These high paying jobs are giving Canada's indigenous peoples an opportunity to pull themselves, and their communities, out of the generational poverty that has plagued so many of them.

There’s also a burgeoning business class amongst Canada's First Nations, particularly in Western Canada — especially in places like Fort McMurray thanks in no small part to oil and gas development and partnerships with major oil companies.

But you wouldn't know that if you got all your news from the mainstream media.

These indigenous success stories are seldom told. Instead, the mainstream media favours the handful of radicals and kooks, like those at Camp Cloud and at the Wetsuwetsin blockade, who inhibit prosperity not only for indigenous communities but for the whole country.

Over the weekend, a pro-oil and gas rally and truck convoy in Lac La Biche, Alberta was led by Aboriginal groups. The media is reporting this event as the first of it’s kind, but that’s because the media has been asleep at the wheel for a long time.

Aboriginal people have been speaking up for years about what resource development means to their communities.

But the media have given their coverage to the cranks and whackos.

For the better part of a decade, Metis pro-oil activist, Robbie Picard, of Oil Sands Strong, has been spreading the good news of the oilsands to anyone who will listen.

Tonight Robbie joins me to talk about the truck convoy to Ottawa and what he has planned next to support the industry.