For The Wild - InTheField： NUSKMATA (Jacinda Mack) on the Gold Rush That Never Ended [ENCORE] ⧸287

00:00:01.000 Welcome to For the Wild podcast, In the Field edition. I'm Ayanna Young.

00:00:07.500 In the Field is a bioregional, place-based storytelling series inspired by my journeys to the temperate rainforests of Cascadia.

00:00:30.000 water over yonder. I feed my people just like my mother. Feed my people.

00:00:41.140 In this week's episode, we turn north to Secwepum territory around Tehuil, so-called Williams Lake

00:00:48.480 in south-central British Columbia, Canada. Nestled within the Caribou Mountains and the

00:00:54.120 Fraser River watershed, this area is known as one of the birthing waters for salmon.

00:01:00.000 i know it's so beautiful here it's like the natural village right yeah yeah it's not like

00:01:11.940 a monocrop tree farm plantation this is the juniper yeah we've got two kinds so we've got

00:01:20.180 this prickly ones low bush juniper and these are so awesome you just like grab a whole handful

00:01:27.920 pull them right off. They're so gentle. Yeah. They're easy. Isn't that amazing?

00:01:32.380 It's just hanging with her. The other voice you hear

00:01:36.280 in this recording is my dear friend Nuskumata Jacinda

00:01:40.180 Mack of the Secwepum and Newhulk Indigenous Peoples of

00:01:44.080 present-day British Columbia. My mother's line, my matrilineal

00:01:48.400 homeland is in the Secwepum territory, Secwepum-Uluch

00:01:51.620 and the most, I guess, recognizable place close to there is Williams Lake

00:01:56.220 So this is kind of south-central British Columbia.

00:01:59.600 You know, mostly pine forests, lots of lakes.

00:02:01.840 The Fraser River runs central through there.

00:02:04.280 So, of course, we have names for all of these places in our own language.

00:02:07.520 There's lots of different plants and medicines that we still continue to harvest.

00:02:11.620 For many years, Nuskumata has worked with Indigenous communities as an active organizer, researcher,

00:02:19.040 and advocate on environmental protection issues,

00:02:21.520 and continues to consult on mining and indigenous rights and title in Canada today.

00:02:27.620 At the time of this interview, Nuskumata was leading First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining,

00:02:34.140 an organization monitoring proposed and existing mining operations in BC.

00:02:39.920 It was 2018, four years after one of the most devastating mining disasters in world history struck her territory.

00:02:48.120 In 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.

00:02:59.680 A 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.

00:03:16.700 So 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.

00:03:24.360 It's an interior rainforest in the mountains of the Caribou Mountains, and it's this really special, sacred place.

00:03:30.600 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.

00:03:38.960 And it's this work for future generations that we do collectively that really brings us together.

00:03:43.780 The 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.

00:04:02.140 Their 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.

00:04:14.540 Shortly after the spill, the BC government allowed the mine to resume full operations.

00:04:20.920 Not 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.

00:04:32.920 Taxpayers have shouldered $40 million to subsidize cleanup costs.

00:04:37.660 Meanwhile, heavy metals live on in the bodies of the creatures, the community, and the waters.

00:04:43.780 who continue to carry this toxic burden.

00:04:49.220 We begin here, the front lines of a sacrifice zone,

00:04:53.940 to shed light on the mining industry's ruthless exploitation of communities and ecosystems,

00:04:59.660 and the BC government's green light to do so.

00:05:03.300 And as we will find out, what has happened to Mount Polly is not an exception.

00:05:08.780 It is the lawful rule in a region where there is little to no accountability

00:05:12.920 for the theft of land and lives.

00:05:42.920 There definitely needs to be a shift in how the decision-making process happens.

00:06:05.760 Right now, there's only a permitting, which basically means an allowance for mining to take

00:06:10.460 place. There's been a lot of talk by Canada and British Columbia around upholding the United

00:06:16.240 Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And what we've seen is more just

00:06:21.300 cherry picking projects to make it look like they're upholding that. Whereas, you know,

00:06:25.620 there are so many different battles that are happening across the country and in British

00:06:30.440 Columbia to protect sacred places, to protect clean water. And this is for everybody. That's

00:06:35.960 not just for Indigenous people, we all benefit from this work. And it's insane that we have to

00:06:40.540 fight the government to protect clean water. It's insane that corporations call the shots around

00:06:45.400 Indigenous rights and title by pressuring governments, all of the closed door meetings

00:06:50.640 that happen that people don't even know about how that impacts the future of everybody.

00:06:55.500 There's a lot that can be done. And a lot of it comes down to, you know, local decision making,

00:07:00.340 it comes down to upholding human rights, it comes down to upholding Indigenous rights and

00:07:05.700 title to make a radical shift away from the way things are, which is so outdated. You know,

00:07:11.100 mining laws in British Columbia are largely from the 1850s and 60s, which is a completely different

00:07:15.740 world of mining. There have been so many reports and studies and feedback, and all of this has

00:07:21.340 given direction on how this industry should be shaped, but it has to be put into action.

00:07:28.000 To understand today's mining laws in BC, we need to turn back the clock to the mid-19th century

00:07:34.400 gold rush. At this time, early colonial legislation created a free entry mining system for the

00:07:41.760 thousands of prospectors traveling west. This allowed any person 16 years of age or over to

00:07:48.980 obtain a free miner certificate, giving the holder the right to freely enter onto and stake a claim

00:07:55.380 essentially anywhere, including private property and indigenous territory. Once a claim was staked,

00:08:02.300 the holder obtained exclusive right to conduct mineral exploration, begin development, and

00:08:08.500 collect the profits. It's shocking that apart from minor regulatory and permitting changes,

00:08:14.820 this system largely remains the same nearly 170 years later. Though instead of picks and pans,

00:08:22.240 today's mining companies wield a toolbox of hydraulic shovels and excavators nearly as tall

00:08:27.960 as a football field is long. Notably, to acquire a mineral claim back then, free miners had to

00:08:34.460 visit their proposed site and erect a physical claim post. Today, it's even less onerous. A

00:08:41.760 prospector can simply go online and secure access to the subsurface rights in most parts of the

00:08:47.500 province with a click of a button and a credit card. This and BC's tax subsidies help explain

00:08:54.460 why the province is home to more exploration mining companies than anywhere else on earth.

00:09:01.120 Peel back the layers of Canada's green veneer to find that 1,300 mining corporations,

00:09:07.080 75% of all mining companies in the world, are headquartered in Canada.

00:09:13.000 People don't see it and it's out of sight, out of mind, but they're getting bigger and bigger

00:09:17.280 because the ore concentrations are getting smaller and smaller. So you have to have a

00:09:22.300 bigger mine to make money. And this lasts for thousands of years. There's mines that are still

00:09:28.480 polluting and creating waste, acid rock drainage from the Roman times, and that's 2,000 years ago.

00:09:34.460 So it just never goes away. And when you think about how much that compounds in the ecosystem,

00:09:40.420 then you kind of start to get an idea of the scale of one of these mines. And there are

00:09:45.840 thousands of mines, and many of them are abandoned because of the poor laws surrounding protection.

