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TASEKO MINES PM STEPHEN HARPER EMBROILED IN IMPENDING GENOCIDE OF THE TSILHQOT'IN FIRST N
TASEKO MINES AND PM STEPHEN HARPER EMBROILED IN IMPENDING GENOCIDE OF THE TSILHQOT'IN FIRST NATIONS THROUGH PROPOSED DESTRUCTION OF FISH LAKE
TASEKO MINES AND PM STEPHEN HARPER EMBROILED IN IMPENDING GENOCIDE OF THE TSILHQOT'IN FIRST NATIONS THROUGH PROPOSED DESTRUCTION OF FISH LAKE
(This document is given to Global Politicians, Banks and Energy stakeholders, Grassroots etc)
Full document with images publicly available at:
http://floodiceorfire.wordpress.com/taseko-mines-and-pm-stephen-harper-embroiled-in-impending-genocide-of-the-tsilhqotin-first-nations-through-proposed-destruction-of-fish-lake/
“Teztan Biny (Fish Lake) is More than just a Lake – It's Part of Our Culture. Our Elders and ancestors have passed the responsibility to protect our lands and way of life on to us. It is not possible for us to agree to the destruction of the land that sustains us.” - Chief Marilyn Baptiste, Xeni Gwet'in First Nation, Tshilqot'in Nation
SUPPORT FISH LAKE & THE SURVIVAL OF TSILHQOT'IN NATION
VIGIL
SEPTEMBER 2, 2010 - 12 NOON
905 West Pender Street (Pender/Burrard)
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Report prepared by Ivona Vujica
Paradigm Shift Environmental Alliance
VANCOUVER, AUGUST 27, 2010
A travel along a river may conjure images of nature-love only those who peacefully commune with their environment may know about. It is a dreamy plan the BC Ministry of Tourism has for the Fraser River. Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley regional districts are working to “give public access to the river” by creating “a continuous walking, canoeing and cycling route,” through parks such as Surrey Bend, Douglas Island and Crescent Island in an attempt to recreate an air of Australia's Great Ocean Walk, Europe's Rhine River walk or the U.S.'s Mississippi trail.(Sinoski, 2010)
“The connectivity” theme in the Experience the Fraser project remains within a safe zone outside the BC's interior or Northern BC and fails to follow the trail along the Fraser River the way mining, fossil fuel burning, hydraulic imperialism of damming and piping lakes and rivers, unsolicited private power projects for exports, tar sands pipelines and the genocide of the First Nations do.
Somehow, the disconnectedness of the connectivity theme serves to refocus attention from what should be of crucial importance to every person in BC and Canada and around the world: the irreversible environmental and socio-economic destruction through current “development projects,” one of them being the proposed Taseko corp's Prosperity gold-copper mine in northern BC.
It may be that Experience the Fraser is creating an inkling of an economy that is hoping to exist in harmony with environment and people. However, with rogue benefits generally drawn from the destruction in the interiors and northern BC, it cannot but remain a self-interested fad for a few for whom the environment and human rights remain out-of-sight-out-of mind phenomenon.
The vision of a dreamy landscape belies the agony of fish, lakes, rivers and people who are awaiting their liquidation moment to make way for a mining corporation,125 kilometres southwest of the Williams Lake.
The agony is wrapped in the silence of those who in two-to-three years will enjoy the “connected” out-of-sight-out-of mind recreation amnesia along the river, and the cheer of those who mistakenly believe themselves to be temporary benefactors of such an enormous and irreversible destruction and genocide.
Sue Redford, president of the Williams Lake District Chamber of Commerce is “comfortable” and calls it “a little sunshine.” “A number of glowing editorials” in the Williams Lake Tribune support her view, and its publisher Lorne Doerksen has stated that he is “at peace.” (Andrew Findlay, 2009)
Shiny euphemisms, used as the plywood of the genocide construction, are “the camouflage vocabulary” to “mask the evil,” (Waller, 2008,156) and make “mass murder .. personally and socially acceptable by portraying it as serving socially worth or moral purposes (Waller, 2008, 155).
The cheerfulness over the hopes of temporary “economic gains” from forcing Tsilhqot'in First Nations out, “taking their possessions and depriving them of rights” (Welzer 2008, 171) seen in the form of mining jobs by the Williams Lake community will surely backfire.
