The sound of cars passing is a constant hum, so constant it’s almost meditative. Every so often one bleats out a honk of support. On the shoulder of the highway stands a man, holding a sign that reads: “Save the Salmon.”

Cheeks ruddy from the cold, he clutches it with gloved hands from behind a waist-high concrete highway barrier. Dark eyes glitter warmly behind glasses, and over his knitted wool toque is a black baseball cap emblazoned with the image of a tree, water and paddles. 

This is Tsartlip First Nation Elder Carl Olsen, also known by his traditional name, ZȺWIZUT. He’s 78 years old. For the last three years, he’s been coming out here every Tuesday — through rain, snow and even sickness — to stand out on the shoulder of the Malahat highway and protest.

It’s December 30, 2025. Olsen grins, surrounded by supporters who wave at cars and shake their own homemade signs. But it wasn’t always this way. When he first started out, it was just him, his granddaughter and a supporter from the local book club Olsen runs.

At his back is Goldstream Provincial Park, or as Olsen knows it, SELE₭TEȽ. At 477 hectares, it’s bigger than New York City’s Central Park, a verdant gem on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, just a 20-minute drive from Victoria. The park features waterfalls, Garry oak meadows, 600-year-old Douglas fir trees, flowering dogwood, western red cedar trees, Oregon grape and salmonberries.

In front of Olsen is the Malahat, a busy two-lane highway that cuts through the park and sees an average of 25,000 vehicles a day pass by. The park’s accessibility means more than 600,000 people visit each year to camp, hike and hang out. Many come in the fall to watch the huge runs of chum, Chinook and coho salmon that return each year to spawn in the Goldstream River.

What prompted Olsen to go out there in the early months of 2023 was learning of a proposal put forward by the province to widen the Malahat that would catastrophically affect the adjacent Chinook and coho salmon spawning habitat in the Goldstream River. 

According to the province, the highway expansion, estimated in 2024 to cost $162 million, was needed to improve safety and reliability along a 1.7-kilometre section that bisects the park.

One part that especially concerned Olsen was the expected “permanent loss or alteration of aquatic salmonid and amphibian habitat” next to the Goldstream River. This impact and others were detailed in a 139-page environmental assessment report commissioned by the province and completed in 2024 by consulting firm McElhanney. The area’s Chinook and coho salmon spawning habitat falls directly within the project’s footprint.

Within half a kilometre of the project site, at-risk species were likely to be affected, including western screech owls, northern red-legged frogs, wandering salamanders and the endangered sharp-tailed snake. Expand that to within five kilometres of the project site and that list lengthens to at least 200 endangered and threatened species possibly affected.

Olsen was also horrified to learn that, among a host of other environmental issues, approximately 715 trees would also be removed from an area along the highway during construction.

He thought about the owls and nesting birds, about the spe’uth (bears) that make their homes in SELE₭TEȽ and fed beside him while he and other nation members harvested fish for winter. He thought of how the noise and vibration from excavation and rock blasting might affect the vulnerable salmon fry, hiding out in the darkness under fallen logs in river pools until they were big enough to head to the ocean.

“The canopy that creates the coolness of the water in the stream — if that disappears, those fish will disappear, because then the water starts to get too hot. It’s about 12 degrees difference from the sun to the shade. So that’s what started me,” he says. “I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this. I can be the voice for the salmon.’ ”

Every Tuesday for the last three years, Olsen wakes up at about 5 a.m. in the house his grandfather built, on the W̱JOȽEȽP Tsartlip reserve. He heads down to the beach right outside his door on the Saanich Inlet and starts his day with a prayer at the water’s edge. 

“I meditate about what I would like to see in my day,” he says.

After his prayer, Olsen heads to a local café for some toast and tea. 

Typically, a group of supporters show up to tag along with him to Goldstream Park. Others meet him there. Some are members of local churches and the Wilderness Committee, or participants in Olsen’s Indigenous authors book club.

One of those book club members is Christine Willes, a settler from a group called Goldstream Protectors that helped organize a protest with Olsen and others at the legislature in October. 

“What he says to anybody who asked him is, ‘Well, I can go and stand by the side of the highway,’ ” she says. “And that’s what he says to other people. ‘Do what you can.’ So I thought, well, I can go stand on the side of the highway too.”

For Olsen, this fight is now broader than the highway project. It’s a flashpoint in a much larger and contentious discussion around Indigenous land rights, title and reconciliation that has consumed the province, and has repercussions for the entire country. It’s also about the ability for Indigenous people to make land decisions in their own territory.

To the W̱SÁNEĆ people, of which Tsartlip are a part, SELE₭TEȽ is one of their oldest fishing villages, arguably protected by a treaty put to paper 174 years ago which clearly states they retain the rights to their village sites and to hunt and fish on those lands as they always have.

It’s one of 14 treaties negotiated in the 1850s by James Douglas, then-Governor of Vancouver Island, with the local First Nations. For many, the existence of these treaties may come as a surprise, as it’s well known that most of the province’s land mass was never ceded by its original inhabitants. 

Known collectively as the Douglas Treaties, multiple court cases since the 1960s have re-affirmed these treaty-protected rights, for both the W̱SÁNEĆ and the other Vancouver Island nations who signed them in the 1850s.

This fight to hold colonial governments to their word is what has kept Olsen out on the highway for three years.

‘It rightfully belongs to us’

On its website, the B.C. government states Goldstream Park was “given to the people of British Columbia by the Greater Victoria Water Board in 1958.” 

But the actual history is far more complicated.

“It rightfully belongs to us,” stated Jean Baptiste Paul, Tsartlip First Nation member and son of then-chief Thomas Paul, in an article published in the Daily Colonist on March 27, 1956. “We have never given it up, and never been offered anything for our fishing and hunting grounds there.”

Jean Baptiste recalled how he had hunted and fished at Goldstream as a child. He told the Daily Colonist that all of the Saanich Inlet, from Cherry Point to the hills south of Goldstream was Indigenous territory, and had been identified as such by his grandfather, former Tsartlip Chief Ben Paul.

Tsartlip and Malahat members had built fish-smoking shacks near the river and his grandfather had also constructed a log cabin in the area. But one day when no one was there, all the buildings were burned down, Paul told the paper.

At the time, Paul’s resistance was reported as little more than a passing curiosity with headlines such as, “Prospect of city giving park to B.C. has West Saanich Indians on warpath.” On June 26, 1958 B.C. went ahead and designated the area a park in celebration of British Columbia’s centennial.

Goldstream became a tourist attraction. Even though it was not yet officially open, the campground was quickly packed with vacationers. Newspaper columnists sung the praises of Goldstream’s beauty and touted its quick accessibility from Victoria. In the fall of 1960, thousands of onlookers crowded into Goldstream to watch the salmon run, a practice that continues to this day. 

However, these thousands of new visitors brought with them a host of new problems, says Eric Pelkey WEC’KINEM, hereditary chief of the Tsawout First Nation. Sometimes when nation members are down at the river harvesting fish, visitors to the park will confront them.

“They start cussing us up and down, saying that we’re destroying the fishery. We tell them, we have the right. We have the right to do this, to carry on our fishery and to just leave us alone. But there’s still a lot of racism that comes out at that time. People think we’re torturing the fish,” Pelkey says. 

The W̱SÁNEĆ carry on regardless. More recently, people have also been coming out there to support them, he adds.

Pelkey sits at a picnic table in the park, the gentle rush of the Goldstream River behind him. Barrel-chested, his voice a deep, gentle baritone, he wears a ball cap-style hat woven from cedar bark and a wool and feather headband. A cream-coloured traditional knitted blanket is wrapped around his shoulders.

These accusations are especially misplaced because, he explains, it’s the W̱SÁNEĆ who constantly steward the area and conduct their own assessments to monitor the health of the fish. 

For example, in 2023 the numbers of chum in the Goldstream were so low that nation members just went down to the river to observe. “Nobody took a fish,” according to Olsen, a long time volunteer at the Goldstream Hatchery.

Most of the environmental problems in the area are due to settler activity in the first place, Pelkey points out. Commercial fishing boats that come down the Johnstone Strait along the coast of Vancouver Island and into the Strait of Georgia take most of the salmon before they can even reach the Goldstream River, he says. In 2011 a fuel tanker truck crashed in the area, leaking tens of thousands of litres of gasoline and diesel into the river caused further stress on the salmon.

Members from all W̱SÁNEĆ nations harvest chum, Chinook and coho salmon from the Goldstream River as a winter food supply, and have for generations. When it’s smoked, the chum can last all winter, Pelkey says.

“I remember growing up, and we always had that smell in our house, because my parents would have sacks of smoked chum on top of our cupboards, burlap sacks,” he says.

A village displaced

In 1877, the Indian Reserve Commission parcelled out a fishing reserve along the south end of Finlayson Arm, an extension of the Saanich Inlet where the Goldstream River feeds into the ocean. However Goldstream Reserve no. 13, as it’s called, sits at the base of Mount Finlayson instead of in the area of the river where the community still harvests fish. 

“They carried out the survey of the old fishing village, but the surveyor is the one that took it from here and put it over there, off on the side of the mountain, instead of surveying where our village was,” says Pelkey. “This whole area here used to be filled with longhouses all along the river. Right over there, where that overhang is there, is actually where our family’s longhouse used to be.” 

He turns and points over his shoulder, to a structure not far from Goldstream Park’s gravel parking lot. 

“I was not aware of that until maybe I was in my 30s, when my grandfather asked me to bring him out here. We parked over there, walked down. And he said, ‘Oh, what is this building?’ ”

He told his grandfather, Marshall Pelkey, that it housed the washrooms and that this was now a public park. He became upset, Pelkey recalls.

Known as the “saltwater people,” the ocean is entwined within everything the W̱SÁNEĆ do, Pelkey says.

The W̱SÁNEĆ have maintained a wide and complex network of traditional reef net fishing sites throughout their territory, which encompasses what are currently known as the San Juan Islands, Boundary Bay, the Saanich Inlet and Saanich Peninsula. These reef net sites are not just places to harvest food, but are part of a wider spiritual and community practice. 

In and around Goldstream Park, community members also use streams that feed into the area for ritual bathing, and host a first salmon ceremony each fall to greet their returning salmon relatives. This is in an area right beside the province’s proposed road work site.

“Our people always fished here, no matter where the reserve was. Every winter, our people came here to fish. Conservation officers always tried to stop us, but we always just kept on and dared them to take us to court,” Pelkey says.

That’s exactly what happened one evening 30 years ago, when Olsen and another Tsartlip member, Ivan Morris, were caught hunting by conservation officers on their territory and arrested. 

To hunt and fish as formerly: what the Douglas Treaties really meant

Though it was early evening, it was already getting dark on Nov. 28, 1996, when two men, driving in the woods near Youbou, spotted what appeared to be the glow of deer eyes through the trees. 

They were showing two boys — eight and twelve years old — how to hunt at night with the help of a light. It was something their families had safely done for generations, but was previously done with burning pitch and bows and arrows. 

Morris pulled the vehicle over. Olsen took aim and fired a few shots. He then passed the rifle across the two boys to Morris, who got out of the vehicle and squeezed off two more.

They soon got a nasty surprise. The deer they shot at was, in fact, a decoy, complete with reflective eyes, set up by provincial conservation officers to trap illegal hunters. The vehicle was quickly swarmed by officers and the two men were arrested, Olsen recalls.

“There were probably a dozen or more conservation that surrounded us and even manhandled the kids that were there, threw them up against the hood of the car to search them,” he said.

The two were charged with hunting with a firearm during prohibited hours and hunting with an illuminating device, under provincial wildlife legislation. The subsequent trial revolved around the Crown’s argument that yes, Morris and Olsen had a right to hunt, but that did not include the right to hunt in a way that was “inherently unsafe,” as the trial judge put it.

At trial, the men’s lawyers countered with a vigourous legal defense. Not only were they using safe practices, they argued, their right as Tsartlip members to hunt as they always had was protected under the North Saanich Treaty of 1852, negotiated between nation members and Douglas.

The case dragged on for 10 years. Initially both men were convicted and it was upheld by the B.C. Court of Appeal. However, when it got to the Supreme Court of Canada, the convictions were overturned in a 4-3 vote.

Under consideration was the relevant text of the North Saanich Treaty, which guaranteed that village sites and enclosed fields were to be kept for the W̱SÁNEĆ and their children’s use, though the land itself was to become the “property of the white people for ever.” However it also clearly stated that its signatories were at liberty to hunt and carry on their fisheries “as formerly.”

But there are essentially two versions of what happened with the signing of the treaties — the written settler version backed by Douglas and others’ accounts, and the Indigenous oral version told through history by W̱SÁNEĆ members.

It’s generally understood that on Feb. 7 of 1852, Douglas met with 10 W̱SÁNEĆ members to agree on what became the South Saanich Treaty. He then requested W̱SÁNEĆ chiefs come to another meeting on February 11 during which he negotiated with 118 “men with beards,” as he later described them, in what ended up as the North Saanich Treaty.

Historians have different theories on why these two agreements were negotiated separately, but it’s important to understand the context in which they were negotiated. For a prior treaty with the Songhees Nation, Douglas said he asked the chiefs to sign marks at the bottom of a blank sheet of paper, later adding details above it that resulted in the acquisition of the area’s South Island. Experts believe it’s possible Douglas did the same thing as with the W̱SÁNEĆ as he did with the Songhees, and got them to sign blank paper.

Adding to the complications, the X marks on the North Saanich Treaty that represented signatures “were forged” in that they were supposedly signed by W̱SÁNEĆ members “but were in fact made by the clerk of the Hudson’s Bay Company,” declared Justice Douglas Lambert, in Olsen’s B.C. Court of Appeal case.

There is no evidence that the First Nations signatories saw the agreements after the fact, were given a copy, or knew what text was later added.

To this day, the text of the Saanich Treaties does not match W̱SÁNEĆ’s own oral version, which asserts that the treaties were likely agreements to share the land, not surrender it.

On this point, the court also came to a stunning conclusion in its final ruling, in Olsen’s favour: “The Douglas Treaties were the reflections of oral agreements reduced to writing by agents of the Crown” and that those oral promises made when the treaty was agreed to “are as much a part of the treaty as the written words.”

As the people who wrote the Douglas Treaties down were not the Indigenous people, the court “had to take into account what was the evidence of Indigenous people about what they thought the treaty meant,” says lawyer Louise Mandell, Olsen and Morris’s representative and one of the founding partners of Mandell Pinder, a law firm that specializes in Aboriginal and treaty rights law.

This was important for the legal cases that were to follow, she adds.

There are other reasons that the W̱SÁNEĆ think the treaties were likely land sharing agreements meant to stave off tensions that had arisen at that time for a variety of reasons, including a dispute over timber being harvested by settlers in Cordova Bay. 

Given that the Indigenous population on Vancouver Island at this time was approximately 11,700 people, compared with a settler population of about 700, there wouldn’t be any motivation for the W̱SÁNEĆ to sell off all their land, says Joni Olsen, the policy and negotiations manager for the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council and Carl Olsen’s daughter.