00:09:51.960 Everybody assumes that there are health and safety laws that are being enforced when they're not.

00:09:56.400 So it just keeps going and going.

00:09:58.080 And then when you add to that the complexities of the social and cultural and health impacts that aren't necessarily directly tied to these mines, you start to get an idea of the giant that this industry is.

00:10:11.680 Mining is, it feels like the secret, untold story.

00:10:17.560 It's the biggest story you've never heard.

00:10:19.420 It's the biggest story you've never heard.

00:10:21.000 It so is. And I, I can just say like, I came up to this part of the world because I was mortified by old growth logging.

00:10:29.600 Once I started walking down that logging road, the metaphorical logging road. 0.98

00:10:34.420 And then I started to see logging is bupkis. Logging is pennies. Logging is to make accessible for the minds. 0.85

00:10:43.260 Yeah. Logging is just the brushing before the drills come in. It's just clearing a road.

00:10:47.400 so you're like well let's make some money off of that so that we can get to the real money

00:10:51.000 and you know you're talking about these nuclear facilities mine sites are the same like people

00:10:55.300 think that you know once the mine's closed and reclaimed that everything's okay and it's like

00:11:00.600 no these sites like mount poly mine water isn't even being treated now and it needs to be treated

00:11:06.780 forever forever who's going to take care of that imperial metal shares have dropped from

00:11:13.400 over $11 a share to like 60 cents because of the disaster if you have a disaster your whole

00:11:20.460 company is going to go under it's such a predatory model the impacts are forever you need perpetual

00:11:25.940 water treatment with nobody like who's going to be responsible for that the people who live there

00:11:30.360 are the ones who are going to bear the cost which is usually cancer social breakdown folks who are

00:11:35.780 trying to sell their properties after the disaster couldn't get any nobody wants to live in a

00:11:39.840 contamination zone rate. So you have all of these other ripple effects that aren't gauged in an

00:11:45.520 environmental assessment or a corporate model because they're just completely discounted.

00:11:50.080 And the money, you know, they don't even have to put money up beforehand.

00:11:53.460 No. It's like, oh, we'll take care of it if something happens.

00:11:55.880 Trust us. If you connected mining up with all of the other industries and how they're connected,

00:12:00.280 the first way that they're all connected is it's all part of this extractive colonial system based

00:12:04.500 on growth you have mines that provide all of the raw materials to run these other industries for

00:12:11.340 creating and building heavy equipment right to do other big extractive processes mining depends on

00:12:17.140 other extractive industries to operate like hydroelectric dams to run their big super gigantic

00:12:22.920 shovels you know that are as big as a building to put them into these gigantic 220 ton dump trucks

00:12:29.200 and you think of a five-ton truck and then think of a 220-ton truck so everything's super scale

00:12:34.980 you've got these gigantic rubber tires the rubber comes from you know tropical rainforest

00:12:38.980 the amount of diesel that goes through in a day on one mine site so you've got fracking and you've

00:12:44.840 got pipelines that's a connection with pipelines you've got them in the headwaters so then you're

00:12:49.720 also adding to the the threat and the sickness that fish farms are also putting in the water

00:12:55.100 on salmon and so all of these things are intertwined into this super extractive industrial

00:13:01.660 crazy brain gold fever you know mining is at all costs and underwrites almost every other

00:13:07.780 law in british columbia especially because it was the reason that british columbia was colonized

00:13:12.860 was because of the gold rush british columbia was say that again british columbia was founded

00:13:17.360 because of the gold rush the gold rush brought in the people it brought in the road building

00:13:23.660 it brought in the infrastructure, it brought in, you have the miners, you have the saloons.

00:13:28.900 There was so much organized crime that was brought in that became the basis for Canadian

00:13:33.480 government in British Columbia. So this relationship, this colonial relationship with

00:13:38.980 mining goes back to the very foundation of the colonization of our lands. Introduced smallpox

00:13:44.920 to devastate the complex trade networks of the Indigenous people because traders were coming in

00:13:50.640 through indigenous territories and having to pay tariffs because of the indigenous law and it's

00:13:55.340 documented by academics and others using government laws that smallpox was deliberately introduced and

00:14:02.420 that this genocide was an act of biological warfare against indigenous people thinking that

00:14:08.200 it would kill all of us to eradicate this indian problem from the land but all it did is it took 0.99

00:14:14.060 all the strongest people and became the new bloodlines for what is now rising up in these 1.00

00:14:18.020 indigenous renaissance who these young people who are out there that haven't gone to residential

00:14:23.040 schools haven't been scooped up or relearning their languages or reconnecting with the land

00:14:27.040 and knowing that the land is still there our land is still here the land hasn't gone away

00:14:31.360 and what is in the imagination the colonial mindset is that indigenous people have been

00:14:36.000 displaced from our lands and there were so many laws to keep us off of our lands to break

00:14:40.400 that connection the residential schools were to you know kill the indian save the man

00:14:45.340 i think like within our very genetic code it's just in us our bodies are made of this land that's

00:14:51.780 where we're receiving our connection to this land and you know for people who have never felt that

00:14:57.600 connection or have never had a spiritual connection to the place simply can understand that and they

00:15:01.920 have no uh idea of who they are or where they are this is the system that we're having to deal with

00:15:08.640 i'm speaking english the other languages that i know before english is french spanish and

00:15:13.440 Portuguese and saying I just need to learn Dutch and I'll have all of the five biggest colonizing

00:15:17.420 languages on the world covered but I still can't speak fluently my own languages but I'm learning

00:15:22.500 and so the more and more I learn out of my language the more beautiful it's revealed to me

00:15:27.360 the beauty of this world and the power and so the more that I learn my language the more I'm

00:15:31.900 connected to the land that I'm from so it's all these different fronts of what's going on and

00:15:36.360 trying to navigate through it while trying to decolonize my own life and heal my own life because

00:15:41.540 I'm still dealing with the impacts of, you know, the colonization that happens around me.

00:15:47.040 My mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother all went to residential school.

00:15:50.620 We're still dealing with that in our families.

00:15:52.740 Our communities are still dealing with that and trying to heal from that.

00:15:55.500 But we're aware of it now.

00:15:57.180 We've named it.

00:16:11.540 The voices of all who've traveled this road

00:16:23.680 Echoed from a mineshaft in the night

00:16:29.200 White lines speak of deep underneath

00:16:38.100 Where the veins of a river run dry

00:16:43.980 Singing

00:16:46.580 One aspect I've savored most from the journey of recording in the field

00:16:52.980 has been to share traditional food with people from their homelands.

00:16:56.980 Whether harvesting berries with Wanda

00:16:59.120 or filleting a salmon with Dune on the banks of the copper,

00:17:03.620 each taste has been a conduit for tender, joyful connections

00:17:07.200 that contain the marrow of deep traditions and foodways.

00:17:11.660 These moments have also given me the opportunity to get into some,

00:17:16.300 let's say, passionate kitchen table chats over a very large cup of coffee.

00:17:22.400 We've been rumbling, but I want to go back to the gold rush mentality

00:17:28.720 because most people, they've heard about the gold rush.

00:17:33.720 They have some romantic idea.