Environmental destruction / human rights abuse - jobs go hand in hand with all other kinds of human right abuses, and are not meant to massage the local economy into its perkiness. Remember, we are dealing with the legislated feudal suzerainty of a “pathological corporation” (Bakan, 2004) over our homelands. Alberta Federation of Labour cries foul over “'out of control' import of 'disposable' foreign workers...who are being misled and taken advantage of by unscrupulous brokers and employers” (Oilsands Truth). “Jobs” are for the imported slave labour not for those who cheer “the genocidal process of the First Nations [they find] useful for [their] career and...social prestige”(Jensen 2008, 12)
The provincial and federal governments have legislated the corporation into an agent of exponential self-serving greed/destruction in our home communities. When the genocide is wrapped in the celofan of “camouflage” labels such as “environmental review,” or “fisheries act” we are faced with “what Gunter Anders calls an 'opportunity for unpunished inhumanity'” (Welzer,167), giving “the signal that [Tsilhqot'in First Nations] have lost all their rights and that [Taseko is] allowed to do to them whatever they like.” (Jensen 2008,12).
“Context can mean legitimization, rationalization and justification of acts that otherwise seem illegitimate, irrational and unjustifiable (Bloxham, 2008, 187). Introduced in 1996 by the Conservative government, and currently legally challenged by the Council of Canadians, and St. John's The Sandy Pond Alliance, the Schedule 2 of the Fisheries Act, for example, allows mining corporations to dump mining waste into pristine lakes.
The proposed destruction of Fish Lake and the consequent genocide of the Tshilqot'in First Nation is an example of a “bureaucratically organized and industrially driven extermination process” (Szejnmann, 2008, 33).
The existing context is shaped through the legislation, governmental decisions, the submergence of individual responsibility within the status quo and the silence of the general population which opens the door to such destruction.
“Environment Canada claims it is more environmentally sound to destroy a natural lake than build a tailings pond” (Crawford 2010) Brigitte Lemay, a media spokesperson for Environment Canada describes a natural lake as 'the best storage option” to keep tailings “in a safe and controlled way, as it may have fewer risks of engineering failure...' (Crawford, 2010).
The Environment Canada's sole focus on ensuring the “safety of Taseko's tailings,” by allowing dumping of the toxic mining waste into the pristine rainbow trout-rich lake, which is the food storage (fridge), the water supply, a connection to Creator and ancestors and an expression of a way of life of the Tsilhqot'in First Nations, has eclipsed what should be immediately obvious: a “death march” of people who will be expelled to “perish from exposure, starvation and thirst,” (Bloxham 2008, 192) their impending “everyday oppressions and discriminations,” (Bloxham 2008, 193), and “depredations – rape, kidnap, mutilation and outright killing” (Bloxham 2008,192).
The Environment Canada's preoccupation with the safety of the tailings at the expense of the full blown genocide signals a “shift [of] attention from the morality of what they are doing to the operational details and efficiency of their job” (Waller 2008, 159). James Waller calls this “diffusion of responsibility” through segmentation and fragmentation of the killing tasks” (159)
The destruction of a living base of a people in the north is unsurprisingly flanked by the world of Robert Pictons and Down Town East Sides in the south coupled with “the passivity of the police toward [anti-Aboriginal] violence..and the perception that it [is] good not to be Aboriginal” {Welzer 2008, 170) into which the expelled are liquidated – a true theme of connectivity, Experience the Fraser fails to achieve.
Mass murderers in the south go together with mass murderers in the north. While the two types of characters may differ in scale but not in purpose, the former act as the “release valve” for the latter. In his article “Modern Serial Killers,” Kevin D. Haggerty of University of Alberta says that “murderers embrace and reproduce the wider cultural codings that have devalued, stigmatized, and marginalized specific groups” (180).
As explained by the Aboriginal Women's Action Network (AWAN) in their Statement Opposing Legalized Prostitution and Total Decriminalization of Prostitution Dec 6, 2007
“We have a long, multi-generational history of colonization, marginalization, and displacement from our Homelands (bold added), and rampant abuses that has forced many of our sisters into prostitution. Aboriginal women are often either forced into prostitution, trafficked into prostitution or are facing that possibility. Given that the average age at which girls enter prostitution is fourteen, the majority with a history of unspeakable abuses, we are also speaking out for the Aboriginal children who are targeted by johns and pimps. Aboriginal girls are hunted down and prostituted, and the perpetrators go uncharged with child sexual assault and child rape. These predators, pervasive in our society, roam with impunity in our streets and take advantage of those Aboriginal children with the least protection.”
