Why First Nations are fighting Site C in court

Today in Victoria, lawyers representing two First Nations will be in B.C. Supreme Court arguing that the provincial government violated First Nation rights by rushing to approve the controversial $9 billion (and counting) Site C dam on the Peace River.

Regardless of the outcome of the case, which is one of three B.C. First Nations legal proceedings against Site C currently underway, First Nations opposition to Site C is understandable.

If built, the dam’s reservoir would obliterate 107 kilometres of river valley bottoms along the Peace River and its tributaries, resulting in the permanent loss of vital hunting, fishing and gathering sites and other areas of historic and cultural importance to the region’s First Nations. That comes on top of the cumulative impacts of industrial development in the Peace that is proceeding at such a pace that Global Forest Watch reports that it outstrips Alberta’s oilsands developments.

But destroying a landscape that has been used since time immemorial by members of the West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations, and which includes some of B.C.’s best farmland, is just part of the problem.