00:17:35.980 there's so many places i've seen gold rush museum gold rush look at the cute little town yeah like

00:17:41.180 old sacramento oh old sacramento like the sierras the sierra foothills it's all this really cute

00:17:47.440 scene and it's sold as a tourist attraction yeah yeah it's this totally skewed revisionist history

00:17:55.380 the insta wealth the american dream it's that gold fever and the gold fever is the sickness

00:18:02.300 actually i was writing something down the other night i was flowing i know it was late i was like

00:18:06.900 way too tired and i was thinking about how oh i started putting this uh presentation together

00:18:14.320 and it was about how gold fever imagining a future wikipedia entry for gold fever

00:18:20.200 um in the future that it becomes known as the human extinction virus

00:18:24.000 gold fever that insatiable greed um that that's what gold fever really truly is

00:18:31.920 And that gold has been responsible for, you know, more war and destruction in the history of human existence than anything else.

00:18:41.700 Look at the connections between organized religion and the pursuit of gold and the military might that these, like the Catholic Church, the Crusades, that the Rococo period after, you know, the discovery, you know, so-called discoveries of North and South America.

00:18:55.780 all of the gold and silver that came out of South America and the indigenous people who 0.56

00:19:01.060 are sacrificed for it you know how to hit blood diamonds it's like dirty gold dirty gold dirty

00:19:05.400 gold it's all tainted I think I think um people are really unaware that it's still happening

00:19:13.520 when you think oh well what does gold mining look like in 2018 yeah a huge huge huge machine

00:19:21.140 that's one thing what it looks like looks like you know ridiculously large mega oh yeah super

00:19:29.560 scale super super scale extraction and people have never been on a mine site but they've seen

00:19:34.380 lots of pictures of you know fossil mining historic fossil mining so people really have

00:19:41.600 no idea of the scale they have no idea that most of it is waste management it's just a big

00:19:46.780 waste you know decapitating mountains and and it's and the the waste sites these companies can

00:19:55.540 bankrupt once they've extracted that's like oh now we're gonna walk away from cleaning up the 0.99

00:20:00.600 waste okay you have toxic bullshit in a open pit of plastic that doesn't last forever it rains 0.97

00:20:09.500 yeah weather happens erosion erosion they're not accounting for climate change in any of their 0.99

00:20:15.180 plants and now they're wanting to go into deglaciated areas to mine and you know what

00:20:21.020 was so frustrating is i've gone around to so many people well why are the salmon coming back

00:20:24.700 and scientists we don't know we don't yeah we don't know yeah we don't what do we okay we know

00:20:31.180 mining we know ocean acidification yeah we know oil fields climate change glacial melt we it's

00:20:38.400 like we agricultural and human waste runoff how much data do we have to collect that's yeah

00:20:44.840 that's totally the other piece is just like death by studying like it's like well we'll get another

00:20:51.280 study it's like you don't need another study we don't need another study oh my god that just

00:20:56.880 drives me crazy because i'm just like you know what your answer is we had all kinds of traditional

00:21:03.120 youth studies and you know all of the interviews around salmon just to document it wasn't that

00:21:08.740 people didn't know that it was just that it needed to be documented in this western colonial whatever

00:21:13.000 right and so people were like we need data we need scientifically proven whatever and it's like

00:21:20.100 do you really or do you already know what the answer is but you're just afraid to actually

00:21:24.400 take a position on it yeah we miss getting baseline data a long time ago so it's okay fine

00:21:31.520 let's get this let's get baseline data but we know already there are multiple reasons why the salmon

00:21:39.160 aren't coming back yes and we're going to wait until we can show a proven decline from this

00:21:44.440 why are we not coming out with precautionary approach to make sure that we're doing no harm

00:21:48.760 first of all and then figure out what the impacts are drives me bonkers people don't want to be the

00:21:54.280 bad guy and they don't want to believe that what they're doing or the industry or whatever's

00:21:57.960 putting food on their table is harm anybody because i think people generally want the same

00:22:03.040 things in life who want to be safe and secure and be able to provide for their families and

00:22:09.060 when you put a lot of guilt on the table for destroying the watershed and our way of life,

00:22:15.080 it becomes very, very defensive.

00:22:16.960 And that's the fragility piece that comes in from having such privilege forever.

00:22:21.320 Do you know how much that hurts my feelings?

00:22:22.760 It's like, do you know how much death and...

00:22:25.760 You are murdering entire ecosystems.

00:22:29.560 Like the whole thing is in collapse, like you were saying, right?

00:22:31.740 And it's just like, coming to terms with that reality is just too much, I think, for some people.

00:22:37.500 and they just don't want to believe that they're part of the problem

00:22:39.900 because they can say, well, we really believe in this science.

00:22:46.200 We believe in the leadership that this company would never do that.

00:22:49.260 They're good people.

00:22:50.640 It's not the people.

00:22:51.820 It's not the individual workers.

00:22:53.180 It's the whole systemic piece that is just completely messed up.

00:22:57.720 I've thought back on this conversation many times,

00:23:01.460 meditating on the thorny question of our individual responsibility

00:23:04.960 in how we navigate and make choices within the lethal, anthropocentric logic of this system.

00:23:12.040 At times, I imagine the beast of resource extraction as a swirling vortex,

00:23:17.540 a spiraling, thrashing gyre so insurmountably large that it might swallow the earth whole. 0.96

00:23:24.560 And yet, I still want to ask, what would free us to be and act within the truth of this urgent time, 0.99

00:23:32.100 to be unmoving in our politic even in the eye of the storm a small piece of this for me at least

00:23:40.020 has been to invite the hard to hear truths into my head and heart so that they begin to move

00:23:45.840 and make home in my being these places are the last living libraries on earth where i live

00:23:54.780 it's a miracle to see a salmon and i live on one of the most the most promising river in all of

00:24:00.740 california for coho where i live used to have salmon so thick you could walk across in their

00:24:06.200 back huge salmon that are the size of men holding them up okay that was not long ago there's less

00:24:13.660 than four percent of all old growth redwoods left there hardly are any salmon i mean we know this

00:24:18.640 extinction crisis we know this but to see it and to see the insanity and to be with dune in the

00:24:24.180 copper river delta he said he hardly caught any silvers and the kings didn't come back and to

00:24:31.140 hear ernestine talk about the abundance of southeast alaska you know because she's from southeast

00:24:35.220 and to see how that abundance is literally being choked what i saw one of the things that i noticed

00:24:42.140 when i went to alaska was that i feel like where they are now they're just starting to feel the

00:24:48.720 pinch of the impacts from you know where they are is where we were here 30 years ago so i i tell

00:24:56.160 them like you have you have a buffer because you're so far north but not you're not you're

00:25:02.180 not yet but it's still you know unless you make some radical changes or just halt things put

00:25:09.100 things on pause for now and that 30 years isn't going to take you 30 years after 30 years is

00:25:14.180 going to take you probably five years oh yeah the way things are going with the extreme fluctuations

00:25:18.980 in the weather and the glaciers i give them 10 years and also the drought like people go oh

00:25:25.220 california is the wildfire state with the drought okay no no no the fires through bc there's drought

00:25:33.420 in the north most rainforest in alaska the creeks are drying up the salmon kick up the creeks because

00:25:40.060 there is no water. This is not compartmentalized to one southern state. Wake up.

