Respecting Aboriginal Values & Environmental Needs

(RAVEN) Respecting Aboriginal Values and Environmental Needs is a nonprofit charitable organization that provides financial resources to assist Indigenous nations within Canada in lawfully forcing industrial development to be reconciled with their traditional ways of life, and in a manner that addresses climate change and other ecological sustainability challenges.^[3]

RAVEN works with Indigenous communities across Canada including supporting the Beaver Lake Cree Nation fighting about tar sands development, the Tsilhqotʼin Nation and Xeni Gwet'in Nation protect Teztan Biny, a lake, from mining.^[3] They also helped the Squamish Nation, Tsleil-Waututh Nation, and Coldwater Indian Band fight the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline through their Pull Together campaign.^[4]

RAVEN (Respecting Aboriginal Values and Environmental Needs) is a charitable organization based in Victoria, British Columbia, that provides Indigenous Canadian communities with legal representation and financial support.^[2] They are also incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in the United States.^[1] They incorporated in 2009.^[1][3] In 2025, Jeffrey Nicholls is their board president and Andrea Palframan is their acting executive director.^[2]

Susan Smitten previously served as executive director.^[4][5]

RAVEN raises legal funds to assist Indigenous Peoples in Canada who enforce their rights and title through the courts to protect their traditional territories. RAVEN is the only nonprofit organization in Canada with a mandate to raise legal funds to help Indigenous Peoples in Canada defend their Aboriginal rights and title (as guaranteed in section 35 of the Canadian Constitution), and the integrity of their traditional lands and cultures. The legal actions of RAVEN’s Indigenous partners have the potential to set precedents for future cases, advance legal rights and title of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and influence environmental impacts by mitigating climate change, maintaining biological diversity, and improving or maintaining access to clean water and secure food supplies.  

Since 2014, the legal actions funded resulted in the quashing of the approval of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline; protection of 83% of the Peel Watershed in the Yukon; halting of mining developments at Teztan Biny (Fish Lake), and T’ak Tl’ah Bin (Morrison Lake); and the cancellation of the Petronas Pacific Northwest LNG project at the mouth of the Skeena River.  

Projects the organization have help supported include:

• From the oil sands to the sea, challenging the fossil fuel corridor: Beaver Lake Cree Nation^[6] taking on Alberta and Canada; the Wet’suwet’en^[7] legal challenge to stop the Coastal GasLink pipeline through their territory (Central Coast, BC); Heiltsuk Nation’s civil action^[8] against US-based Kirby Corporation, British Columbia and Canada over a catastrophic diesel spill in the Great Bear Sea (north central BC Coast);  
• For rivers and rights in Treaty territory: Site C dam campaign^[9] with West Moberly First Nations (Treaty 8, BC);  
• Mining justice: Gitxaala Nation’s challenge to the BC Mineral Tenure Act^[10] to protect Banks Island (North Coast, BC); Neskantaga Nation’s legal challenge to inadequate environmental review in the Ring of Fire mining region (Ontario); Tsilhqot’in Nation’s civil action^[11] against Taseko Mines Ltd and BC.

The organization uses crowdfunding^[4] and has held different entertainment events to raise funds while educating the public. In 2022, RAVEN collaborated with Scout Canning, a sustainably sourced seafood company, to host a traveling concert series, Festival Afloat, from the deck of a tall ship.^[12]

RAVEN created "Home on Native Land", a virtual class on environmental justice issues, Canadian history, and Indigenous law.^[13] Employing humor as a tool, the ten-video course features comedian Ryan McMahon (Couchiching Anishinaabe).^[13]

The Beaver Lake Cree Nation, a small, impoverished band of 1,200 people in eastern Alberta, are suing the Canadian federal and Alberta provincial governments to protect the land.^[4] They claim that Alberta's tar sands developments are obliterating their traditional hunting and fishing lands in Alberta.^[5] RAVEN has supported the Beaver Lake Cree's efforts to protect their ecosystems since 2009.^[5]

In Canada, the rights of Indigenous people are constitutionally protected. Led by Chief Al Lameman, the Beaver Lake Cree Nation is asserting a treaty right to hunt and fish throughout lands where tar sands activity is destroying the forest. This court action seeks an injunction against new developments. The Beaver Lake Cree’s Statement of Claim cites more than 17,000 infringements on their treaty rights and in the course of doing so names every major oil company in the world.

Investment in the bituminous sands in northern Alberta – the world's last great oil field – totals approximately $200 billion. No assessment of the cumulative environmental or cultural damage has been done. It has been argued that this project – unhindered – will destroy a large part of the great boreal forest of North America, will escalate global warming, and will destroy an indigenous way of life. The Alberta government continues to approve projects, such that production of dirty oil will increase from the current 1.3 million barrels per day (210,000 m3/d) to 3 million barrels per day (480,000 m3/d) by 2015.

