This week former premier Stephen Kakfwi, negotiator for the K'Asho Got'ine Dene of Fort Good Hope, said he thought the pipeline project was "doomed to failure." The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines "doomed" as such: "consigned to misfortune or destruction."

Geez, not very optimistic. Sort of the same kind of optimism one might possess if staring down the Four Horsemen on doomsday. How grim.

But whatever doom and gloom may be on the horizon, take comfort in the fact Inuvik made the New York Times last week in a story entitled "Demands by Native Canadians Delay Start of Ambitious Pipeline Project." With reports that Imperial Oil just asked for $2 billion worth of concessions from Ottawa, I guess somebody forgot to tell the Times about big oil's "demands."

Switch over to Reuters news service out of London, England and its pipeline article's lead is, "Canadian governments may offer to broker a deal between major oil companies and native groups in the Arctic to push forward a pipeline..."

Two things here: aboriginal groups in the Arctic portion of the territories are more-or-less on-side with respect to the project; and, secondly, haven't the "Canadian governments" been trying to broker a deal all along?

Then take into consideration that hearings for the project - expected to take two years - have yet to get underway and with all that doom and gloom in the media on the subject, one wonders if it will even get to that stage.

Jason Unrau, Inuvik Drum