“The concept of selling land at that point in history was not a thing for W̱SÁNEĆ people,” she says, especially in the context of B.C. being the last place in Canada that settlers came. “Maybe on the east coast, where they had been settled hundreds of years before, there were probably those concepts there already, but that didn’t happen here.”

Furthermore, the idea that the W̱SÁNEĆ would sell land in exchange for a “payment” of blankets doesn’t make sense culturally, and represents a fundamental lack of understanding around what gifting means to their people, Joni says.

“I mean, historically, to access land you would have married somebody’s daughter or something like that. There would have been an exchange. And it could have been through Potlatch, where you had an exchange of things like blankets. But it wasn’t to own. It was to share. It was to have access to.”

Last February, Joni helped negotiate a joint statement with the provincial and federal governments to acknowledge W̱SÁNEĆ’s oral version of the treaties. It states that “though Canada and British Columbia have long considered these agreements to be land purchase agreements, W̱SÁNEĆ oral histories hold that they were agreements to settle disputes and establish peaceful relations between the W̱SÁNEĆ Nation and the European settlers.”

But these peaceful relations remain a challenge when it comes to negotiations over the future of Goldstream Park.

Moving Indigenous court victories into the real world

Olsen stands on an outcropping of stone known as “The Rock.” It’s a scenic spot along Mill Bay Road in the Cowichan Valley that looks out across the waters of the Saanich Inlet, which is fed by the Goldstream River. In the distance are the western shores of the Saanich Peninsula; beyond that, a scattering of islands.

The sun is bright, and he cups a hand over his forehead as he looks across the water.

“When I was a kid, this bay was full of salmon. You could see it,” he says. “You really could see it.” These waters and lands were his garden and food source growing up.

“It’s where we harvested food plants, medicine plants, and berries. And when you come to the ocean like this, we harvested our food from the ocean. In fact, I was in my early teens before I even had a store-bought meal. It was like fish, ducks, deer, clams, oysters, seal meat. That was my diet before, up until maybe the mid ’60s,” he says.   

Though he was raised as a hunter and a fisherman, his father taught him those skills in private, under a cloud of fear.

“Most parents in our communities suffered from fear. Fear of losing their kids because of how the residential school would just take you away if there was a problem. They actually lived with that fear right up till the end, and so they never taught us on land here. My dad always taught me when we were out fishing on the boat, when there was nobody around. Nobody to come and take us away,” he says, overcome with emotion. “That’s how it affected the treaty as well. They had to go outside or to the islands to teach us our ways.”

That fear has continued to affect the exercising of their Douglas Treaty rights because those rights are still disrespected and uncertain, he adds.

“It only verifies the rights that I have, that’s what the Douglas Treaty does. Because that’s what we did before, hunting and fishing, being taught with hands-on teaching,” he says. “That fear is still there, because of the inability of the government to come and sit down with you to implement that court ruling.”

Of the five historical court cases that involved Douglas Treaty rights — including Olsen’s — each one resulted in victory. And every case presented its own legal challenge.

“It wasn’t as if we sat around, thinking about what all we have to do to win whatever,” says Mandell, the lawyer who represented Olsen and Morris. “In every case, we nuanced what the arguments were going to be, and we built the law — gradually.” 

In the 1980s Mandell worked on the 1987 Saanichton Marina case, around a development company’s intention to dredge and develop a commercial marina in Saanichton Bay that was home to eel grass beds, crabs, salmon and trout. 

The legal team wondered how they could assert the treaty “not as a shield but as a sword,” Mandell says. Rather than defend themselves from persecution, they would now assert their rights proactively, to protect the crab fishery and the Tsawout Nation’s traditional fishing grounds.

Essentially, Saanichton Marina Ltd.’s argument was that the “right to fish as formerly,” as stated in the treaties, meant the company could simply pick up and move the eel grass habitat elsewhere. The fish would still be there to harvest, so what was the problem?

The court agreed with Tsawout’s lawyers that found that a fishery is actually the place where fish are harvested, and the right includes the nation’s capacity and the capacity of a nation to care for it, so they’re not deprived of that right.  

“It’s both the incidental aspect and also the place itself. It’s not the right to put your fish net in the water and pull out a fish. It’s the right to continue to protect and harvest and steward and be reciprocal, inside the place that the fishing is happening,” Mandell says. 

This was a crucial and far-reaching finding, and directly relevant to the fight at Goldstream Park — the concept that nation members not only had the right to fish as formerly, but to protect their harvest. 

It’s been a rallying cry for Olsen ever since.

“My relatives fought for that. And the decision that came out of there was that they not only had the right to hunt and fish as formerly, they have the right to protect what they hunted and fished as formerly,” says Olsen. “That’s why I’m here. I’m protecting what belongs to us, our relatives that come up the stream that feed us.”

However, Mandell says there is a huge difference between winning a case and translating that legal victory into political action.

“I can’t tell you how many times we came home from the Supreme Court of Canada thinking we had died and gone to legal heaven, only to find out nothing much changed on the ground. I think that’s the difference between winning a legal point and actually having the capacity to move that victory into shifting the political landscape,” Mandell says.

Olsen, standing on the side of the Malahat protesting for the protection of Goldstream, embodies that distinction.

Despite decades of court cases and historical agreements which upheld the W̱SÁNEĆ people’s rights not only to their village site but also to their fishing grounds at SELE₭TEȽ, despite three years of weekly protests to highlight these rights, it appeared the government’s $162-million highway improvement plan was poised to go ahead.

That is, until Olsen received a phone call in February this year from some members of the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council to tell him they had received some news.

‘Do what you can’

The province had an announcement to make about the Malahat highway. The widening project was being paused. The leadership council members congratulated him.

In a February news release, the province said additional work was required “to address environmental considerations in this sensitive area of Goldstream Park” and understand the project’s impacts.

“I thought, ‘Well, that’s great,’” Olsen says. But he also doubts whether the government will keep its word.

“In the past we’ve had meetings with businesses and government offices and in our longhouses here and come to agreements with them. Then not even a couple of days later, they break those agreements,” he says.

“This could be one of those issues. You know they said they were pausing it, and in their statement, they talk about how they need to better understand the environment and do more research on the environment there, which tells me we were right in thinking that they didn’t really have an environmental plan.”

From the beginning, the province wanted W̱SÁNEĆ members to accept their environmental assessment without question, Olsen says. But he always felt that there was something odd about being asked to accept something without fully agreeing to it. From what nation members could see, the environmental risks were obvious — even from the government’s own assessment report.

The purpose of the environmental assessment was to identify issues, and “some of these considerations were brought to light through that process,” Ministry of Transit and Transportation spokesperson Murray Sinclair stated in an email.

“This does not mean the report was incomplete. The purpose of an environmental assessment is to identify issues, and some of these considerations were brought to light through that process,” Sinclair stated. Given the complexity of the site and the sensitivity of the habitat, addressing those issues will take time, he added.

The ministry is currently conducting a review of crash data in the area as part of an update to its 2012 study of the Highway 1 Malahat corridor.

What about Olsen’s concern that the project is merely on pause, and not actually cancelled?

“It’s possible the project could be revisited in the future. However, there is no timeline or estimate for when that might occur,” stated Sinclair.

This is why, for now, Olsen has decided to keep up his weekly protests.

“We want better decisions made about Goldstream and protecting the watershed especially. It’s about protecting the whole area,” he says. “It’s really important that we recognize where we stand in the whole thing. I’m not going to leave. I think they expected me to leave. We’re still there.”

On-the-ground reporting for this story is made possible with support from Carleton University’s Peter Stursberg Award in Conflict Journalism and Media Studies. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories.

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Summary

• Indigenous culture camps are happening across Canada this summer. Revitalizing cultural practices, spending time on the land, and participating in ceremonies is the focus of most camps. 
• Despite dozens of wildfires across B.C., organizers are fulfilling their commitments, highlighting the importance of hosting communities and organizations.
• Some culture camps have been happening for decades, while other communities hosted their first camp this year.

For 10 days in July, Qaqaqam Chris Wells spent time on the land camping with Líl̓wat youth, teaching Lil̓wat7úl cultural protocols, songs and stories. The Kwáozán̓tsut cultural summer camps have been “a long time coming,” he said. 

“Bringing our children back onto the land is teaching them land based healing and learning,” Wells told the Narwhal. “It was really awesome to bring back our culture.”

Hosted at Klháka7min, previously known as the Coast Mountain Outdoor School, two separate age groups camped for five days each between July 6th and July 17th. 

Though the youth were a bit shy at first, Wells and fellow camp leaders Ánwasúlmec Brett Wallace and Sík Sík Joshua Anderson say that by the end of each cohort, seeing how the participants had come out of their shells was a highlight.

“It was extra special for me: I had two of my daughters there, one in each age group,” Anderson said. “It was an opportunity to spend more time with them during the busy summer.”

During this year’s culture camp, a wildfire prompted evacuations in Pemberton, located approximately 25 kilometres down the road. Despite the nearby fire, the culture camps were a success — connecting youth with tradition, the land and culture. 

“We were pretty safe from all the fires happening around us,” Wells said. He’s stewarded the territory since he was a youth.

Land-based learning, education and connection

Between the two age groups — 9 to 12-year-olds, and teens — 30 youth attended the camps. 

Líl̓wat Elders took youth out onto the land, teaching them about edible berries and teas that grow in the area during that time of year.

“Every evening we had singing and drumming, and talked about cultural protocols. We talked about the origin of the songs. We talked about our ceremonies,” Wells said. 

Archery, axe throwing and rifle shooting with the older age group all took place with laughter and storytelling throughout. 

Youth had the opportunity to make traditional rattles and smudge bowls, ceremonial items that can be hard to access for a young person. Anderson said numerous parents reached out to him after the camp, sharing how their child went home wanting to practice their culture more through smudging. 

The youth even made a swimming hole to jump into cold glacier water, adding some casual fun into the mix, and relief from the hot summer days. 

“You can’t forget the fun part of it. We had the opportunity to play bone game in the evening time,” Anderson said, which showed the youth “how disputes were settled in a traditional manner.” 

The bone game is a traditional game used historically as an alternative to war by nations along the Salish Sea, and has other names such as “stick game” or “hand game” in other regions of Western Canada.

Youth were also split into three groups and tasked with helping in the kitchen. Local Lil̓wat7úl chef Casey Gabriel taught them how to cook for the group and clean up afterwards. 

The Kwáozán̓tsut Cultural Summer Camps were championed by the organizing trio of Anderson, Wells and Wallace, who are no strangers to hosting culture camps. But despite hosting camps in St’át’imc Nation communities for years, it took some time to prepare and build the trust required to host youth camps in their own nation. 

Now the Líl̓wat Nation wants to host another culture camp this fall. Wells, Wallace and Anderson are all looking forward to sharing their knowledge and helping out.

Now in its 15th year, Nlha’7kapmx annual culture camp is a ‘safe haven’

Excitement for future camps is a sentiment shared by Michelle Isaac, who always lends a helping hand at an annual Nlaka’pamux culture camp hosted at Pasulko Lake, located in B.C.’s Southern Interior.

“My stepmom at the time, Amy Chapman, brought me up to what used to be called the healing gathering. All I remember from there was how much of a difference it made in my life,” Isaac told the Narwhal. 

She attended the healing gathering after surviving a severe car accident, but over the years, the annual gathering lost volunteers and resources. 

Having experienced the healing energy of gathering herself, and meeting with the service agency about how to support community members, Isaac and a group of ladies working for Nlha’7kapmx Child and Family Services decided to spearhead a community based culture camp.

Now in its 15th year, people in the area look forward to gathering at Pasulko Lake each summer, practicing culture and being together on the land. 

This year, a mix of cultural activities, including drum making, cedar weaving and language friendship bracelet making took place, along with activities such as a tug-of-war game between youth and the local firefighting group, the Lytton Rattlers, and a performance by local band Ritchie and the Fenderman.

Isaac attends camp each year with her children, who are part of the Lower Nicola Indian Band community. While Isaac is not Indigenous herself, she still attends with an open heart and mind, supporting in any way she can. When wildfires are burning, she sees the camps as an especially important place for youth. 

“They’re able to come up there and do the activities, do the crafts, I find it takes a lot of stress and fear from the fire away from them,” Isaac said. This year, it’s also been an important refuge for her as well, after she was evacuated in July due to the nearby Brunswick Creek wildfire.

“Fire-wise, for me it was a safe haven. My one daughter came up as well, who was also evacuated, and hung out all week there. It gave me a safe place,” she said.

Across B.C. and Canada, wildfires disproportionately impact First Nations communities. Though they represent only five per cent of the population, it’s estimated that First Nations make up 42 per cent of all wildfire evacuations. 

As wildfires blaze all around the Interior, the camp offered a break from smoke for those in attendance. On event posters this year, air quality warnings were addressed, with evacuation routes marked along the way to camp as a precaution.

People who attended camp were asked to register at the sign in desk daily, to track who was there, and were informed about a muster point in the event of evacuation. 

The decision to continue on with both culture camps was deliberated by organizers carefully, with designated people monitoring surrounding wildfires.

Renegerating the land through fire

B.C. was the first province or territory in Canada to ban cultural burning in 1874, prohibiting generations of Indigenous people from stewarding their territories with fire. In 2024, 150 years later, the province officially amended wildfire regulations to support cultural burns. Today, many nations are in the process of reclaiming this practice, including Líl̓wat. 

“We can’t look at fire as dangerous all of the time. We gotta look at it as an element that helps us regenerate, and help us repurpose the land,” Wallace added.

An example of fire regenerating the land was visible to those at Líl̓wat’s culture camps through an abundance of berries, following a cultural burn several years before.

“That specific area was culturally burnt seven or eight years ago and now finally it’s starting to reproduce huckleberries,” Wallace said. “It’s not just a small piece of land, it’s a really big area, and the whole area was covered in huckleberries and raspberries because of these cultural burns that happened.”

Youth were able to harvest these berries, and surrounding wildlife have a tasty treat. 

And in the era of technology, culture camps give youth the opportunity to disconnect from the internet, and to connect with the natural world. 

“Back in our time, we didn’t have technology to hold us back from being out on the land,” Wells said. “It’s important to return to land-based healing … to be St’át’imc, and to do St’át’imc things.”

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Every time workers dig into the ground in Attawapiskat First Nation, Chief Sylvia Koostachin-Metatawabin says there is a chance they will uncover a problem the community has lived with for decades.

During repairs near her home, she said a worker stopped to tell her what he had found beneath the surface, close to a water line.

“Hey, chief, I saw the fuel on your property. A pool of fuel,” she recalled him saying.

But there was no equipment to clean it up, she said, so the excavation was covered again.

For community leaders, these discoveries are reminders of what they describe as a decades-long problem of diesel contamination beneath Attawapiskat, a Cree community in Ontario’s Far North on the western side of James Bay. It’s an issue both the federal and Ontario governments have known about for years but have failed to fully address.

