00:00:00.420Hey for the wild community, Zyana here, speaking to you from the Allied Media Conference in Detroit, Michigan.
00:00:08.480I'll be hosting a panel Saturday on objectivity, intimacy, and integrity in journalism and storytelling.
00:00:17.160So if you're here, I would love to connect and say hello.
00:00:21.080In other news, we are on the lookout for land partners for the One Million Redwoods Project.
00:00:26.200so if you're a land steward and are interested in partnering on our biodiversity enhancement
00:00:32.580test plots and tree plantings email us at engage at for the wild dot world we're also looking for
00:00:39.180some help at cougar mountain so if you have any carpentry or building experience for our seed and
00:00:44.640fungal library email for the wild world at gmail.com and lastly we are open to sponsorships
00:00:54.040So if you're interested in sponsoring this podcast so that we can keep going week in, week out, email us at engage at for the wild dot world.
00:01:03.300All right. Now on to our conversation with Jacinda Mack.
00:01:07.320People need to become activated and the apathy is what's going to kill us.
00:01:11.720The giving up, saying it's too big, it's going to happen anyway. That's what's going to kill us.
00:01:23.260The silence is broken by somebody crying, trying to be heard, never a word.
00:01:31.700Always the attitude, sort out your own, always alone.
00:01:37.220Wishing for something the world is denying.
00:01:41.860Out in the wilderness somebody's crying.
00:01:53.260Somebody wishing for something to happen
00:05:06.820So to start us off with a sense of place, would you mind telling us about the lands and waters that raised you?
00:05:14.400And how the presence of the mining industry and the Mount Polly tailings dam disaster has impacted the way your community is able to make relationship with your more than human relatives?
00:05:27.500Absolutely. I would love to talk about the beautiful land I was raised on.
00:05:31.300As we all know, the land that we grow up in as Indigenous people, this is where we get our identity, where our identities are formed.
00:05:40.200I was raised in my mother's territory of the Sikwetan people, and in this area, it's pine forests.
00:05:48.440The Fraser River runs through the canyon, which starts in our community.
00:05:51.700I grew up fishing at night in the summertime on the river for sockeye salmon.
00:05:56.560We would have sockeye eggs in the morning for breakfast, and that was just part of our way of life.
00:06:01.860And we would move through the seasons doing different harvesting activities, you know, whether we were working in our big garden or maybe it was fall time and it was hunting season and it was time to hunt for deer and moose.
00:06:16.980and I'm also from the coastal nation of the Nuhalq people and here we have giant snow-capped
00:06:24.100mountains and dense rainforests as part of what is now known as the Great Bear Rainforest.
00:06:30.120We were just out harvesting in springtime here and in the Nuhalq territory getting medicines
00:06:34.140and preparing for all of the different activities for winter such as harvesting cedar for weaving
00:06:39.260and ceremonial purposes so it is really still a very big part of my life and the older i get the
00:06:47.240more i realize those connections are really critical to maintaining my sense of who i am
00:06:52.580in place and to make sure that i maintain that for myself so that i can pass it on to my my
00:06:58.360children my nieces and nephews and you know when the mount poly mine disaster happened
00:07:04.420it was a collective response from everybody. It was like a death that happened and it rippled
00:07:10.480throughout, not only throughout our territory, but into neighboring territories who are also
00:07:15.280on the Fraser River. And beyond that, because there's so many mines that are spread out
00:07:20.460throughout British Columbia, throughout Canada and around the world. People from Brazil were
00:07:26.480reaching out to us because they have huge mines and dams in their territory as well.
00:07:31.640And so through this disaster, I have learned so much.
00:07:35.800And it's actually such an awakening for so many people to understand what the realities of mining are.
00:07:41.900And it's like this sleeping giant that people are only becoming aware of with this disaster.
00:07:47.000To think that the mining industry took Mount Polly not as a wake-up call, but as a green light to continue and expand business as usual is sickening.
00:07:58.420And especially when experts warn that B.C. can expect two such ruptures per decade, on top of the fact that there are already 2,000 abandoned mines in B.C., two-thirds of which are spewing pollutants.
00:08:12.720So with that in mind, could you expand upon how Imperial Metals has gotten away with resuming full operations and the dumping of wastewater into Quenelle Lake without any compensation to the local indigenous peoples?
00:08:28.420The laws in British Columbia around mining are basically from the 1850s and 1860s, really when the first gold rushes were happening and getting bigger.
00:08:39.480And really, we've been dealing with mining and this gold rush and gold fever since that time.
00:08:45.700A lot of the mining laws are the basis for the actual colonization of the province of British Columbia.
00:08:51.880And so they are held as basically as the central laws around which other laws have been built.
00:09:02.140Mining is considered in British Columbia as the highest use of the land.
00:09:06.240And so this runs, of course, very contrary to our Indigenous beliefs,
00:09:11.320really across all nations around values for protecting clean water,
00:09:16.120for having a clean environment, and also being an integral piece of a balanced environment.
00:09:21.880And so when the disaster happened, we met with the mine and we asked them, what is your disaster response plan?
00:09:29.620What is your plan? We haven't seen that. What is it that you're going to do?
00:09:33.460And they responded that they didn't have a disaster response plan because it wasn't required by the province of British Columbia.
00:09:40.440It wasn't part of their permit. Therefore, they didn't have anything.
00:09:44.020And so we were we were shocked that this was another piece of mining law that was missing.
00:09:49.160And that mining, they say, is in the interest of all of the province or in the national interest.
00:09:56.200But really, it's for the benefit of the mining companies and the governments that receive the taxes from it, the royalties from mining.
00:10:04.480And so the mine really is only going to ever do what is in their permit.
00:10:09.440And each mining permit is unique to that mine.
00:10:13.420So there will be, I mean, you have your standard mining regulations that are supposed to be followed.
00:10:18.780But there are different acts that come into play also. So you have the Mines Act, you have the Environment Act.
00:10:24.380And in some cases, you'll have other acts coming into place like Forest Lands, Natural Resources,
00:10:29.460where it's dealing more with the forestry aspect when you're dealing with road building.
