Sandy Lake blessing for gold exploration – by Bryan Phelan (Onotassiniik Magazine – Fall 2014)

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Robin Luke Webster, president of Goldeye Explorations, figures he spent about three months of a recent one-year period in Sandy Lake First Nation. It has been an extraordinary but necessary investment of time, Webster has found.

With the First Nation’s blessing, Goldeye has been exploring for gold on its mining claims south of Sandy Lake since 2013. The junior exploration company is based in Richmond Hill, Ontario, part of the Greater Toronto Area.

“First Nations and exploration companies need to understand each other better,” Webster says during a presentation at the Ontario Mining Forum in June. “In Sandy Lake, community members had no idea what exploration is and on our first visits there we had no idea what a remote First Nation is.”

Webster helped the learning process along by spending 92 days in Sandy Lake during the preceding year, when he held the titles of manager and then vice-president of corporate affairs and community relations for Goldeye. “None of that is project related; it’s just talking to people,” he says of that time in the community. “It’s not easy. A junior (exploration company) can’t really afford that time but that’s what we’ve got to do.”

Webster’s outreach activities in Sandy Lake have included hosting an information booth during Treaty Day and a community feast, supporting participation of youth hockey teams in the regional Little Bands tournament and making home visits to local elders.

This relationship building is the foundation for Goldeye’s five-year exploration agreement with Sandy Lake, signed last year. “It takes time; there’s no substitute,” Webster explains. “You can’t fly in and fly out one day later and say ‘here, sign this (agreement).’ That’s crazy.”

With so much potentially at stake – use of Sandy Lake’s traditional territory and the gold it might yield – a certain level of understanding and trust is needed before a proper exploration deal can be reached, suggests Webster. “You can’t do it without the understanding because you’re not sure what you’re negotiating about; you’re not sure what you’re talking about. You need the trust, you need the understanding and then you can have the confidence to know, ‘OK, we’re giving and taking; it’s a good deal.’ Agreements have to work for all sides, so there has to be trust.”

By spending so much time in Sandy Lake, Webster says he witnessed firsthand daily challenges people in a remote First Nation can face, such as limited access to health services, but he also experienced the community’s strengths.

“I have visited with a number of elders in the community and had an opportunity to hear many stories about life in Sandy Lake now and in times past,” he says. “I have been invited into people’s homes for feasts, memorials, birthday parties and other gatherings, and the welcome has always been warm and genuine; there is such a strong sense of community. Respect plays an important role in day-to-day life but so does laughter. I’ve made a lot of real friendships in Sandy Lake.”

While visiting elders, Webster mostly listens but sometimes he talks a bit about Goldeye’s exploration work. At the company’s Treaty Day booth this work was illustrated with the help of a poster and a drill core. And during the Goldeye drilling program last winter, Sandy Lake’s chief and council, along with their band office staff, were given a full tour of the work site. Encouraged by Goldeye, others dropped by for informal tours.

“It’s a learning process for both sides,” Webster says of the relationship between the company and the First Nation, which now owns a small part of Goldeye through the exploration agreement. “The process has to start at the earliest stages of exploration … the very beginning. We certainly haven’t reinvented the wheel in terms of the consultation activities, we’ve just moved it a heckuva lot forward. Local support at the early stage is crucial for Goldeye to be able to effectively carry out the exploration activities that we hope will lead to the next major gold discovery in northwestern Ontario.”

The drill program last winter started with an elder from Sandy Lake leading a traditional blessing ceremony near the project site. Participating in the ceremony were Sandy Lake Chief Bart Meekis, councillors and community members, alongside Goldeye staff and contractors. “The ceremony to me signified mutual respect and shared hope,” says Webster.

A couple of months after the winter drilling had stopped, around the time of Sandy Lake’s annual Treaty Day in June, Goldeye sponsored a feast to celebrate a safe drilling period and its positive results, and the community’s support of the project.

“There is a genuine appreciation that our company is taking the time to be involved in the community at such a deep level,” Webster says. “And working with the people here on a day-to-day basis, and being a part of something with the potential to create so much opportunity, has been an incredibly positive experience.”

Goldeye personnel and Sandy Lake volunteers served the food at the feast, which included geese and moose meat. Webster was so busy handing out plates to the waves of Sandy Lakers who arrived he didn’t get one himself. He didn’t seem to mind.