Federal records show the issue was brought to the attention of Minister of Indigenous Services Mandy Gull-Masty last year, in a briefing note received on July 2, 2025.

A copy obtained through an informal access-to-information request revealed almost none of its contents. Most of the material was redacted under provisions of the Access to Information Act protecting personal information, government advice and recommendations and information subject to legal privilege.

A copy of the heavily redacted briefing note received by Minister of Indigenous Services Mandy Gull-Masty last July, regarding the contamination of the core of Attawapiskat.

These heavy redactions make it impossible to determine what officials advised the minister or what action, if any, was recommended.

But, a recent lawsuit filed by the First Nation claims that, a week after the briefing note was received, Canada refused to contribute to the costs of a remediation plan.

After years of negotiations and this alleged recent, unsuccessful, attempt to secure funding for a comprehensive clean-up, the First Nation is asking the courts to intervene.

Attawapiskat is seeking $200 million in compensation, including aggravated and punitive damages, from Canada and Ontario over diesel contamination in an area known as the Core of Community, provincial land that sits in the middle of Attawapiskat but is not legally part of the reserve.

“[The core] is not fenced off. It’s not separated physically from the community,” Chris Evans, a lawyer with Woodward & Co. Lawyers LLP, which represents Attawapiskat, told The Narwhal. 

The land isn’t empty. It is where children go to daycare and patients seek medical care. It contains a grocery store, a gas station, a place to access mental health and wellness services and the diesel generating station that provides backup electricity during outages.

“Many members of the community are unaware that it’s not part of the reserve because it’s fully integrated into it,” he said.

The lawsuit alleges Ontario has also failed to commit to funding, for the portion associated with the provincially-funded Weeneebayko Area Health Authority which owns facilities in the core.

The First Nation also says the contamination is preventing the core from being added to its reserve, wasting land it urgently needs for housing.

“There comes a time when we just say, enough is enough,” Koostachin-Metatawabin said.

Attawapiskat is also asking the court to declare that Canada and Ontario failed in their legal and moral responsibilities by breaching their fiduciary duties, the honour of the Crown and their duties of care.

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

In a written statement, Indigenous Services Canada told The Narwhal it is reviewing the claim, adding, “As this matter is currently before the court, we cannot comment further at this time.”

The Ontario premier’s office, Ministry of the Attorney General and Ministry of Indigenous Affairs and First Nations Economic Reconciliation did not respond to requests for comment.

A problem generations have lived with

Attawapiskat relied primarily on diesel-generated electricity for generations, from the 1960s until it was connected to Ontario’s power grid in 2003. Diesel continues to be used for backup power.

The nation alleges the pollution resulted from spills and leaks from the diesel infrastructure, including pipelines, trucks, storage tanks and the generating station.

“There have been many diesel spills,” Evans said. “They’ve happened for various reasons. Most likely, it’s because this system was not installed properly and maintained properly over the years.”

According to the statement of claim, there was no room for the generating system on the reserve. The federal government measures the reserve to be about 15 square kilometres, an area 1.5 times the size of Toronto’s High Park for a population of 2,000 people. The infrastructure was instead built on neighbouring provincial land. In 1973, after some reserve land was surrendered to build an airport north of the community and an equivalent area was added to the west, the core became the centre of Attawapiskat.

The lawsuit says the diesel infrastructure was owned or operated at different times by organizations including the local Roman Catholic mission, Ontario Hydro and its successors. Ownership of some infrastructure has since been transferred to Attawapiskat in connection with the community’s move to grid electricity, and is now used as a backup power system.

According to the claim, some individual spills have been partly cleaned up over the years, but the contamination across the core has never been fully remediated.

“There have been piecemeal efforts made at various times to identify and clean up the contamination,” Evans said. “But generally, it hasn’t been done.”

For many residents, the contamination of the core is part of an endless cycle.

J.R. Nakogee school closed in 2000 because of diesel contamination beneath the building and school grounds. Students spent more than a decade attending classes in portables before Kattawapiskak Elementary School opened in 2014.

The former school site is separate from the land involved in the current lawsuit. But Koostachin-Metatawabin said the earlier contamination continues to shape how residents understand the potential risks.

She said some former employees and families believe the contamination has caused them to become ill. 

“They attribute their health, their families’ health that pass on or are sick to being constantly exposed to fuel contamination,” she said.

Reminders of the contamination return whenever ground is disturbed, Koostachin-Metatawabin said.

“When you start excavating, you get the smell of diesel. It’s persistent,” she said.

The statement of claim alleges diesel has migrated from the core onto reserve land in several places. It also alleges the contamination could eventually reach Attawapiskat’s drinking water supply and the Attawapiskat River if it is not remediated.

“The diesel moves and migrates over time and the longer it stays in the soil the more likely it is to get into our water supply — and that would be catastrophic,” Deputy Chief Kara Fireman said in a press release about the court case. “It could even force us to entirely relocate.”

Diesel and fuel oils are complex mixtures that can contain substances such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes. Benzene has been considered toxic by Health Canada since 1993, and labelled it a “known human carcinogen” as recently as 2024. The health implications of a specific contaminated site depend on factors including which chemicals are present, their concentrations and whether people are being exposed through soil, water, air or direct contact.

The site-specific assessment prepared for the remediation project, which analyzes the concentration of chemicals in the core, has not been released publicly.

A clean-up plan was ready. Then it stopped

In 2023, Attawapiskat approached organizations with legal interests in the diesel infrastructure to develop a comprehensive remediation plan.

Attawapiskat, Hydro One Remote Communities Inc., the Weeneebayko Area Health Authority and the local electric transmission company hired Stantec Consulting Inc. to investigate the contamination and prepare a remediation action plan and budget.

According to the statement of claim, Stantec completed a draft plan in January 2025. The participating organizations agreed to a preferred option involving off-site disposal and bioremediation and agreed on how the costs would be apportioned among them.

The environmental report and total projected cost have not been released publicly.

“The parties agreed on an option and an apportionment of costs for implementing those options,” Evans said.

According to the lawsuit, the plan stalled at a meeting on June 9, 2025.

Canada advised the parties it would not contribute to the cost of implementing the remediation plan, the claim alleges. Attawapiskat had expected Canada to cover the share associated with assets assigned to the community, but the federal government advised the parties it would not contribute to the cost of implementing the remediation plan, the claim alleges.

“Attawapiskat doesn’t have the means to pay the apportionment that was assigned to it, and relied on Canada to cover that cost, and Canada refused,” Evans said.

Similarly, the claim says the Weeneebayko Area Health Authority expected Ontario to fund its portion, but the provincial government didn’t commit. 

The claim says Hydro One Remote Communities Inc. and the local electric transmission company remain supportive of the remediation effort and willing to cooperate, and that work could have begun in August 2025 and been completed within two years if funding had been secured. Instead, no comprehensive remediation has started.

Attawapiskat says housing crisis another reason diesel contamination must be cleaned up

Evans said testing has found considerable contamination beneath the daycare and health facility. Those findings are described in general terms in the statement of claim, but the underlying environmental report is confidential.

“Knowing that there is a toxic pollutant sitting there in the ground in the centre of your community, and that it’s been sitting there for decades in a place where people go and where little kids go to the daycare, where sick people go to the health facility, it’s extremely concerning to them,” Evans said.

Koostachin-Metatawabin said concerns also surfaced during construction of a youth centre, when workers discovered what she described as pooled fuel during excavation.

The discovery required remediation and delayed construction, she said. Further disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic left parts of the building exposed, contributing to mold and additional repair work.

“It’s been on the ground for a long time,” she said. “We know it’s there.”

The contamination is also an obstacle to one of the community’s most pressing priorities: finding more room for housing.

The statement of claim alleges the community received far less reserve land than it was promised under Treaty 9, which provided for 2.5 square kilometres for every five members. At the time of signing, the community had a population of about 550 people, equivalent to an area of about 300 square kilometres — 20 times larger than its current reserve.

Attawapiskat filed a separate specific claim with Canada in 2023 regarding its Treaty 9 reserve-land entitlement.

The current lawsuit states some members live in overcrowded, dilapidated or condemned homes, while others lack housing altogether.

The community has sought for years to have the core added to the reserve. But, according to the statement of claim, Canada’s rules about adding land to reserves require contaminated land to be environmentally assessed and, where necessary, remediated before it can be added to a reserve.

Because of the contamination, Evans said, “They can’t use [that land] to do things like add housing to remedy what is a just shocking humanitarian crisis that we’re seeing in the community, resulting from a lack of housing and overcrowding.”

Attawapiskat also provides services in the core, including water, garbage collection and snow removal, even though the land is not part of the reserve and the community says it does not receive federal funding to provide those services.

“I just want them to clean that site to turn it into reserve status,” Koostachin-Metatawabin said. “Because we need and can build some things there.”

The case may take years. The contamination remains

For Evans, the lack of a comprehensive clean-up raises questions about environmental injustice for Indigenous people.

“It’s hard to imagine there being a similar level of complacency toward the contamination here compared with other communities,” he said. “It’s been allowed to sit there for decades.”

He said the implications could extend beyond Attawapiskat.

“Attawapiskat is not alone in having these kinds of contamination problems in its community,” he said. “There are many communities in Ontario and Canada, especially remote communities, that are powered by diesel.”

The lawsuit is in its early stages.

Canada and Ontario had not filed statements of defence at the time of publication. Evans said the governments would ordinarily be required to respond within 30 days, although he expects they will seek more time because of the case’s complexity.

“It will be a few years at a minimum before we get a decision from the court,” he said.

For Koostachin-Metatawabin, the court case is one part of a much longer effort to make the community safe and create room for it to grow.

She said pursuing litigation was never her preferred option.

“I personally don’t like going through the legal court system. I don’t really want to do it,” she said. “But what other means do we have when we’re trying to get them to do the right thing?”

Rajpreet Sahota is a community and policy reporting fellow. Her position is generously funded by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, the foundation has no editorial input.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• Nunavut hunters and trappers are concerned about a proposal to expand the Mary River mine on Baffin Island.
• Hunter and trapper organizations in three Inuit communities have raised concerns about detrimental effects to the environment, as well as a lack of consultation.
• The proposed expansion by Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. comes amid a financial crisis for the company, which owes $2.6 billion to creditors and recently received a $660-million loan from the federal government to provide it with “breathing room.”

Hunters and trappers organizations in three Nunavut communities are raising concerns Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation’s proposal to expand its Mary River mine, including the construction of a 149-kilometre rail line, will be detrimental to wildlife in Foxe Basin.

The organizations from Naujaat in the Kivalliq region, and Igloolik and Sanirajak in the Qikiqtaaluk region, are seeking consultation and a full review of the expansion plan, arguing it will impact their right to harvest.

Made up of the shallow waters off the west coast of Baffin Island, Foxe Basin is an important environment for marine species including narwhals, walruses and bowhead whales. 

Inuit in all three communities rely on the area to harvest these animals for food and as a way of life. But the expansion is likely to change that, according to John Ell-Tinashlu, chair of the Arviq Hunters and Trappers Organization in Naujaat. 

Baffinland’s proposed Steensby expansion, which received environmental assessment approval in 2012, is aimed at increasing iron ore production at the mine from 4.2 million tonnes per year to 22 million tonnes. Transportation for the iron ore would take place via the rail line from the mine, south to a proposed port on Steensby Inlet, as well as a sea route through Foxe Basin. 

“The big difference will be the numbers of ships going in and out [of Foxe],” Ell-Tinashlu says, adding the size of the ships transiting in the area to transport the iron ore each year — as well as their presence year-round — will affect the entire food chain. 

“With narwhals, when they hear the lightest noise, they quit making sounds until the [shipping noise] gets farther,” he says. “And it’s not just narwhals — bowhead whales, walruses, harp seals, ringed seals, shrimp, cod.” The increased shipping, he says, will have impacts on marine life at every link of the food chain, “from a small predator to a big predator.”  

Mirroring concerns from Mittimatalikmiut 

A spokesperson for Baffinland said the company has been approved for 242 transits through the Foxe Basin waterway each year, transporting iron ore as part of the expansion. James Gunvaldsen Klaassen, a lawyer with Ecojustice, says this will deeply affect the local narwhal population, in particular, as the ore carriers will follow the same path as the local narwhal population’s migration route — from summer in Repulse Bay, where Naujaat is located, to Foxe Basin and Hudson Strait in the fall — causing serious impacts to the marine mammals. 

The impacts of such activity are already known in communities such as Mittimatalik, or Pond Inlet, which is located on Eclipse Sound just east of Baffinland’s current port on Milne Inlet. In 2018, Baffinland began seeking approval to increase production to six million tonnes per year, with a proposed second phase that would involve increasing production to 12 million tonnes per year. 

The Nunavut Impact Review Board recommended against the increase to 12 million tonnes and former federal minister of northern affairs Dan Vandal rejected the proposal in 2022. Under its current operating licence, Baffinland is allowed to mine up to 4.2 million tonnes of ore from Mary River annually, and since 2018, has been granted temporary permission to mine up to six million tonnes per year. 

“The Arviq [Hunters and Trappers Organization] has heard from other Inuit who live in Pond Inlet and are dependent on the narwhal in Eclipse Sound that when the ore carriers travelled there the narwhal were very sensitive to noise and it disrupted migration patterns,” Klaassen says. 

“At that point, the narwhal started to go to other places and disappear from the locations they’re normally found in. Some still return, but there’s a big difference in how many come back year over year.”

Inuit in Mittimatalik have found the health of narwhals to have been impacted by the stresses associated with ships as well, Klaassen added. 

“The Arviq [Hunters and Trappers Organization] has seen this happen in the north side of Baffin and they’re extremely concerned it’s going to happen in their area as well when the shipping starts, so this is a big concern.” 

By email, Baffinland’s spokesperson Peter Akman said Baffinland is taking concerns raised by the Arviq Hunters and Trappers Organization seriously, and has invested significantly in underwater acoustic monitoring, through which it has found “while noise from project vessels is detectable in the underwater soundscape, vessel noise exposure is temporary in nature and below sound levels that could cause acoustic injury.” 

“We’ve implemented measures to reduce vessel noise and mitigate potential impacts on these sensitive species,” Akman said. “Our approach includes reducing vessel speeds to minimize noise and disturbance, implementing a designated marine shipping lane, avoiding ecologically sensitive areas and scheduling vessel transits to avoid breaking ice at the beginning of the shipping season.” 

Akman added Baffinland also requires vessels to maintain minimum distances from marine mammals and to follow strict protocols including observing a speed no faster than nine knots, maintaining fixed routes and avoiding ecologically sensitive areas. 

“Hudson Strait connects Foxe Basin to the Labrador Sea, forming a marine ‘superhighway’ for narwhal, bowhead and beluga whales. Foxe Basin also supports the largest walrus population in Canada,” Sam Davin, lead specialist for conservation and shipping at World Wildlife Fund Canada, says. “More ships will mean more pollution, noise, black carbon and a greater risk of ship strikes.” 

