00:02:55.620At the time of this interview, Nuskumata was leading First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining, an organization monitoring proposed and existing mining operations in B.C.
00:03:08.400It was 2018, four years after one of the most devastating mining disasters in world history struck her territory.
00:03:16.960In 2014, of course, was the Mount Polymine disaster, where 26 billion litres of mine waste was released into the environment, including into the headwaters of the salmon of the Fraser River watershed.
00:03:28.200A lot of the work that I've been doing over the last few years has been focused on holding the mining industry to account, calling out Canada and the industry to clean up their practices and to enforce their own laws and, you know, really focus more on community health and protection and prevention in a lot of this.
00:03:45.220So the area where the disaster took place is a place that we call Yuchnis and Chamekwa, and that's the birthing water of the salmon. It's an interior rainforest in the mountains of the Caribou Mountains, and it's this really special, sacred place. And it's really been a difficult task for us to know that this is going to be part of the landscape forever, and this is part of our children's inheritance. And it's this work for future generations that we do collectively that really brings us together.
00:04:12.300The 26-billion-liter spill of the toxic waste of copper and gold mining sparked a surge of activism among Nuskumata's community and environmentalists across BC, who have long fought for reforms and strengthened protections within the mining industry.
00:04:30.660Their cries for justice, however, have not been heard. It's been six years, and Imperial Metals Mining Corporation has yet to pay a single cent in fines or charges.
00:04:43.060Shortly after the spill, the BC government allowed the mine to resume full operations.
00:04:49.460Not only this, but Imperial Metals was issued a permit to discharge almost 60,000 cubic meters per day of tailings effluent directly into Quaynell Lake.
00:05:01.440Taxpayers have shouldered $40 million to subsidize cleanup costs.
00:05:06.160Meanwhile, heavy metals live on in the bodies of the creatures, the community, and the waters.
00:05:12.300who continue to carry this toxic burden.
00:05:17.720We begin here, the front lines of a sacrifice zone,
00:05:22.460to shed light on the mining industry's ruthless exploitation of communities and ecosystems,
00:05:28.380and the BC government's green light to do so.
00:05:31.820And as we will find out, what has happened to Mount Polly is not an exception.
00:05:37.300It is the lawful rule in a region where there is little to no accountability
00:06:11.440There definitely needs to be a shift in how the decision-making process happens.
00:06:34.280Right now, there's only a permitting, which basically means an allowance for mining to take place.
00:06:39.420there's been a lot of talk by Canada and British Columbia around upholding the United Nations
00:06:45.140Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and what we've seen is more just cherry-picking
00:06:50.380projects to make it look like they're upholding that whereas you know there are so many different
00:06:55.820battles that are happening across the country and in British Columbia to to protect sacred places
00:07:02.040to protect clean water and this is for everybody that's not just for Indigenous people we all
00:07:06.000benefit from this work. And it's insane that we have to fight the government to protect clean
00:07:10.720water. It's insane that corporations call the shots around Indigenous rights and title by
00:07:16.380pressuring governments, all of the closed door meetings that happen that people don't even know
00:07:20.660about how that impacts the future of everybody. There's a lot that can be done. And a lot of it
00:07:26.460comes down to, you know, local decision making, it comes down to upholding human rights, it comes0.95
00:07:31.620down to upholding Indigenous rights and title to make a radical shift away from the way things are,
00:07:37.460which is so outdated. You know, mining laws in British Columbia are largely from the 1850s and
00:07:42.34060s, which is a completely different world of mining. There have been so many reports and
00:07:47.140studies and feedback, and all of this has given direction on how this industry should be shaped,
00:07:53.640but it has to be put into action. To understand today's mining laws in BC,
00:07:59.120we need to turn back the clock to the mid-19th century gold rush.
00:08:04.380At this time, early colonial legislation created a free-entry mining system
00:08:09.400for the thousands of prospectors traveling west.
00:08:13.540This allowed any person, 16 years of age or over, to obtain a free miner certificate,
00:08:19.980giving the holder the right to freely enter onto and stake a claim essentially anywhere,
00:08:24.980including private property and indigenous territory.
