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SLAVE LAKE, ALTA.
Oilpatch contractors say Northern Alberta native bands are demanding cash from companies working on their traditional lands and the provincial and federal governments won't intervene.
Rather than bid for oilpatch contracts, the bands pressure oil companies to give them business and throw up roadblocks on Crown land if they don't get their money, said Kelly Persson of the Northern Oilfields Contractors Association.
The association claims local companies can't afford to meet the demands and have had to chop staff and sell equipment to make ends meet. The dispute centres on the status of the Crown land claimed as traditional lands by the five northern Treaty 8 Indian bands.
Leaders of the Bigstone, Woodland Cree, Loon River, Lubicon and Whitefish bands claim much of northern Alberta.
The bands have the acknowledged right...