In the case of narwhals, Davin said the marine mammals are among the most sensitive to underwater noise and are “more stressed than ever as industrial activity and shipping in their habitat intensifies.” 

“A Fisheries and Oceans Canada study, supported by WWF-Canada’s Arctic Species Conservation Fund, found that cortisol levels of narwhal in Eclipse Sound, near Pond Inlet, increased by 200 per cent from 2013 to 2019,” he said. “Already under intense pressure from rapid climate change, these species will be placed under even greater stress if proposals to dramatically increase shipping and related infrastructure in the Canadian Arctic proceed.” 

Davin added, “There is no scenario in which a project of this scale does not have a significant impact on marine mammals and other species in the region.”

Former Nunavut premier opposes expansion, cites lack of consultation 

Paul Okalik, former premier of Nunavut and lead Arctic specialist with World Wildlife Fund Canada, said he understands Arviq Hunters and Trappers Organization’s concerns about the Steensby expansion as he got involved in advocacy against the Mary River Milne port expansion in 2018. 

As well as proposing to increase production to 12 million tonnes per year under its phase two expansion, Baffinland wanted to build another railway to move all of that ore to the Milne port, rather than by road.

“I had grown up 800 kilometres south of the current project, and we had only been exposed to narwhal in early spring, before ice breakup,” he recalls. After the mine received approval to increase annual production to 6 million tonnes, he says, “we were starting to see narwhals in the summer months — in August — because they were being displaced and dispersed.”

“Since [Baffinland was] not approved for expansion on the eastern front through Milne port, they now have started to focus their attention on trying to ship ore through Steensby, and that’s going to be brutal for Naujaat, in particular, where they depend on narwhal in the summer months.”

According to Okalik, a key difference between the Milne port expansion and the one proposed at Steensby is that Inuit from Mittimatalik were consulted about the former, while Inuit in Naujaat were left out of the 2012 approval of shipping through Foxe Basin. 

“Fortunately for Mittimatalik and the surrounding communities, they were able to take part in the hearings and have an influence on the decision of the proposed phase two [expansion at Milne port] and they were able to push back and say, ‘This is not acceptable to us,’ ” Okalik says. 

“For the Steensby port and railroad project, there has never been any hearing. There has never been any input from Naujaat to influence that decision that took place in 2012 because they were never approached, they were never able to take part in any hearing. That’s a really flawed decision in my opinion, because any community that’s going to be impacted deserves to have a say and influence on the impending project.” 

The lack of consultation with Inuit in Naujaat in 2012 — and in the 14 years since — is why Ell-Tinashlu said the Arviq Hunters and Trappers Organization is working with Ecojustice to call on the Nunavut Impact Review Board and Inuit associations for a complete review. 

They have seen some response since organizing a news conference for this call with the Igloolik and Sanirajak hunters and trappers associations in Iqaluit on May 15. Klaassen confirmed the Arviq Hunters and Trappers Organization participated in Nunavut Impact Review Board meetings in Iqaluit as part of their assessment of the cumulative effects of the Mary River project in early June. On June 29, the review board announced a final virtual information session on July 14, acknowledging some in-person sessions in May had been impacted by weather and travel issues. 

However, Klaassen emphasized the organization continues to “have some concerns about its scope and whether it will lead to any meaningful changes in relation to the project’s impacts on their livelihood and harvesting rights under the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement.” 

According to Akman, consultation on Steensby “has been extensive” and the Nunavut Impact Review Board’s original scoping of potentially affected communities was public and included the community of Coral Harbour, which is also in the Kivalliq and close to the proposed shipping lane. 

Akman said Naujaat did not elect to participate in the public review at the time and as a result was not integrated into Baffinland’s community and stakeholder engagement plans for this expansion. He also said the Arviq Hunters and Trappers Organization has never reached out to Baffinland for a meeting but the corporation is working to address concerns raised by hunters who are part of it. 

Akman added that Baffinland itself led direct engagement efforts in all Qikiqtani communities affected by the mine between 2023 and 2024 to develop the necessary applications following the environment assessment authorizations. 

“Following the submission of our applications, the federal government commenced an extensive engagement process with the same affected communities, completing several rounds of written and in-person exchanges between March 2025 and January 2026.” 

In the case of Igloolik and Sanirajak, Akman said Baffinland has organized in-person consultations to discuss environmental monitoring and mitigation measures for the expansion 48 times since 2023. The engagement has involved discussions about “community access to vessel routing information, marine mammal and caribou protection measures, incorporation of Inuit knowledge and the inclusion of approximately nine proposed snowmobile and ATV crossings along the railway at locations identified through consultation with Inuit to support safe travel and land use.”

In a May 2025 response to the Canadian Transportation Agency’s consultations on the Steensby expansion, the Igloolik Hunters and Trappers Association said consultations have been piecemeal and the association has “serious unresolved concerns,” which is why it believes permits for the expansion should not be issued at this time. 

The Igloolik Hunters and Trappers Association also said the original review and assessment of the expansion is over a decade old, and therefore outdated. It called for new assessments instead, arguing that under federal legislation, a mining company has five years to begin operations. After that, a re-consideration of the terms and conditions is required. 

“These ‘sunset clauses’ exist because environmental conditions and knowledge change over time, sometimes necessitating reassessment,” the association said in its response. 

“This same logic should be applied to Baffinland’s plans to build a port and railway to Steensby Inlet.” 

For both Klaassen and Ell-Tinashlu, consultations remain but a first step in the process — what they would like to see is concerns about the expansion addressed and alternatives found for the impact the Steensby expansion will have on the way of life for Inuit in Naujaat, Igloolik and Sanirajak. 

“We’re in a tough situation and we need Canada, our government, to step up,” Ell-Tinashlu says. 

“This shipping route will run for 40 to 45 years if they go ahead and our Foxe Basin animals will be absolutely gone.” 

Baffinland debts put future of mine, expansion into question

Baffinland’s current financial crisis has also put the future of its proposed expansion into question. As the biggest industrial development project and largest private-sector employer in Nunavut, the Mary River mine contributes nearly a quarter of the territory’s GDP. 

The Milne phase two expansion, had it been approved, would have generated $2.4 billion for Inuit organizations including Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association over 17 years of operations, according to Baffinland. 

In addition, the corporation had said it expected $680 million in revenues generated for the Government of Nunavut annually as well as a total of $1.7 billion in revenues for the Government of Canada over the life of the mine. 

Baffinland anticipated the total gross domestic product generated in the Canadian economy over the Milne project’s life span to be over $30 billion. 

However, as recently reported by the CBC, as of May 14 the corporation currently owes a total of $2.6 billion to creditors.

On June 30, Baffinland received a $660 million loan from Export Development Canada to provide the company with “breathing room,” according to a news release, and continue operations at the Mary River mine site. The company remains under creditor protection, according to a news release, which could lead to “recapitalization or potential sale of the company.”  

“Ultimately, what the Arviq [Hunters and Trappers Organization] would like to see is a different route for this railway and port,” Klaassen says.“Arviq [Hunters and Trappers Organization] is not opposed to the operations at Mary River. It must be done responsibly and carefully. … The big concern is not to shut down that operation, but to make the route much better and more carefully arranged so that the rights of Inuit are protected and the environment is protected.”Klaassen also says as an organization made up of Inuit from Naujaat, Arviq has constitutional rights based on the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement and the ability to assert those rights in court if necessary. While no legal actions have been filed so far, he says they continue to be “a distinct possibility.”“We’re talking about a way of life and food security for the Inuit living [in Naujaat],” Klaassen says. “Those must be protected, otherwise it’s going to be a disaster.”

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Summary

• In Simpcw First Nation, women are continuing traditions practiced by generations of women before them, including animal-hide tanning. 
• Tiffany Bowser and Roberta Haller are Secwe̓pemc women who grew up immersed in their culture and now teach others who want to learn through community workshops.
• While women have always tanned deer hide in B.C.’s interior, a smaller number practice the skill today, making the workshops hosted by Bowser and Haller a powerful assertion of Indigenous Rights.

Working with animal hides can be a messy process — and children in Tiffany Bowser’s community of Simpcw First Nation “absolutely love it.”

“They love scraping the hide. They love stretching it,” she shares.

“I don’t know why, but brain water is one of their favourite things,” she adds, laughing. “I’m like okay, just don’t get it in your mouth.”

Bowser hosts hide-tanning workshops in her First Nation, come-and-go style, so people with different needs can attend. Her workshops are also hosted during the school day, so children and youth from the Secwe̓pemc community — located north of Kamloops — are able to participate.

From hunting the animal, to skinning and tanning the hide, it is a lengthy, expensive and labour-intensive process that many people struggle to make time for. And finding people who carry the knowledge about how to properly tan an animal hide is becoming rare.

Despite those challenges, the tradition lives on in the Simpcw First Nation. In Secwe̓pemc culture, women are typically tasked with preparing animal hides — a responsibility that Bowser takes seriously.

“There’s not too many people on the reserve who know how to tan a hide,” Roberta Haller, who also teaches hide tanning in the community, says. “I feel very proud that I’m one of them.”

“I’ve been hunting since I was about three years old,” Bowser told The Narwhal.

“Some of my earliest memories are sitting on my dad’s shoulders, packing a handful of gophers around and fishing. It’s just something I grew up doing.”

This year, she hosted a 10-day workshop, calling her mentor Haller over the phone for advice each day. Haller was mentored by the late Virginia Donald, her aunt, who was known in the area for her tanned deer hides. 

“I’m probably pretty biased, but she was one of the best hide tanners out there. Her deer hides came out white and perfect,” Bowser says. 

Following the tradition of women who came before and taught them, Bowser and Haller support one another, teaching the next generation of hide tanners in their community how it’s done.

Hide tanning process and usage

While methods to prepare animal hides vary from person to person and community to community, Bowser and Haller follow the methods passed down to them from generations of Secwe̓pemc women. 

After harvesting and skinning the animal, Haller explains, the hide gets soaked in water. After it’s soaked, the hair is cut and scraped off the hide before it’s carefully placed on a frame. 

This part can be tricky: experienced tanners know where to cut holes to properly stretch the hide on the frame, without ruining it by piercing in the wrong places. 

Once on the frame, the hide is pounded and stretched, over a gentle heat source. “Not too hot, so it doesn’t try out too fast,” she says. 

After that, the hide is taken off of the rack and smoked, which adds colour, prevents stiffness and makes the fabric not water-resistant, but washable.

The next step is the brain water. 

“We take the brains from the deer and then we dissolve it in warm water so it becomes a milky liquid, in there we soak the hide again. As we’re soaking, we’re stretching it out again … then you put it back on the frame, pound it out again and start the whole process over again,” Haller says. All of this takes days, weeks or months, depending on the animal size, and what outcome the tanner is going for.

But if the steps aren’t completed properly, the whole process must be started over. Smaller game animals can take weeks to complete, while larger animals like moose can take up to a year. 

It takes time, commitment, muscles and know-how to make it all happen.

Passing the tradition through generations

Haller started working with animal hide in her 30s, wanting to pass the tradition onto her children. And since tanning was so intensive, she wanted to help her mentor Virginia continue the practice as she aged, while learning the practice from her. 

“Auntie Virginia didn’t like to take any shortcuts,” Haller tells The Narwhal. That meant skipping modern tools including pressure washers and trimmers to remove animal hair during the tanning process, which weren’t available back in her day.

“She just liked to do it the way she was taught, she didn’t try any other way. She knew one way would work, and that’s how she taught me, and that’s what we still do.”

Since learning from her auntie, Haller has mentored Bowser and anyone else who wants to learn at the community workshops in Simpcw First Nation. Though they focus on involving youth, anyone from the general community is also welcome to attend, as long as they are respectful of the animal hide.

One of those community participants is Fred Fortier, a Simpcw member who has attended many hide-tanning workshops hosted by Bowser and Haller. 

Fortier grew up connected to the land. After recovering from cancer five years ago, animal hide workshops have become a more accessible way for him to practice culture, although he still goes hunting sometimes. 

Visiting, speaking Secwepemctsín, sharing meals, telling hunting stories and laughing together at the workshops are “just a lot of fun,” Fortier says. 

Watching his grandchildren participate in the workshops is exciting. “I think that’s a really important component, our kids wanting to learn and not feeling ashamed to learn our cultural ways … for them to keep their head up and be proud,” he says.

He encourages hunters in the nation to keep the hide, bones and brains in mind when harvesting deer to be in alignment with Secwe̓pemc culture. 

“We have a lot of women in our community who have stepped forward to teach people our cultural ways,” he says. 

“For those people like Tiffany and Roberta, and all of the women who have stepped forward … I think they are the backbone of our community.”

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Summary

• Grade 7 students Veda Nair and Latavia Douglas discovered their school and community no longer had access to recycling services after Ontario shifted responsibility for blue box collection to a producer-run system.
• Although the First Nation is eligible to join Ontario’s Blue Box Program, it has not registered due to logistical concerns.
• Nair and Douglas continue to advocate for recycling in their community, arguing they should have the same opportunity to protect the environment as anyone else.

In September 2025, Veda Nair and Latavia Douglas set out to start a recycling program at their school.

The Grade 7 students attend Mamawmatawa Holistic Education Centre, locally known as MHEC, in Constance Lake First Nation, about 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay, Ont. They planned to encourage their classmates to sort paper, plastic and other recyclables through a student-led initiative called Project Z.E.R.O.

Project Z.E.R.O. stands for “zero mistakes, engage everyone, recycle and one school, one goal,” Nair said. 

But the project quickly became complicated. 

“When we first started, we just hoped that this would be a little project where we would just buy some recycling bins and everyone would recycle, but it evolved into a lot more,” Nair said.

For one thing, they learned there were no longer recycling services available in Constance Lake — not for their school, or the roughly 200 homes in the community. Any recycling they collected and sorted had nowhere to go.

Up until 2023, Ontario municipalities were responsible for their own recycling programs. Then, the Ontario government decided to make a major change, shifting that responsibility over to Circular Materials, a not-for-profit organization run and funded by the major producers of recyclables, like plastic and cardboard.

Municipalities and First Nations have gradually transitioned over to the new program — but not all of them, at least not yet. Constance Lake’s recycling had been handled through an agreement with the nearby Town of Hearst, Ont., but now, like more than 100 other First Nations, it is lacking that service.

“We were unable to continue it because the Town of Hearst isn’t responsible for the recycling anymore,” Nair said. 

Constance Lake is located about 32 kilometres by road northwest of Hearst. After the First Nation’s landfill site was closed in 2018, a solid waste and waste diversion service agreement was signed and the town provided recycling services for the First Nation, which has about 900 members living on reserve. According to the agreement dated March 28, 2020, Hearst would accept the First Nation’s waste and recycling material at the municipal landfill site in exchange for a service fee.

But that changed a few years later, according to Éric Picard, the chief administrative officer for the Town of Hearst, to prepare for Ontario’s new recycling regime, the Blue Box Program. Lillian Sutherland, infrastructure and public works manager for Constance Lake First Nation, said the community has not received any recycling services since around 2022, when the provincial program was ramping up.