00:08:29.120Once a claim was staked, the holder obtained exclusive right to conduct mineral exploration, begin development, and collect the profits.
00:08:38.760It's shocking that apart from minor regulatory and permitting changes, this system largely remains the same nearly 170 years later.
00:08:48.360Though instead of picks and pans, today's mining companies wield a toolbox of hydraulic shovels and excavators nearly as tall as a football field is long.
00:08:59.000Notably, to acquire a mineral claim back then, free miners had to visit their proposed site and erect a physical claim post.
00:09:10.140A prospector can simply go online and secure access to the subsurface rights in most parts of the province with a click of a button and a credit card.
00:09:20.040This and BC's tax subsidies help explain why the province is home
00:09:24.380to more exploration mining companies than anywhere else on Earth.
00:09:29.620Peel back the layers of Canada's green veneer to find that 1,300 mining corporations,
00:09:35.60075% of all mining companies in the world, are headquartered in Canada.
00:09:41.220People don't see it, and it's out of sight, out of mind.
00:09:43.860But they're getting bigger and bigger because the ore concentrations
00:09:47.720are getting smaller and smaller so you have to have a bigger mine to make money and this lasts
00:09:54.160for thousands of years there's mines that are still polluting and creating waste acid rock
00:09:59.600drainage from the roman times that's 2000 years ago so it just never goes away and when you think
00:10:05.700about how much that compounds in the ecosystem then you kind of start to get an idea of the scale
00:10:11.840of one of these one of these mines and there are thousands of mines and many of them are abandoned
00:10:16.680because of the poor laws surrounding protection everybody assumes that their health and safety
00:10:22.440laws that are being enforced when they're not so it just keeps going and going and then when you
00:10:27.180add to that the complexities of the social and cultural and health impacts that aren't necessarily
00:10:33.280directly tied to these mines you start to get an idea of the giant that this industry is
00:10:38.840mining is it feels like this secret untold story it's the biggest story you never heard it's the
00:10:48.260biggest story you never heard it so is and I I can just say like I came up to this part of the world
00:10:53.720because I was mortified by old growth logging once I started walking down that logging road
00:11:00.560the metaphorical logging road and then I started to see logging is bupkis logging is pennies logging
00:11:08.200is to make accessible for the mines yeah logging's just the brushing before the drills come in
00:11:13.980it's just clearing a road so you're like well let's make some money off of that so that we
00:11:18.620can get to the real money and you know you're talking about these nuclear facilities mine
00:11:22.800sites are the same like people think that you know once the mine's closed and reclaimed that
00:11:27.820everything's okay and it's like no these sites like mount pauline mine water isn't even being
00:11:33.060treated now and it needs to be treated forever forever who's going to take care of that imperial
00:11:40.720metal shares have dropped from over 11 a share to like 60 cents because of the disaster if you have
00:11:48.000a disaster your whole company is going to go under it's such a predatory model the impacts are
00:11:53.280forever you need perpetual water treatment with nobody like who's going to be responsible for
00:11:56.960that the people who live there are the ones who are going to bear the cost which is usually cancer
00:12:01.760social breakdown folks who are trying to sell their properties after the disaster couldn't
00:12:06.500get any nobody wants to live in a contamination zone right so you have all of these other ripple
00:12:12.120effects that aren't gauged in an environmental assessment or a corporate model because they're
00:12:16.840just completely discounted and the money you know they don't even have to put money up beforehand
00:12:21.580no it's like oh we'll take care of it if something happens trust us if you connected mining up with
00:12:26.660all of the other industries and how they're connected the first way that they're all
00:12:30.280connectors it's all part of this extractive colonial system based on growth you have mines
00:12:35.340that provide all of the raw materials to run these other industries for creating and building heavy
00:12:41.360equipment right to do other big extractive processes mining depends on other extractive