Drawing on the work of Agamben Giorgio (1995) titled “Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life”, Haggerty notes “western legal systems routinely treat some categories of people as pariahs, effectively positioning such individuals beyond the law, and as a result, providing few if any, legal consequences should they be killed” (179).
According to the Submission “Nothing to Report” of the B.C. CEDAW Group to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women:
“Aboriginal girls in British Columbia have also experienced sexual violence directly from the officials from the justice system. In British Columbia in 2006 Judge David Ramsay plead guilty to charges of procuring and sexual assault on four First Nations Girls who were between twelve and sixteen at the time of his attacks, and who had all appeared before him in youth criminal court or family court. The RCMP began their investigation into Judge Ramsay's assault after a complaint in August 1999. But Judge Ramsay was not removed from the Bench until 2002, three years after the investigation began. According to media reports, his assaults continued until 2001.”
It takes small sparks of imagination to create an economy steeped in human rights and environmental protection. Williams Lake should stand up in fierce solidarity with Tsilhqot'in First Nations, Fish Lake and its unique and intricate environment, and imagine many economic initiatives based on a moral framework which condemns destruction of people and environment.
Santiago Rengstorff, a student at the San Francisco State University Department of Geography explains in “The Biogeography of Rainbow Trout” that “cold water lakes,” such as Fish Lake, “are perfect for rainbow trout, which belongs to Onchorhyncus mykiss species, and is the cousin of the salmon. It is defined by the reds, violets, greens and yellows on its back, a brilliant reddish band along each side and black spots on the upper body above the lateral line and also on the upper fins and the tail.” It is estimated that about 90,000 rainbow trout live in the Fish Lake.
Brian Battison, vice president of corporate affairs for Taseko mining corp. has described the lake as “overpopulated” with small 'starving' fish that have parasites” (Tait, 2010). “'The fish that are there now are small and unhealthy” says Battison (Crawford 2010).
Enjoying the freedom of “moral disengagement” through “a barbarity of language that dehumanizes the victim” (Waller 2008, 155), and “de-individuation” (159) [or] hiding of [his] individual [responsibility] in the “anonymity” of “situation-specific group norms” (159) derived from the Schedule 2 of the Fisheries Act, and the BC's approval of the project, Mr. Battison, is ready to extirpate the rainbow trout from Fish Lake, and in their stead pour millions of litres of mining waste. From a perspective of the Kensington Mine in Alaska, 900,000 litres of wastewater are dumped per day into the Lower Slate Lake (Findlay 2009).
Can the corporate destruction of the Creator's food storage and fresh water supply, a brilliantly intricate and interconnected aquatic-amphibian-terrestrial environment (Schultz, 1991), and a whole nation of people be justified by execrating the rainbow trout in Fish Lake in a canard statement that they are “starving and unhealthy?”
This is not unlike the attitude of about a hundred years ago, when the Fisheries Act was used to strip Native communities of their fishing rights after the salmon species collapsed consequent, on the one hand, to the frivolous work of the Canadian Northern Railway which triggered the fatal landslides in the Hells Gate canyon in 1910/1914, blocking the salmon from returning to their spawning grounds in cold northern lakes, and the overfishing for exports on the other.
People with a self-sufficient local economy and a holistic way of life rooted in harmony with their local environment “became portrayed as deprived animal killers, destroying the resource that could be profitably put to use” – only because they fished to supply themselves with food and not starve. Some commentators suggested that a ration for natives would be better than preserving their access to fish.” (Evenden 2004, 38).
In line with the current attitude of wannabe miners in the Williams Lake, native fishing traps and weirs of a hundred years ago were cracked on “at the behest of local canners.” (38)
In the voice of Nlaka'pamux who were affected by the catastrophe of the Hells Gate landslides and overfishing: “'The white men are to blame for the scarcity of fish, yet they would take away from us Indians the only means of making a living after taking everything back from us.'” (37)
As UBC Geography professor, Matthew Evenden explains, “rather than contend with the boiler politics of fishing [and development] regulation, fisheries officials used the field of habitat restoration as a regulatory release valve” (45).
The focus has not changed or evolved. The destruction of people and environment is legitimized as long as there is a false promise of a hatchet remedial work involved.
According to Environment Canada, “Companies must develop a habitat compensation plan” and “prove that dumping waste in a fresh water body 'makes the most environmental, technical and socio-economic sense.'” (Crawford, 2010).
The lack of accountability, corruption and an air of the genocidal lack of morality may be seen in the fact that Environment Canada falls for the “evidence” which suggests that irreversible destruction of people, environment and a way of life “makes environmental, technical and socio-economic sense.”