00:25:46.080 Despite the continued pollution of the Fraser River watershed,

00:26:08.720 it still supports more salmon runs than any other system left on the planet.

00:26:14.620 Stretching 1,375 kilometers southwest from a dripping spring in the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean,

00:26:23.060 this river sustains seven species of salmon, rainbow trout, giant sturgeon, and more than 300 species of migratory and resident birds.

00:26:32.620 The dynamic, bountiful river basin has sustained First Nations community for thousands of years.

00:26:39.880 Some of its traditional names include Latako in the Dachal language and Stalo in the Halk Omelem language.

00:26:49.100 When I visited Nuskmata's home, we walked down to a particular spot along the river.

00:26:55.220 Surrounded by native edible plants, this area, now frequented by tourists, had once been an ancient fishing ground for her people.

00:27:03.680 yeah the river is the thing that connects us all here you know within this this whole watershed

00:27:11.200 this bio region of all the tributaries all of the salmon all of the interconnected species you know

00:27:19.100 I think that's probably why I feel so grounded in my work to come here because it's back to

00:27:24.020 that center for me I followed Nuskamata further out onto the rocks where her family

00:27:30.620 used to catch salmon from the crystalline, free-flowing waters. As I sat there, the water

00:27:36.960 braiding with the rocks, Nuskumata's stories reminded me that we are all vitally connected

00:27:42.760 by the intricate lattice of water's chosen path. Downstream, people in Vancouver dine on fresh

00:27:49.500 seafood, watching ships move across the wide mouth of the Fraser towards the ocean. While

00:27:55.020 upstream, a community wrestles with the risk of drinking, bathing, and eating from contaminated

00:28:00.160 waters and this is something that we had said 20 years ago here you know like when i was a teenager

00:28:06.420 late 80s early 90s we were told then don't eat the eggs from the salmon that you catch this was

00:28:13.200 you know over 20 years ago and we were like why and i said because of the mercury contamination

00:28:18.340 it settles in the eggs okay so we can't eat the eggs but these are the eggs that are going to

00:28:24.700 become the salmon so are we should we even be eating the salmon if we can't be eating the eggs

00:28:31.920 and so you think of the amount of contamination in the bioaccumulation right in not only in the

00:28:37.560 salmon did everything you know the salmon die it goes back to the earth what is the toxic load of

00:28:42.360 the land nothing is assessed in an cumulative way so you have on the Fraser River watershed you have

00:28:48.340 mines dumping waste you have pulp mills dumping waste you have partially treated sewage that's

00:28:54.260 stuffed into the river, all the agricultural fertilizer runoff, and then you have all the

00:28:58.940 runoff within the larger watershed from overlogging and clear cuts, which contributes to warmer

00:29:04.460 waters, which is harder on salmon. The Fraser River is just like one gigantic sewage pipe to

00:29:10.620 the ocean. And how is that impacting other species? Like somebody had posted something

00:29:15.840 on online yesterday of all of these birds that just dropped dead on this beach. A whole bunch

00:29:21.600 had just fallen out of the sky and then they don't talk about how the exploration companies

00:29:26.200 also pollute oh yeah they break down through groundwater you know you have all of your um

00:29:31.780 your waters and your lubricants and whatever to run the drills that often gets down into the wells

00:29:37.600 and that are capped that are there self-monitoring mining's all self-monitoring so it's like ripe

00:29:44.460 right conditions for corruption and what about all the wealthy people in vancouver who want to

00:29:49.880 catch their salmon on the weekends i mean like do you just they not know like what i don't know

00:29:55.040 wealthy white people in the towers of vancouver in their glass buildings yeah the fraser river

00:29:59.360 goes through there right it does i think part of it is that they don't know or they they don't have

00:30:04.440 an immediate connection to it that's the storytelling piece to get people connected

00:30:09.020 into how they're being impacted so you're really passionate about kinder morgan well you should

00:30:15.920 hear about mining because there are there are thousands of mining sites in bc it's one pipeline

00:30:22.300 you need to learn about the next piece when i was down at the protecting mother earth conference

00:30:27.880 and listening to all of the conversations around getting off of fossil fuels and you know renewable

00:30:33.040 energy i'm like you have to clean up mining because there's more mining that's going to

00:30:37.020 be required for rare earth materials and more copper and like i'll tell people you're being

00:30:41.760 impacted whether you understand it or not

00:30:43.600 Can you show me a good trick

00:30:53.240 Show me some magic

00:30:56.180 Can you pull the whole world from my ear

00:31:00.880 I hate how the best things

00:31:06.260 Keep disappearing

00:31:08.640 Like Leonard and Bowie

00:31:12.700 And the ice caps here

00:31:16.260 And we're left with this 0.94

00:31:19.980 Ignorant bliss

00:31:23.220 When we find a good thing 0.88

00:31:26.360 We can't hold on to it

00:31:30.900 The golden age

00:31:34.000 It sure was great

00:31:36.640 The sun was so pretty

00:31:39.500 We couldn't look away

00:31:44.020 Now I can't see my brother

00:31:47.720 My sister or mother

00:31:51.000 Through the rose-colored glasses

00:31:54.500 Of my own newsfeed

00:31:59.020 And the sermon I'm giving

00:32:00.820 In this new algorithm

00:32:04.200 It's falling on deaf ears

00:32:07.500 Cause the choir already believes

00:32:13.120 Tell me where are our heroes

00:32:16.020 Are they stuck at the wall

00:32:19.260 Cause we got some real villains

00:32:22.600 To stop before they kill us

00:32:26.400 All the golden age

00:32:30.260 It's ours to save

00:32:33.020 I hear the bells ringing

00:32:35.920 Are you awake?

00:32:40.800 the amount of rhetoric spewed at conferences and beyond and commercials and the future and

00:33:04.240 techno fixes and the renewable energies okay that is literally i see it i'm like oh my gosh

00:33:10.180 this is just the next wave of industry this is just it's the next wave of industry of factories

00:33:18.820 of yeah it's not less energy intensive no people think oh it's a solar panel somehow that's less

00:33:25.460 energy intensive to create or there's no oppressed people that are having to make the things that

00:33:30.120 water all over the world being poisoned but um and that's just a deeper level of like

00:33:35.200 this this false resilient community being sold to even good activist people like i i've been

00:33:43.100 so many amazing activists that talk about energy freedom yeah and they talk about just transition

00:33:50.120 it's like yeah but where is the mining talking about transition that's right when i was down

00:33:55.180 when i gave my talk down and on this probably i had mentioned about that and saying like you're

00:34:00.220 missing a piece of the conversation if you're not talking about mining i mean of course forestry

00:34:04.580 underpins it all because that's what clears the roads but you've got your big hydroelectric dams

00:34:09.600 right you got site c which a lot of people are saying is you know they're just going to sell

00:34:13.580 off the water or use it for fracking which would make sense where it is because that's in the big

00:34:18.780 fracking zone up there and then you have your fish farms and then you have your pipelines right

00:34:25.860 and then the mining and then agriculture on top of that because you've got to think of all the

00:34:29.800 runoff right so within just the Fraser watershed you've got all of these super industrial practices

00:34:36.920 that are just not being considered together in one conversation no you know people are wanting

00:34:43.620 to just transition where are you on mining or is that even on your radar because if it's not

00:34:50.020 yeah how is it a just transition if your land is being poisoned exactly so that somebody else

00:34:55.500 somewhere else can have a just transition. All of those huge tires, you know, they're like $75,000

00:35:01.060 each. We don't have rubber in our territory. This is coming from the jungles, you know.

