Indigenous Peoples

Rattler sat on the sofa scrolling through his phone. It was a drizzling, cold spring day in Bismarck, North Dakota, but he wasn’t going outside much anyway. A great mountain of a man with thick black hair to his waist and a disarming gentleness, Rattler made the objects around him look small. The sofa on which he sat, the phone he held, the homey living room where we met, the whole city of Bismarck seemed too small for Rattler. But his bail conditions and an ankle monitor confined him to the area for over half a year as he awaits trial.

PORT HARDY, B.C. — Members of two British Columbia First Nations say they have occupied a salmon farm on a small island on the province’s coast, the second such protest to be held in the past week.

Chief Willie Moon, also known as Okwilagame, said about 16 members of the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw and the Kwikwasutinuxw Haxwamis arrived at the Wicklow Point salmon farm on Thursday afternoon.

He said about five protesters plan to stay until the provincial and federal governments revoke permits for the facility on Broughton Island, about 50 kilometres east of Port Hardy.

Today I submitted an analysis to the BC Utilities Commission in response to their consultation on the economics of the Site C dam. You can read it here.

British Columbia’s new NDP government campaigned on a promise to transition the province’s fish-farming industry away from open-sea pens to land-based sites, but First Nations are pushing for more aggressive action. They want the province to revoke the licences of unwanted salmon farms operating in their territorial waters.

B.C.’s aquaculture industry was once again in the spotlight last week after thousands of Atlantic salmon may have escaped a Washington State fish farm near the border.

A United Nations panel on racism is calling on the B.C. government to immediately halt construction on the $8.8-billion Site C dam, arguing the province needs to review the controversial project in consultation with the First Nations communities facing irreversible destruction of their lands.

August 24, 2017. For immediate release.  Ernest Alexandra Alfred and a small group have peacefully occupied the Marine Harvest salmon farm, Swanson Island.  They state that they will remain on the farm until their chiefs are satisfied that the Province of BC has cancelled that farm’s Licence of Occupation and thus it has to leave the territory. The farm is located 17km east of Alert Bay.

Despite opposition from Indigenous leaders and the provincial government, the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is moving ahead, with construction set to begin in September.

Kinder Morgan plans to twin the existing pipeline running from central Alberta to British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, increasing capacity from 300,000 barrels of oil a day to 890,000. The company has announced its intention to begin construction next month on private land, which could include the Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby and a tank farm near Simon Fraser University.

TŜILHQOT’IN NATIONAL GOVERNMENT                                   

MEDIA RELEASE

August 15, 2017

Tŝilhqot’in Commend Federal Intervention to Permanently Stop Taseko Mines Limited’s