If genocide and environmental destruction is the way to keep “tailings safe,” then it is plausible to suggest that there is no solution for mining, and that we should not create problems which are beyond the powers of our humanity to solve.
Mr. Battison's remedial idea is to create a man-made lake larger and deeper than Fish Lake, to have a hatchery and to introduce large fish for sport fishing (Tait; Crawford, 2010).
Man-made lakes are dead bodies of water without circulation or cleansing power. They become clogged in silt and are sponges for toxic runoff from nearby mines. In them, the fish cannot survive. This is why Mr. Battison is referring to the need for a hatchery. The fish has to be artificially introduced over and over again in order to be found in the lake.
Man-made lakes are fragile construction projects, subject to engineering failure. To make an artificial lake, Mr. Battison, would have to flood a large area of land by splicing a whole watershed of lakes, rivers and tributaries into one body of water pent up behind a man-erected dam, always at risk of bursting out and causing further damage due to numerous reasons. As G.A. Schultz of the Institute of Hydrology, Water Resources and Environmental Techniques from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany explains, manmade lakes are prone to “catastrophes due to potential “earthquakes...incompetent engineering (design and operation), bad structural work or inadequate dam maintenance.” He warns that “creating and operating a manmade lake requires great professional competence and high personal responsibility.” He reveals that “dam break flood waves ...usually hidden from the population, are frightening” (Schultz 1991, 149).
Taseko corp's Battison is not interested in creating a lake. It is a remedial action. No remedial action has ever worked in the history of environmental destruction. Corporations are not here to remediate anything. A glimpse into the enormity of the proposed destruction of people and environment paints “remediation” as a cruel joke or rubbing some more salt into the fresh wound.
Historically, the Canadian Northern Railway demonstrated a very “reluctant response to the federal department's demands for assistance” (Evenden 2004, 31) after its 'hurried construction' (24) caused the landslides at the Hells Gate, which affected the salmon runs for three decades to come.
Cariboo Hydraulic Mining Company, which in 1890s built a dam on Quesnel River “blocked a system of lakes and rivers...and cut off many thousands of miles of the best spawning grounds in the province” (70-71) according to then the Fraser River Canner Association Secretary W.D. Burdis. Before the dam was built, “Quesnel Lake and Horsefly River had been the largest single spawning habitat in the basin (72).
In the words of an engineer at the dam, the “'fish had died in enormous numbers while struggling to pass upstream... So many salmon had expired at the site that workers had placed them in great heaps on the shore and burnt them.' No federal or provincial water officials expressed interest or concern” (70).
“The danger of a dam break” (bold added) was cited as a reason to remove the dam, after the fad of gold was forgotten, leaving behind the horrific environmental damage.
The remedial measure of adding a fishway so that salmon can pass upstream, legislated by the federal Fisheries Act, did not work (Evenden 2004, 70-71).
Few fish could pass.
As it was discovered in the case of the Coquitlam Buntzen dam on Coquitlam river, those few salmon that did swim upstream through a fishway caused pollution of the drinking water. Simply, the stale waters behind the dam lacked circulation to clear the rotting fish bodies after spawning. No compensation was paid to the Coquitlam First Nations Band after the dam construction destroyed their fishing grounds.
Another failed remedial antidote to dam developments was “to relocate thousands of spawners” after a dam on Alouette Lake “cut off salmon habitat and disturbed spawners in the lower Alouette River” in 1927. Kwantlen Band was cut off from their food supply, but “there is no evidence that the Stave Lake Company...concerned itself with these problems” (Evenden, 2004, 76-77).
Before damming Nechako River in the early fifties, Alcan Aluminum did “'not care about any remedial steps until they have gained their full water rights'” according to Milo Bell, an engineer with the International Pacific Salmon Fisheries Commission (Evenden 2004, 164). After Alcan received a legal right to dam Nechako River, Alcan vice president McNeely Dubose, “informed Minister of Fisheries Robert Mayhew, that the remedial work was unnecessary and too expensive” (Evenden 2004, 170).
“'We have compromised and accepted maximum risk. The Company had done nothing.'” (bold added) were the words of the then Department of Fisheries scientist A.L. Pritchard. (Evanden 2004, 174)
The “stirring white water” of the Nechako River from the glossy brochures, the government used to woo developers, met their still death, and the environment became an industrial zone. The Cheslatta Ten First Nations were fooled into signing papers, “which gave Alcan legal title...without a full understanding of the consequences or a third party advice. Department of Indian Affairs simply asked them to “abandon the territory” while those who were not informed were simply “evacuated.” “The dam flooded several lakes into one large circular reservoir chain as well as the ancestral burial grounds and the fishing and trapping territories of the Cheslatta Ten Peoples.