00:35:06.980 Where is the fuel coming from to run those big mega trucks, probably being fracked somewhere,

00:35:12.260 from somewhere. You know, what about all of the big jumbo hydroelectric shovels? Well,

00:35:18.000 they're coming from big electric dams. The forestry cleared the roads to get them in there,

00:35:22.340 And all the water from the watersheds, from all the headwaters is where all the big gold mines are because of the way the geology works.

00:35:29.320 So all of this is going into the river.

00:35:31.420 That impacts the salmon, that impacts the killer whales.

00:35:34.800 So it's just a ripple effect constantly.

00:35:37.300 There is no way to continue getting out of it.

00:35:40.060 I mean, unless you want to start eating like Petri dish food, which is the direction we're going.

00:35:44.320 Going down to Southern California, where a lot of my family lives, there's million dollar houses right next to an oil rig.

00:35:49.680 Like, you know, people like are breaking out with asthma and like have all these issues that you literally, you have your million dollar fake looking Tuscan mansion with this offshore drilling and then an oil patch that was wetland.

00:36:02.540 Why would you have asthma?

00:36:03.800 What 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?

00:36:18.000 We must be clear that this new industrial revolution, painted green, carries existential

00:36:25.020 consequences for the millions of at-risk species of Earth, ourselves included.

00:36:31.240 Replacing the world's 1.2 billion vehicles with those powered by batteries would in part

00:36:37.500 require an 8,840% increase of current global lithium production.

00:36:44.180 And by 2035, the current global demand for copper, an essential material in electric systems, is estimated to spike by 43%.

00:36:54.480 It 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.

00:37:11.360 My 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.

00:37:25.400 What could our purpose and identity become outside of the imperialist framework of consumption and domestication?

00:37:33.280 And this has been the conversation, this has been the battle with Indigenous people since contact. 0.53

00:37:38.140 is this completely different worldview around how to live in this world well in potlatching culture 0.70

00:37:44.720 on the northwest coast you would only ever acquire wealth or more than what you needed

00:37:49.240 to redistribute it to the community you would never acquire personal wealth for your own

00:37:53.580 personal gain that would be breaking the law and like actual physical wealth it was metaphorically

00:38:01.500 held in the potlatches of how many times you fed the people that's where your status came from was

00:38:06.260 how much you provided for your wider community so that's written in our laws and within our language

00:38:12.400 so we've got these completely different worldviews this completely different spiritual connection

00:38:17.320 where there is no spiritual connection in the dominant yeah i was thinking about this the other

00:38:22.540 day and i was like i've got to write this stuff down when i was pregnant with my son i didn't do

00:38:27.760 this consciously but i was eating as much traditional food as i could and so his body

00:38:33.540 is made up of salmon and deer meat and you know medicines and berries and everything that is

00:38:40.860 here while I was pregnant. I was drinking soap fairy juice every day and so our bodies are

00:38:46.340 physically made up of this land and it's the same genetic code as it always has been so that our

00:38:51.240 physical vibrational spiritual however you want to describe it connection to this very land

00:38:56.820 this land actually built our bones and our blood and our flesh. It always shocked me when I was

00:39:02.620 younger that people could just grow up somewhere and then just move away forever and never come

00:39:06.440 back it's just not in my world view to do that it's like this is home forever and it always will

00:39:12.600 be for my bloodline we're not going to leave we're not going to go anywhere and that's been the whole

00:39:16.660 that's what the indian problem is the indian problem they actually call it the indian problem

00:39:20.220 in canada is that we survived we're still here and that we still are maintaining this connection

00:39:26.160 with the earth and you know i was thinking about it last night of how to describe it i was thinking 0.68

00:39:30.580 of a play you know maybe something that kids could do if you had this indigenous woman that

00:39:37.900 represents the earth mother the mother you know and her basket is filled with everything that you

00:39:43.240 would ever need you know with your food and the clean water and all of the ceremonies that keep

00:39:47.780 you connected to the land we still have a lot of that a lot of it isn't even lost but a lot of it

00:39:52.580 still remains there's ways of regaining that knowledge through ceremony and through you know

00:39:57.220 just being on the land itself and learning the language it's all in there so you talk about

00:40:02.060 these living libraries and within indigenous cultures the language and the ceremonies and

00:40:07.100 the knowledge of the land and the food that we eat gives us information and access to these

00:40:11.560 libraries as well so when we can't go out on the land because there's mining and there's no

00:40:17.380 trespassing and no hunting science everywhere roads are gated and it becomes harder and harder

00:40:22.540 to maintain that taste for the line.

00:40:24.520 I have a niece that came out from Ontario,

00:40:27.040 born and raised in Ontario her whole life.

00:40:28.660 She's Nicole.

00:40:29.560 Came to Bella Coola for the first time.

00:40:31.900 She doesn't like anything. 0.60

00:40:33.060 There's like five things on earth that she likes to eat. 0.67

00:40:34.960 She doesn't like anything. 1.00

00:40:35.900 She's super, super fussy.

00:40:37.800 She tried deer meat for the first time

00:40:39.460 and her eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.

00:40:41.900 She couldn't get enough of it.

00:40:43.000 And I was like, that's your body recognizing

00:40:44.940 what you were made up of.

00:40:46.720 It was just instant recognition.

00:40:49.640 You know, they want to learn how to hunt.

00:40:51.020 They really want to learn how to hunt.

00:40:52.540 So it's like, okay, well, you need to be here in the fall, right?

00:40:57.860 So we're harvesting certain things.

00:40:59.740 It's like, well, you can't do that until fall time.

00:41:02.260 It's that connection with the land because it's like,

00:41:04.720 we know that we're still in the place, our birthplace,

00:41:07.960 and we still have this connection in that

00:41:09.520 because we have this close relationship with the land,

00:41:12.360 even though it's harder and harder to maintain,

00:41:15.820 we know that at a very deep level.

00:41:18.720 We as Indigenous people descend from the strongest of the strong of our ancestors.

00:41:22.540 yeah so that blood is running through us and it's not even a choice their job was to survive

00:41:28.120 just make it through just survive get through this survive through the smallpox you know the

00:41:32.740 genocide that happened so yeah like i think what happened is you just concentrated all the warrior

00:41:37.540 survivor blood you know you think of after in europe after the plagues went through what the

00:41:42.360 state of society was at that time right the sickness the trauma so that's what our communities

00:41:48.560 have gone through you know and then the residential schools and boarding schools in the united states

00:41:52.240 The 60s scoop in Canada, you know, forced sterilization, medical experimentation, all of these things.

00:41:59.240 It's just like, oh, thing after thing.