00:10:33.100But even then, if you have a mine road that doesn't meet the forestry requirements,
00:10:38.720you can say, well, it's actually under our mining lease, so it doesn't apply to us.
00:10:43.640So there's all of these off-ramps for mining to get these kind of free rides all over the place.
00:10:49.880And after the disaster happened, we really found out how little the government is willing to do to keep these mines in check.
00:10:57.740Because, I mean, obviously, with that amount, I think it was compared to 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools of mine waste that had been released into the environment.
00:11:07.900and the company response was to basically re-engineer the creek that it went down to go
00:11:14.780back into operation, stitch up its tailing storage facility that broke, and then just continue to
00:11:20.100operate. And that's what happened. And so you have these laws that are favoring mining at every
00:11:28.860different angle at the expense of the environment, at the expense of the communities that depend on
00:11:34.100that clean water that depend on that immediate area for food and sustenance and you have these
00:11:39.780really rural communities that are surrounding these mines and they choose to live there because
00:11:44.600they love that way of life you have indigenous people who use that land that's part of our
00:11:49.520very dna you know for over 10 000 years and when we would go to these community meetings it would
00:11:57.380be meeting after meeting after meeting of the mine basically dictating the conversation and the
00:12:04.540government and the communities would respond and so this has been the way of mining since it was
00:12:10.960started in British Columbia and this is what we're trying to address to say actually you know we need
00:12:16.920to be directing this conversation we need to be saying what is safe for our communities and we
00:12:20.920need to you know take that level of interpretation by the mine out of the equation and we need to
00:12:26.560take that back because Mount Pauly, this disaster, we need to use it as an opportunity to change
00:12:33.540these laws. Otherwise, as their own experts have said, two every decade. And there was another
00:12:38.040disaster recently in Australia. And I think what a lot of people don't understand is that this
00:12:42.820Canadian model is being exported around the world. Canada is the center point. It's the
00:12:49.280eye of the storm for mining in the world. Most mining companies in the world are registered in
00:12:54.700Canada because the laws are so privileged towards mining that it makes sense for them to make the
00:13:00.420most money by setting up their companies here. So what we do with Mount Pauly is really important,
00:13:05.600not only in our community and in our watershed, but around the world because people are watching.
00:13:11.200What do you think proper reparations would look like when it's so difficult to even begin to
00:13:17.560quantify the cultural and psychological dimensions of environmental harm? And what actions do you
00:13:24.300see as absolutely vital in going forward? I think that British Columbia really needs to
00:13:29.660step up to the plate and honor its own laws and to enforce its own laws. There was a private
00:13:35.540prosecution that was brought forward, not by the provincial government, but actually by my mother,
00:13:39.680Bev Sellers, who stepped in on the last day of the statute of limitations, which was last year,
00:13:45.600August 4th, 2017, which would be three years after the disaster, to step in to press criminal
00:13:51.340charges against the company for breaching, I think, 15 counts that they had brought up under
00:13:56.440the Environment Act and the Mines Act. And the province took those charges over and dismissed
00:14:01.700them, stating that there wasn't enough evidence. And I think that goes to show how inadequate the
00:14:10.560system is, and in a lot of ways, how corrupt the system is. These companies donate a lot of money
00:14:15.820to different political parties and they have a lot of lobbying power and it's just they need to
00:14:23.000live up to their their laws they need to be enforced they need to have proper monitoring
00:14:27.300and compliance because in the auditor general carol bell ringer's report she had said that you
00:14:33.040know you can't have one ministry the ministry of energy and mines who's supposed to be permitting
00:14:38.540and monitoring and keeping these mines in check but they're the same ministry that's also promoting
00:14:43.700mining in British Columbia. So you have an extreme conflict of interest. And you have also the mines
00:14:50.060who are basically self-monitoring and doing all of the work that the government should be doing
00:14:55.560to be keeping them in check. And so, you know, that's a real problem. The other thing that needs
00:15:00.500to happen immediately is for the government to uphold its obligations to the United Nations
00:15:05.440Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. And both British Columbia and Canada have stated
00:15:10.500that they support that and that they are going to be working with that as the new model of how to
00:15:17.700deal with projects and how to deal with Indigenous people as government-to-government
00:15:23.540relationships. And we really haven't been seeing this. Right now, the same governments that promise
00:15:29.680that have done nothing about Montpali. They've actually taken over charges at the federal and
00:15:34.540provincial level and dismissed them. Right now in British Columbia, Premier John Horgan is saying
00:15:39.100that he's upholding No Kinder Morgan Pipeline coming in to protect water and the people,
00:15:43.540yet he completely ignores the Site C dam up in the Treaty 8 Moberly Lake area and completely
00:15:50.800ignoring things around Mount Pauly. So the government can't be cherry picking when they
00:15:55.080choose to uphold these rights. It's across the board. And so we've been working with folks up
00:16:01.120in Alaska and expanding our network to other areas in Montana, Washington State, working with
00:16:06.900different Indigenous people to say, okay, we need to define what upholding the United Nations
00:16:13.240Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People looks like for us. And we need to get in front
00:16:17.000of any type of government interpretation, which we fear will simply water down the spirit and the
00:16:22.580intent and the value of what that declaration brings to us. And with British Columbia upholding
00:16:28.240its own laws and Canada upholding its own laws and enforcing them and the application of the
00:16:33.560declaration, I think that's a really good place to start. And we're also looking at other options
00:16:38.760around what is the professional community doing about this as well. One of the initiatives that
00:16:44.800we're really looking at as a tool to get mining companies on board is the Initiative for Responsible
00:16:51.380Mining Assurance, or IRMA for short. And so we're looking at all of these better standards to clean
00:16:57.340up this industry because the reality is, is that we have so many mines that are already in operation
00:17:03.560or have been in operation for a very long time. And these have all been built without any kind
00:17:08.200of consent from Indigenous people. And that process just wasn't implemented. So we're trying