00:12:46.660industries to operate like hydroelectric dams to run their big super gigantic shovels you know
00:12:52.800that are as big as a building to put them into these gigantic 220 ton dump trucks and you think
00:12:58.520of a five ton truck and then think of a 220 ton truck so everything's super scale you've got these
00:13:04.260gigantic rubber tires the rubber comes from you know tropical rainforest the amount of diesel that
00:13:09.140goes through in a day on one mine site so you've got fracking and you've got pipelines that's a
00:13:14.300connection with pipelines you've got them in the headwaters so then you're also adding to the
00:13:19.840the threat and the sickness that fish farms are also putting in the water on salmon and so all
00:13:26.060of these things are intertwined into this super extractive industrial crazy brain gold fever you
00:13:32.860know mining is at all costs and underwrites almost every other law in british columbia especially
00:13:38.480because it was the reason that british columbia was colonized was because of the gold rush
00:13:42.400british columbia was say that again british columbia was founded because of the gold rush
00:13:47.340the gold rush brought in the people it brought in the road building it brought in the infrastructure
00:13:53.400it brought in you have the miners you have the saloons there were so much organized crime that
00:13:59.840was brought in that became the basis for Canadian government in British Columbia so this relationship
00:14:06.020this colonial relationship with mining goes back to the very foundation of the colonization of our
00:14:11.480lands introduced smallpox to devastate the complex trade networks of the indigenous people because
00:14:17.800traders were coming in through indigenous territories and having to pay tariffs because
00:14:21.720of the Indigenous law, and it's documented by academics and others using government laws
00:14:27.680that smallpox was deliberately introduced and that this genocide was an act of biological
00:14:33.500warfare against Indigenous people, thinking that it would kill all of us, to eradicate
00:14:39.180this Indian problem from the land.0.87
00:14:41.420But all it did is it took all the strongest people and became the new bloodlines for what0.53
00:14:45.460is now rising up in these Indigenous renaissance, who these young people who are out there that
00:14:50.800haven't gone to residential schools haven't been scooped up or relearning their languages or
00:14:54.520reconnecting with the land and knowing that the land is still there our land is still here the
00:14:58.880land hasn't gone away and what is in the imagination the colonial mindset is that
00:15:03.580indigenous people have been displaced from our lands and there were so many laws to keep us off
00:15:07.760of our lands to break that connection the residential schools were to you know kill the
00:15:12.780indian save the man i think like within our very genetic code it's just in us our bodies are made
00:15:19.180of this land that's where we're receiving our connection to this land and you know for people
00:15:24.340who have never felt that connection or have never had a spiritual connection to the place simply
00:15:29.180can understand that and they have no uh idea of who they are or where they are this is the system
00:15:36.140that we're having to deal with i'm speaking english the other languages that i know before
00:15:40.460english is french spanish and portuguese and saying i just need to learn dutch and i'll have
00:15:44.560all of the five biggest colonizing languages on the world covered but I still can't speak fluently
00:15:49.700my own languages but I'm learning and so the more and more I learn out of my language the more
00:15:54.740beautiful it's revealed to me the beauty of this world and the power and so the more that I learn
00:15:59.320my language the more I'm connected to the land that I'm from so it's all these different fronts
00:16:03.600of what's going on and trying to navigate through it while trying to decolonize my own life and heal
00:16:09.000my own life because I'm still dealing with the impacts of the colonization that happens around
00:16:14.980me. My mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother all went to residential school. We're still
00:16:19.580dealing with that in our families. Our communities are still dealing with that and trying to heal
00:16:23.360from that, but we're aware of it now. We've named it.
00:16:39.000Voices of all who've traveled this road
00:23:21.500It's just the whole systemic piece that is just completely messed up.
00:23:26.200I've thought back on this conversation many times.
