In May of 2024, after watching the Dried Up documentary, I reached out to Harley Bastien of the Piikani First Nation. I asked Harley to tell me what I am missing in my thinking and he delivered. Reviewing this conversation today, I notice that I open with reference to Dixon Hammond and the Beaver Creek Watershed Crew, as well as giving power to landowners, not First Nations—yikes! A couple weeks ago at the Chiefs Steering Committee’s Think Tank on Water in Edmonton that the term “stakeholder” refers to taking a stake. Makes me wonder if it was not a coincident that I worked in the “Stakeholder Relations” department for the oil and gas industry rather than the Indigenous Relations department.
The conversation begins with me situating the dialogue in the context of watershed protection and headwaters stewardship in Southern Alberta, describing how a local council brought together Indigenous representatives, residents, experts, and council members to ensure landowners lead decisions about their river system. I explain that despite 20 years of local work to care for the river, the broader headwaters remain vulnerable, emphasizing that logging, coal mining, and road building damage water sources and calling for restoration of the eastern slopes as protected “taps” for regional water.
Harley introduces himself through his Blackfoot identity, explaining that he comes from the Ani people and sees himself as part of a lineage stretching back perhaps 10,000 generations, with a way of life “etched” into his being. He describes being taught that humans are not above other creation, that everything—including plants, animals, air, and even beings beyond Earth—has a spirit, and that Blackfoot teachings acknowledge “star people” or star beings who have visited Earth. Alongside this traditional upbringing, he recounts his “Canadian” education, brief work in oil and gas that he left because of its destructive impacts, and his subsequent decades in environmental consulting, where he deliberately avoided government employment and instead built private-sector initiatives like Harmony Walkers and Buffalo Rock Tipi Camp to blend Indigenous and Western science. He also serves on Alberta’s Indigenous Wisdom Advisory Panel but criticizes its focus on making oil sands appear acceptable, calling this misaligned with his values.
As the discussion deepens, Harley contrasts Indigenous land-based learning with Western education, arguing that many scientists and professionals learn about land from computers and brief field visits rather than living on the land, which he sees as “missing the whole boat.” He recounts a vision quest that led him to “save the land” as a way of saving his culture and all those generations, and he critiques how perspectives are shaped by greed, arrogance, and narrow upbringing. He is sharply critical of Western schooling and religion, calling education “one of the roots of all evil” when it transmits lies, such as teaching that Columbus “discovered” a land already inhabited, or presenting sanitized histories that erase Indigenous presence and contributions. He denounces churches as often functioning like financial institutions and “torture chambers,” rejects mythologized religious narratives, and insists that children are being failed when they are not taught the truth about history, land, and humanity’s dependence on the rest of creation.
Harley then links these critiques directly to environmental crisis and intergenerational responsibility, stressing that trees, animals, air, and water do not need humans, but humans absolutely need them. He condemns short-term, self-centered thinking focused on personal wealth, three-year returns, and material legacies while ignoring breathable air, clean water, and the broader web of life, arguing that most people are “me and ours” oriented and unwilling to look 100–200 years ahead. He describes “giving back” as a total life commitment—every day his “boots hit the floor” he is working for Mother Earth and all his relatives, not just human descendants, and he criticizes performative or minimal efforts, unpaid though his own work often is. Using stories from his childhood berry-picking in the mountains, he illustrates teachings about leaving enough for other beings, staying quiet to respect mountain spirits, and the warning that if those spirits leave, the mountains and all dependent life will suffer—contrasting this with today’s “three ring circus” of industrial activity and recreation in the headwaters that threatens to dry rivers and spark future “water wars.”
In closing, Harley asserts that Mother Earth will survive and reorganize without humans, as she has before, and warns that if humanity continues on its current path, nature will eventually “flush the toilet of man,” a force no wealth, science, or military can stop. He expresses that he personally has no hope under present conditions but invites others to prove him wrong by changing, emphasizing that the first step is truth—especially in education—through revising curricula to correct myths about figures like Columbus and Cortez and acknowledging that colonial powers had no legitimate right to claim Indigenous lands.
Follow and Support: Harley’s legacy lives on in his son, Trevor Bastien
The Surest Way to Block Open-Pit Coal Mining
Join our Piikani Partners in asserting their constitutional aboriginal right to healthfully consume fish from their traditional waters of the Crowsnest and Oldman Rivers.