00:17:14.160to catch up with what exactly is best technology, what exactly are the best practices, because the
00:17:20.620companies will state that they're using those, when in reality, they're paying for the cheapest
00:17:24.780way forward, which is the experience that we've had with the Mount Pauly mine. So there's a lot
00:17:28.740of work to be done, for sure. I hear that. I've also heard you describe mining as a waste storage
00:17:36.080industry, speaking to the fact that over 90% of what comes out of a mine is waste. So I'd like
00:17:42.740to hear more specifically about the tailing ponds, which are essentially supposed to store waste
00:17:48.060forever as their toxicity never fades or disappears so what exactly do these tailing
00:17:55.700ponds contain and how are they regulated and maintained yeah so in on mining sites most of
00:18:02.920what comes out of a mine or what most of what is produced in a mine is waste especially when you're
00:18:07.360looking at really low grade mines that don't have a lot of you know heavy concentrations of whatever
00:18:13.940it is that you're after in our territory a lot of it is gold and copper and the whole process by law
00:18:20.180they have to keep the waste stored separately and what they've processed to extract the gold or the
00:18:27.040silver or the copper or the molybdenum or whatever they're after is mixed in a process when they
00:18:33.380bring the the higher concentrate rock into the mill they'll crush it up into a very fine kind
00:18:40.620of rock flour, they call it, and they'll mix it with water and mix it with chemicals and do this
00:18:46.000flotation system. These are the ones that I've seen. And they'll float whatever they're after
00:18:50.660to the top, skim it off, and continue processing it that way. But once they've extracted whatever
00:18:55.740it is that they want, then they have to do something with all of the waste. And so this
00:19:00.060is where it gets basically piped out to the tailing storage facility. And by law, it has to
00:19:05.240be contained. And so it has to be contained so that it's not entering into the environment and
00:19:10.540just mixing in because you have high concentrations of like heavy metals. You have things like
00:19:16.120mercury and selenium. You've got like your different like flotation chemicals that are
00:19:22.740mixed in with that. And not only that, but in tailings facilities, you will also have sometimes
00:19:27.620you'll have outside materials that aren't even related to mining. Like at the Mount Polly site,
00:19:33.400one of the things that they have is treated sewage that's being trucked in from the greater
00:19:39.460Vancouver area, so these large urban centers. And so they'll heat treat the sewage and drop
00:19:44.500up the moisture out of the sewage. And then they'll use it on mine sites in their, what
00:19:49.020they call reclamation. So they'll cover these big rock dumps. So the stuff that doesn't
00:19:54.740make it into the mill that's been blasted. And they'll have these big rock dumps. And
00:19:59.120you've probably seen it before and just didn't know what it was. And it'll be this kind of
00:20:02.840perfectly sloped hillside and they'll cover it with some of the dirt and leftover trees that
00:20:10.740try to slow down erosion. And then they'll mix in all of this treated sewage on the hillside
00:20:15.820and then they'll plant grass on it to help stabilize the soils from blowing away or runoff.
00:20:21.800And so you have this kind of weird looking hillside of grass on these perfectly sloped
00:20:26.040areas around mine sites. And that's what they call reclamation, returning the site back to nature.
00:20:30.820and you know when you look at the area around a mine site often it does not look like that at all
00:20:37.440in the case of Mount Polly it's thick interior rainforest and so when you think of this weird
00:20:43.520landscape filled with sewage and grass and waste rock that's absolutely nothing of what the natural
00:20:50.220landscape looks like and so you have these tailings facilities that are containing this waste you have
00:20:56.680these rock dumps that are filled with all of this waste and when that disaster happened when that
00:21:03.040dam broke and released all of that into the environment it took that static facility and
00:21:10.080just it's loose in the world now so it's loose in the entire watershed and when that happened
00:21:15.500it was right on you know during fishing season in the summertime and the entire Fraser River
00:21:21.560there are nations First Nations all along the river right from the different headwaters
00:21:26.000all the way to the mouth in Vancouver, and nobody fished.
00:24:37.600I think about how Canada has more mine tailing spills than any country in the world aside from
00:25:00.000china and hearing about this toxic legacy that the mining industry is leaving as an inheritance
00:25:08.280for future generations you know what happens when the selenium and copper and the arsenic become
00:25:13.380bioavailable to the saskatoon berries and huckleberries and with the heavy metal accumulated
00:25:18.920in the bodies of the bears and the salmon like you'd been talking about these salmon that have
00:25:23.380been nesting in these places. It's just so heavy and horrible. And I remember actually talking to
00:25:34.180Faith Jamil from the Arctic and Sherry Foytland from the Gulf Coast about how their regions are
00:25:39.600considered energy sacrifice zones. And similarly, areas with industrial mining could be considered
00:25:47.300luxury sacrifice zones because this is what is primarily coming out of these mines is luxury
00:25:54.740items you know sacred mountains demolished and headwaters poisoned for gold rings and copper
00:26:01.700wires absolutely there's enough gold that's already been mined on earth that no more gold
00:26:08.560needs to be mined and it is it's a luxury item you know i think that the figure that i've seen
00:26:14.740repeatedly is about 80% of all gold mine goes towards jewelry. And, you know, we really need
00:26:20.940to also check our language around gold as being this ultimate luxury or ultimate standard, like,
00:26:26.920you know, the gold standard to be treated like gold. I was asked once what I think of when I hear
00:26:33.700the word gold. I said, I think of pollution. I think of people being murdered in Central and
00:26:39.440South America. I think of these luxury items that people don't need, but they just want.
00:26:45.500I think of greed. And that has been the experience of our people. When the BC Caribou Gold Rush
00:26:52.180happened in the 1860s, smallpox was deliberately introduced. And this has been proven repeatedly
00:26:58.280and through the journals of government officials and different people who've been involved. And
00:27:02.800these stories are finally surfacing. Our people knew that from the start. And we were ridiculed
00:27:08.160for saying that it's finally coming to light by very meticulously documented academic writing.
00:27:15.240Yes, it's true. And here's the proof. Smallpox was introduced to eliminate these very sophisticated
00:27:21.480trade networks that existed here in what is now known as British Columbia throughout different
00:27:25.880indigenous territories. And so this devastation was to remove us from the land. And, you know,
00:27:32.600these diseases, this is what happened across, you know, North America, South America for gold.