00:23:29.220meditating on the thorny question of our individual responsibility and how we navigate
00:23:35.140and make choices within the lethal anthropocentric logic of this system. At times I imagine the beast
00:23:42.400of resource extraction as a swirling vortex, a spiraling thrashing gyre so insurmountably large
00:23:50.080that it might swallow the earth hole. And yet I still want to ask what would free us to be
00:23:58.000and act within the truth of this urgent time to be unmoving in our politic even in the eye of the
00:24:04.860storm a small piece of this for me at least has been to invite the hard to hear truths into my
00:24:11.580head and heart so that they begin to move and make home in my being these places are the last
00:24:19.080living libraries on earth where i live it's a miracle to see a salmon and i live on one of the
00:24:26.580most the most promising river in all of california for coho where i live used to have salmon so thick
00:24:33.740you could walk across in their back huge salmon that are the size of men holding them up okay
00:24:39.160that wasn't that long ago there's less than four percent of all old growth redwoods left
00:24:43.900there hardly are any salmon i mean we know this extinction crisis we know this but to see it
00:24:49.340and to see the insanity and to be with dune in the copper river delta he said he hardly caught
00:24:55.200any silvers and the kings didn't come back. And to hear Ernestine talk about the abundance of
00:25:02.000Southeast Alaska, you know, because she's from Southeast and to see how that abundance is
00:25:06.760literally being choked. What I saw, one of the things that I noticed when I went to Alaska was
00:25:11.760that I feel like where they are now, they're just starting to feel the pinch of the impacts
00:25:18.320from you know where they are is where we were here 30 years ago so i i tell them like you have
00:25:25.840you have a buffer because you're so far north but you're not you're not yet but it's still
00:25:32.040you know unless you make some radical changes or just halt things put things on pause for now
00:25:38.980and that 30 years isn't going to take you 30 years after 30 years is going to take you probably five
00:25:43.740years oh yeah the way things are going with the extreme fluctuations in the weather and
00:25:48.520the glaciers i give them 10 years and also the drought like people go oh california is the
00:25:54.640wildfire state with the drought okay no no no the fires through bc there's drought in the
00:26:02.500north most rainforest in alaska the creeks are drying up the salmon can't get up the creeks
00:26:08.360because there is no water. This is not compartmentalized to one southern state. Wake up.
00:26:14.560Despite the continued pollution of the Fraser River watershed,
00:26:37.900it still supports more salmon runs than any other system left on the planet.
00:26:43.160Stretching 1,375 kilometers southwest from a dripping spring in the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean,
00:26:51.580this river sustains seven species of salmon, rainbow trout, giant sturgeon, and more than 300 species of migratory and resident birds.
00:27:01.160The dynamic, bountiful river basin has sustained First Nations community for thousands of years.
00:27:08.320Some of its traditional names include Latako in the Dakhel language
00:27:13.200and Stalo in the Halk Omelem language.
00:27:17.620When I visited Nusk Mata's home, we walked down to a particular spot along the river.
00:27:23.740Surrounded by native edible plants, this area, now frequented by tourists,
00:27:29.420had once been an ancient fishing ground for her people.
00:27:32.200Yeah, the river is the thing that connects us all here, you know, within this whole watershed, this bioregion of all the tributaries, all of the salmon, all of the interconnected species, you know.
00:27:48.040I think that's probably why I feel so grounded in my work to come here, because it's back to that center for me.
00:27:54.380I followed Nuskumata further out onto the rocks where her family used to catch salmon from the crystalline, free-flowing waters.
00:28:03.040As I sat there, the water braiding with the rocks, Nuskumata's stories reminded me that we are all vitally connected by the intricate lattice of water's chosen path.
00:28:15.460Downstream, people in Vancouver dine on fresh seafood, watching ships move across the wide mouth of the Fraser towards the ocean.
00:28:23.300While upstream, a community wrestles with the risk of drinking, bathing, and eating from contaminated waters.
00:28:30.180And this is something that we had said 20 years ago here.
00:28:33.400You know, like when I was a teenager, late 80s, early 90s, we were told then, don't eat the eggs from the salmon that you catch.
00:28:41.360This was, you know, over 20 years ago.
