The idea of confederation was brought up in 1839 by Lord Durham, in his Report on the Affairs of British North America. In 1837 some areas of Canada began to experience rebellions. In response to the turmoil, Durham was sent by Great Britain to investigate the cause of these rebellions, thus the foundation of his report. In his report he said that “It is not necessary that I should take any pains to prove that this is a state of things which should not, which cannot continue. Neither the political nor the social existence of any community can bear much longer.”3 Durham was expecting to find that liberalism and economincs were the cause of the rebellion, however; he found that the rebellion was actually being caused by conflict between the traditional French and modernizing English. In response, Durham proposed that Upper and Lower Canada be united into one province. Although this idea never actually held any significance, it still managed to set a precedent and spark the idea of a possible Confederation.<br> It took nearly 30 years after Durham's report to formulate the British North American Act. On July 1, 1867, the British Colonies of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick were united to form the Dominion of Canada. This is what is referred to as the Canadian Confederation. This was not a revolution, but rather a calculated political separation. In the decades before 1867, “almost all influential British opinion came to favour the eventual creation of a regional union, [but] in Canada opinion was more divided.”1 Canada knew that they wanted to be their own country, but they were not sure to what level of independence they really wanted. On the other hand, Great Britain wanted to decrease their involvement with overseas colonies as it was becoming increasingly expensive. So, when they heard that Canada wanted independence, they were very eager to make a deal. Canada has always had a primarily resource based economy, so Britain was not ready to let them go completely. Britain wanted to come up with a way in which they could still benefit from the overseas resources, while still giving Canada what they wanted.<br> The British North America Act (BNA) brought upon the new Dominion of Canada a constitution “similar to that of the United Kingdom.”2 Although separated, Britain still had its way of maintaining just enough control of Canada. The executive government of the new dominion was still vested in Queen Victoria and her successors. Canada's new government was formed in British tradition of a parliament and a cabinet. Senators were appointed for life to form the legislature, and representation for the House of Commons was determined by elections.<br> The most important part of the BNA was the new constitution, which outlined the federal and provincial powers. The people were not so worried about all of the little details; they were really just worried about being able to live peacefully the ‘Canadian way.’ One of the lines of the BNA stated that the ultimate goal was peace, order, and good government. Canadians took this little minute detail and lived by it. They even came to brand that as the new Dominions motto.

The Delegates of the Provinces and the Quebec Confederation Conference. 27, Oct. 1864.

1White, W. L. Canadian Confederation: a decision-making analysis. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1979. Page 110.

2McConnell, William H. Commentary on the British North America Act. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1977. Page 7.

3Durham, Lord. Archive.org. Edited by C.P. Lucas. Vol. 3. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912. Page 127, 128.

Fort Good Hope is a community in the Northwest Territories, located along the Mackenzie River. A 2016 census declared there to be a total of 516 people living in Fort Good Hope, which accounts for about 1% of the Northwest Territories total population. Fort Good Hope is in a region called Sahtu, which is a Dene word meaning Great Bear Lake. The Sahtu consists of four Dene Communities: Deline, Tulita, Fort Good Hope, and Colville Lake. There is another community, Norman Wells, that is situated between Fort Norman and Fort Good Hope. Although many Dene and Meti do live there, Norman Wells remains a primarily non native town. It remains non-Native due to a high presence of oil, which causes white settlers to flock there.<br> Fort Good Hope relies on a harvesting based food source. There was a survey conducted that suggests that Fort Good Hope has an estimated annual harvest of 100 kg of edible country meat per capita.2 Their favored meat sources include caribou, moose, fish, small game, and birds. The main food source is caribou and moose, as it is the most efficient in terms how many people can be fed with one kill. Hunting is usually a job that is left for the men, however, they have been known to have event in which all members of the community engage in a large hunt. These formal community hunts are “popular in the Northwest Territories and have been used by some communities particularly in response to reduced availability of barren-ground caribou, which continues to be a high-priority species for subsistence.”2 Women were just as important as men in Meti culture. Women were the backbone of society, “the ones who kept the family together and passed on values of caring, giving, and sharing.”3 They were even known to follow the motto “work work and more work.”3 In Fort Good Hope, hunting is strictly a means of survival, and is not done for profit. Recreation hunting is frowned upon in Fort Good Hope and many remote settlements in the Mackenzie river area. With their entire well being resting on the ability to hunt the resources produced by surrounding ecosystems, Fort Good Hope and communities alike were outraged by Thomas Berger. If a pipeline were to extend through their ecosystem, the animal populations would be greatly diminished and so would the people that rely on them. Although the proposition of a pipeline is a nightmare for the indigenous people of Fort Good Hope, their opinions are likely to be shunned by the white populations who would be more then happy to make a deal and receive compensation. Fort Good Hope is governed at the local level by a community council, which acts as both a municipal council and a band council. This is not the normal government structure for a small settlement like Fort Good Hope. “This is one of the ways in which Fort Good Hope has shown creativity and initiative in local governance, effectively subverting the imposed political structure and creating something genuinely new and unique out of its material.”1 The community has shown great interest in the self-government model and they continue to push the limits on their “creativity.” While this seems like a positive thing, it actually proves to make things more difficult with the proposition of the pipeline in the Mackenzie Valley. With the whites making the majority of the decisions, the Indians were restricted in their participation level within the government. This means that the natives would have a much harder time fighting people like Thomas Berger to protect their environment.