The First Nation’s waste is still handled by the town, but the recyclable materials are no longer accepted under the renewed agreement because blue box services are now administered by the province and producer-led organization.

That has left Nair and Douglas trying to figure out where their school’s recyclables could go.

Why doesn’t Constance Lake First Nation have a recycling program?  

Ontario’s Blue Box Program recycles printed paper and packaging, including plastics, paper, glass, aluminum and steel. It is regulated by the provincial government and managed by Circular Materials. Its recycling services are largely contracted out to GFL Environmental Inc.

The Doug Ford government finalized its Blue Box Regulation in June 2021 and began transitioning responsibility for residential recycling from municipalities and First Nations to Circular Materials. The new system officially launched in July 2023. Under the regulation, all participating communities were to be included in the new system by Dec. 31, 2025.

Ontario’s Blue Box Regulation defines an eligible community as a local municipality, local services board area or First Nations reserve south of the Far North region of Ontario — but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re participating.

Constance Lake, for example, is eligible for the program, according to a spokesperson for the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority, the regulator mandated by the Ontario government to enforce the province’s recycling law. But it hasn’t signed up — and it’s not alone.

As of Jan. 1, 2026, only 12 First Nations out of 102 residing south of the Far North border had transitioned over to the new program. 

Eligible First Nations must first register and submit information about their community and existing waste collection services. That information is then shared with Circular Materials. Once a First Nation is registered, Circular Materials is required to provide an offer of collection services or funding on behalf of the producers that finance the system.

Constance Lake First Nation Chief Richard Allen told The Narwhal the community did not apply to be a part of Ontario’s Blue Box Program due to logistical concerns — the cost of transportation to and from the community and concerns GFL would not service it because the reserve is on federal Crown land.

Part of the challenge facing Project Z.E.R.O. is that students and school staff have received conflicting information about why recycling services through GFL Environmental are unavailable in the community, and if it’s related to being on federal lands.

“We were a little panicked because, what would we do if the only company that was responsible for our recycling cannot help us with recycling?” Douglas said.

The Narwhal reached out to GFL Environmental Inc., but the company declined to comment, explaining that it is a contracted service provider, and referred questions to Circular Materials.

In an emailed statement to The Narwhal, Circular Materials wrote it is not currently engaged in any discussions about providing recycling service to Constance Lake First Nation and not in the position to comment on operations or any possible third-party private contract negotiations. It further wrote eligibility is determined by Ontario’s Blue Box Regulation.

“Circular Materials is committed to supporting First Nations communities with their needs and requirements around the blue box transition, in alignment with Ontario’s Blue Box Regulation,” Jennifer Kerr, a spokesperson for Circular Materials, wrote.

“Communities’ eligibility for participation in the Blue Box Program is determined by the Blue Box Regulation.”

‘It just seems a bit absurd’

Nair and Douglas began working on the project through their school’s enrichment program, a project-based learning class led by Cameron Straughan, who teaches science, technology, engineering and mathematics — or STEM.

Since learning about the lack of recycling service, the students have written letters to Kapuskasing-Timmins-Mushkegowuk MP Gaétan Malette, federal Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin and Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty, asking for advice and help.

“We recently did surveys at our school, and the results show that we have a lot of students and staff who are dedicated to recycling,” they wrote in the letter.

The students wrote that it “feels wrong” for paper and plastic to go into the garbage just because of where the community is located and that they have the support of their school to put a program in place, but need help to “find the right path.”

Nair said only Dabrusin’s office responded.

“And the funny thing is that they told us that they would transfer this to another person who is the Minister of Indigenous Services of Canada and we already sent them a letter,” she said.

Straughan said he was surprised by the limited response.

“I thought being students, a student-led project at a First Nation school, I thought that there’d be more response by far,” he said.

Indigenous Services Canada told The Narwhal the community has received $222,000 annually for their solid waste management needs since 2020-2021, which can cover recycling, garbage and compost.

The Narwhal reached out to Malette and Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, which oversees the blue box legislation, but did not receive a response before publication.

Mushkegowuk-James Bay MPP Guy Bourgouin declined to comment, but a spokesperson at his office said additional information is still being gathered and the situation continues to be reviewed.

Straughan said the situation is frustrating because Hearst is only about a 30-minute drive from Constance Lake First Nation. He knows because he lives there and drives to the school every weekday.

“It seems a bit absurd to me that [GFL] cannot send a recycling truck to pick up recycling for this community,” he said.

“And yet they do pick up garbage. They do have a garbage truck in Constance Lake. Garbage is delivered to the dump in Hearst, but not recycling.”

Straughan understands the issue is complicated, but believes the students have exposed a real problem.

“It just seems absurd that we’re tied by red tape, our hands are tied by red tape that we can’t get that recycling truck to deliver,” he said.

Straughan said he has been impressed by how Nair and Douglas handled the complexity of the recycling issue. And the school may still have a path forward. They’re currently looking into the First Nations Waste Management Initiative, a federal program that supports First Nations in developing sustainable waste management systems. Straughan expects to write a proposal over the summer. 

“We have some more work to do ahead of us before we can actually get the recycling program up and running,” he said.

Students want decision-makers to understand that recycling should be available to their school — and community, Nair said. “As an Indigenous school or as any school, students use a lot of paper every day, we should have the rights to recycle and save our environment.”

Rajpreet Sahota is a community and policy reporting fellow. Her position is generously funded by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, the foundation has no editorial input.

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Morning light streams into the tiny, five-seat helicopter as it hovers above the Tranquil Creek watershed in Clayoquot Sound, B.C. It turns into what seems like a collision course with a cliff, but a landing pad appears just in time.

After a minute of careful positioning, the chopper touches ground on a bed of freshly cut grass and branches, allowing Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation’s natural resources manager Saya Masso and lead guardian Tattuuskulth (Tatt) Charlie to step outside.

They’ve come to see a mine shaft with an entranceway small enough that Masso ducks down to look inside. It looks like a relic from the gold rush, but there are a few conspicuously new things stashed at the entrance: a shiny white construction hat, plastic bags and a long orange hose coiled in a pile. 

For Masso and Charlie, they’re quiet reminders that what began here more than a century ago has yet to conclude.

In February, Canadian mining company Imperial Metals received a permit to explore for gold at the long-dormant Fandora mine site on Vancouver Island’s west coast. For the next five years, the company is allowed to pick and prod underground in the hopes of accessing the site’s mostly untapped resources. 

Masso is worried about Hiłsyaqƛis, the name for the Tranquil Creek watershed in Nuu-chah-nulth. Problems at this remote site in the middle of rain-drenched temperate forest could easily metastasize. 

“Positive change is gradual,” he says, “but negative change can happen so quick.”

Clayoquot Sound is home to the some of the largest intact old-growth forests on Vancouver Island, and remains a key refuge for massive red cedars, orcas and Pacific salmon. About 20 kilometres from the mine site, these lands and waters now underpin the tourism economy of Tofino, B.C. First Nations including Tla-o-qui-aht have spent decades protecting the region, helping to shape its economic future. According to Tourism Tofino, visitors spent $430 million in the region in 2024. 

Tofino Mayor Dan Law was careful to clarify the municipality has no jurisdiction over a prospective mine outside its boundaries, but says a mine in the sound “seems like a no-go.”

“Clearly, the wealth of Clayoquot Sound is not in resource extraction,” Law says from his office on a tree-lined street in the heart of town.

Masso puts things a little more bluntly. “A gold mine will never open in Clayoquot Sound in this tenure,” he says. The Tla-o-qui-aht have opposed Imperial Metals’ efforts to search for gold on the site for more than a decade.

“It goes against our spiritual plan, our cultural plan, our tourism plan, so we’re asking ministers and leaders in B.C. to help turn this around, to put a pause on it, put an injunction on it,” Masso says.

The Tofino Chamber of Commerce also opposes the plan. 

“This would be extensively damaging to our business community,” Graydon Clerk, executive director of the Tofino Chamber of Commerce, says. The association recently sent a letter to the province outlining its concerns.

Imperial Metals did not respond to The Narwhal’s multiple requests for comment. 

B.C.’s Ministry of Mining and Critical Minerals told The Narwhal the permit doesn’t allow activities beyond the current exploration plan. Anything more would require a new decision under the province’s Mines Act.

“The Ministry remains committed to strong environmental oversight, safe mining practices and ongoing consultation with First Nations and partners,” it added. 

Pressure from the growing price of gold

East of Clayoquot Sound, a broader debate over Canada’s future is unfolding.

“Canada has what the world wants,” Prime Minister Mark Carney told a room of the world’s elite at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this year, signalling his government’s open-for-business ethos. And the world wants gold.

Gold is among Canada’s largest exports, after oil and gas. Thanks to skyrocketing prices, the precious metal has boosted the profile of Canada’s stock exchange and contributed to the country’s claimed success diversifying its exports away from the U.S. To facilitate a resource-sector renaissance, Canada, B.C. and other provinces have promised to push major projects through — and quickly.

The Tla-o-qui-aht are no strangers to the treasures beneath their territory. Copper and gold from the region have long been used in ceremonies and to adorn regalia. “They had monumental value,” Tla-o-qui-aht Chief Elmer Frank tells The Narwhal in an interview. 

By the late 1800s, word had gotten out, and prospectors flooded the region as the north’s Klondike Gold Rush wound down. The efforts were buoyed by B.C.’s mining laws, which allowed settlers to stake out mineral rights simply by driving posts into the ground.

The Fandora mine site was first staked in the 1930s, but in 1940, the mine had yet to produce the equivalent of a large gold bar. It has sat mostly dormant for half a century. 

Meanwhile, Tofino grew. 

In 2000, Clayoquot Sound was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, marking it as a global priority for conservation. The town’s new boom was in whale-watching, five-star hotels and fancy restaurants. Today, Tofino’s population surges from about 2,500 year-round locals to more than 12,000 during its summer peak.

But in February, as gold prices soared, British Columbia approved a five-year permit for Imperial Metals, under its wholly-owned subsidiary, Selkirk Metals Corp., to see whether Fandora’s reserves are worth the cost of constructing a mine. 

Documents obtained by The Narwhal show the company plans to dig a series of metre-wide trenches, some as long as two football fields, to determine if trace amounts of gold in the soil signal riches below. The company has also mapped out six drill pads, each roughly the size of a small house, some as close as 110 metres from the river. Drilling will likely require thousands of litres of water for each hole. On the company’s proposed exploration map, there are three “helicopter drill pad water sources” listed in Tranquil Creek’s tributaries. According to its permit, “road-access drilling” will not use water from Tranquil Creek or its tributaries. 

In its permit application materials, Imperial Metals noted it will seek to reuse and reduce water as much as possible. The company’s permit also requires it take steps to accommodate traditional harvest and cultural practices during its exploration work, among other requirements.

In the documents, Imperial Metals noted the intensity of this project in its first year will depend on how much funding the company obtains. “We may only drill one or two holes,” it added. Its permit allows it to drill another 15 house-sized drill pads in yet-undisclosed locations across the Tranquil Creek watershed and its adjacent valley.

The documents also suggest gold on the property extends farther than previously understood. “After a long hiatus in exploration, modern soil geochemistry was completed on the property, which successfully extended the anomalous gold horizon along strike of the known veins,” an August 2025 Notice of Work document obtained by The Narwhal states.

Imperial Metals did not respond to The Narwhal’s questions about its plans.

A mine surrounded by tribal parks

As the lead guardian for Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, Charlie doesn’t miss a beat when asked which of his many tasks he prefers. 

“Hands down, my favourite is trail building,” he says.

Trails extend throughout the nation’s tribal parks, which now encompass Tla-o-qui-aht’s entire territory, more than 1,000 square kilometres. Within tribal parks, industry and economic development aren’t categorically excluded. But their acceptance is contingent on support from the nation and other locals who aim to ensure industry doesn’t come at the expense of what ecosystems and communities need to thrive. 

“It’s a vision that the region can stand behind,” Masso says. 

The province has yet to recognize tribal parks within its own legal system — and where some form of recognition exists, it has been hard-won.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, members of Tla-o-qui-aht and ʕaaḥuusʔatḥ (Ahousaht) First Nations discovered logging giant MacMillan Bloedel had plans to clear-cut almost all of Meares Island, home of ecologically important intact forests. In response, Tla-o-qui-aht declared its first tribal park across Meares in its entirety. The province granted the company’s logging permits anyway.

A blockade led by the Tla-o-qui-aht ensued, sparking the first of a series of blockades in Clayoquot Sound which eventually led to the War in the Woods. In 1985, the B.C. Court of Appeal decided the nations’ yet-to-be-recognized Aboriginal Title should outweigh the company’s right to short-term profit.

According a paper published by lawyer and professor Douglas Harris, the decision helped shape a key turning point. Indigenous Rights claims were no longer a point of curiosity for the courts. Now they had legal weight.

Today, Meares Island remains off-limits to logging, protecting the District of Tofino’s sole source of drinking water. But elsewhere in the territory, including in the Tranquil watershed, areas within tribal parks had no such safeguards.

That is, until recently.

‘Consent of affected First Nations is not a legal requirement,’ B.C. government says

In spring 2024, B.C., Tla-o-qui-aht and neighbouring ʕaaḥuusʔatḥ announced a set of protected areas across Clayoquot Sound and throughout the Tla-o-qui-aht Nation’s tribal parks. “It’s a monumental occasion,” Masso said at the time. 

In theory, the conservancies would recognize some principles of the Tla-o-qui-aht’s tribal parks within B.C.’s laws, and they came with commitments: B.C. promised the areas would have no commercial forestry within their boundaries, nor any mining activity. 

To Masso, it remains a partial victory: The Tranquil Creek conservancy B.C. put forward has a big hole in the middle, shaped seemingly to avoid overlap with Imperial Metals’ mining claims.

Masso says he remembers the province’s reassurances. “They said, ‘This is just the first step,’ ” he says. “‘We’ll make more as we do more work to resolve overlaps or tenures, and we’ll add it.’ ”

But that hasn’t happened. 

Instead, Masso received an email from the province in December 2025, which revealed Imperial Metals was about to return. After a few years of what Chief Frank described as “one-way” consultation, the company was on the precipice of receiving a renewed exploration permit.

Masso was stunned. “We said, ‘Wait a second, they’re considering issuing this,’ ” he says. “We wrote a very stern letter reminding them that they couldn’t.”

Two months later, the province approved Imperial’s permit anyway.

In an emailed statement, B.C.’s Ministry of Mines and Critical Minerals said its decision was based on the exploration activity alone. 

The ministry added “Consent of affected First Nations is not a legal requirement” but that it “seeks to reach consensus in decision making and considers all input from First Nations in that process.”

“Input received informs decision making,” it added. 

ʕaaḥuusʔatḥ, whose territory overlaps with areas within Imperial Metals’ Fandora claim, did not respond to The Narwhal’s interview request. 