00:42:00.620 And now the big thing in Canada is, you know, the amount of children that are in care.

00:42:05.020 There are more children that have been taken into foster care than were ever in residential schools.

00:42:10.560 Do you think the foster schools are just like, you know, 2.0 residential schools?

00:42:15.620 Because it's still this patriarchal system where the underlying belief is that Indigenous people aren't truly human, aren't truly civilized, don't know how to be parents, are totally messed up because we're just degenerate.

00:42:29.160 This is totally systemic. 0.98

00:42:31.940 It's really exciting when I see young people who are really stoked to learn their language and they're speaking out against colonization and they're doing these amazing creative things to say, you know what, I don't buy that bullshit story anymore.

00:42:44.140 and it stops with me this trauma this cycle this you know sickness stops with me because i'm doing

00:42:51.920 everything i can to learn and so you see this people organizing that's really exciting because

00:42:57.380 that's what needs to happen right and to get these young people fired up where they're raised

00:43:01.660 where it's just not even acceptable they wouldn't even entertain the idea like i asked my son when

00:43:06.600 he was going to school here in williams lake because i went to high school in williams lake

00:43:09.260 it was very very racist when I went and I asked him how the racism was and he was just like

00:43:15.040 oh I don't know if if there was something directly directly at me he was like I wasn't

00:43:23.180 really aware of it I'm like well you'd be aware of it my son is the first generation whose parents

00:43:29.800 didn't go to residential school I'm the first generation he's the first generation whose 0.99

00:43:34.600 parents didn't go the work that indigenous grandmothers are doing are coming from this

00:43:40.060 intense place of love that's why it's powerful that's why they're powerful you know it's it's

00:43:45.780 a love story and when i was in alaska i was saying you know like every love story there's heartache

00:43:49.880 it's this underlying love people like don't you ever want to quit i'm like yeah like every day

00:43:55.180 like every single day i want to quit and i heard this one this one speaker and she was saying that

00:44:01.140 people would ask her that she goes oh I do but I do I quit every single day at five o'clock I quit

00:44:05.800 and then I'm with my family and I'm doing the things that feed me and then I start again the

00:44:10.260 next day knowing that I can quit at five o'clock every day otherwise I would burn out and go crazy

00:44:14.920 you're having to fight on so many different levels you're having to experientially live it

00:44:19.720 you can't get away from it you drive down the road and oh yeah you know I'm driving on the

00:44:25.940 freeway and I'm like oh there's a mine truck there's a mine truck yeah that one's got you

00:44:29.580 know the big rod for the rod mill that's going to crush up the rock oh that one is hauling

00:44:34.260 concentrate back to Vancouver that's a big piece of mining equipment going up I see it everywhere

00:44:38.820 I see the word capitals n-o-w I think notice of work that's mining you know I see stuff everywhere

00:44:45.700 and I'm just like I can't unsee it once you know right this machine is broken we're just moving

00:44:57.040 Through the motions

00:45:00.240 But you can't tell

00:45:02.920 The ocean when the tide should come in

00:45:06.840 And it's coming in

00:45:09.340 Yeah, yeah

00:45:20.820 How long can us people

00:45:25.560 There's so many different parts of the work that needs to be done.

00:45:49.000 You might not be out there at the front of that march getting arrested,

00:45:52.800 but you're going door to door in the community getting signatures for a petition and you're like

00:45:57.380 looking after the kids while there's a meeting going on or you're slogging through government

00:46:01.880 meetings or doing public events like there are lots of different strategies they're all threads

00:46:08.140 of the same fabric within indigenous communities too you have people who think that oh if you go

00:46:15.280 to a government meeting then you're a sellout they're being played in this divide and conquer

00:46:20.540 and they're like oh you're so colonized and it's like well then maybe we need to address that what

00:46:25.620 solutions are you bringing you know and getting over this whole internalized colonization

00:46:30.360 internalized divisions within the communities that's a really key piece and you know we're

00:46:35.040 talking about free prior informed consent moving into this age of consent now away from consultation

00:46:39.260 what are we doing in our indigenous nations to ensure true decision making within the nations

00:46:45.180 and i was asked the other day by cbc radio you know well isn't that going to put a halt to every

00:46:51.620 single industrial project out there and i just said that's really oversimplifying it that's

00:46:57.420 fear-mongering and there's a lot of work that has never been done and so now it's time to get down 0.51

00:47:03.100 to work and now indigenous people have fought their way court after court battle all of these 0.96

00:47:09.620 things getting our own agencies to take care of our own children to take care of our own health

00:47:12.820 services all of this stuff that is all trench work you know we're in this position that we're

00:47:18.440 in because it was bought and paid for with the blood sweat and tears of every generation after

00:47:24.580 that's had to deal with the trauma and the ongoing colonization with this gold rush that never ended

00:47:29.420 it just changed clothes just changed appearances it's got a new storefront you know they just keep

00:47:34.980 such a low profile and they try to yes very low very low profile you won't see imperial metals

00:47:40.220 now polymine on any social media platform you won't see them doing anything other than working

00:47:44.700 directly with government and directly within the industry itself yeah they don't reply to anything

00:47:49.820 they don't need to engage with the public because they get all of their permissions and

00:47:54.960 authorizations and permits from the government fossil fuel companies they have social media

00:48:00.060 they're hooking up with coca-cola oh yeah they're out they're sponsoring events bp for instance like

00:48:06.740 i saw a commercial on youtube for bp and they had all these famous musicians and they're like bp and

00:48:12.600 they're like singing you know and they're like bp the way to the future whatever go to disneyland

00:48:18.280 right an old gold mine you know like new gold mine yeah mom is the word when after the mont

00:48:23.920 polly disaster happened the government of british columbia wanted the first nations to sign

00:48:29.440 non-disclosure agreement oh gosh the government on behalf of the mining company and so like you

00:48:36.320 have right now in British Columbia people going what consent do you know how much time that's

00:48:41.960 going to take reconciliation do you know how much that's cutting into our bottom line and so

00:48:46.660 everything has to operate at the speed of money they want to do it in like a year two years or

00:48:51.460 less for these major oh yeah major projects that couldn't totally wipe out entire populations

00:48:58.680 of human and non-human alike talk about no concept of deep time and in British Columbia one of the

00:49:05.040 big things is this whole system called professional reliance. So rather than having ministries that

00:49:10.840 are responsible for, you know, maintaining the integrity and making decisions around

00:49:15.680 environmental protection, like the Ministry of Environment, has turned over all monitoring of

00:49:23.540 the water coming off the mine site, all monitoring of the impacts over to the mine. And then they're

00:49:29.240 like, oh, well, yeah, we checked in with them and it looks legit. So we're going to go with that.

00:49:35.040 So these 2,000-plus abandoned mines, many are the headwaters of rivers.

00:49:42.180 What will it take for the B.C. government, the U.S. government?

00:49:46.380 What is it going to take to first get these companies or somebody?

00:49:51.660 Somebody's got to be cleaning this up.

00:49:53.360 What are we going to do about that?

