We Need Mines
We need mines. We need mines because we need stuff like cars and food and pipes to deliver our water and fuel. I have a car and a cell phone and a house, so I understand all that.
Mines are needed to get the metals and other chemicals from the ground that we need to manufacture stuff. Of this there really is no doubt.
We Don't Need Mines Anywhere and Everywhere
We just don't need mines everywhere there is a concentration metal and chemicals in the ground. In fact, we CAN'T have them everywhere. We can't have them where they would poison my drinking water, nor where they would destroy my house or my children's school.
Mines need to built:
- where there is both a concentration of metals and chemicals in the ground that makes them financially viable, and
- where they do not impose too great a cost on the people who live close to them and on the environment.
That is the test for any mine, and that is the test for Taseko Mines' proposed Prosperity Mine.
So how do you measure "too great a cost" to people? or the environment?
You Wouldn't Want it in Your Backyard
I live in One Hundred Mile House, British Columbia, and there are lots of pretty lakes here, filled with lots of fish and with backdrops of hills and mountains as pretty as you'll find anywhere. But no one who lives near 108 Mile, or 103 Mile, or Horse Lake, Sheridan Lake or Green Lake would put their lake forward as a tailings pond, or offer their beautiful lakefront property up for blasting.
Of course, our houses are collectively worth billions of dollars, and, hey, we built this country, didn't we?
So Whose Land Is It Anyway?
The people who live close to the proposed mine are, for the most part, Aboriginal people, or First Nations people. They are the original inhabitants of this land, a collection of Nations that existed long before Europeans and Asians came here and declared it to be their country.
The people that call themselves Xeni Gwet'in (pronounced Honey Geteen, more or less) have lived where they do for thousands and thousands of years. That's thousands, people, not hundreds. As in, before Christ, before the Han Dynasty, and before Moses divided the Red Sea.
If you came here from England or China or South Africa last year or decade and now call Canada home, I think we can safely say that this place is, in relative terms, not so much yours home as it is theirs.
Who Cares Whose Home It Is?
Why does it matter whose home it is? For the same reason it matters that you wouldn't accept a mine near your home, nor allow your lake to be used as a giant toxic waste dump (I mean tailings pond).
The people of the Xeni Gwet'in have been heard from but not listened to in this debate over Taseko Mines' proposed Prosperity Mine.
The Provincial Government Hasn't Listened
The provincial government rubber stamped this mine proposal without so much as a second look. I am shocked to see that a government that espouses new relationships with First Peoples could kow tow to mining with such alacrity... by which I mean they did it quick-like without so much as a glance at where they were signing.
Taseko Mines Hasn't Listened
Taseko Mines has stuck with one proposal this entire time. It has not entertained any other style of tailings facilities other than emptying, digging up and then filling in a beautiful place that doesn't belong to them.
Taseko Mines has not listened to the Aboriginal People who would have to live with the results of their mine, not shown any respect for those who have always lived, fished, hunted and died on that land.
Taseko Mines' public relations machine has made the Xeni Gwet'in out to be a backwards and hypocritical people whose opinions don't count. Sound familiar? It is the same argument the Government of Canada and the Government of British Columbia has used since Confederation to make sure Aboriginal People do not have land or treaty rights.
It also sounds familiar to centuries of Aboriginal People who have endured both the claiming of their lands by Europeans and other newcomers, and the intended and unintended genocide of their people by successive Canadian governments.
It also sounds familiar to centuries of Aboriginal People who have endured both the claiming of their lands by Europeans and other newcomers, and the intended and unintended genocide of their people by successive Canadian governments.
Genocide? Never In Canada You Say?
Yes, Genocide by the definition established by the United Nations following the Second World War... a war Aboriginal People contributed to far beyond their proportion in the population, by the way.
The effects of this genocide are still evident today, after all it's been less than forty years since we stopped stealing babies from their families and making them go to residential schools where they were starved and beaten and forbidden from speaking their language or expressing their beliefs.
Why Does the Past Matter With Regards to the Prosperity Mine?
This history stuff matters today because we as British Columbians and Canadians have a choice. We can decide whether it is OK to go on not listening to First Nations people like the Xeni Gwet'in, or whether we should figure out that it isn't alright to steamroll them one more time.
If it wasn't alright to take away language and traditional ceremonies and beliefs then, it isn't alright to create this destruction today.
If it wasn't alright to believe that "our" values of hard work and entrepreneurship are superior to "their" lesser set of values then, well then it isn't alright today either.
This is exactly the argument that Taseko Mines has gladly fomented in the press and around the water cooler in places like Williams Lake, 100 Mile House and Vancouver. It's the same old "Indians are Lazy" argument you can read about in newspapers from the 19th Century.
The Williams Lake Tribune and writers like Tom Fletcher have been a key rallying point for this sort of explicit and implicit racism.
I have never once heard Taseko Mines step up to plate to say tell folks to quit making this an issue about race. Presumably it works in their favor. That tells me that they'll simply do what it takes, in public and through whatever back channels they can find, to make sure they make their millions on this mine.
They don't care 'cuz they don't live there.
Folks, we either still do this in Canada or we don't. You decide.
Folks, we either still do this in Canada or we don't. You decide.