00:27:36.820and gold is really and this gold fever this crazy mind is what is driving the human rights
00:27:44.960violations the murders the deaths murdered and missing indigenous women you know these big man
00:27:50.160camps that are associated with these big construction projects industrial projects
00:27:53.920pollution of water you know pollution of the land and what we're asking for what we're trying to
00:28:00.620maintain and protect is simply our way of life and a clean environment and we are part of this land
00:28:06.260And we have deep, deep knowledge and deep experience and connection and spiritual connection to the lands that we're from.
00:28:12.920And it's really difficult to explain that to somebody, especially like an executive or a politician whose values and point of reference and sense of identity comes from a very different place.
00:28:25.720And so this is this kind of these worldview differences that we're trying to to navigate.
00:28:31.260So we learn how to use different tools to try to protect what we are most closely tied to with the land.
00:28:41.320All of the work that we're doing is about protecting things for seven generations ahead.
00:28:47.320And a lot of what we, our knowledge is, it really bothers me when I see a company,
00:28:52.800like a mining company, take on an Indigenous name and name their company that name.
00:28:57.460One is an example is Tzatziko Mines, which comes from Daziko,
00:29:01.680which is from the Tzatziko team, from the territory it's in.
00:29:14.300Khatul First Nation, where I grew up, has an agreement with Mount Pauly Mine.
00:29:18.900And the agreement is to share information ahead of time so that we know what they're planning,
00:29:23.700so we know what permits that they're applying for,
00:29:25.980that we have a heads up on what's going on and the idea is that there's no surprises it's not
00:29:32.240a consent agreement and within the agreement it states that it's not a consent agreement and that
00:29:36.980consent is something that has to be worked towards these are just kind of operational agreements of
00:29:43.560how to communicate with each other but the companies will take these agreements and say
00:29:47.580their consent and i heard recently a very high-ranking government official in bc was saying
00:29:53.240well if there's an agreement that means there's consent and it's a one-time consent and you get
00:29:58.320it once and then that's it and I think anybody who's ever been in a relationship knows that
00:30:03.780there's no such thing as a one-time consent it's ongoing and these agreements aren't consent
00:30:09.900agreements and the consent has to come from the the community or the nation at large and so there's
00:30:15.500a lot of posturing and positioning and twisting of what's happening on the ground and people are
00:30:21.960often misinformed. And, you know, when it's coming from the Indigenous people, what we're saying
00:30:27.940is often not valued as highly as what's coming from government or the industry, who have much
00:30:34.240bigger voices and a lot more money to put what they're saying out there. So there's a very
00:30:38.480unbalanced power dynamic that's going on. But I'm hopeful that, you know, there are a lot more
00:30:44.520people who are becoming aware of what's going on and are outraged at the way that communities are
00:30:51.500being treated, the way that Indigenous people are being treated, and that people are starting
00:30:55.760to take action and starting to get educated about these issues. I think with the Mount
00:30:59.820Polly mine disaster, a lot of people became really educated about mining that knew nothing
00:31:03.720about mining before. And from what I was seeing on social media and the emails that I was
00:31:09.520receiving, people were asking very informed questions and reading these huge government
00:31:13.460documents and reading the permits and really getting engaged. So I think that there are
00:31:18.440a lot of people, especially in British Columbia, who are outraged that nothing has been done about
00:31:23.280Mount Pali and who want a better future, who want a cleaner future. And they're seeing right now
00:31:27.540with the Kinder Morgan protests that having that support from the BC government to protect water,
00:31:33.520it's like, okay, that's great. We do need to do that. And I totally support that.
00:31:37.620And we also need to address mining and we need to address indigenous rights and that it's not just
00:31:43.740pick one here and pick one there. It has to be across the board. So these are all of the issues
00:31:47.960that I feel are starting to come together and I would really love to see all of these different
00:31:52.780kind of silos of like you know your people who are working on pipelines and people who are working
00:31:57.680on fish farms and big hydroelectric dams and mining we all need to be talking and working
00:32:02.720together because it's all for the same thing it's all for protecting our communities it's for
00:32:08.120protecting long-term sustainability it's for protecting the water and if we can protect the
00:32:12.040water, if we can stand for water as the most basic life-sustaining thing, then we can also
00:32:18.320get the bigger picture and work together across these different campaigns.
00:32:24.360Yeah, I want to speak more about working together across campaigns. And I recently was speaking
00:32:30.700with Dune Lancard, who's the co-founder of Red Oil and the Native Conservancy Land Trust and
00:32:35.960the EAC Preservation Council from Cordova, Alaska. And Dune has been really pivotal in the protection
00:32:43.220of thousands of acres of indigenous land. And from his experience, he urges that creativity
00:32:48.400is mandatory in how we go about preserving land and life ways in these really tumultuous times.
00:32:56.320And these coalitions forming in response to trans-boundary mining impacts along the BC-Alaska
00:33:03.580border are exemplary of the collaborative thrust that we need for our initiatives to be loud and
00:33:10.980successful. So I'd love to hear about the collaborations your organization, First Nations
00:33:17.240Women Advocating Responsible Mining is growing and how important you see authentic relationship
00:33:23.460building being right now. Oh, absolutely. I think that is really key. First Nations Women
00:33:29.800advocating responsible mining is really about advocating a responsible way to engage with0.84
00:33:35.300communities, a responsible way to engage with the land. And, you know, sometimes the responsible
00:33:39.760thing is to not have a mine in a specific area, especially at Salmon Headwaters. This is something
00:33:45.120that we've been really working with a lot of communities on is trying to amplify those
00:33:50.520Indigenous voices around what the values are and what the solutions are. Because it's not just
00:33:55.740enough to say we disagree with this, it's really important to come to the table with a solution.
00:34:00.800And communities have solutions. A lot of the work that we're doing is trying to connect
00:34:06.000different people together and to really do whatever we can to foster those conversations
00:34:11.980to happen with or without us at FN WARM and to connect different communities who are going
00:34:18.840through similar things or who are opposite ends of the spectrum. For example, in the kind of the
00:34:23.760northwest British Columbia, southeast Alaska, transboundary area, you know, they're connected by
00:34:29.760some major rivers up there. And so you have, for example, at the headwaters of the Stikine,
00:34:36.240you have the Taltan people who have been doing a lot of work around protecting their headwaters
00:34:43.140and their salmon. The Stikine River goes down and empties into southeast Alaska in the community of
00:34:49.060Wrangell, which is Lingit Territory. And so there have been these meetings and wanting to have
00:34:55.960gatherings of bringing the people together and sharing their knowledge and sharing strategic
00:35:01.440actions that they can take together as united across with this river and their history and
00:35:07.440their language. And it's been really incredible to see a lot of these connections come together.
