Environment can't be traded for jobs - Snow

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The environment can't be traded for jobs, warns Goodstoney Chief John Snow.

"Unless we respect Mother Earth, we will destroy ourselves," he told graduate university students heading out to Alberta reserves to work as consultants for the summer.

Despite a desperate need for jobs - the Stoneys have a 90 per cent unemployment rate - Chief Snow sad economic progress can't come at the expense of destroying the environment.

But that poses a problem, he admitted.

The business of making profit and traditional Indian harmony with nature just "don't jive," he said.

Even Natives who want to make money but live in harmony with nature can't do it "because in order to make money you have to step on it (the environment)," said Snow.

Non-Natives are even worse.

"We need to teach non-natives about the balance of nature, to respect Mother Earth," said Snow, a member of the First Nations Resource Council executive, which runs the program sponsoring the students.

Snow said Indian bands need environmentally-safe economic development and he called on Ottawa to help Indian reserves develop to deal with their "Third World" conditions.

He said federal failure to help bands build a strong economic base is part of the government's ongoing attempt to "assimilate us" into the Canadian mainstream.

H said there's "hardly any" development on reserves, because Ottawa wants to get Indians off reserves.

Snow hopes the federal government will change its ways in the 1990s and will finally help establish environmentally-safe businesses on reserves to help Indians get off welfare.

There will be no improvement of the horrendous conditions now common on Indian reserves unless long-term economic development plans are put into lace, he said.