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New navigators help patients through cancer in the NWT Cancer care coordinators like Marie-Christine Aubrey have planstomakethejourneyback to health less intimidating. See page 7. A tale of prairie rock n roll heartbreak A funny thing happened to Yellowknife music journalist Jack Antonio on the way to the Black Sabbath show in Edmonton. See page 11. SEEING IS BELIEVING Yellowknife eye team focuses on patients all over the NWT. See page 6. A sense of humour crisp as the Arctic Now working on their sixth season the upstart owners of Qanurli are the de facto dons of comedy in Nunavut. See page 10. Yellowknifes Rankin is bound for New York Victoria Rankin will be playing NCAA hockey this fall and shes earned partial funding to do it. See page 8. V IS IT W W W .N O R J.C A A national award winning independent newspaper serving northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories since 1977 1.00 February 10 2016 Vol. 39 No. 39 By DALI CARMICHAEL The road to hell is paved with good intentions and so too was the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan LARP the rst of seven policies developed by the Alberta govern- ment to establish land and water use plans in the province. Uponapanelreviewofthepolicy- as requested in 2014 by six First Na- tionswithterritoriesintheregionwho statedtheirtreatyrightshadbeenvio- lated - competing interests in north- ern Alberta were not balanced in the regional plan allowing the needs of industry to erode the rights endan- ger the health and impact the lands of indigenous peoples. TheLARPsetsoutavisionthatis inclusive of Aboriginal Peoples and in fact goes above and beyond ex- pectations for First Nation consul- tation reads the report which has been released to the involved First Nations but not to the public. The reviewpanelobserveshoweverthat theactualimplementationofthisvi- sionfallsshortasitdoesntintegrate FirstNationsinndingasolution.To be frank what Alberta said it would do and what it actually did are very dierent things. Thepanelsndingswereinlinewith the concerns expressed by the First NationswhichincludetheAthabasca ChipewyanMikisewCreeColdLake FortMcKayFNandMetisOnionLake Cree and Chipewyan Prairie Dene. ThendingsarecriticaloftheLARP arguing it doesnt protect Aboriginal cultureandcreatesnewconservation areaswithoutreferringtotraditional land use. There are few protection activist group dedicated to the pro- tection of environmental and indig- enous rights has followed the pro- ceedings for over two years. It was just kind of a common theme in that whenever there was indigenousinputitwasalwaysreally goodveryvalidandthenwhenthey would release the nal framework therereallywasntmuchchangefrom the draft she said. I want to know traditional baselines the concerns from the First Nations. The report was nished in the summer of 2015 but was only dis- tributed to First Nations last month. The most frustrating part is that this policy and this framework was utilized as a justication to validate approvals of oil and gas projects within our territories even though we had led for a statutory review even though it was under review said Eriel Deranger spokesperson for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. Then the ndings come out that validate our arguments around theillegalityofthispolicyandthegov- ernment sits on it not just sits on it but sits on it for a very long time and then doesnt release it to the public. She said she is concerned about the governments motivation in not releasing the report. Personally I see this as a prime opportunityforboththenewprovin- cial and the federal governments to live up to their commitment to this renewed relationship with First Na- tions communities to addressing thingslikeclimatechangetoaddress- ingthingslikeeconomicchallenges. See Panel on Page 7. Report slams toothless Athabasca plan measuresinplace.Industrywasfound tohavepriorityovertheconstitutional rightsofthelocalindigenousgroups. Thereportreectsfrustrationsfelt bypartiesthroughoutthewholeland useframeworkdevelopmentprocess whichbeganaftertheLARPsrelease in 2012. Jesse Cardinal coordina- tor for Keepers of the Athabasca an where is our input and feedback re- ectedTohavethisreviewthatwere talking about today it validates so much of that. It validates all of the informationthatwasneverincluded in the nal draft of the framework. Here is all this information about traditional land use about co-man- agement about cultural land use What Alberta said it would do and what it actually did are very dierent things. LARP report Hes no cupid but Hay River native Brendan Green was on target at the 2016 BMW IBU World Cup Biathlon in Canmore Feb. 7. See story page 9. PhotoPamDoyle