00:35:12.780Recently, I was at a gathering in Phileal, Washington, and this was organized by tribes
00:35:17.060in southeast Alaska, and they invited a lot of different people to this gathering. There were
00:35:22.780people there from across British Columbia, Alaska, the Yukon, there was a delegate from Idaho,
00:35:30.360Washington State, Montana, and basically anywhere, any like state or province that borders with
00:35:37.960British Columbia has a problem with British Columbia, which says a lot about how resources
00:35:45.160are being managed in BC. And so a lot of the work that we're doing right now is gathering people
00:35:51.360together who have common issues and solutions around mining and how mining is being dealt
00:35:56.560within BC. But the idea is to also reach out farther to talking with folks around the pipelines
00:36:02.460and the dams and the fish farming and to have a common voice and to be really pushing the
00:36:07.980government to say, we are organizing according to our bloodlines, not borders. We are organizing
00:36:14.280according to family relationships, according to traditional trade networks, according to
00:36:20.320our values of the land and our values for our way of life and for water and for salmon and for all
00:36:27.520of these shared resources and shared things that we still depend on as Indigenous people for our
00:36:31.920way of life. There's another gathering that I have just recently heard of that will be in the
00:36:37.160Statlium Nation along the Fraser River that is pulling together interior Indigenous peoples and
00:36:42.960coastal Indigenous peoples around salmon. And salmon is a really important piece of all of this
00:36:49.900because the salmon represents so much. It's not only keystone for our culture, for our food,
00:36:58.300for trade, all of these things, not only for human beings, but for all different kinds of animals,
00:37:04.980for the forest. The forest needs the salmon to grow, to have these big trees. So we're trying
00:37:11.920to pull together people from all over to say, come, let's all gather together and work this out
00:37:17.600and figure out where the commonalities lie, where our strengths lie. How can we strategically
00:37:24.120approach this? Who's going to be doing what? A lot of the work that we do at FN WARM, we also
00:37:29.020work with outside of the Indigenous community. We work with Amnesty International, Mining Watch
00:37:34.220Canada, the Fair Mining Collaborative, which is based here in British Columbia, Uvik Environmental
00:37:39.300Law Center, Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake. We're reaching out with this Stand for Water
00:37:45.060Tour to go into communities to connect with more people and to basically say that, you know, we
00:37:50.480share these common values and we share these concerns. So let's pull them all together and
00:37:56.360have one collective voice and really have a lot of pressure and comments and solutions coming from
00:38:03.540the ground to government because they obviously need our help. They obviously need our help if
00:38:09.100they're not doing what is right for the people, then we need to take that power back and we need
00:38:13.540to say, OK, this is what you need to do. This is what we need to be done to have these solutions
00:38:18.260coming up. So it's really a grassroots movement around providing these solutions and stepping in
00:38:24.600and intervening with elected leadership to say this needs to be corrected. And these laws around
00:38:29.740mining need to be corrected and they need to be updated. They're so out of date. You can imagine
00:38:34.860mining in the 1850s and 1860s with pickaxes and shovels and homemade sluice boxes compared to
00:38:42.960these dams now that are happening like at Red Chris Mine or the one proposed at the KSM mine
00:38:49.380that are over 20 stories tall and who have these giant hydroelectric shovels and big
00:38:55.800haul trucks that are 200 tons that haul 200 tons at a time. These are mega scale projects and you
00:39:03.540have this outdated legislation dealing with pickaxes and shovels. So it's kind of ridiculous,
00:39:08.760actually. I was just thinking about the word ridiculous when you were explaining all this.0.80
00:39:14.800I was literally thinking to myself, this is ridiculous. And absolutely, gosh, the legislation0.96
00:39:21.660and the regulations, at minimum, those need to be shifted. And gosh, when you were talking about
00:39:30.460some of these solutions, I thought, where does the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
00:39:36.200Peoples fit into all of this? And I was also wondering about the IJC, the International
00:39:42.540Joint Commission, and what role that could have in halting the development of projects like the
00:39:48.380KSM mine, whose impacts don't know political borders at all. Right? You've got these international
00:39:55.820tools that we need to be looking at. And, you know, it's really important for people to understand
00:40:00.620that these international tools are put there to have a bigger picture, a bigger scope and scale
00:40:07.140of things, to know that what we do locally, you might have your idea, well, it's in likely BC.
00:40:14.140Oh, well, actually, that extends to the Caribou. No, that extends to the Fraser Watershed. No,
00:40:18.280actually, that extends out to the entire Pacific region, right, and beyond, because we're all
00:40:23.740connected by water. And this International Joint Commission with the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909
00:40:29.780was created specifically to address when there's pollution coming across the border, how to deal
00:40:35.320with it collectively and to make sure that it's being addressed so that you're not polluting
00:40:40.500your neighbor, basically. I feel like we need that in British Columbia within the different
00:40:47.320jurisdictions. You have all of these different ministries that don't talk to each other.
00:40:51.700And I've been to different tables where it feels like you're like at an international summit because, you know, the Ministry of Energy and Minds, the Ministry of Environment, Flinroe, you've got all of these different ministries sitting at the table and they're trying to come up with a solution.
00:41:09.100But really, I mean, all of the laws should be complementary and they should be cumulative to deal with these things.
00:41:14.500And so when you have these actual international instruments like the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People or the International Joint Commission to Address Pollution, you know, they have so much value and they have so many solutions built within them that internally within British Columbia, these systems aren't working, obviously, because you have a disaster like Mount Polly, which is a failure both at the mine site, their oversight of their operations, and it's a failure of the province of British Columbia.
