The 900-member Beaver Lake Cree First Nation, about 240 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, is getting financial help from a British bank to fight a legal battle over a nearby oilsands development at Lac La Biche.

Gwyneth Brock, senior campaigns manager with The Co-operative Bank in Manchester, said the member-owned bank votes on ethical policies and has agreed to help the First Nation directly impacted by oilsands development to protect the land.

"The new policy is to do with tarsands because as a fossil fuel investment, it's not something our customers want us to be investing in," she said.

Brock said Co-operative wants to stop British investment in the oilsands.

"What we're talking about is whether or not those risks have been costed satisfactorily ... in terms of the long-term damage to the environment," Brock said.

The Beaver Lake First Nation launched a legal battle in May 2008 against the federal and Alberta governments over treaty rights, claiming their rights had been violated, said Jack Woodward, lawyer for Beaver Lake.

"You can't find caribou in parts of Alberta where caribou were abundant just 12 years ago. Moose are being displaced in large numbers and you just simply can't find them. There's not a new calf population to replace the older population of moose," he said.

A treaty signed in 1876 guarantees the Beaver Lake Cree the ability to continue their traditional rights to hunt, fish, trap and gather food, in exchange for giving up ownership of huge tracts of land.

"That solemn promise that was made, and I emphasize in return for the land itself, that solemn promise is not being kept," Woodward said.

As well as helping to pay legal costs, the bank is financing a series of short films the First Nation wants to make, said Brock.

"We've committed to help them gather some testimony from some of the elders … because what they'd like to do is gather evidence and to talk about what the impact of the tarsands has been on their way of life," she said.

Woodward said he'll likely use the films as part of the legal challenge.

He won't disclose how much money the bank has given Beaver Lake but said it's enough to not only follow through on the initial legal challenge, but also enough to take the big oil companies to court, if necessary.