Indirectly Shaping Regional Economies
Beyond the direct economic impacts of specific projects, modern treaties also indirectly shape the economies of their regions by asserting their priorities. The Peel River Decision is a good example of this, where modern treaty nations used their agreements to protect the land from certain types of economic activity and therefore kept it open for others.
The Peel River watershed includes large portions of the traditional territories of three Yukon First Nations: Na-cho Nyak Dun, Tr’ondëk Hwëchin, and Vuntut Gwitchin; as well as one Northwest Territories First Nation: the Tetlit Gwich’in.
There are no permanent settlements, active mines or producing oil wells in the Yukon portion of the Peel. For the Indigenous people of the Peel this is a sacred place, rich in renewable resources and alive with the spirits of their ancestors. Through a planning process enshrined in their modern treaties, First Nations agreed to a land use plan that would protect 80% of the Peel Region from industrial development.
When the Yukon Government effectively ignored the land use planning process and unilaterally reduced the percentage of protected land to 30%, modern treaty organizations banded together and took legal action. The case eventually found its way to the Supreme Court of Canada, where, in 2017, the Yukon Government was found to have ignored its treaty obligations and ordered to restart the land use planning process. In 2019 the Peel Watershed Regional Land Use Plan was signed by all parties, with 83% of the Peel watershed under either permanent (55%) or interim (28%) protection.
In this situation, First Nations were able to use their modern treaties to shape the regional economy by protecting land from certain types of economic activity. As a consequence, the land remains available for uses aligned with the objectives of modern treaties, such as harvesting and tourism.