00:33:24.920the amount of rhetoric spewed at conferences and beyond and commercials and the future and
00:33:32.760techno fixes and the renewable energies okay that is literally i see it i'm like oh my gosh
00:33:38.700this is just the next wave of industry this is just it's the next wave of industry of factories
00:33:47.340of it's not less energy intensive no people think oh it's a solar panel somehow that's less energy
00:33:54.280intensive to create or there's no oppressed people that are having to make the thing that
00:33:58.620waters all over the world being poisoned but um and that's just a deeper level of like
00:34:03.740this resilient this this false resilient community being sold to even good activist people like i
00:34:11.180interviewed so many amazing activists that talk about energy freedom yeah and they talk about
00:34:17.940just transition it's like yeah but where's the mining talking about transition that's right
00:34:23.040When I was down, when I gave my talk down in Miss Kali, I had mentioned about that and saying, like, you're missing a piece of the conversation if you're not talking about mining.
00:34:31.640I mean, of course, forestry underpins it all because that's what clears the roads.
00:34:35.260But you've got your big hydroelectric dams, right?
00:34:38.440You've got Site C, which a lot of people are saying is, you know, they're just going to sell off the water or use it for fracking, which would make sense where it is because that's in the big fracking zone up there.
00:34:48.320and then you have your fish farms and then you have your pipelines right and then the mining
00:34:55.480and then agriculture on top of that because you've got to think of all the runoff right
00:34:58.960so within just the Fraser watershed you've got all of these super industrial practices that are
00:35:06.440just not being considered together in one conversation no you know people are wanting
00:35:12.140to just transition where are you on mining or is that even on your radar because it's not yeah how
00:35:19.240is it a just transition if your land is being poisoned exactly so that somebody else somewhere
00:35:24.360else can have a just transition all of those those huge tires you know they're like 75 000
00:35:29.540each we don't have rubber in our territory this is coming from the jungles junk you know where
00:35:35.760is the fuel coming from to run those big mega trucks probably being fracked somewhere from
00:35:40.960somewhere um you know what about all of the the big jumbo hydroelectric shovels well they're coming
00:35:46.800from big electric dams the forestry cleared the roads to get them in there and all the water from
00:35:52.340the watersheds you've got from all the headwaters is where all the big gold mines are because of
00:35:56.320the way the geology works so all of this is going into the river that impacts the salmon that impacts
00:36:01.720the killer whales so it's just ripple effect constantly there is no way to continue getting
00:36:07.420out of it i mean unless you want to start eating like petri dish food which is the direction we're
00:36:11.740going going down to southern california where a lot of my family lives there's million dollar
00:36:16.740houses right next to an oil rig you know people like are breaking out with asthma and like have
00:36:20.640all these issues like uh you literally you have your million dollar fake looking tuscan mansion
00:36:26.440with this offshore drilling and then an oil patch that was wetland why would you have asthma like
00:36:32.600What is meant by a clean energy future if it necessitates a permanently polluting, predatory industry, and moreover requires that industry to expand many times over to meet consumer demands?
00:36:47.080We must be clear that this new industrial revolution, painted green, carries existential consequences for the millions of at-risk species of Earth, ourselves included.
00:36:59.420Replacing the world's 1.2 billion vehicles with those powered by batteries would in part require an 8,840% increase of current global lithium production.
00:37:13.640And by 2035, the current global demand for copper, an essential material in electric systems, is estimated to spike by 43%.
00:37:22.980It will be areas of rich natural resources, from the high-altitude lithium reserves in the Andes Mountains to the deep-sea mineral deposits in the waters of Papua New Guinea, that become tomorrow's sacrifice zones for a techno-utopian Green New Deal.
00:37:39.880My hope is that this conversation will challenge us all to broaden the scope of a just transition to include all communities of life on the front lines of metal and mineral mining, and all those downstream.
00:37:53.920What could our purpose and identity become outside of the imperialist framework of consumption and domestication?