Indigenous consent and the country’s relationship to it are an increasingly charged lightning rod in Canadian politics. In 2019, B.C. committed to integrate the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, into its own laws, including the principle of free, prior and informed consent.

More recently, the B.C. Court of Appeal found the province’s mineral tenure system inconsistent with UNDRIP, as incorporated into provincial law through the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA). The province appealed the ruling, which is now waiting to be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada. In the meantime, Premier David Eby attempted to suspend parts of the Declaration Act, a move that was widely criticized and stopped, in part, by the NDP government’s own members. The government says it will revisit the issue in the fall legislative session.

Sara Ghebremusse, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s Allard School of Law, cautions against efforts to go backwards, particularly given the growing body of international and national law recognizing the weight of Indigenous Rights. 

“This is going to be a long-term issue,” she says.

The cost of gold

At the Fandora site, gold comes wrapped up with sulphides. Under certain conditions, the compound turns water into acid that can leach heavy metals into the watershed.

To curb that risk, mines generally store waste rock underwater and away from oxygen. But in rain-drenched Clayoquot Sound, accumulating pools of tailings could overflow, meaning if built a mine would likely require long-term drainage systems and monitoring. 

“Water is always a problem,” Scott Dunbar, a professor of mining engineering at the University of British Columbia, says. “If an accident occurs, the first question is always ‘Where did the water get out?’ ”

For the time being, Imperial’s exploration permit requires it to mitigate the potential for acid mine drainage through identifying and safely disposing of rocks capable of causing it.

Gold is also famously stubborn for clinging to its host rocks, which means heavy-duty chemicals are used in extraction. Cyanide leaching is the most common method of choice. Companies aim to isolate the obviously noxious chemical and keep it contained, but tailings that are left over are likely contaminated.

Meanwhile, the Tranquil Creek watershed is already on life support. 

After the valley bottom was logged extensively in the 1960s and 1970s, loggers moved into the hills, destroying root systems that held the region’s crumbly till in place. Landslides ensued, helping turn Tranquil Creek, a key spawning ground for Pacific salmon, into a danger zone capable of suffocating salmon eggs beneath gravel or washing them out to sea. By 2017, resident Chinook and chum salmon had almost disappeared.

With the Redd Fish Restoration Society, Tla-o-qui-aht is working to restore the watershed, including installing a series of costly but effective human-made log-jams to slow the water and building terraces in the landslides to choke off the gravel taps. Collectively with other groups, about $6 million has been spent restoring the Tranquil so far. Recent years of boosted salmon returns are providing some hope.

Charlie warns of the risks of backsliding in the Tranquil. “Mining is one thing that will just throw it over the edge,” he says. 

In a recent article in the publication Ha-Shilth-Sa, Imperial Metals CEO Brian Kynoch noted the mine would “most likely” be underground, not in an open pit, and that it would target only “narrow” gold veins. He also said Imperial Metals “remains committed to engaging respectfully with First Nations and local communities as the project moves forward.”

Kynoch has previously described the project as “artisanal.”

But the company has a checkered past: In 2014, the company’s “crown jewel” gold and copper mine, Mount Polley, became the site of the largest mining waste disaster in Canada’s history when its tailings dam breached. More than 25 billion litres of water and mine waste, including lead, cadmium and arsenic, spilled into the surrounding watershed. Later reporting showed the province warned the company about stability concerns in its tailings dam at least five times before the disaster occurred. 

In 2018, the company faced significant financial challenges and there was concern it might file for bankruptcy. But even if a mine is never built, Imperial could profit from the claim. In B.C., mining companies stand to be compensated if they withdraw claims to make way for new protected areas. In 2022, Imperial Metals received $24 million to relinquish its claim area in the Skagit Headwaters. 

“It doesn’t make any sense at all to let them drill it if the only end result is to compensate them to not mine,” Masso says.

Imperial Metals did not reply to The Narwhal’s request for comment.

‘It’s still a beautiful place’

Once we’re back in the helicopter’s bucket seats, the chopper ascends from the cliff face and travels on through the Tranquil watershed. 

Uniform patches of short, stubby trees extend across the valley bottom, but the forests transform as we fly higher, farther from the reach of roads and access points. Soon the chopper tips toward the deep blue bowl of a mountain lake, its water still and inky blue. 

“It’s still a beautiful place,” Masso says. “Even if it’s still in recovery.”

From up above, Tofino’s growth is hard to ignore. Multimillion-dollar vacation homes sprawl across the coastline. Masso peers out the window, thinking about an old photo of Tofino in the 1960s with just a scattering of homes. He knows more change is on the way. 

“Imagine another 80 years from now,” he says. “People are gonna say, ‘Look at what it was like.’ ”

Tourism has its challenges: Tofino is short on water and housing. Charlie and the other Tla-o-qui-aht Guardians sometimes spend days cleaning up after visitors who leave their trash on the beach and backcountry. 

But these are the challenges that Tla-o-qui-aht and the town of Tofino are choosing to grapple with, and there is work underway to smooth out the industry’s edges. Local businesses, for example, are now encouraged to collect a one per cent “responsible visitor fee” from customers to support restoration and protection in Tla-o-qui-aht’s tribal parks program. 

“We live together,” Tofino Mayor Law says. “We see this as a present and future relationship.”

Back on the ground, Masso and Charlie get ready to return to their day’s business. Masso is thinking about the coming heat and wildfires, and asks to see the helicopter company’s firefighting equipment. Moments of pause are few and far between. 

Masso had hoped the nation’s tribal parks would ward off ill-fitting visions of the region’s future. 

“We could spend our time building longhouses and rebuilding rivers, doing positive things for our children,” he says.

“But now I have to spend the next couple of years opposing a gold mine.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Federal Minister of Indigenous Services Mandy Gull-Masty has unveiled a new and long-awaited bill to provide safe drinking water to First Nations, which she says was written to ensure “we have provincial partners at the table.” Ontario chiefs say they were shut out and their right to clean water was not recognized. 

Gull-Masty denied her government caved to provincial pressure in Bill C-37, or An Act respecting water, source water, drinking water, wastewater and related infrastructure on First Nation lands, that sets out principles to provide safe drinking water and disposal of wastewater for First Nations.

“My conversations with leadership and the chiefs that have spoken to me understand that we are trying to pass a bill that is going to be protected and stand the test of time,” the minister said at a press conference on Parliament Hill on June 16.

“I’m not trying to put a bill forward that is going to be challenged,” she said. “I’m trying to put a bill forward that partners, provinces and territories feel can advance, that they can work with us.”

The Chiefs of Ontario, however, say First Nations were not consulted in the process. The group is “cautiously optimistic” but remains concerned about the approach to this issue by the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney.“Unlike previous legislative efforts, which were developed through meaningful dialogue and partnerships with First Nations Knowledge Keepers [and] technicians, Bill C-37 was introduced without broad or meaningful input from First Nations,” Linda Debassige, Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief, and a member of the Chiefs of Ontario leadership council, said in a Tuesday press conference in Rama, Ont. 

“Our letters of advocacy have been met with a deafening silence, to be honest. We do not have access to parliamentary privileged dialogue or cabinet discussions in relation to this.”

It’s been over a year since the Liberal Party promised in their election platform to “immediately introduce and pass legislation affirming that First Nations have a human right to clean drinking water.” In the last six months, two First Nations in northern Ontario have declared severely worsening water crises due to failed infrastructure; one of the communities, Kashechewan, remains entirely evacuated.

The bill released this week states that the quality of water on First Nations lands must at minimum meet either federal guidelines for Canadian drinking water quality and for wastewater, or the standards in place in the province or territory where the lands are located. It’s backed by $4.6 billion for First Nations communities to build, operate and maintain water and wastewater systems, according to the press release, which adds to the $9.4 billion committed to these projects over the past decade.

The minister will still have to come out with regulations for a “protection zone,” which the bill leaves undefined. The use of these zones would hand First Nations jurisdiction over water sources adjacent to their lands — that is, if the nation and the federal and provincial governments have all agreed on the rules in force. 

“We have to acknowledge that [water] is not stagnant, it moves around,” Gull-Masty said. “For water that is adjacent or flowing in and out, I think that the important part of the work that we’re undertaking is that partners and territories understand that they also have a role to play.”

In addition to defining “protection zones,” the bill empowers the minister to come out with regulations on a dozen different aspects of water services, including source water protections, training and certification, occupational health and safety, monitoring and inspections, emergency planning, permitting and more. The government can even design regulations to govern the disclosure of information.

But the bill doesn’t commit to the same kind of rights language that the Liberals promised in their platform. Instead, it declares that the government’s policy is to “further the progressive realization, for individuals on First Nation lands, of the human right to safe drinking water as protected by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.” That covenant is a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations that came into force in the 1970s.

“To me, [this] is insane,” Debassige told reporters. “It’s been a progressive realization for many of our nations for decades.”

Debassige has been working on First Nations water issues for more than a decade and has been involved in negotiations over previous federal bills on the matter. She said that by excluding language like “in collaboration with First Nations” in Gull-Masty’s new legislation, the Carney government is “hiding from their obligations.” 

“We must remember that most of the drafters of Bill C-37 have never spent time in our community,” she said, citing the speedy passage of the federal Bill C-5 and the provincial Bill 5, both of which aim to “fast-track” infrastructure and mining approvals and construction. “And we’ve seen the pushback on the previous iteration of this bill. And now we see the results of that weakening of our inherent rights to pave way for economic development.” 

“I think it’s a deflection of responsibility, a fear of provinces, a fear of nation-building projects not coming through because our nations want to protect water.” 

The bill comes as tensions grow over these issues between the federal government, provincial governments and First Nations. 

Some chiefs, particularly in Treaty 8 territory, which spans northern B.C., Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories, asked the federal government to rethink its approach. Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation’s chief said the bill didn’t meaningfully incorporate inherent and Treaty Rights to water while Mikisew Cree First Nation’s chief said the bill didn’t do enough to deal with the potential release of oilsands wastewater into rivers.

Last July, the environment ministers from Ontario and Alberta asked the federal government to “refrain” from introducing a new First Nations water bill, claiming it would “undermine competitiveness, delay project development and disproportionately harm specific provinces and territories without any quantifiable benefits to the natural environment.” 

Ontario’s Environment Minister Todd McCarthy apologized for any “confusion” the request may have caused First Nations. But First Nations have not been convinced by the apology. The Ontario government has skirted meaningful consultation with First Nations in its push to open the Ring of Fire region in northern Ontario, with significant implications for water use and sources, and broadly speed up mining approvals and development. It has also signalled its own plans to make broad changes to provincial clean water rules.

As Canada and Ontario rush to expedite major projects, including in the mining sector, First Nations have long been asking for the same expediency to pass laws to protect drinking water before shovels hit the ground. With a few days left before MPs are scheduled to rise for the summer, this bill is unlikely to become law before the fall. 

“I wish one of Canada’s major projects were to provide us clean drinking water,” Knowledge Keeper Sally Gaikezheyongai said, as she offered a prayer to begin the Tuesday press conference by the Chiefs of Ontario. “I ask the Creator to make sure that happens hopefully within my lifetime.” 

Why does Canada need a law to protect access to clean drinking water on First Nations? 

Indigenous Services Canada reports that there are 36 Indigenous communities that have been under orders for more than a year to boil their drinking water for one minute. Most of these communities are in Ontario. The longest-standing boil water advisory is for Neskantaga First Nation in northern Ontario, just south of the Ring of Fire region. It hasn’t had clean drinking water since 1995. (The federal count is not comprehensive, as some jurisdictions, such as B.C., track their own boil-water advisories in Indigenous communities.)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to end all these boil-water advisories by March 31, 2021, but did not succeed. Post-colonization, and as stated in the Indian Act, the federal government has a fiduciary obligation to ensure safe, potable drinking water for First Nations. Instead, there is a regulatory black hole for and chronic underinvestment in on-reserve water and wastewater services.

A month before Trudeau’s deadline, a government audit found that Indigenous Services Canada “did not provide the support necessary to ensure that First Nations communities have ongoing access to safe drinking water,” thus prolonging boil water advisories. 

The impacts of these failures are severe, including preventable illnesses, costly reliance on bottled water and long-term evacuations. 

Kashechewan First Nation, a community of 2,000 residents, has been entirely evacuated since January due to a catastrophic sewage pump failure. There is still no access to safe drinking water on their reserve. 

In May, Pikangikum First Nation declared a second state of emergency, a year after the original declaration, due to collapsing water and wastewater systems. The community’s only water treatment plant is operating beyond capacity, even as more than 300 homes remain without direct water service. The community’s reservoir is also at critically low levels and is losing water at a rate roughly four times greater than it can be filled.As a result, the nearly 4,000 on-reserve residents are dealing with daily water rationing and forced evening shutdowns. As wildfire season looms, Pikangikum is now suing the federal government. 

“It’s so important that we take action as a country, as First Nations leadership, to ensure that there are no more Kashechewans, that there are no more Pikangikums,” Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, told reporters. 

“It’s unacceptable that this is a reality that many of our communities are being put in: to try to negotiate on big, major nation-building projects while they’re trying to make sure that their children and their youth can have access to water to drink.”

Why is the federal law to protect clean drinking water on First Nations so delayed?

There have been different iterations of this legislation, Kathleen Padulo, director of environment for the Chiefs of Ontario, told The Narwhal in a conversation before Bill C-37 was released, but none have proved durable.

Since the 1970s, the federal government has been promising to provide Indigenous communities with water and wastewater systems equal to those enjoyed by most Canadians, but no matter which party is in power, it has continuously fallen short of that goal. 

In 2013, the Stephen Harper government passed the Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act. This law created a regulatory regime to govern water infrastructure on First Nations lands, but without any financial backing or centring Indigenous decision-making or rights. It also didn’t protect the sources of water flowing onto First Nation lands.

“It had no teeth, and it was really watered down,” Padulo said. “It was a piece of paper just floating around for years.” 

As a result, this law was met with widespread disapproval from First Nations. Several, including Neskantaga, launched a class action lawsuit in 2019, claiming “Canada has been negligent, breached its fiduciary duties, breached the honour of the Crown and breached various rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

Ottawa settled that lawsuit in 2021, agreeing to provide $1.8 billion in compensation and spend $6 billion on water infrastructure over nine years. The federal government also promised to repeal and replace the Conservative law. 

That didn’t happen until 2023 when the Trudeau government introduced Bill C-61, or the First Nations Clean Drinking Water Act. The landmark bill involved First Nations in its creation, doing so over a two-year-long consultation and co-development process. This bill established clean drinking water as a human right, set minimum standards for drinking water and wastewater on reserves and pledged funding for water-related infrastructure. This bill also created an Indigenous-led First Nations Water Commission to help implement the law and monitor its impact. 

After weeks of consultation with First Nations, the bill did not pass before Parliament was prorogued in January 2025. Then-Indigenous services minister Patty Hajdu said the delay was the fault of opposition parties. 

