The Canadian government said in September that it will spend approximately $15 million on a 27-mile road in support of critical minerals at Galore Creek Mine. The road will stretch between two different work camps on the Galore Creek Mine’s property and will bring the copper, silver and gold mine closer to operation.

This news is hard to hear across the border, since the site is very close to the Stikine River headwaters in Southeast Alaska. Some Wrangellites are very concerned about this development near a waterway they depend on.

RELATED: Alaska delegation asks Biden to act on Canadian mining near transboundary rivers

Tlingit and Tahltan tribal member Christie Dascawah Jamieson was born and raised in Wrangell, located at the mouth of the Stikine River. She said she and her husband fish and hunt as much as they can.

“If this copper and gold mining project comes into play, it’s going to be a huge threat to our way of living,” she said. “Not only to Wrangell, but Petersburg (too), we both share the Stikine River.”

She said she has fond childhood memories going up and down the Stikine. 

“It was one of the best times of my life,” Jamieson said. “I just cannot imagine the river being totally devastated by this copper and gold mining project.”

Jamieson worries the mine will destroy the river

Jamieson said she worries that the mine will destroy the river and surrounding land and that the mine’s owner, Galore Creek Mining Corporation, won’t clean up after extraction. 

“(If) they don’t clean up what they have ruined and they leave it for somebody else, it’s just left behind,” she said. “The land and the beauty and the wildlife and the fish are all gone; and it’s so, so sad, because that’s our way of life.”

Galore Creek Mine has been in the planning stages for almost 20 years. 

RELATED: Southeast tribes seek a pause on Canadian mine near B.C. border

Galore Creek Mine went through many changes over the last 20 years

It’s changed investors, been put on hold due to capital costs skyrocketing and has been waiting on negotiations between British Columbia and the Tahltan Nation – the tribe who owns nearby land on the B.C. side of the border.

KSTK contacted Galore Creek Mine by phone and email. An interview was pending at publication time.

Alanah Connie with the B.C.’s Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation said the road funding is coming from the federal government and to call the country’s natural resources department.

Marie Martin, senior communications advisor with Natural Resources Canada, also responded the day of publication and said the agency is looking into KSTK’s request.

“We consider that border to be a colonial border.”

The Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission is a coalition of 15 tribes on the Alaska side of the border advocating for having a voice in the mining.

RELATED: As a mining project moves ahead, Southeast Alaska tribes say Canada denies their human rights

<figure class="alignright size-medium"><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The Galore Creek Mine in Canada is 25 miles from the Alaskan border northeast of Wrangell. (Courtesy Galore Creek Mining Corp.)</figcaption></figure>

President Esther Aaltséen Reese said Wrangell will be directly impacted by the mining project. Galore Creek is 25 miles from the border and the entire project drains into the Stikine River.

“We consider that border to be a colonial border,” she said. “It did not exist in the time of our ancestors and we were allowed to care for our lands on both sides of the border. Now, because of that border, the tribes downstream are restricted and we aren’t given rights to have a say in what happens to projects that will directly impact us.”

She said the Stikine is literally the lifeblood for Wrangell, in terms of subsistence foods and recreation.

“…we’re protecting our salmon.”

Reese said for them not to have a voice in the decision-making is equivalent to a human rights violation. The tribal organization is asking the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to pause another mining project up the Unuk River near Ketchikan for similar reasons. Reese said they – the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian – are salmon people and she doesn’t want her culture only to know salmon as a myth.

“There was a young woman at one of the conferences that said in their streams that had been polluted, salmon now only exists in their myths,” Reese said. “That is what we’re fighting against. We want to make sure that we’re protecting our salmon.” 

The coalition’s Executive Director Guy Archibald said it’s important to protect salmon because it not only feeds the culture and people, but also the forest. He said that nature is good at balancing itself after an occasional catastrophic impact. But the Galore Creek mine would put consistent stress on the environment.

“Salmon and ecosystems cannot tolerate constant, low-level stress,” he said. “I mean, we know what that does to our immune system, digestive, nervous system. But that’s what’s happening here and we’re losing our salmon. We’re watching an extinction event.” 

He said that the British Columbia government is aware of the detrimental outcome the mine would produce.

“The B.C. government has basically declared these upper head waters as a sacrifice zone,” Archibald said. “They know they’re going to be environmentally damaging. They’re willing to take that damage in order to pump up their economy.”

(Alanah Connie, communications manager for B.C.’s Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low