00:41:44.220and their laws for not being monitored and, you know, being out of compliance and having no
00:41:49.600penalties. So there's really no incentive for them to follow these rules. So now that we move
00:41:54.200into this international arena, we're feeling like we have to go outside of Canada because what's
00:41:59.520working inside of Canada, it's not working. It's favoring these companies and it's not protecting
00:42:04.020the people that these laws are supposed to protect and to protect the land and this integrated system
00:42:09.660of the whole ecosystem so with the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous people
00:42:15.440there are so many solutions within there that get to protecting way of life protecting values on the
00:42:23.840land protecting clean environment all of these things and these have been worked on by indigenous
00:42:28.420people from around the world and so this is a global instrument to address these harms that
00:42:37.000are happening to Indigenous people. And the work that Indigenous people do to protect their way of
00:42:43.420life, wherever they happen to be, myself included, this is going to protect everybody. It's not going1.00
00:42:49.560to protect just Indigenous people because it's going to be protecting clean water. It's going
00:42:53.300to be protecting clean air and clean soil. Every single thing that we need as human beings comes
00:42:58.280from the earth. And I think that people forget that super basic reality. Every single thing that
00:43:03.540we need comes from the earth and people are so disconnected i feel in a lot of ways that they
00:43:09.940forget that and they're not out there you know growing their own food you know or they're not
00:43:14.940seeing what's happening on the river every day because they're so removed from it so people tend
00:43:19.660to live in this virtual reality world where it's all about consumerism and the latest technology
00:43:27.500and what's going on on facebook and you have all of these alternate universes that are actually not
00:43:32.220even connected to where we get our food or where we draw our water. And the International Joint
00:43:37.860Commission is something that we're trying to get the attention of the federal governments to say
00:43:43.040there's a problem here and you need to be aware of it. And a lot of the movement that we've received
00:43:48.120from British Columbia has been in direct response to Alaska ringing the bell saying there is a major
00:43:54.940problem happening in British Columbia. Alaskans need to know about this. Americans need to know
00:43:58.760about this. British Columbia is potentially setting us up for a major disaster in our waters.
00:44:07.280And so, you know, using these international instruments is a really good way of waking up
00:44:12.360the British Columbia government to saying, okay, you have higher obligations here. And the thing
00:44:18.180is, is that British Columbia has said, we agree to uphold this declaration protecting Indigenous
00:44:23.940people. And that doesn't just apply to Indigenous people in British Columbia. That's all Indigenous
00:44:29.620people. So all these different borders surrounding British Columbia, there's Indigenous people in
00:44:35.560every single area because we're still here and we're still in our home territories. So I don't1.00
00:44:41.300know that British Columbia fully realizes the obligation that it has agreed to uphold, but
00:44:48.280we're having to use outside larger international instruments because we need to use every tool that
00:44:55.560we have. So working internally within the environmental assessment reform talks that
00:45:01.020are happening now, working with our local grassroots communities, but also working with
00:45:05.500Amnesty International, working with using the declaration as a tool for people to understand,
00:45:11.980having these conversations in our community, upping the education level on this critical,
00:45:16.680we're at this tipping point right now and you know you see that with demonstrations around the
00:45:22.040world we're at a tipping point where this capitalistic system based on luxury and consumerism
00:45:28.520is killing us it's killing the planet and we're seeing around the world also if you if you follow
00:45:33.720the conversations around what's happening with water is that water is starting fresh water
00:45:37.860sources drinking water sources are starting to disappear around the world and are predicted to
00:45:41.320disappear in major cities, especially really hot regions like in South Africa, certain places in
00:45:46.920New Mexico and Arizona. In California, you look at the wildfires that are happening, wildfires that
00:45:53.200are changing, the entire weather systems. We experienced this in Suquepam country last summer0.88
00:45:57.780when we were evacuated. So the earth is changing very quickly and we need to have a major shift1.00
00:46:05.000in how we operate and what we consume and what we value for our very survival. And that's as
00:46:12.480basic as you can get, is we have to change things quickly, or things are going to change
00:46:17.980catastrophically for us. So we need to do that work right away.
00:46:23.840I couldn't agree more. I feel the urgency that you're describing. And I think we all need to
00:46:32.600actually commit tangibly to this earth right now if we haven't already and join forces and i've been
00:46:42.140so interested hearing about the different strategies these international tools that you've
00:46:47.300been using community organizing and i also am thinking about tools of creativity and how we
00:46:55.560really need to also be extremely creative and how we make these assaults on land and people visible
00:47:01.640to more people and I'm curious as a songwriter and an artist what do you think the role of
00:47:08.360writers filmmakers photographers is an artist is in documenting the effects of mining
00:47:14.900I think that the creativity is key and I think that is the key to really changing the system
00:47:21.420we have to imagine something beyond the status quo we have to imagine something outside of
00:47:25.700the norm because the norm is really screwed up the norm is killing us right this western
00:47:31.520capitalistic system we need songwriters out there and there are it's really actually a really
00:47:37.000exciting time to follow different indigenous artists who are extremely intelligent and clever
00:47:43.120and creative and in the work that they're doing there's an exhibit happening right now down in
00:47:49.000I think it's in New Mexico from an artist named Nick Golanan who's a Tlingit artist from Alaska
00:47:54.500who speaks directly to a lot of different issues about colonization.
00:48:11.220People who are of like minds are coming together.
00:48:13.500And there are other artists here in British Columbia
00:48:16.320who one of my favorite music artists is a band's indigenous duo called Mob Bounce.
00:48:21.940and they have very politically inspired lyrics and they're reaching out and doing a lot of work
00:48:27.020with the youth in Indigenous communities, which is also really important to really empower the
00:48:31.520youth coming up. You've got people who are doing these really amazing paintings that are coming,
00:48:38.000that are these kind of fusions of their traditional culture and kind of mashing it up
00:48:43.640with a reimagined future. And I think that's what we need to do is we need to get away from all of
00:48:50.000these apocalyptic storylines that you see in movies like it's always when you go to the theater
00:48:56.680the public imagination or whoever's creating these big mainstream films it's always apocalyptic
00:49:01.800and it's always about death and power and greed and what that brings to it you know and I think
00:49:07.680we need to reimagine what we can do and what we should be doing together I think we need to really
00:49:13.860focus our energy on how we can do it better what we can do as individuals what we can do in our
00:49:21.140communities and sometimes it really feels like you you don't know you can't see the work that
00:49:26.340you're doing how it's impacting others or how it's going to be picked up in the future it's
00:49:32.780really difficult to know that so you just have to have faith that what you're doing is with the
00:49:36.980right intent and it's part of your love story for the land i talk about love stories for the land and
00:49:42.260And really coming from this place of love to put that into your work of why we do this work.