Padulo said they’ve been waiting for this bill to re-emerge and be passed “with the speed of light like Bill C-5” and then put it in place in communities right away. 

“What is happening here is colonization at the end of the day, that’s what it is,” Padulo said. “And Canadians not understanding that not everybody has basic human rights.”

What happens next?

Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Debassige is asking the government to ensure “sufficient engagement” with First Nations as this bill goes through the parliamentary process, urging the government to move quickly from legislation to action. 

“We’re cautiously optimistic,” she said, but with the Liberals holding a majority government, “It’s going to be a difficult process.”

“Water is a human right. Full stop,” Debassige said. “We are looking to Canada to help us champion a shift from the outdated and colonial perspectives of First Nations being viewed as second-class citizens to ensuring our people can enjoy the same clean and safe drinking water guaranteed to non-First Nations across this country.” 

Gull-Masty said the government supports consultations with First Nations governing bodies to develop the many regulations that the bill authorizes. 

Ontario Regional Chief Abram Benedict told reporters that the government needs to focus on accountability to ensure First Nations communities have “confidence in the drinking water.”  

“We are calling on the federal government to move swiftly from legislation to action. The goal must not only be to eliminate advisories, but to prevent new ones from coming on,” he continued. “Legislation is only the beginning of ending these challenges.”

“Our communities have waited long enough.” 

Updated on June 16, 2026, at 8:40 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to include the amount of federal funding dedicated to building, maintaining and operating water and wastewater infrastructure in First Nations communities as part of Bill C-37.

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Three hundred years after their ancestors chose peace on the same ground, the Mi’kmaq people returned to the Fort Anne National Historic Site in Mi’kma’ki.

Mi’kmaq leaders and community members gathered at what was then called Port Royal on June 4, 1726, when their ancestors signed a Peace and Friendship Treaty with the British Crown.

Under a bright Nova Scotia sky, they came back to the same ground to celebrate, to grieve, to demand and to hope.

Chief Leroy Denny of Eskasoni First Nation, co-chair of the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs, said as he stood on the grass, he could feel the weight and power of what happened on the same grounds 300 years ago. 

“This 300th anniversary is a reminder that these were never land-surrender treaties; they were sacred agreements of peace, coexistence and nation-to-nation relationship building,” Denny said. 

“Our ancestors envisioned a future of mutual respect, and three hundred years later, these living treaties continue to guide us as we protect our rights and carry their legacy forward for future generations.”

The Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1726 outlined how Indigenous and European people could establish peaceful coexistence in the Maritime region. 

It was signed by Mi’kmaw, Wəlastəkokewiyik and Peskətəmohkatewey leaders amid rising conflicts as the British pushed to colonize the area and were concerned about relationships between local Indigenous Peoples and the French Crown.

The 1726 treaty was part of a series of Peace and Friendship agreements with the British Crown between 1725 and 1779.

But Mi’kmaq Grand Council Kji-Keptin (Grand Captain) Antle Denny came to speak plainly about what a 300-year treaty relationship has delivered and what it has not.

The relationship between Mi’kmaq nations and the provincial government has deteriorated sharply in the last year, in the wake of raids on Mi’kmaw cannabis dispensaries and the recent criminalization of logging protests.

Tensions were underscored by the notable absence of Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston from the Fort Anne celebration. Many in attendance felt that absence was not simply a scheduling matter. It was a statement.

The treaty signed on this ground 300 years ago was supposed to be a living commitment. What they were watching, many felt, was a provincial government treating it as a historical footnote.

This month’s commemoration at Fort Anne National Historic Site drew Mi’kmaq leaders, community members, Canadian officials and allies for a day of ceremony, cultural performance and the unveiling of a national historic plaque. 

Youth turned out in force. Elders undertook journeys that were not easy to make. And on the sun-warmed grass of the oldest administered national historic site in the country, Mi’kmaq people held a tenacity that textbooks have never quite managed to convey.

Under a tent, Eliza Gould, youth chief from Eskasoni First Nation, spoke quietly about Mi’kmaq history as other young people listened intently. 

Outside, the voice of Kalolin Johnson, a young vocalist and musician from Eskasoni First Nation, carried across the grass of the old fort. Beyond that, the Annapolis Basin shimmered in the heat. It was the kind of day that made the past feel very close.

Gould had learned about the treaties in school in almost every grade, she said. But learning about something and feeling it are different things.

“I’ve heard it so much I kind of became numb,” she said.

“But being here, seeing all the chiefs, all the people that actually care — I kind of wish more people came. Because this is our history. This is very much our history.”

The fisheries question, for Gould, was the sharpest example of how old agreements play out in present-day conflict. As part of the treaty, the British agreed not to interfere with Indigenous fishing rights — however, those rights are something that Mik’maq people have continued to fight to uphold.

“The fisheries, we take only as much as we need, but also respecting everything around us,” she said. “For others it’s greed, it’s money, it’s power.” 

She described watching the same arguments repeat year after year, the treaty invoked and dismissed in the same breath. “There’s no evenness,” she said. “It’s so back-and-forth.”

But as she looked out at the crowd filling the sunny grounds, Gould also felt the living impact of the agreement from hundreds of years ago. 

“It’s nice to see everyone here, not just Mi’kmaq people but others. You know, just like 300 years ago, it’s not just us and the French anymore,” she said. “There’s a better understanding.”

Assembly of First Nations Nova Scotia Regional Chief Andrea Paul brought that meaning into focus. 

“As we celebrate 300 years of treaty, we honour the wisdom of those who came before us, who chose peace and friendship as the foundation of our relationship,” she said. 

“Their teachings continue to guide us today, reminding us that treaties are not relics of the past, but living commitments that shape our future together.”

For JUNO award-nominated Mi’kmaq musician Morgan Toney, the reality of that history did not fully land until he walked the grounds that morning. 

He had read about the treaty, he said. But standing on the actual earth where it was signed was something else entirely.

“I never actually got to go on the grounds until earlier this morning,” he said. “And I was like, I have to tell my bandmates. This is where that treaty was signed. It was here, in this location, where you’re standing right now.”He shook his head slowly. “That’s crazy. That’s beautiful. That’s powerful.”

In a statement, federal Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Rebecca Alty said the Peace and Friendship Treaty “is one of the foundational agreements in the history of Crown-Indigenous Relations in this country.”

In honour of the celebration, the federal government declared the signing of the treaty an event of national historic significance, and unveiled a commemorative plaque at the site.

“Three hundred years later to the day, and on the site of its signing, we honour the leaders of the Wabanaki Confederacy who negotiated this treaty and reaffirm our commitment to the relationship it represents,” she said.

“Designating this treaty as an event of national historic significance is a recognition of its enduring importance to the Mi’kmaq Nation and to all Canadians.”

Kji-Keptin Denny spoke about sovereignty. About his father going before the United Nations in the 1980s to seek recognition of the Mi’kmaq Nation, and foreign ambassadors telling his father privately that he was right, but that they could not move against Canada. 

He spoke about the cod fishery collapse, watching non-Indigenous fishermen exhaust the resource while Mi’kmaq were never compensated. 

He called for a Mi’kmaw treaty commissioner to hold Atlantic provinces, the federal fisheries department and police forces accountable.

“We’ve protected you for over 300 years,” he said. “You never protected us once.”

He called for Mi’kmaq youth to be supported into every professional field, including medicine, law and sport. He described a heart surgeon who had recently saved his life.

He spoke of wanting Mi’kmaq athletes at the Olympics, Mi’kmaq professionals in every sector.

“We need our youth to be working together with organizations and companies. Teach them. Instead of holding them down, we should be lifting them up.”

He ended by looking ahead. 

“It’s only been 300 years. But you have to learn our ways of protecting the environment, of taking what’s needed, of working together and helping each other,” he said.

“We’re human beings. Let’s look at the next 300 years and make sure all leadership helps one another. It does not matter what the colour of your skin is.”

Relationships between Mi’kmaq people and colonial governments have been strained at times, including in recent history. In December 2025, the Nova Scotia government issued a province-wide directive ordering police to raid illegal cannabis operations, which Mi’kmaq leaders have long asserted are protected under their treaty right to trade.

Premier Houston claimed the unregulated cannabis was laced with fentanyl. Both the Nova Scotia RCMP and Halifax Regional Police said that claim was false. Mi’kmaq chiefs called for an apology. None came.

Raids followed across multiple communities, including Eskasoni, shattering relationships between Mi’kmaq communities and police that had taken years to build.

Sipekne’katik First Nation passed a resolution banning Houston and two of his ministers from reserve lands, calling them “undesirables.”

Chief Leroy Denny, speaking for the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs, said the raids “only further deteriorate our relationships with these Crown entities.”

Then came Hunters Mountain. Mi’kmaq land protectors established a checkpoint in September 2025 to oppose clear-cutting in Unama’ki, Cape Breton, gathering in what they described as an educational mawiomi to protect moose habitat and forest their ancestors depended on. 

Two weeks after the checkpoint was established, Houston’s government introduced Bill 127. 

On Oct. 3, 2025, two days after Atlantic Canada’s Treaty Day, it passed. The law criminalized blocking forest access roads on Crown land, with fines of up to $50,000 or six months in jail. Mi’kmaq leaders said they had not been consulted.

Former mayor of Annapolis Royal William MacDonald, who attended the commemoration, acknowledged the weight of the moment from the other side of the treaty relationship. 

“This is a live issue,” he said. “As a former mayor of this town, it’s been really important to me that we do everything we can to advance reconciliation. I’m happy to be here to support it.”

Back in the youth tent, as Kalolin Johnson’s voice carried across the grounds outside, the conversation returned to where it began. The youth. The next generation. The ones who will inherit this relationship and all of its weight.

Near the close of the ceremony, four Mi’kmaq youth representatives were called to the stage alongside the assembled leaders for the presentation of treaty medals.

Retired Canadian senator Daniel Christmas, from Membertou First Nation, said the presentation to young Mi’kmaq people and Crown representatives alike “demonstrates the timeliness, the enduring nature of the treaty relationship.”“It also seeks to look forward to the future and the obligation that we all have as treaty partners,” he said.

Christmas said that, in current times, there’s a very high awareness of the treaty relationship.

“People are taking the time to come and actually trying to understand what it means. How did this happen, and why did it happen. An event like today begins to answer some of those questions.”

Gould looked around at the crowd gathered in the June sunshine on the oldest treaty ground in what would become Canada, at the Elders who had traveled far to be here, at the chiefs who had stood and spoken difficult truths, at the young people sitting quietly in the tent around her, listening.

“I think the generation coming up now,” she said quietly. “I think they’re going to be the balance.”

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“There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold,” penned the poet Robert Service about the Klondike Gold Rush. Between 1897 and 1899, around 100,000 people voyaged to the Yukon with the dream of striking it rich.

But perhaps the strangest thing yet: 127 years later, Yukon mining is still governed by laws drafted for the Gold Rush era. 

In 2025, placer miners — like that gold-panner you’re probably already picturing — harvested $449 million in gold revenue from the territory while the Yukon government took home $33,000 in royalties — taxes earned from said mining.

Yes, you read that correctly: $33,000. Another way, perhaps, to say “fool’s gold.”

The Placer Mining Act was created in 1906 when gold was worth $15 an ounce. It requires placer miners, who extract heavy minerals from loose sediment — typically in rivers or streambeds — rather than digging them out of solid rock, to pay the government 37.5 cents for every ounce of gold they get. Today, the price of gold ranges from $6,150 to $6,500 an ounce.

And antiquated royalty laws are just the tip of the iceberg.

The Yukon’s mining legislation is “grossly outdated,” Sebastian Jones says. A fish and wildlife habitat analyst at the Yukon Conservation Society, Jones says the Yukon’s mining legislation should be “top of mind” for Canadians to understand at a time when all eyes are fixed on critical minerals in the North — and when new mines are being approved by the Yukon and federal governments.

Up here, the habitat of threatened Woodland caribou is already under pressure, while First Nations are dealing with the environmental damage of legacy mines and determined to enforce their territorial rights.

More than one Yukoner warned me that writing about mining in the Yukon is like opening a can of worms. Or a whole barrel, for that matter.

How is mining regulated in the Yukon, which mines are being approved and what’s really at stake?

Grab a can opener, folks.

Let’s get into it.

Two acts govern mining activities in the Yukon — both fundamentally fail to address First Nations land treaties

The rules that govern mining in the territory are divided into two documents: the Placer Mining Act, which governs those surface miners, and the Quartz Mining Act, which governs the extraction of minerals from within rocks by blasting, drilling or heap leaching. (We’ll get into heap leaching in a bit.)

A major gap in the Yukon’s outdated mining acts is any mention of the modern-day context of First Nations self-governance and rights. 

Eleven of the 14 First Nations in the Yukon have signed land-claim agreements under the Umbrella Final Agreement, one of the most important political and legal frameworks in the territory, which came into effect in 1993. The agreement recognizes seven regions and recommends land-use planning within those regions — legal agreements with First Nations governments and the Yukon government to define what activities, mining included, will be allowed where and by whom.

Since 1993, only two land-use plans have been completed in the Yukon, with a third currently in review.

What does this have to do with mining and outdated mining legislation? Well, pretty much everything.

What is free-entry staking and why does it matter?

Free-entry staking, yet another colonial holdover from the Gold Rush, allows anyone — literally anyone over the age of 18; you don’t have to be a Yukoner or even a Canadian — to stake and record a mineral claim that gives them the right to explore for minerals in the area.

Mining claims staked during the Klondike Gold Rush, for example, still have legal jurisdiction, even if they aren’t being actively developed or exploited.

These staked claims are creating enormous legal complexity. And it’s a big part of the reason why land-use planning has been delayed.

First Nations governments, including the Na-Cho Nyäk Dun, have called for a cessation of all mining activities on their traditional territory, including the exploration and development of existing and proposed claims, until their land-use plan is completed.

Meanwhile, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation has taken it one step further. They’re suing the Yukon government for the mismanagement of hundreds of idle mineral claims that were staked before their land-claim agreement was signed in 1998. The First Nation argues the idle claims weren’t properly cleared out or cancelled, and have since caused environmental damages on their traditional territory.

Is change on the horizon?

In 2021, the Yukon government, led by the Liberal party, began meeting with First Nations, industry and other stakeholders. The goal? Develop new legislation to replace both the Placer Mining Act and Quartz Mining Act.

In September 2025, CBC North got its hands on a 30-page draft document using the territory’s access to information laws. The plan was to make major changes to the free-entry system. Staking a claim would no longer automatically grant mineral rights. Only after a certain amount of exploration was done could prospectors apply for mineral rights, and if they wanted to go ahead they’d need authorization from the Yukon government and First Nations.

But then came an election. In November 2025, the Liberals lost power after three successive terms. The conservative-leaning Yukon Party took the reins, winning the largest majority in the territory’s history. It’s unclear if any parts of the draft document are still being considered.

