The people of Bella Bella need your help

Today at Bella Bella’s only grocery store, a jug of milk costs $7.10 (and expires in a few days). A package of frozen chicken drumsticks goes for $11.89 and a Christmas ham is $75.00. Shampoo, tampons and fresh produce, when available, cost twice what people pay in the city.

Many families in this remote First Nations community were already struggling to afford the basics. Now that a Texas-owned tugboat has crashed into one of the most productive food harvesting spots on the coast, our Heiltsuk neighbours are facing a multi-layered crisis:

• All shellfish harvesting is closed, cutting off commercial clam digging for 50 families.
• 25 food species in the area could be off-limits for years, depriving the whole community of abundant, nearby traditional food.
• Grief, stress and diesel exposure during this emergency will have health impacts for years to come.

At Dogwood, we often ask you for donations to pay for our own campaigns. That can wait. Today I’m asking you to send whatever you can to the Heiltsuk Nation, so they can achieve justice for this devastating spill.

Two weeks after the Nathan E. Stewart sank, diesel and engine lube are still sloshing over clam beds, tide pools and beaches. More than half the 200,000 litres of fuel on board escaped into the water, poisoning endangered abalones, herring, urchins, anemones, kelp, sea stars and more. Whales have since been spotted swimming through the slick. It’s sickening.

Kirby, the oil barge company, has insurance to pay for “spill cleanup” -- as futile and ineffective as that has been. What now needs to be documented is the economic loss, the cultural damage and the collective trauma of losing a sacred place like Koqui, Gale Passage. None of these things will be willingly paid for by the company. That’s why the Heiltsuk are asking for your help.

What made this village site so special? Partly it’s geography. Twice a day the tide sucked nutrients through a narrow rocky passage, feeding a long chain of wide flat beaches inside Athlone Island. That’s where clams grew by the hundreds of thousands of pounds -- enough to feed the diggers’ families and still have plenty to trade and sell.

Herring roe, another food prized by Japanese buyers, was cultivated there every spring. The golden clusters of eggs were also traded up North for oolichan grease and inland for things like moose meat. The amazing protein surplus from this area, just 40 minutes from Bella Bella by boat, fed friends and relatives from the Nass Valley down to Port Hardy, Nanaimo and Vancouver, where many Heiltsuk families reside.

That’s just a part of what has been lost. For the rest of the story, meticulous interviews will need to be conducted with elders, fishermen and knowledge-keepers in Bella Bella. Until this month, the Heiltsuk traced thousands of years of continuous use at Koqui. Now the masthead of the Texas tug sticks out of the reef like the handle of a knife.

The painful truth is that Koqui has become a sacrifice zone. Ottawa put this place at risk to save a bit of money for a Texas oil company. It was our federal government that loosened regulations so Kirby could send fuel barges from Washington to Alaska along the inside passage -- instead of renting a seaworthy tanker and going offshore.

The Heiltsuk happen to live in the way. For that, they’ve been forced to pay a terrible price. It’s unjust. It makes me incredibly sad and angry. And while money can’t undo the damage, your donation will help the Heiltsuk compile evidence of what was lost so those responsible can be held to account. If we all pitch in, this could be a turning point in the battle against oil tankers. If we don’t, this is only the beginning of what we will lose.

Please join me in supporting the Heiltsuk Nation in this time of profound grief.

Kai Nagata

P.S. This was one tugboat pushing an empty barge. The failed containment of the spill has revealed another truth: we have no plan to clean up a boatload of diesel, let alone a tanker full of bitumen. The ongoing Heiltsuk investigation is aimed at uncovering the facts behind this incident, documenting its full impacts and ensuring this never happens again. For Bella Bella and all the special places on this coast, please donate what you can to the Heiltsuk today.