00:49:55.260 Some of the things that are happening right now in the different channels and partners that I work with is

00:50:00.380 there's the Indigenous Guardians initiatives that are happening in different communities

00:50:05.300 around doing all of that monitoring, being part of the compliance, being part of the land use

00:50:10.560 planning, having areas that are designated as Indigenous protected areas where there are just

00:50:14.600 no go zones, right? And so that's where I think it's really important for people to be engaged

00:50:19.920 locally. And what I've seen from after the Mount Polly disaster was that local people became so

00:50:26.040 discouraged and angered and silenced or just completely ridiculed or harassed everything

00:50:33.940 that was happening on the land in the community in the public online it just completely traumatized

00:50:42.640 people and people withdrew to protect themselves the aftermath of the mount poly mine disaster

00:50:50.640 reminds us of the toxic social and environmental legacy left behind on the mining industry's

00:50:56.780 destructive path. An expert panel predicted that there will be two such tailing pond failures

00:51:03.020 every 10 years in BC, like ticking time bombs, threatening the heart of living, breathing

00:51:08.720 ecosystems. Nuskamata warns that constant vigilance and community oversight is required

00:51:15.340 over not only active, abandoned, and decommissioned sites, but also new sites in the exploration phase

00:51:21.880 on the frontier of mining expansion. While traveling in so-called Hanes, Alaska,

00:51:28.000 I witnessed the turning gears of this predatory model, as Constantine Metal Resources, a Canadian

00:51:34.400 mining company, invaded the pristine headwaters of the Chilkat River to quantify the copper,

00:51:40.440 zinc, gold, and silver content of a mountain. This new mine site, in the unceded territory

00:51:48.100 of the Chilkat Tlingit, could begin operations shortly, despite a majority opposition from

00:51:54.320 Native and non-Native Alaskans. And the road into Haines, for the last two years,

00:52:00.780 totally been reconstructed. I mean, they are chopping down the mountains. And they're like,

00:52:04.780 oh, for the tourists. Really? Not for the gigantic haul trucks? Not for the gigantic

00:52:09.320 like shifting, you know, out the ore.

00:52:11.440 It's the Bald Eagle Sanctuary.

00:52:13.560 Most bald eagles anywhere.

00:52:15.040 Most grizzly bears in the continent in the Kluwani right there.

00:52:19.240 I mean, this area is just unreal.

00:52:21.420 And they're just chopping, chopping, chopping the mountains.

00:52:24.880 Grinding, grinding, grinding for the road.

00:52:27.020 Big excavator, boom.

00:52:28.340 Dunking these excavators in the effing river,

00:52:30.980 creating new road on the river.

00:52:32.660 The Department of Fish and Wildlife,

00:52:34.540 who's supposed to be protecting the salmon,

00:52:35.620 allowed for this road construction during the peak months of salmon spawning to make the road 0.91

00:52:42.880 for tourists i'm like this is bullshit and they have so many machines massive massive project 0.59

00:52:49.380 you know millions of dollars obviously i'm just like oh my gosh once the road is in it's it's 0.96

00:52:54.900 classic project splitting this is what they do in mines where they'll just incrementally get bigger

00:53:00.100 and bigger and bigger beyond the original footprint of what they ever proposed to get the

00:53:04.300 approval i've got a 10 year life 15 year life it's going to provide this many jobs or whatever

00:53:08.700 right and then incrementally it gets bigger and bigger to the point that it's well beyond the

00:53:14.600 capacity or the design like mount poly and it it bursts yeah it's maddening it's maddening i've

00:53:20.640 seen the road i know what you're talking about up in hanes yeah german it if am i going to come

00:53:25.080 into your town do you maybe you want to look at all other communities that have had this and try

00:53:28.940 to see what's happened to them to see if it's a good idea for your community there's no way

00:53:33.400 that your community will not go down the same path yeah your community will not be the exception

00:53:39.080 how far will we go to mine ourselves out of the climate crisis in order to maintain a luxury

00:53:46.980 driven consumerist culture are we willing to sacrifice more of the earth's remaining intact

00:53:53.200 ecosystems and watersheds still turning with the primordial hum of life in the name of modernity

00:53:59.720 inhabiting these questions in part demands an honest investigation into the true cost of our

00:54:07.280 individual material footprint while i hold and acknowledge the larger systemic forces at play

00:54:13.500 in contemporary waste regimes it's also my sense that we shouldn't abandon the thoughtfulness

00:54:19.300 of our material experiences wherever possible when we fail to acknowledge our interconnectedness

00:54:25.880 we've cast not only the weight of our material burden, but also the psychic burden onto the

00:54:31.620 affected people and places and creatures. So I invite you to feel into your embodied experience

00:54:38.820 of the metals, fossil fuels, papers, plastics that pass through your hands on a day-to-day basis.

00:54:46.280 Is there a way to remain effective in the world while drastically reducing or abstaining from

00:54:51.700 such consumption. How can we reclaim the concept of abundance from the grip of mass resource

00:54:58.200 extraction and return it to the arms of the earth? It's facing this mythology, this romanticized gold.

00:55:07.120 There's no reason to mine any more gold. It's all for vanity. It's all for, most of it's for

00:55:12.580 jewelry. You know, if people can just stop buying gold, even if you have gold, just stop buying it.

00:55:18.860 and be aware of your language around gold you know oh treat you like gold it's the gold standard

00:55:24.220 it's you know where it's this highest value and it's like actually clean water is worth a heck

00:55:29.340 of a lot more can you imagine how our world would be transformed if everybody had access to clean

00:55:33.600 water on the whole planet if everybody had clean water how that would change the world

00:55:39.240 this is the most fundamental thing other than air and so when we as indigenous people are being

00:55:44.780 criminalized for wanting to protect clean water that protects everybody it's so outrageous but

00:55:51.680 it's the accepted norm in this industrial military capitalistic complex that we're in

00:55:57.980 so shifting these systems is huge huge huge work but it's doable we have to believe that we can do

00:56:04.820 it but be skeptical enough that it motivates us to take action in our own lives we can't just wait

00:56:11.440 for someone else to do it because everything that we don't do burden gets passed on to our children

00:56:15.000 so what path are we clearing for them what work are we doing to prepare for them that's why telling

00:56:21.480 the truth is so revolutionary not subscribing to this murder culture and actually working from a

00:56:27.140 place of love is revolutionary people have like love how corny is that and it's like if you don't

00:56:33.020 truly understand what i'm saying that's the problem and if you haven't found your love

00:56:38.940 story with the land yet that's what we need to help you find because that's what's going to shift

00:56:42.980 you know and i think also just thinking about my unborn grandchildren that is a huge motivator

00:56:50.740 for me what am i gonna what is my inheritance going to be that i'm building up now for them

00:56:55.420 you know so it's life work and sometimes just gotta stop and go pick berries

00:57:01.980 Go to the river

00:57:04.020 Go to the river

00:57:04.980 This tea was delicious

00:57:06.300 Oh good

00:57:07.080 What was it again?

00:57:09.560 Labrador tea

00:57:10.460 Rose hips

00:57:12.640 I think it's balsam

00:57:18.040 I know the name 0.99

00:57:18.680 It's melanz

00:57:20.480 Which means the medicine bar

00:57:21.840 The medicine shoe

00:57:22.680 I wish I would have found

00:57:27.040 When was the last time you walked in a forest?

