When resource companies leave a toxic mess, First Nations are stuck with the consequences
Na-Cho Nyäk Dun First Nation Elder Jimmy Johnny no longer fishes in the waters that generations of his family members have relied on since memories are remembered.
This past summer, 68 dead fish were found in beautiful Haggart Creek, downstream from the site of an environmental disaster that occurred on June 24 at Victoria Gold Corp.’s Eagle Gold mine, on the Na-Cho Nyäk Dun traditional territory, near Mayo in central Yukon.
Four million tonnes of cyanide-laced rocks gave way at the open pit gold-mining site, crushing infrastructure and releasing two million tonnes of materials containing cyanide into the local environment, leaving a giant, absolutely heartbreaking mess in some of the most beautiful mountainous lands and valleys left on this warming planet.
To say this containment failure was catastrophic is an understatement.
“As far as I’m concerned, this should never have happened,” Mr. Johnny told me from his home on Wednesday. “We used to stand up on the hill and glance across to where the disaster happened. Once, I went up and I didn’t like what I saw, so I never went back there.”
The tight-knit Na-Cho Nyäk Dun community of 600 people is devastated that their traditional hunting grounds have been affected, with no one truly knowing how the spill will play out in the years to come for the watersheds, the forests and the local people and animals, as Yukon government officials and a team of experts struggle to fix the disaster Victoria Gold left behind. The company went into receivership and is unable to pay the estimated $150-million cleanup costs.
With Victoria Gold gone, the Yukon government and the Na-Cho Nyäk Dun community are left holding the bag – living with the consequences of yet another abandoned, bankrupt mine in the territory. The Faro open-pit zinc mine was abandoned in 1998 in south-central Yukon, leaving behind 70 million tonnes of tailings and 320 million tonnes of waste rock that has the potential to leach metals and acid into lands and waters. It is one of the most complex cleanup mining jobs in Canada.
Now, Yukon and First Nations officials are scrambling to figure out containment measures and test waters, lands and animals, all the while worrying what the actual future impact of this will be to the entire ecosystem dependent on the water – from the caribou, moose, lynx, wolves, foxes, salmon and people.
“To me, they just don’t give a damn. As long as they have money in their pocket,” Mr. Johnny said about resource extraction companies.
This type of open pit mining and lack of corporate responsibility in ecologically sensitive areas continues out of sight and out of mind to most Canadians living in the south. It is Indigenous peoples who are on the front lines of global warming and environmental disaster caused by our current unsustainable living practices. Our community members live out on the land, harvest the fish, plants and animals and we also try to safeguard and care for all living things, as is our way.
The list of human-made disasters, abandoned mines and toxic chemical spills in waters, lakes, oceans and lands sometimes seems endless. The consequences are deadly. I am thinking of Grassy Narrows, where a mercury spill by a paper company in the English-Wabigoon river system continues to sicken generations. The disaster of Grassy Narrows, which occurred more than 50 years ago, falls in and out of the news – with our people living the consequences.
Sustainable corporate and mining practices can no longer be lip service. And governments of all levels need to step up their environmental policies, not override them for quick development.
In Ontario, Premier Doug Ford’s government did away with automatic environmental assessments for new projects prior to development with Bill 197 in 2020. We are seeing the damage of that bill, which was slipped into an omnibus piece of emergency COVID legislation, play out across the province.
And, also in Ontario, this gives us great pause as we will soon see the development of the Ring of Fire area. In one of the last, vast carbon storehouses on the planet, roadways and rail lines will be built, drilling though muskeg and disrupting traditional caribou habitat, blowing apart ecosystems for dollars. All we have to trust is a company or government that tells us not to worry – they’ve got everything under control.
Where is the First Nations governance seat at the table? As traditional stewards of the land, we need to be there – not just for us – for you, too.
Industry can’t operate at tomorrow’s expense. Yet we never seem to learn that lesson.