HIS family once traded fur pelts with the Hudson Bay Company but Chief Jim Boucher of Fort McKay First Nation is on his way to China to talk about a new product and it could be worth billions.

He has a standing invitation to Beijing where a Chinese oil company is anxious to talk to him about a parcel of land in the middle of the world’s largest petroleum resource: the Athabasca oil sands. Fort McKay First Nation, a community of aboriginal Canadians of mainly Chipeywan descent has title over land which contains some 350 million barrels of bitumen, a significant resource for the less than 500 community members.

“Once the Chinese found we had some oil, they invited me over to China. I will probably go in April,” he says.

Fort McKay has already agreed a memorandum of understanding with Shell, its neighbour on the far shore of the Athabasca river. Chief Boucher’s deadpan expression gives nothing of his intentions but Neil Camarta, head of Shell’s Athabasca Oil Sands Project, is looking slightly nervous. While Fort Mckay’s barrels are in no way critical to Shell, Chief Boucher is important in other ways. Even before his transition to muskeg oil sheikh, the Fort McKay leader was wheeling and dealing, setting up businesses: catering, trucking and environmental services — annual revenue of $100 million.

Once a local rebel who fought legal battles with polluters, Chief Boucher did not ask for money from Shell. Instead, he asked for business opportunities, a policy that has paid dividends to the First Nation members.

But it is not all peace and prosperity. There is huge pressure on resources with the population of Fort McMurray, the neighbouring town, growing 40 per cent in five years, leading to chronic shortages of housing and teachers.

Within living memory, people lived off the land and the older generation regret the life and the habitat that is lost. There was huge derision in Fort McKay when a film producer imported a tame moose to star in a Shell commercial.

“There is good and bad. We need to develop a new economy,” said Chief Boucher.