00:57:33.440 When was the last time you climbed a tree?

00:57:38.240 You know it's still there, getting smaller every day.

00:57:42.660 And if it could speak, I'm sure you'd hear it say. 0.88

00:57:47.480 Quit cutting me down, killing my critters,

00:57:50.260 poisoning my lakes and damming my rivers.

00:57:57.040 When was the last time you swam in the ocean?

00:58:02.260 When was the last time you sailed the sea?

00:58:07.040 It's still there, getting dirtier every day.

00:58:11.480 And if it could speak, I'm sure you'd hear it say.

00:58:16.240 Quit filling me with plastic, killing my critters, drilling for oil, I won't live forever.

00:58:21.000 Nah, nah, no one lives forever.

00:58:23.660 Nah, nah, nah, yeah.

00:58:25.600 Saw Skullet the other day 1.00

00:58:27.280 Not minding his business 1.00

00:58:28.540 Showing Whiskamish 1.00

00:58:29.640 Pushing his limits 1.00

00:58:30.880 Munching on street

00:58:31.920 Overhead through the Eagle

00:58:33.220 Another sunny day

00:58:34.300 Not surrounded by people

00:58:35.620 Talking about the land 0.96

00:58:36.860 Swappin' hulu

00:58:37.980 Running through the hills 0.98

00:58:39.220 Dancing on hoodoos

00:58:40.520 Catching swell

00:58:41.300 Fishing trout early spring

00:58:42.860 Harvesting the goodies

00:58:44.020 Doing our thing 1.00

00:58:45.060 Watching out for that smoole 1.00

00:58:46.460 Covering our tracks 1.00

00:58:47.660 Picking with cocactum

00:58:48.900 Shivering us a laugh

00:58:49.980 Out the river

00:58:50.580 We forced them all to go 1.00

00:58:52.140 Whisked that pool

00:58:53.140 The land like a four-leaf globe

00:58:54.620 We all want to be healthy. We want to be happy. We want, you know, clean water and food and to

00:59:00.220 have an enjoyable life and to have that available for future generations. And I think that if we can

00:59:05.220 base our work around those values and those principles and be open to learning,

00:59:10.700 to be open to new systems, to be open to sharing power, that's what's going to change the world.

00:59:16.960 This love story, it's what we do every day. It's the decisions that we make. It's our

00:59:21.280 our intention and our awareness and our commitment to action and I think that it's really important

00:59:28.000 for people to get out there and to have those experiences on the land to put that time and

00:59:33.660 commitment into learning where they're from to upholding and protecting these beautiful wild

00:59:39.180 places or to restoring places that have been impacted we can't abandon these places that have

00:59:44.600 been you know polluted or who have been harmed just like we wouldn't abandon a family member

00:59:50.160 who needs our support and who needs our our attention and so if we can have those values

00:59:56.440 guide our work and to be creative and to try things and to really be bold we don't have time

01:00:02.500 to be careful and cautious we have to be really bold in our actions and I think people know deep

01:00:08.140 down what they need to do and finding that bravery and that inspiration all you have to do is spend

01:00:13.700 a bit of time and out there in the wild on the land or even if you're in the city to really see

01:00:19.040 that the planet needs us our children need us so it's really an honor to be able to do this work

01:00:25.080 and to come at it from that perspective I think shifts things a lot and takes back that power

01:00:29.500 and that's an incredible thing I'd like to take a moment to extend my deepest gratitude

01:00:35.720 to Nuskumada Jacinda Mack for generously opening her home to me and offering her time

01:00:42.400 open spirit and honest reflections for the making of this episode it has been such an honor to

01:00:49.020 to learn from this wise woman, artist, musician, mother, and meet along the path as we weave

01:00:55.620 ancient and new worlds into being. Since this interview, Nuskumata has left First Nations

01:01:01.700 women advocating responsible mining and joined the team at Maddie Lee in northern BC, an

01:01:08.060 indigenous-led team that has regained control and occupation of their traditional lands in

01:01:13.760 Gitkasan territory on the Skeena River. To learn more about their work in indigenous systems change,

01:01:20.220 ancestral governance, and cultural revitalization programs, please visit maddielee.com. That's

01:01:27.800 m-a-d-i-i-l-i-i dot com. We also request that you consider supporting local and indigenous

01:01:36.700 communities on the front lines of metal and mineral mining, those working to radically

01:01:41.320 transform the mining industry to preserve the wildlands and watersheds of sacred lands everywhere.

01:01:49.560 As a starting point, check out First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining,

01:01:55.560 Fair Mining Collaborative, Salmon Beyond Borders, BC Mining Law Reform, and Mining

01:02:01.740 Injustice Solidarity Network. Lastly, wherever this podcast reaches you, we encourage you to

01:02:07.860 get more involved in local mining, resource extraction, and land defense issues. Here are a

01:02:14.000 few pressing projects we've been following that we hope you'll take the time to learn more about.

01:02:19.260 First, as mentioned earlier, the Palmer Project. A proposed copper, zinc, gold, and silver mine

01:02:25.580 is sited at the headwaters of the Chilkat River on unceded Chilkat-Tlingit territory.

01:02:31.960 Second, the proposed open-pit copper and gold pebble mine in Bristol Bay, southwest Alaska, threatens the world's greatest sockeye salmon run and the lifeways of local residents and indigenous communities.

01:02:45.400 Third, Imperial Metals has recently applied for a five-year permit in the Skagit headwaters

01:02:52.440 that, if approved by the BC government, will see the building of an access road,

01:02:58.100 surface trenches, drill pads, and exploratory pits up to 2,000 meters deep

01:03:03.280 amid sensitive populations of grizzlies, bull trout, and bald eagles.

01:03:08.140 finally on february 23rd tech resources withdrew its application to build a 20 billion dollar

01:03:17.880 tech frontier mine the largest ever open pit tar sands mine cited on dene and cree territory

01:03:24.360 in so-called alberta this win is a direct reflection of the tireless work spearheaded

01:03:30.760 by indigenous-led campaigns and frontline communities.

01:03:35.360 We know all such victories are temporary while industries exist,

01:03:40.060 so we must be non-negotiable in our solidarity with these wild places

01:03:44.040 and those who are most beholden to their defense.

01:03:49.020 Please visit our website at forthewild.world

01:03:52.800 for a full list of links, resources, and action points.

01:04:00.760 thank you for listening to for the wild podcast in the field edition i'm ayanna young the music

01:04:09.760 you heard today was jug in the water by carrie morin dirty water by compassion gorilla ghost

01:04:15.940 by lynx and the servants of song fauna lingua by the malaman collective golden age by the mina

01:04:22.880 birds and this machine by the honey tongues i'd like to thank our podcast production team

01:04:28.800 Aidan McRae, Cardaloo McElroy, Erica Ekrem, Aaron Wise, Francesca Glassbell,

01:04:35.820 Hannah Wilton, March Young, and Melanie Younger.

01:04:58.800 You

For The Wild - May 18, 2022

InTheField： NUSKMATA (Jacinda Mack) on the Gold Rush That Never Ended [ENCORE] ⧸287

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