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A consortium of 15 Alaskan tribes bordering British Columbia’s “Golden Triangle” region says Canadian mining operations threaten their healthy environment.
The lawsuit, filed this week in a 112-page filing with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleges that Canada failed to properly consult with tribes of the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian nations. Together, they were grouped under the Sudeste. La Alaska Native Transboundary Commission (SEITC) will oppose the British Columbia legislation. Mining in the upper reaches of 3 rivers.
Contacted at the Capitol in Juneau, Alaska, SEITC Executive Director Guy Archibald said the tribes were enforceable protections to ensure rivers downstream of the mines were not polluted by runoff on the Canadian side.
“We have rights that want to be here. And B. C. and mining corporations are making no effort to protect those rights,” Archibald said.
“They sat down with us and asked us how to use the rivers.
SEITC’s most recent indictment builds on previous claims accepted through the human rights framework last fall, when it agreed to the expansion of mining operations in British Columbia. Crossing the border can simply violate the human rights of Alaskan tribes.
This initial filing alleges that Canada failed to obtain the free, prior and informed consent of the tribes when it supported six mining projects in the headwaters of three regions of British Columbia, rivers that flow into Alaska.
These are the Schaft Creek, Galore Creek, and Red Chris mines in the Stikine Basin; the KSM and Brucejack mines in the Unuk basin; and the main Tulsequah mine in the Taku Basin.
Taken together, the mines pose an “imminent and foreseeable risk of contamination of downstream waters with highly poisonous heavy metals” and may cause a “sustained and significant” decline in the fish that tribes rely on and maintain their farming, according to the latest report. .
Canada said the tribes’ request was “manifestly baseless or impermissible” and rejected the fact that the mining projects involved a threat of “significant environmental harm. “
The petition is now scheduled to move to the merits stage, where the Commission on Human Rights will determine whether or not there have been human rights violations.
The firm has no force in its decisions. Instead, if human rights violations are found, the commission sends a report detailing its findings and making recommendations to the member state.
The cross-border region of the British Columbia-Alaska border has long been a hot spot for mining. But for others located downstream of the megaprojects, gold and copper mining has brought more anxiety than wealth.
Archibald said that when the Eskay Creek mine, one of the world’s highest-grade gold mines, was operational between 1994 and 2008, Eulachon’s migrations into the Unuk River first slowed and then disappeared.
About a decade after the mine closed, the fish began to return each year, in ever-increasing numbers. And while the smelt, long prized for its oil, has not returned to its former levels, which Archibald attributes to the untreated mining waste that continues to flow into the Unuk; In the coming weeks, they hope to have a classic harvest for the first time years from now.
These food resources are for a collection of tribes scattered along a rugged sea coast crisscrossed by rivers and a tangle of fjords, where roads are scarce and everything arrives via planes or barges.
“There’s more water than land,” he said. This makes advertising foods incredibly expensive and tend to be of very poor quality. “
Archibald said fish like salmon remain an “incredibly important” staple to the local diet. But more than that, salmon and the flowing river are inextricably connected to tribal identity and culture.
Last month, the SEITC presented evidence to environmental regulators on the Canadian side of the border asserting its former presence along the Unuk River, a water frame that allegedly revealed seven tribes “through a dream. “
The British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) has shown that it is lately reviewing data through the SEITC.
“The EAO’s existing and long-standing practice is to work with potentially impacted Indigenous communities in Alaska, where there are potential transboundary effects related to the proposed projects located in British Columbia,” it said in an unattributed statement.
“A significant engagement with potentially affected communities is to ensure the culpable progression of mineral resources in the transboundary region. “
As climate replaces the reasons why the planet’s icy environments fall above freezing, the glaciers and mountain tops they occupy are melting.
This is expected to be of great help to the transboundary region, where melting rivers are expected to open up thousands of kilometres of new habitats for salmon and could provide a safe haven from warmer rivers to the south.
But according to a study published last November, those salmon could come into direct conflict with mining corporations to tap into a new market in British Columbia. Recent research describes it as having “the structural and operational attributes of a gold rush. “scheme. “
In a November 2023 study by Simon Fraser University, lead researcher Jonathan Moore looked at the number of mineral claims on both sides of glaciers. He and his team found that in 25 of the 114 rivers studied in the transboundary region, more than a portion of the salmon’s future habitat is within five kilometers of a mining lease.
That overlap worries others like Heather Hardcastle, crusade adviser for the Juneau-based advocacy organization Salmon State. As the Golden Triangle region embarks on the path to industrialization, it fears that thousands of miles of exploratory drilling will pollute waterways important for fisheries.
“A single U. S. copper penny in an Olympic-sized pool would interfere with the salmon’s navigation system,” Hardcastle said earlier this year.
Ramin Pejan, chief representative of the SEITC, said the worst is Canada and British Columbia. They facilitate mining projects “under the guise of finding critical minerals for a blank energy transition,” while mines basically produce gold.
“This is misleading and misleading,” he said in a statement.
Archibald said most of the mines the tribes are concerned about have yet to be built. He pointed to KSM and Galore Creek, which he said could be among the largest open-pit mines in the world.
To date, Canada and British Columbia have authorized 3 of the six mines. Two are in operation and one has obtained environmental approvals. Meanwhile, New Polaris and Eskay Creek have been proposed and are in the process of obtaining permits.
But as plans to reopen Eskay Creek move forward after fruitful consultations with the Tahltan Nation, Archibald says tribes on the U. S. side of the border have not gotten the same remedy despite Canadian legal precedent requiring the government to do so.
“We’re doing meaningful consultations,” Archibald said.
“It’s hard to look your children and grandchildren in the eye. “
© 2024 Boss Squamish