Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Sheldon Wuttunee. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
SASKATOON – Among those who took the podium at the announcement of Saskatchewan’s large nuclear power strategy was Sheldon Wuttunee of Saskatchewan First Nations Natural Resource Centre of Excellence. The organization has been playing a key part in development of this nuclear strategy, and here is his speech, verbatim:
Thank you very much, Minister Harrison. Of course, thank you very much for the kind words, Premier Moe. Ladies and gentlemen, those of you that are here from right across Saskatchewan, our MLAs, our MPs, our chiefs, those that are representing our First Nations, President Glen McCallum, (Metis-Nation Saskatchewan).
I certainly want to take a moment to acknowledge and recognize our residential school survivors and those that are no longer here, and acknowledge each of you that have you know that are wearing the orange shirts and the pins, and it’s it’s a very important time of the year for us. And we see many of our kids wearing the orange shirts, and schools doing their activities. And there’s a big paul over at Sask Place right now, hosted by STC. So it’s really important that that acknowledgement is made both ways reciprocally, and I want to take a quick moment to say a special thank you to Premier Moe. And you know we enjoyed some good time tog”ether in London, and the exposure that I had gained and have gained in the nuclear sector, and the real demands that are on our province really allowed me to think about where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.
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And Minister Harrison had commented on the importance of partnerships and working together, and acknowledging the First Nations, of course, the Métis and Indigenous people that are here because these are our homelands, and through the generations we’ve had to deal with you know many of the issues such as residential schools, and now we’re now we’re in an era where we’re faced with some enormous opportunity in the nuclear sector.
We’re faced with enormous demands on our Saskatchewan workforce, that being First Nations, Métis, and non-First Nations. How do we work together in these spaces to make sure we’re meeting the needs of some of these major projects that are being entertained? I want to acknowledge Tim (Gitzel) and Cameco for the great work you’ve done in the north, because that is the blueprint. That’s the direction that many of these other projects are going to be following and working to follow. So, Tim, you I know you always represent Cameco, but also the relationships that you have with the nations very well.
You know, in regards to the announcement with the reactors in northwest Saskatchewan. When it’s something that we’re very excited about, they’ve been able to talk to a number of the leadership. Our chair, Chief Tyson Bear of Flying Dust, is here. We’ve had a lot of discussions with our leadership in in moving forward with this type of development, and we understand that it’s a heavy lift. It’s a heavy lift not only for Saskatchewan, but our First Nations as well.
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We’ve developed strong relationships with the university, so Jafar (Soltan) and the Nuclear Energy Management School. I work very closely with Eric Anderson with SIMSA. We’ve recognized that, as you mentioned, Mr. Premier, that the supply chain component of the nuclear sector moving forward is going to have enormous demands right across the globe.
And for us here in Saskatchewan, what a great opportunity to work together as First Nations and non-First Nations to come together to build those partnerships. And many of you have done that already, but to not only be able to supply those projects that we are hosting and entertaining here in the province, but those projects that they’re entertaining around the world. And so that creates not only partnerships, that creates opportunity, and it generates hopefully generational wealth for either entrepreneurs or band-owned companies, as we call them in our world. It allows us to build relationships right across the country as well. We know that the nuclear sector is is maturing out east in Ontario. How would I say it? The role that they play in in our learning is increasingly important, and as jurisdictions, provincial jurisdictions, work amongst each other. We too, as First Nations, are creating learnings and relationships as well. And how do we? How have you worked with the province in Ontario? How have you worked with the federal government? And in turn, that that allows us that opportunity to say, hey, these are things that maybe we haven’t thought about that we should.
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But I would say, by and large, ladies and gentlemen, that these nuclear projects, the nuclear sector, is not something that’s new. You know, it’s in terms of the fuel, in terms of the in terms of the mining aspects of nuclear. But the new nuclear, as we look at SMRs in the southeast corner of Saskatchewan, and now looking at the northwest corner, that is some new ground. It’s exciting ground, and these opportunities to come together to build partnerships on fuel, on manufacturing, on construction and operations are really important.
But also, I want to acknowledge another very important relationship that we’ve been exploring as well with the University of Saskatchewan, and that’s and the Sylvia Fedoruk Centre as well. And how do we come together to work together to produce rare medical isotopes for cancer treatment? And so these are many of the relationships that we’ve been able to build over the last handful of years of the centre. And so I’m very proud to to be here to share some comments on behalf of our board of directors.
Again, we’re an organization that’s wholly owned by our 74 First Nations, and when we look at opportunities in workforce development, we look at opportunities in in procurement and supply chain, and now as Minister Harrison mentioned, opportunities with equity in major projects is really it’s an important important road that we’re on … the coming years and decades. So access to capital, access to private capital, those are all important things that we talk about amongst our First Nations leadership in order to be able to participate in first hand within these projects. So, with that, Mr. Premier, I thank you for the invite today. We’re very excited about these projects, and we’ll be here to support and participate as things move forward. So, thank you very much.
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