Already vast expanses of the boreal forest have been cut down – causing significant damage to the environment and to the earth's well-being. The forest is home to a long list of animals, from black bears and caribou to marten and moose. Chief Al Lameman says they can no longer find caribou herds where caribou were abundant just 12 years ago. Moose are also being displaced in large numbers and simply cannot be found. There is evidence the herds are also not self-sustaining – there is not a new calf population to replace the older population of moose.

As the forest is eroded to make way for open mines and in-situ mines, the ‘great lung’ of North America with its rich carbon-storing peat and soil, is disappearing. In its place, rapid growth of carbon emissions threatens to increase the Earth's temperature. Meanwhile, oil sands extraction pollutes the earth with its tailings ponds, pollutes the air with its emissions, and pollutes the water using two to four barrels of water to produce just one barrel of bitumen and creating vast lakes of chemicals that leach into local watersheds.

The Beaver Lake Cree is a small First Nations community located in eastern Alberta, north-east of Edmonton and just outside Lac La Biche. In the early 19th century, the Hudson's Bay Company built a trading post at Lac La Biche, and the locals hunted, fished and trapped fur to sell to the HBC agents. In the 1870s the Canadian government was involved in a gradual process of treaty making aimed at addressing Aboriginal title and opening up the lands for settlement. By the middle of the decade, food supplies for the plains Cree were running low with a rapid decline in buffalo, and geographical survey crews were running into tensions with the local inhabitants. In July 1875, Cree warriors stopped a telegraph crew at the fork of the Saskatchewan River. In response the Canadian government sent Treaty Commissioner Alexander Morris^[14] to meet with Cree, Chipewyan and Salteaux leaders beginning on August 15, 1876.

Discussions lasted for several days and included many pipe ceremonies. The pipe ceremonies were viewed by the Cree people as a mark of the solemnity of the occasion. In the presence of the pipe only the truth could be told and it was understood that promises made as part of such ceremonies would be kept. For their part, the Commissioners invoked the name of the Queen, and made the treaty promises in her name. Beaver Lake's immediate ancestors met with Commissioner Morris at Fort Pitt in September 1876.

Chief Pay-ay-sis signed Treaty 6. He and the other chiefs surrendered approximately 195,000 square kilometres of land . In return for their land, they were promised that they would be able to hunt and fish to make a living from the land as they had always done, and they were promised that each band member would be paid $5.00 per year.

The promise to pay $5.00 per year to each Cree person has been faithfully kept every year.

The important text of Treaty 6 is:

The Plain and Wood Cree Tribes of Indians, and all other the Indians inhabiting the district hereinafter described and defined, do hereby cede, release, surrender and yield up to the Government of the Dominion of Canada, for Her Majesty the Queen and Her successors forever, all their rights, titles and privileges, whatsoever, to the lands included within the following limits… Her Majesty further agrees with Her said Indians that they, the said Indians, shall have right to pursue their avocations of hunting and fishing throughout the tract surrendered as hereinbefore described, subject to such regulations as may from time to time be made by Her Government of Her Dominion of Canada, and saving and excepting such tracts as may from time to time be required or taken up for settlement, mining, lumbering or other purposes by Her said Government of the Dominion of Canada, or by any of the subjects thereof duly authorized therefor by the said Government.

The treaty generates tension between the Crown's right to seize land and the enduring right of First Nations to hunt and fish. In the 19th century, land available for hunting and fishing was plentiful. But by the early 21st century, tar sands developments has encroached on such huge amounts of land.

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that he Crown cannot take up so much land as to compromise the meaningful right to hunt. If game becomes so scarce that the First Nations people would have to travel far and expend too much effort to make the hunting worthwhile, then the treaty right is no longer meaningful. If that decrease in the abundance of fish and wildlife is caused by Crown actions, then the Crown actions can be declared unconstitutional.

The Athabasca oil sands deposit represents the second largest known deposit of oil in the world, after Saudi Arabia. There are estimated to be more than a trillion barrels of oil embedded in the sands, with an estimated 315 billion barrels (5.01×10¹⁰ m³) considered to be recoverable.^[15] Production of synthetic crude oil from the tar sands is well under way – Alberta is producing about 1.3 million barrels (210,000 m³) of dirty oil per day.^[16] That amount is expected to double or triple in the next few years, based on recent massive private investment in these projects.

The environmental liabilities that result from the various steps in oil sands extraction and refining process include:

• Destruction of the boreal forest ecosystem^[17][18]
• Damage to the Athabasca watershed^[19][20]
• Heavy consumption of natural gas^[21][22]
• Creation of toxic tailings ponds^[23]
• Increased release of greenhouse gases.^[24]

• Environmental issues in Canada

• Hoogeveen, Dawn; Borrows, John; Ritts, Max; Smitten, Sue, eds. (2025). The RAVEN Essays: Indigenous Environmental Justice, Education, and Self-Determination. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781487562403.

• Official website
• Home on Native Land, 10-module course about Indigenous law, Canadian history, and environmental justice developed by RAVEN