00:38:01.800And this has been the conversation, this has been the battle with Indigenous people since contact.0.53
00:38:06.660is this completely different worldview around how to live in this world well in potlatching culture0.70
00:38:13.240on the northwest coast you would only ever acquire wealth or more than what you needed
00:38:17.760to redistribute it to the community you would never acquire personal wealth for your own personal gain
00:38:22.820that would be breaking the law and like actual physical wealth it was metaphorically held in
00:38:30.360the potlatches of how many times you fed the people that's where your status came from was
00:38:34.780how much you provided for your wider community so that's written in our laws and within our language
00:38:40.940so we've got these completely different world views this completely different spiritual
00:38:45.400connection where there is no spiritual connection in the dominant yeah i was thinking about this
00:38:50.880the other day and i was like i gotta write this stuff down when i was pregnant with my son i
00:38:55.680didn't do this consciously but i was eating as much traditional food as i could and so his body
00:39:02.060is made up of salmon and deer meat and you know medicines and berries and everything that is
00:39:09.380here while i was pregnant i was drinking soap and juice every day and so our bodies are physically
00:39:15.160made up of this land and it's the same genetic code as it always has been so that our physical
00:39:20.400vibrational spiritual however you want to describe it connection to this very land
00:39:25.340this land actually built our bones and our blood and our flesh it always shocked me when i was
00:39:31.140younger that people could just grow up somewhere and then just move away forever and never come
00:39:34.960back it's just not in my world view to do that it's like this is home forever and it always will
00:39:41.120be for my bloodline we're not going to leave we're not going to go anywhere and that's been the whole
00:39:45.180that's what the indian problem is the indian problem they actually call it the indian problem
00:39:48.760in canada is that we survived we're still here and that we still are maintaining this connection
00:39:54.680with the earth and you know i was thinking about it last night of how to describe it i was thinking0.68
00:39:59.100of a play you know maybe something that kids could do if you had this indigenous woman that
00:40:06.420represents the earth mother the mother you know and her basket is filled with everything that
00:40:11.660you would ever need you know with your food and the clean water and all of the ceremonies that
00:40:16.120keep you connected to the land we still have a lot of that a lot of it is getting lost but a lot
00:40:20.940of it's still amazing there's ways of regaining that knowledge through ceremony and through you
00:40:25.640You know, just being on the land itself and learning the language, it's all in there.
00:40:29.920So you talk about these living libraries, and within Indigenous cultures,
00:40:33.840the language and the ceremonies and the knowledge of the land and the food that we eat
00:40:37.980gives us information and access to these libraries as well.
00:40:41.340So when we can't go out on the land, because there's mining and there's no trespassing
00:40:46.420and no hunting science everywhere, roads are gated,
00:40:49.160and it becomes harder and harder to maintain that taste for the land.
00:40:52.620i have a niece that came out um from ontario born and raised in ontario her whole life she's
00:40:57.360nicole came to bella coola for the first time she doesn't like anything there's like five things on
00:41:02.540earth that she likes to eat she doesn't like anything she's super super fussy she tried deer
00:41:07.120meat for the first time and her eyes lit up like a christmas tree she couldn't get enough of it and
00:41:11.580i was like that's your body recognizing what you were made up of it was just instant recognition
00:41:17.000you know they want to learn how to hunt they really want to learn how to hunt so it's like
00:41:21.660okay well you need to be here in the fall right so we're harvesting certain things it's like we
00:41:28.640can't do that till fall time it's that connection with the land because it's like we know that we're
00:41:34.220still in the place our birthplace and we still have this connection in that because we have this
00:41:39.240close relationship with the land even though it's harder and harder to maintain we know that at a
00:41:45.440very deep level we as indigenous people descend from the strongest of the strong of our ancestors
00:41:51.000yeah so that blood is running through us and it's not even a choice their job was to survive
00:41:56.620just make it through just survive get through this survive through the smallpox you know a
00:42:01.260genocide that happened so yeah like i think what happened is you just concentrated all the warrior
00:42:06.060survivor blood you know you think of after in europe after the plagues went through what the
00:42:10.880state of society was at that time right the sickness the trauma so that's what our communities
