Extractive Economy Jobs Are Not the Good Jobs Tribes Were Promised
April 11, 2017
After the construction phase of the Keystone XL, only 35 employees would be needed to operate the pipeline.
A couple of years ago a tribal leader showed me an abandoned lumber mill near the village of Tyonek, Alaska. The company promised jobs. And, for a time, for a couple of decades, there were those jobs. But after the resource was consumed, the mill closed, the company disappeared, and the shell of the enterprise remains today.
This same story could be told in tribal communities across North America. Sometimes the resource was timber. Other times gas and oil. Or coal.
The lucky communities were left with a small toxic dump site. More often there was major cleanup work required after (plus a few more jobs). And in the worst case scenario, a Superfund site was left behind requiring government supervision and a major cleanup.
But all along, and in each case, the accompanying idea was that jobs would be a part of the deal.
There would be construction jobs to build the mine, pipeline, or processing plant. Then there would be truck-driving jobs moving materials, a few executive jobs (especially in public and community relations), and, of course, the eventual supervision of the cleanup, especially if the tribal government had its own environmental protection agency.
