The Southeast Alaska Conservation Council is one of several groups which have been working in towns like Wrangell to raise awareness of how transboundary mining in British Columbia could affect them. Most recently, Heather Evoy visited Wrangell to discuss some of the potential downsides mining represents, especially to indigenous communities.
"A big problem is that a lot of these companies operate all over the world and are known bad actors pretty much everywhere," she said.
Some of the information Evoy brought up about transboundary mining has been covered in previous meetings in Wrangell by other conservation groups. The Mount Polley mine, as readers may know, had its tailings dam collapse in 2014 and caused the spillage of 24 million cubic meters of toxic waste. The Galore Creek Mine, which has been proposed and permitted along the Stikine River, could pose a disaster to the river and its headwaters should a similar dam failure occur.
According to flyers Evoy had available at the meeting, The Galore Creek Mine has a proposed lifetime of 25 years. Over the course of that lifetime, it is expected to generate 3.2 billion tons of waste rock. Of that, 289 million pounds will be acid generating. The Galore Creek Mine, and all transboundary mines, Evoy said, put the environment at risk. Besides that, they can also threaten a way of life for many people.
"It really can lead to community division and breakdown," she said. "Forced community displacement and loss of cultural identity."
Evoy also said that there is a disproportionate impact on women in communities where mining corporations move in. There is a link, she said, between a mining operation moving into an area and indigenous women going missing or being murdered. While she did not have numbers to back up this claim, she said that she has been in touch with an organization known as the Sovereign Bodies Institute to gather more data.
"The response I got is that they are extremely busy right now and they're a very small team, but I was just in Oklahoma the week before last and made some connections with some folks who said they could share some of the data with me," she said. "Again, it's hard for me to say that it's not a legitimate issue unless you have the numbers to prove it."
An article by CBC News, posted on June 6, said that a report by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls found "a link between resource extraction and violence against Indigenous women, girls, and LGBTQ and two-spirit people." According to the report, 2,380 people participated in the inquiry. The two-volume report can be found online at http://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca. A 2017 report by the Firelight Group, a Canadian research group that works on behalf of indigenous communities, found that industrial work camps did offer several benefits to rural communities, such as employment opportunities, but also found that indigenous women and girls were the least likely to participate in those benefits and also saw increased risks by their presence. This report can be found at http://www.firelight.ca.
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