00:49:47.120I'm a mother and I imagine a future for my children, for my bloodline coming after me.0.79
00:49:55.940I imagine a future for them that they are living back on the territory, that they're off of these Indian reserves, that they're out of this colonial stranglehold.
00:50:06.400colonization has put such a huge traumatizing impact on our communities and not only for0.98
00:50:12.040indigenous people for settler Canadians as well because we've been led down this path to believe
00:50:18.300that things are a certain way which it really isn't it's really our choice and so I think that
00:50:23.220creativity part through music through film through photography through painting through dance these
00:50:30.160are all opportunities to really express those relationships and the beauty of the land the
00:50:36.320beauty of our cultures and that really deep connectedness that we have with who we are as
00:50:42.160indigenous people and it's going to be different across every different territory every different
00:50:47.240first nation every different tribe it's going to be different because we have a very unique
00:50:52.720relationship with the land in that area and that's really beautiful and to see the language
00:50:57.200revitalization that's coming back. Everything that's in the language, the language comes
00:51:01.400from the land. So the more that you can understand your language, the more you understand how
00:51:06.020beautiful that land is and how beautiful your connection is. So I think that being really
00:51:10.720creative around this and for people to go where people are gathered to say, wow, I see an
00:51:16.200opportunity here to create a song or to create a piece that will speak to that because you can do
00:51:22.100things in art and say things in art that reach people in a way that simply speaking to them
00:51:25.980won't. You can really reach them at their heart. You can really reach them in their imagination and
00:51:30.240inspire them in a way through art that is just so incredibly powerful. So I really encourage people
00:51:37.360to really use that creative inspiration and channel that hurt or that anger or that love
00:51:44.840or whatever it is that you're feeling into shifting this consciousness. I think it's super important.
01:03:53.000And, you know, it's really about having an overall bigger picture, intelligent conversation, a difficult conversation about what needs to change and where we need to start shifting our values and what we need to sacrifice in exchange for that.
01:04:06.680okay, maybe I'm not going to have every single thing that I want. What do I need? How do we
01:04:13.400recycle? How do we reuse? How do we really make that big shift away from consumerism to just,
01:04:19.660we're eating ourselves to death. We're consuming, consuming, consuming to the point that we're
01:04:23.820polluting everything. And so we need to really think about what we can individually do, what we
01:04:30.720can do in our community, in our watershed, in our province, internationally. All of these
01:04:35.420conversations all of these threads have to be happening at the same time and people will be
01:04:39.460able to contribute to different parts of those conversations but the point is to get activated
01:04:43.280to get motivated and to do whatever you can whether you're an artist or somebody who's
01:04:48.380politically engaged or you're working on subsistence fisheries or different types of
01:04:54.780sustainable food grown in your own community all of these things contribute to this conversation
01:04:59.540people need to become activated and the apathy is what's going to kill us the giving up saying
01:05:05.260it's too big. It's going to happen anyway. That's what's going to kill us. When people ask me,
01:05:09.680this is really heavy work. Don't you ever want to quit? I'll say, we don't have that luxury.
01:05:14.460We don't have that time. I'm not going to give up on my bloodline. I'm not going to be the one
01:05:20.040who quit. I'm not going to be the one who said I'm too tired. It's too hard. I won't be that person
01:05:24.360because my bloodline needs me. And I imagine a future for them that is healthier, that is
01:05:30.260stable, that is sustainable, that is based on these values. And we need to shift those values
01:05:35.700in our life in order for them to have it. Wow, Jacinda, you are a heroine to me,
01:05:43.440hearing your conviction and your passion and your, oh, you're so strong and brave. And gosh,
01:05:50.980I'm just taking a moment to take it all in. And our kids need us. Yeah, you know, our kids need
01:05:57.240Yeah. And that's that's just the simple truth. That's what we've been born into. So we just better just get busy and get on with it.
01:06:03.560I so agree with you. And it's just insane, this dominant colonizer culture, how cannibalistic it
01:06:13.020is, how we're literally conditioned in this culture to eat ourselves alive. It's insane
01:06:20.940when you start pulling the threads and seeing the unraveling of all of these ecosystems for what?