Indians mending fishing nets, Fort Good Hope, [N.W.T.] Ca. 1945.

1Kulchyski, Peter. Like the Sound of a Drum Aboriginal Cultural Politics in Denendeh and Nunavut. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2014.

2Mcmillan, Roger, and Brenda Parlee. Dene hunting organizations in fort good hope, northwest territories: “ways we help each other and share what we can.”

3St-Onge, Nicole, Carolyn Podruchny, and Brenda Macdougall. Contours of a people: Metis family, mobility, and history. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014. April 12, 2012. Accessed November 24 , 2017. Page 265.

James Bay lies at the Southernmost tip of the Hudson Bay, bordering both Ontario and Quebec. James Bay was, and still is, the home of many aboriginal communities. Some of these include the Kashechewan, Inuit, and several different communities affiliated with the Cree. James Bay was one of the first occupied areas of Canada, due to its high population of Indigenous people. It is such a popular settlement because of its thriving ecosystem. However, “life in this territory is difficult - the land and waters are frozen for two thirds of year.”1 The Bay is the ending point for thousands of lakes and streams and large rivers such as the St. Lawrence. The James Bay/Hudson Bay watershed recycles one-sixth1 of the world’s fresh water. In 1971, the plans were announced by Hydro-Quebec and the Quebec Government to construct a system of hydroelectric dams. This $5.6 billion3 project would result in destruction of huge amounts of the environment surrounding James Bay. There was immediate outrage by not only the environmentalists, but more importantly the Indigenous people who have called James Bay home for thousands of years. They feared the destruction of their communities. The outrage only grew when word got out that the dams would result in the flooding of over 10,000 square km of land. The Cree has spent 4000-6000 years in this rugged terrain, in which “a complex set of skills were honed to negotiate the particular demands of each season.1 They had spent so long adapting to this way of life, so they had no intent of starting over somewhere else. However, this was also the basis of argument used against the Cree.<br> Claude Peloquin and Fikret Berkes explained that “human groups who interact closely with their environment -- indigenous resource users, hunters, fishers, farmers, and others -- often develop knowledge and practices that are pragmatically adaptive to shifts and changes in the environment.”2 People who were in favor of the project would use this to argue that the Cree and the Inuit were so closely inept with their environment that they should be able to thrive in any environment. Also, they would argue that if they were able to survive for so long in an environment as difficult and complex as the James Bay, then they should have no problem anywhere else. However, the problem was not that the indigenous people were worried that they could not survive anywhere else. The indigenous people themselves knew as well as anyone else that they would have no problem adapting to a new environment, but that was not the point. The point was that they have called this place home for such a long time, so why should they have to pack up and move just because some white people want to make money. After four years of negotiating and fighting for what they believed in, the two sides were finally able to settle. The indigenous people insisted on gaining more control over local governments, a school and health system created just for their own settlements, and a judicial system to protect the people and the environment. They were even able to get Hydro-Quebec to move the site of their first damn, sign an agreement limiting the allowable change of water levels, and a “remedial works system for social and environmental damages.”1 Most importantly, Hydro-Quebec agreed to compensate the indigenous groups affected with immense amounts of money. When all was said and done the Cree and Inuit were paid $225 million over 20 years and the Naskapi received $9 million. Despite the immense payoff, many indigenous people were still unhappy with the deal because they felt that there could be no price tag put on nature. Also, the James Bay Agreement happened two years before Thomas Berger wrote his report. It could be argued that this agreement set a precedent for Berger. By seeing that the natives could simply be paid off, it could have given him the false idea that there really is nothing wrong with taking their land.

Mouth of Attawapiskat River, James Bay Coast, Ontario. 2002.

1Hornig, James F. Social and Environmental Impacts of the James Bay Hydroelectric Project. McGill-Queens University Press, 1999. Page 26.

2Peloquin, Claude, and Fikret Berkes. "Local Knowledge, Subsistence Harvests, and Social–Ecological Complexity in James Bay." Human Ecology37, no. 5 (2009): 533-45. doi:10.1007/s10745-009-9255-0.

3Salisbury, R. A Homeland for the Cree Regional Development in James Bay, 1971-1981. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2014. January 12, 1986. Accessed November 25, 2017. Page 3, 17.