00:42:17.080have gone through you know and then the residential schools and boarding schools in the united states
00:42:20.780the 60s scoop in Canada, you know, forced sterilization, medical experimentation,
00:42:26.780all of these things. It's just like, oh, thing after thing. And now the big thing in Canada
00:42:30.300is, you know, the amount of children that are in care. There are more children that have been
00:42:34.720taken into foster care than were ever in residential schools. Do you think the foster
00:42:39.920schools are just like, you know, 2.0 residential schools? Yeah. Because it's still this patriarchal
00:42:46.380system where the underlying belief is that indigenous people aren't truly human aren't0.95
00:42:51.180truly civilized don't know how to be parents are totally messed up because we're just degenerate
00:42:57.340oh no this is this is totally systemic it's really exciting when i see young people who are really
00:43:03.280stoked to learn their language and they're speaking out against colonization and they're0.94
00:43:06.920doing these amazing creative things to say you know what i don't buy that bullshit story anymore0.96
00:43:12.680and it stops with me this trauma this cycle this you know sickness stops with me because i'm doing
00:43:20.440everything i can to learn and so you see this people organizing that's really exciting because
00:43:25.900that's what needs to happen right and to get these young people fired up where they're raised
00:43:30.180where it's just not even acceptable they wouldn't even entertain the idea like i asked my son when
00:43:35.140he was going to school here in williams lake because i went to high school in williams lake
00:43:37.780and it was very very racist when I went and I asked him how the racism was and he was just like
00:43:43.560oh I don't know if if there was something directly directly at me he was like I wasn't
00:43:51.720really aware of it I'm like well you'd be aware of it my son is the first generation whose parents
00:43:58.320didn't go to residential school I'm the first generation he's the first generation whose0.99
00:44:03.120parents didn't go the work that indigenous grandmothers are doing are coming from this
00:44:08.600intense place of love that's why it's powerful that's why they're powerful you know it's it's
00:44:14.300a love story and when I was in Alaska I was saying you know like every love story there's heartache
00:44:18.400it's this underlying love people like don't you ever want to quit I'm like yeah like every day
00:44:23.720like every single day I want to quit and I heard this one this one speaker and she was saying that
00:44:29.660people would ask her that she goes oh I do but I do I quit every single day at five o'clock I quit
00:44:34.320and then I'm with my family and I'm doing the things that feed me and then I start again the
00:44:38.780next day knowing that I can quit at five o'clock every day otherwise I would burn out and go crazy
00:44:43.460you're having to fight on so many different levels you're having to experientially live it
00:44:48.240you can't get away from it you drive down the road and oh yeah you know I'm driving on the
00:44:54.480freeway and I'm like oh there's a mine truck there's a mine truck yeah that one's got you
00:44:58.100know the big rod for the rod mill that's going to crush up the rock oh that one is hauling
00:45:02.780concentrate back to Vancouver that's a big piece of mining equipment going up I see it everywhere
00:45:07.340I see the word capitals n-o-w I think notice of work that's mining you know like I see stuff
00:45:13.840everywhere and I'm just like I can't unsee it once you know right this machine is broken
00:52:56.680dunking these excavators in the effing river creating new road on the river the department
00:53:01.980official wildlife who's supposed to be protecting the salmon allowed for this road construction0.98
00:53:06.120during the peak months of salmon spawning to make the road for tourists i'm like this is bullshit0.90
00:53:14.920and they have so many machines massive massive project you know millions of dollars obviously
00:53:19.540i'm just like oh my gosh once the road is in it's it's classic project splitting this is what they
00:53:25.340do in mines where they'll just incrementally get bigger and bigger and bigger beyond the original
00:53:30.320footprint of what they ever proposed to get the approval on a 10-year life 15-year life it's
00:53:35.760going to provide this many jobs or whatever right and then incrementally it gets bigger and bigger
00:53:40.560to the point that it's well beyond the capacity or the design like Mount Polly and it it bursts
00:53:46.580yeah it's maddening it's maddening I've seen the road I know what you're talking about up in Haynes
00:53:51.240If a mine doesn't come into your town, maybe you want to look at all other communities that have had this
00:53:57.080and try to see what's happened to them to see if it's a good idea for your community.
00:54:00.900There's no way that your community will not go down the same path.
00:54:05.260Yeah, your community will not be the exception.
00:54:09.260How far will we go to mine ourselves out of the climate crisis
00:54:13.120in order to maintain a luxury-driven consumerist culture?
