the

show, she might well have been one of its stars. In 2011, her

home community of Little Buff alo, Alta., already devastated

by decades of resource extraction, was the site of a pipeline

rupture and one of the largest oil spills in the province’s his-

tory. Four years later, as part of a master’s degree project in

Indigenous governance at the University of Victoria, Laboucan-

Massimo helped Little Buffalo build a 20.8-kilowatt solar

installation to power the local health centre. Not only did it

demonstrate to the community that renewable energy was

accessible and could create employment but it was also both

a way toward a sustainable future and a link to the past.

Lubicon Solar, the fi rm she formed to implement the project,

has since solarized houses for the Tiny House Warriors, a

group of activists who have built homes on the path of the

proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. “The way

Indigenous people live in connection with Mother Earth is

through reciprocity,” Laboucan-Massimo says. “Giving and

taking, honour and respect. You don’t take more than you

need. Renewables are a rejuvenative energy; they’re about

respect and love for the land and ensuring that it’s passed on

to future generations.”

Droughts, fl ooding

and extreme weather

around the world will

drive people out of

their homes by the

millions. Small island

states like Tuvalu and

the Seychelles could

fully disappear.

Bangladesh and the

Philippines may

become largely

uninhabitable. And

California is already

experiencing water

shortages. Canada’s

vast space and

abundant resources

will make it a magnet

for climate refugees.

The results are hard

to predict, but what’s

certain is that people

are coming en masse.

APRIL/MAY 1019 • CHATELAINE 83

Melina

Laboucan-Massimo,

37

PHOTO, GREG MILLER.

Canada, for all its problems, will

look desirable to climate refugees