01:06:27.360for a gold ring? For what? I mean, we're giving up life for objects that become meaningless to
01:06:34.640so many people and are tossed into a shipping container that goes to China and to elsewhere
01:06:39.520in the world to go into landfills. I mean, it's really nuts. And I was thinking back to something
01:06:44.440you had just said about being on the land and really seeing what is happening, actually being
01:06:51.200able to witness because I think in so many ways in this dominant culture, especially for those
01:06:59.320who don't live in these places, it's really easy to stay in denial or to stay uneducated or
01:07:04.820to just not understand the complexities of these issues. And I hear in your voice that you're
01:07:13.360someone who carries the lands you love with you wherever you go. And I'd love to close this
01:07:20.500conversation by hearing your thoughts on how important it is amidst all the phone calls and
01:07:26.860meetings and conferences to actually be on the land and listen to the forest to the waters and
01:07:33.060the animals and how they're all responding to all that's unfolding all of the you know the advocacy
01:07:40.060work that i do i just feel like i'm a microphone for a lot of people a lot of people who might not
01:07:46.540have that voice or might not be at that point in their in their life you know colonization is real
01:07:53.400it's happening today it's not over the Mount Pauly disaster is not over these are the realities that
01:07:58.320we deal with and you know just keeping focused on on what is important and it's really drawing for
01:08:05.260me it's to draw my strength from the land and in the Up Rivers film that we're touring with the
01:08:10.140Stand for Water campaign I say being on the land makes you strong it makes you strong physically
01:08:16.340mentally emotionally and spiritually because you are consciously reconnecting to source
01:08:23.500to you're out there just yesterday I was out harvesting devil's club and cedar bark and alder
01:08:30.440and out there on the land running up and down and slipping and you know sliding up and down
01:08:36.640these mountains in New Chalk territory and breathing in that medicine and being out there
01:08:41.880with friends and with my son. And that's healing. That's really healing. And it's so important to
01:08:48.800really make time to do that because that's what it's all about. It would be really ironic and
01:08:53.980horrible if I spent all of my time in boardrooms trying to fight for clean water and clean
01:09:00.560environments and for our families and then never actually got to do that myself. So I make a
01:09:05.100conscious effort to be in season and to to put those those values as a as a priority and kind
01:09:11.740of schedule my calls and my work around making sure that I'm also harvesting salmon and I'm
01:09:16.840harvesting medicines and I'm going to birthday dinners with family and I'm doing these things
01:09:21.440that ground me and strengthen me and fuel me the really cool thing too is when I go out to these
01:09:27.760communities and indigenous people come I have received so much medicine from different indigenous
01:09:32.260people from territories from all over who will come to me and thank me for speaking out and1.00
01:09:37.480they'll give me medicine to smudge or tease or whatever it is that they may have to share and
01:09:42.920say make sure you take care of yourself here's something from the land from here to help you in
01:09:48.120your journey and to me that is incredibly powerful it's incredibly powerful work because they know
01:09:55.400that this work comes with great personal sacrifice also yes yes i can smell the devil's club
01:10:03.520as you were mentioning that amazing plant that i am so in love with and i'm so relieved to hear that
01:10:14.460you have people that are supporting you and giving you medicine and acknowledging the sacrifice and
01:10:24.580all that you give to the land and to the people and so from for the wild from all of us here
01:10:31.980we are just so grateful that you do what you do and this is a topic that I think really many more
01:10:42.500people need to be aware of I think it's like I said at the beginning it's been something that
01:10:47.540has been in the shadows of other fossil fuel resource extractive industries. And, and so
01:10:54.520thank you so much for sharing so much with us today. And thank you, Jacinda.
01:11:00.820One thing that I forgot to mention is one of the connections between getting off of fossil fuels
01:11:06.120and shifting to this green economy is that that's going to require a lot more mining.
01:11:10.820Because you're going to need rare earth materials, you're going to need copper,
01:11:13.660you're going to need all of these things. And I think that having the conversation around
01:11:17.020what is recyclable and reclaimable to put into this greener energy. You can't have this green
01:11:23.480energy without cleaner, cleaned up mining practices. You can't be having dirty mining
01:11:27.880that's supplying this green energy. It just doesn't work. You're completely shooting yourself
01:11:33.020in the foot with that. So that's a conversation that also needs to happen and that we're really
01:11:37.840trying to push is that mining impacts us in so many different ways and looking to a greener
01:11:43.280future, you have to clean up mining in order for that to happen.
01:11:47.020Thank you so much for bringing that up, because I think about that a lot with solar panels and
01:11:53.220batteries and these quote unquote green technologies. But I almost started to think
01:12:02.000the other day that, oh my gosh, this is a farce. This is actually, this is a trick. This green
01:12:09.620technology, it's not green. We're just switching industries. We're just extracting more from
01:12:15.140somewhere else and poisoning a different area. We're not actually getting out of consumer
01:12:21.820culture, which is I think about, and I've talked about that a lot in the show, the falsities of
01:12:26.420green energy. And I'm not saying there isn't any solutions. And I'm not trying to say that
01:12:33.140solar panels are evil per se. But I also think that when we don't actually look at where the
01:12:42.360materials are coming from and what kind of impact that is having and then weighing that out with
01:12:47.020what we have been doing and then seeing well actually neither of them are the solution it's
01:12:52.800not the solution to just plug your computer into a solar panel that goes to an iCloud that has a
01:12:59.560mega storage facility somewhere in the desert just because you're not printing out a piece of paper
01:13:04.900but it's being stored in the memory of something you know we have to really look at this and i
01:13:09.560think what's so challenging is that it always comes back to consumption. It always comes back
01:13:16.140to this addiction to consumerism. And it's so challenging because so many people don't want
01:13:23.280to look at that. That's the last thing. They don't want to give up. And it's so crazy. I mean,
01:13:28.900this really gets me in a whirlwind and I'll just try to stop myself within a minute or less.
01:13:33.520But I think, oh my goodness, it's so hard for many people in the dominant culture to give
01:13:39.240up their stuff, but people are so willing to give up clean water, so willing to give up forest and
01:13:48.120salmon, but they'd rather have junk that becomes obsolete within a couple years. It makes me crazy.
01:13:56.280And of course, I'm still within that system too. So I look at myself and I try to see all the ways
01:14:01.440that I'm complicit as well. And so anyways, not to totally get on an existential tangent with that,
01:14:08.520I really am grateful that you brought up mining with renewable energy because we have to look at
01:14:15.800that. We cannot turn a blind eye and then have ourselves in the same situation with these new
01:14:22.340technologies. There's no techno fix. And I'm so inspired by you. So thank you. And you've given
01:14:31.000me so much food for thought today. So I can't wait to re-listen to this interview and sit with
01:14:36.280all of this so thank you so much and we'll be in touch really soon that sounds great and thank you
01:14:41.160so much for the work that you do too you know that it's really part of the connecting you know
01:14:44.840being able to hear the stories from the people that you talk with is really inspiring for me as
01:14:49.160well and I just I want you to know that your work too like the ripples that go out from what you're
01:14:54.560doing is really important and it's fuel for me as well so thank you for your work
01:15:06.280thank you so much for listening to for the wild podcast i'm ayanna young the music you heard today
01:15:27.960was from kayla cohen and jacinda mack our theme music is silence returns by bow and like a river
01:15:35.080from Kate Wolf. I'd like to thank our incredible podcast team, our editor and producer Andrew
01:15:41.600Storrs, research director Madison Migulski, media director Molly Lee Bove, and research assistant
01:15:49.180Francesca Glaspell. The questions for this episode were crafted by Madison Migulski,
01:15:55.520Francesca Glaspell, and myself, Ayanna Young. If you haven't rated us on iTunes, please do so,
01:16:02.400as it helps spread these messages and expand our community.
01:16:06.960All right, thanks again, and until next time.