00:54:17.120Are we willing to sacrifice more of the Earth's remaining intact ecosystems and watersheds, still turning with the primordial hum of life in the name of modernity?
00:54:29.340Inhabiting these questions, in part, demands an honest investigation into the true cost of our individual material footprint.
00:54:38.220While I hold and acknowledge the larger systemic forces at play in contemporary waste regimes,
00:54:44.240it's also my sense that we shouldn't abandon the thoughtfulness of our material experiences
00:54:49.680wherever possible. When we fail to acknowledge our interconnectedness, we've cast not only the
00:54:56.300weight of our material burden, but also the psychic burden onto the affected people and places
00:55:01.760and creatures. So I invite you to feel into your embodied experience of the metals,
00:55:08.080fossil fuels, papers, plastics, that pass through your hands on a day-to-day basis.
00:55:14.800Is there a way to remain effective in the world while drastically reducing or abstaining from
00:55:20.220such consumption? How can we reclaim the concept of abundance from the grip of mass resource
00:55:26.740extraction and return it to the arms of the earth it's facing this mythology this romanticized gold
00:55:35.240there's no reason to mine any more gold it's all for vanity it's all for most of it's for jewelry
00:55:41.380you know if people can just stop buying gold even if you have gold just stop buying it and be aware
00:55:48.960of your language around gold you know oh treat you like gold it's the gold standard it's you know
00:55:53.600where it's this highest value and it's like actually clean water is worth a heck of a lot
00:55:58.280more can you imagine how our world would be transformed if everybody had access to clean
00:56:02.120water on the whole planet if everybody had clean water how that would change the world
00:56:07.760this is the most fundamental thing other than air and so when we as indigenous people are being
00:56:13.300criminalized for wanting to protect clean water that protects everybody it's so outrageous
00:56:18.620but it's the accepted norm in this industrial military capitalistic complex that we're in
00:56:26.500so shifting these systems is huge huge huge work but it's doable we have to believe that we can do
00:56:33.360it but be skeptical enough that it motivates us to take action in our own lives we can't just wait
00:56:39.960for someone else to do it because everything that we don't do burden gets passed on to our children
00:56:43.520so what path are we clearing for them what work are we doing to prepare for them that's why
00:56:49.520telling the truth is so revolutionary not subscribing to this murder culture and actually
00:56:55.080working from a place of love is revolutionary people have like love how corny is that and it's
00:56:59.880like if you don't truly understand what i'm saying that's the problem and if you haven't
00:57:06.940found your love story with the land yet that's what we need to help you find because that's
00:57:10.900what's going to shift people and I think also just thinking about my unborn grandchildren
00:57:17.300that is a huge motivator for me what am I going to what is my inheritance going to be
00:57:22.320that I'm building up now for them you know so it's life work and sometimes just go stop and
00:57:29.720go pick berries go to the river go to the river this tastes delicious oh good
00:57:35.620I think it's balsam. I know the name. It's it's Milan's which means the medicine bar
01:02:32.120Lastly, wherever this podcast reaches you, we encourage you to get more involved in local mining, resource extraction, and land defense issues.
01:02:41.640Here are a few pressing projects we've been following that we hope you'll take the time to learn more about.
01:02:47.760First, as mentioned earlier, the Palmer Project.
01:02:51.280A proposed copper, zinc, gold, and silver mine is sited at the headwaters of the Chilkat River on unceded Chilkat Tlingit territory.
01:03:00.520Second, the proposed open-pit copper and gold pebble mine in Bristol Bay, southwest Alaska,
01:03:07.940threatens the world's greatest sockeye salmon run and the lifeways of local residents and indigenous communities.
01:03:15.160Third, Imperial Metals has recently applied for a five-year permit in the Skagit headwaters
01:03:20.920that, if approved by the B.C. government, will see the building of an access road,
01:03:26.180surface trenches, drill pads, and exploratory pits up to 2,000 meters deep amid sensitive
01:03:32.800populations of grizzlies, bull trout, and bald eagles. Finally, on February 23rd,
01:03:42.520Tech Resources withdrew its application to build a $20 billion Tech Frontier Mine,