Premier Currie Dixon, leader of the Yukon Party, campaigned on bolstering the mining industry and tells me modernizing the Yukon’s outdated laws is a priority for his government. He cites a long list of issues from the way mines are assessed, regulated and monitored, along with processes for ensuring that companies adhere to regulations. “We’re hopeful that we’ll be able to find a way to engage with First Nations through a process that will lead us to a new mineral legislation sometime in 2028,” he says.

What projects are being approved?

For those concerned with Indigenous Rights and environmental issues, the new legislation can’t come soon enough — particularly as the Yukon government approves new mines.

In mid-April, the Yukon and federal governments approved the Kudz Ze Kayah mine, a proposed zinc, copper and lead mine, owned by Vancouver-based BMC Minerals. 

The proposed mine is located 115 kilometres south-east of the community of Ross River on the traditional territories of the Kaska First Nations. The Ross River Dena Council has expressed fierce opposition to the project.

The Kudz Ze Kayah mine, Jones says, would be “right slap in the middle” of a threatened caribou herd’s range. The Finlayson caribou, a woodland caribou herd, was recently declared a “living ecological person” by the Ross River Dena Council, which grants caribou the inherent rights to thrive in their natural range and be legally protected from industrial harms. 

Yukoners are also paying close attention to the Coffee Gold Mine, located 130 kilometres south of Dawson City on the traditional territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in and Selkirk First Nation and on the claimed traditional territory of White River First Nation. It’s getting closer to obtaining the necessary permits to start building.

Who is going to clean up the mess?

While past and present Yukon governments continue to tout the economic development benefits of mines, the territory is paying millions of dollars to clean up a long list of failed and abandoned mines. 

In 2024, the Yukon government paid nearly $190 million for mine remediation. That didn’t include the cost of the Eagle Mine disaster, one of the biggest mine failures in the territory’s history, which occurred on June 24, 2024.

The Eagle Mine, formerly owned by Victoria Gold, is located near the community of Mayo in north-central Yukon on the territory of the Na-Cho Nyäk Dun First Nation. It’s a gold mining operation that uses a technique called “heap leaching.” 

To understand what that looks like, think of a pour-over coffee. Heap leaching involves crushing rock, piling it on top of an impervious liner pad and then pouring a cyanide-liquid over the heap that selectively targets the gold, dissolving it into a liquid that pools in the pad. It’s relatively common in the Yukon because it’s cheaper than drilling or blasting. Companies extract the ‘liquid gold’ from beneath the pile and pump it out to be processed. The remaining ore stays piled and enclosed by containment berms.

The Eagle Mine disaster happened when one of those protective berms suddenly collapsed, causing a massive landslide of cyanide-contaminated ore. An independent review found that 1.8 million tonnes of contaminated material spilled into nearby Haggart Creek and the surrounding groundwater.

All operations were immediately halted, while Victoria Gold, unable to afford environmental clean-up, entered into a court-ordered receivership and filed for bankruptcy. It took a full month after the initial failure for the government to begin groundwater remediation. 

Kate White, leader of the NDP, the official opposition party in the Yukon, describes the events of the Eagle Mine failure as “the biggest environmental disaster” the territory has seen. “No one knows the full cost … no one will know what has leached into the water,” White says.

The costs to clean up the mess are projected to reach upwards of $377.5 million by this fall, with a $220-million payout from the Yukon government. 

In December 2025, the Na-Cho Nyäk Dun filed a $150-million lawsuit against the Yukon and federal governments, claiming treaty obligations were not upheld and the Eagle Mine was not adequately regulated. In a letter penned to the Auditor General of Canada, the Nah-Cho Nyäk Dun blamed the Yukon government’s “lax approach to permitting, compliance, monitoring and enforcement of mineral activity in the Yukon.” The First Nation is also calling for a public inquiry.

Yukon’s modern-day ‘mineral rush’ despite century-old legislation

It’s hard to keep up with the number of mines currently being advanced in the Yukon. The list is long and projects are at various stages of development.

In Whitehorse, residents don’t have to look beyond the city limits to encounter drilling sites. Gladiator Metals, a B.C.-based company, has been looking for copper, silver and gold in Whitehorse since 2023. In April, the Yukon government approved the company to expand exploration, with some drilling sites located only 800 metres away from residential areas.

The Casino Mine — what would be one of the biggest open-pit copper, silver, and gold mines in the Yukon’s history — is currently under review by the Yukon’s environmental and socio-economic assessment board. The mine is owned by Western Copper and Gold Corporation, a Vancouver-based company.

And then there’s the Mactung mine, owned by Fireweed Metals, which is one of the world’s largest-known deposits of high-grade tungsten. 

What is tungsten? It’s an exceptionally hard, heat-resistant metal that’s sought after for industrial and military manufacturing. Tungsten replaces lead in ammunition. It’s used to make rocket engine nozzles and aircraft parts.

The Mactung mine, located at the end of the North Canol road near the Yukon-Northwest Territories border, is drawing major investment from the Canadian and U.S. governments.

In 2024, Canada and the U.S. Department of Defense announced they’d be investing a combined $35 million toward studies and designs for improving the North Canol road and connecting the electrical transmission line to power operations.

Over a century may have passed since the Klondike Gold Rush, but perhaps it’s never really ended in the Yukon — it’s just traded gold pans for open-pit mines. Today’s national agenda is resulting in a new rush for critical minerals yet the Yukon’s mining legislation remains a century behind.

Updated June 9, 2026 at 9:35 a.m. PT: A previous version of this story stated that in 2025, placer miners harvested $449,000 million in gold revenue from the Yukon. The correct figure is $449 million.

Updated June 11, 2026 at 4:25 p.m. PT: The Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board was previously misidentified as “the Yukon environmental and social assessment board.”

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Summary

• In early May, BC Parks announced Pipi7íyekw/Joffre Lakes Park will be restricted to members of the Líl̓wat and N’Quatqua nations from June 20-27 and Sept. 8-30. 
• Líl̓wat Nation has since released its own statement with different closure dates, saying the trust with the province has been broken. 
• Since 2018, the two First Nations have been working with BC Parks on visitor management and the temporary closures — called reconnection periods — have been implemented since 2023. However, negotiations broke down last year over a dispute over the 2025 closure length.

Once again, one of B.C.’s most popular parks is implementing temporary closures this summer — and no one is happy about it.

Since 2023, Pipi7íyekw/Joffre Lakes Park has closed for brief reconnection periods, when entry is restricted to members of Líl̓wat and N’Quatqua First Nations, whose unceded territories encompass the park. During these periods, members can harvest traditional medicines, participate in cultural events and ceremonies and enjoy a part of their territory that is often too crowded with visitors for them to access at all, trampled and strewn with trash by the end of peak season. Since 2018, the two nations have worked with BC Parks on a joint strategy for managing visitors.

Last year, things went off the rails. Backlash over the temporary closures spiked as politicians — including BC Conservative leadership candidate Caroline Elliott and OneBC leader Dallas Brodie — used the closures to argue Indigenous Rights had gone too far. On X, Brodie claimed that park access across the province may someday be “dependent upon your racial status.”

Then came a dispute over the length of the final 2025 reconnection period. The nations planned for two months, from late August to the end of October, but BC Parks went with about half that time, between the Labour Day weekend and Oct. 3. The decision sparked protests from members and supporters of the two nations and allies. 

Which brings us to May 7, when BC Parks announced the closure dates for this year: one week in June, which includes National Indigenous Peoples’ Day on June 21, and from Sept. 8 until the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Sept. 30. Neither nation was part of the announcement. They have not met with BC Parks as a working group since last fall’s dispute, according to the Ministry of Environment and Parks, which said it “has been working to try and re-engage” the nations ever since.

On May 27, almost three weeks after the BC Parks announcement, Líl̓wat Nation released a statement calling on the B.C. government to implement its desired reconnection period for the fall, spanning Aug. 23 to Oct. 5. That’s roughly three weeks longer than the province’s stated closure, and the nation made it clear the unilateral announcement by the province “has further undermined an already fractured relationship.”

In an emailed statement, Líl̓wat Nation said this year’s letter has also been signed by N’Quatqua First Nation, “reflecting continued alignment between the two nations on the importance of the closure periods and the broader management concerns at Pipi7íyekw/Joffre Lakes.” 

The planned reconnection period has once again unleashed “an unspeakable amount of online racism,” Green MLA Jeremy Valeriote said in the legislature on May 19. Valeriote, whose West Vancouver-Sea to Sky riding includes Pipi7íyekw, added the ministry’s lack of consultation with the First Nations, as well as the public disagreement over closure dates, may fuel the growing misinformation and mistrust surrounding Indigenous Rights in B.C. 

During question period, he asked Minister of Environment and Parks Tamara Davidson: “How is this collaboration? It seems that the government is either blaming the nations or waving the problem away instead of doing the actual work to alleviate the confusion in the minister’s estimation. Have the Líl̓wat and N’Quatqua Nations become collateral damage in the toxic reconciliation dialogue we’re experiencing?”

Major spike in visitors at Pipi7íyekw/Joffre Lakes

Just three provincial parks in B.C. require visitors to reserve a free day-use pass in advance during busy months — Pipi7íyekw/Joffre Lakes, Garibaldi Park and Golden Ears Park, all located within driving distance of Vancouver. Though there are more than a thousand parks in the province, these three and a handful of others become magnets for visitors. 

According to BC Parks, provincial parks on the south coast have seen a 52 per cent increase in visitor traffic since 2010 — and in Pipi7íyekw/Joffre Lakes, visits increased by 222 per cent between 2010 and 2019. 

“The overtourism leading up to the day-pass system was pretty significant. … I don’t think people fully appreciate what it’s like to have 200,000 people tramping through a relatively small park,” Valeriote told The Narwhal.

The stampede put a strain on the park, which can be accessed only through a single out-and-back route: trails were packed, cars spilled out of the parking lot, trash cans overflowed. Temporary closures were implemented to ensure rights-holding First Nations could access their territory, as well as give the land itself an opportunity to rest.

The nations’ proposed 2025 closure dates reflected “the time required for our communities to reconnect with the land, conduct ceremonies, gather food and medicines, and allow Pipi7íyekw the rest it needs to heal,” according to an August statement. “The province’s refusal to honour these dates undermines both reconciliation and the health of the land and people.”

History is repeating itself in 2026, with another disagreement over dates. 

In a statement sent to The Narwhal on May 27, the Ministry of Environment and Parks said it’s aware of the discrepancy between its 2026 dates and those given by Líl̓wat Nation. “The province reached out to the Líl̓wat Nation and N’Quatqua First Nations starting in February, reiterating a desire to identify long-term solutions that provide predictability and support the needs of all park users,” it said. According to the statement, the length of the 2026 closure dates align with “a commitment the province made in 2023 for 30 days of closures” — though in 2024 and 2025, the park was closed for nearly twice as many days. 

Parks Minister Davidson declined an interview with The Narwhal, but said by email the government values its relationship with both nations and hopes “to return to the table to collaborate on long-term solutions that provide predictability and support the needs of all park users.”

When asked if the province has a plan in place for protests or blockades that might arise over the disputed closure dates — as they did in 2025 — Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Spencer Chandra Herbert did not answer directly, but said the province supported peaceful protest but not blockades.

Green MLA concerned about the politicization of parks closures

Valeriote told The Narwhal he worries the ministry’s unilateral communications, contradicted by Líl̓wat, will exacerbate growing tensions in B.C. over Indigenous Rights and reconciliation. 

The claim that the closures are race-based — rather than rights-based — has been deployed frequently.

“I won’t mince words: the Conservatives and OneBC are using this as a political wedge issue,” Valeriote said. “It’s fully opportunistic. They’re talking about … ‘We no longer have access to our public land.’ It’s pure fear mongering, and it’s irresponsible,” he said. “But in our political system, they’re taking advantage of an opportunity. That’s unfortunately how this political system works.”

Valeriote alluded to the recent tension over the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, or DRIPA, which spiked in the wake of a court decision affirming that Cowichan Nation holds Aboriginal Title over a former village site in Richmond, B.C., which is now privately owned land. Despite Cowichan asserting repeatedly that they do not intend to seek claim to private land, the ruling has sparked panic among some property owners, with politicians rushing to reassure them — or amplify their fears. 

“They’re using [parks] to argue that Indigenous people are getting too good of a deal, and we should all be scared and, you know, private land ownership is playing into that.”

Misinformation is circulating, and not only about the closure dates, but who exactly is being kept out. B.C. politics reporter Rob Shaw posted on X that the BC Parks closure is “to allow First Nations to practice cultural and conservation traditions.” In fact, while there are 203 First Nations in B.C. — and residents of the province who are members of other First Nations across the country — only Líl̓wat and N’Quatqua members can access the parks during those periods.

Do B.C. and the First Nations see the park the same way?

In her emailed statement, Davidson emphasized balancing “predictable access” and visitor experience with reconciliation. “As one of BC Parks’ busiest destinations, welcoming thousands of visitors each year, we have a responsibility to carefully manage visitation in [the] park so people can have the most enjoyable experience.” When asked in the legislature on May 28 if trust had been broken with the First Nations, Davidson said, “I think we’d have to go back to Líl̓wat and N’Quatqua to ask them. But for our part, we’re working together and we’re trying to build that relationship back up again.” (In their August 2025 statement, the nations wrote, “We have lost trust in working with BC Parks.”)

But Líl̓wat’s statement makes it clear the First Nation sees the park differently, writing that reconnection periods are required “so our people can harvest, hold ceremony, teach our children on the land and carry out our stewardship responsibilities in Pipi7íyekw.”

In other words, a park is not just for enjoyment; it’s also a responsibility and a relationship. And that responsibility requires acknowledging that predictability is an increasingly unrealistic goal as climate change wreaks havoc on the planet, including Canadian parks. In recent years, parks across the country have closed after being damaged and destroyed by storms and floods. Many parks — including Jasper in Alberta, and Nopiming in Manitoba — have closed after being scorched by wildfire.

There is no certainty when it comes to our future access or enjoyment of nature. And the likelihood that parks will be around for anyone to enjoy is diminished when stewardship is treated as less important than on-demand access. The province knows this — despite the repeated emphasis on widespread access, only 500 daily passes are available, often booked up within moments of reservations opening.

“We see [a park] as a kind of piece of infrastructure, like a building, that’s supposed to be able to handle constant traffic and constant stress,” Valeriote told The Narwhal. “And I appreciate the Indigenous way of looking at it: it’s cyclical, and it’s a cultural asset that isn’t just about monetizing or utilizing 365 days a year. Sometimes it does need time to rest and reset,” he said. “I think the small amount of solitude that the Líl̓wat and N’Quatqua Nations can get in that cultural place is worth inconveniencing locals or tourists for a relatively few days a year.” 

Líl̓wat has asked the ministry to respond by Tuesday, June 2, and urged it to align the closure dates with those identified by the First Nation. 

“Reconciliation must be matched by action,” Líl̓wat Nation’s Chief Dean Nelson said in the statement. “If the province is serious about building a relationship based on mutual respect, it must start by respecting our reconnection periods.”

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