Currently, tying the tubes of the watershed into an artificial lake is considered a remedial action to the destruction of a natural rainbow trout bearing lake of the Tsilhqot'in First Nations. But what is the remedial action for the man-made lake itself?
As documented, throughout history, Canadian government has used “remediation” solely as a justification for environmental destruction that really cannot be remediated.
If gold and copper, Taseko hopes to excavate, lie under the lake as reported by David Williams (Williams 2009), an issue not transparent in the communication from the Environment Canada, Fish Lake will have to be completely drained and the surrounding area flooded, another natural lake would have to be found for mine waste disposal, and other lakes and rivers would have to be rerouted and dammed to create a remedial artificial body of water. So Taseko's dalliance with the government is more than about Fish Lake. Many more lakes and rivers in the area will be destroyed.
The artificial lake Mr. Battison is talking about is neither meant to create the food storage for the Tsilhqot'in First Nations, nor the sport fishing tourism. Taseko needs cheap power for an energy intensive mining operation, a more useful purpose its remedial action can be put to.
Fiercely independent, the Tsilhqot'in First Nation's the Xeni Gwet'in people of 300 or so residents who in a landmark court case had won their hunting and fishing rights over the territory which includes Fish Lake, but due to a “technicality” according to Justice Vickers could not secure their Aboriginal title, were not included in a Joint Environmental Review Process (ERP), in which the BC Minister of Environment made a decision that a public open review process will not take place. (Williams, 2009).
When previously used, a public review process called a Joint Review Panel, stopped Kemess North Mine north west of Prince George from destroying Amazay Lake on the territory of the Tsay Keh Dene, Takla Lake, and Kwadacha of the Tse Keh Nay Nation, and the Gitxsan house of Nii Kyap. (Williams, 2009)
The January 2010 decision of the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office stated that ”the adverse effects on fish and fish habitat... were justified in the circumstances.” (Report of the Federal Prosperity Review Panel, Executive Summary July 2010).
The Federal Prosperity Review Panel points out that the the Province of British Columbia made their decision without an input from either federal departments or from the public hearings involving the First Nations.
The Xeni Gwet'in have launched a lawsuit hoping to secure a declaration of an Aboriginal Right to fish in Fish Lake also called Teztan Biny. (Williams, 2009)
Their claim is that the mine construction based on the Fish Lake destruction cannot be legally approved by the federal or provincial governments. (Kennedy, 2010)
Mr. Battison, has laughed off the lawsuit based on what he perceives to be a 'standard practice' of BC mines “proceed[ing] in spite of the threat of legal action.” (Kennedy, 2010)
The Federal Prosperity Review Panel (the Panel), appointed on January 19, 2009, announced its decision on July 2, 2010, in which it concluded that Taseko's Prosperity mine project will result in significant adverse environmental effects on fish and fish habitat, the First Nations and the grizzly bears. It reviewed the project's cumulative effect by considering it in the context of past, present and future developments, and was based on a 30-day public hearing in ten communities, which it found “instrumental in gathering information from First Nations ...” (Executive Summary)
The report was submitted to the federal Minister of the Environment and to the Ministers of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Transport Canada and Natural Resources Canada. (News, Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency July 2, 2010)
Mr. Battison has laughed off the findings of the Federal Prosperity Review Panel saying that the Panel did not consider the economic aspect of the mine. (Tait, 2010)
And so will Mr. Battison likely laugh off Taseko's faulty water management plan about which Kevin Morin, an acid mine drainage expert, hired by the Tsilhqot'in National Government, has to say the following: “Taseko has underestimated the acid generating potential and overestimated the neutralizing potential of the rock at the mine site...” (Findlay 2009).
It is possible that Mr. Battison cannot stop laughing about Taseko's Gibraltar Mine's free wastewater daily discharges into the Fraser River (Findlay 2009) nor potential spillage of the wastewater of its proposed Prosperity mine into the Fraser River through a connected string of rivers -Taseko Lake>Taseko River>Chilcotin River- Fraser River (Crawford, 2010).
Mr. Battison is putting on a display the self-fulfilling prophecy of the connectivity of destruction and pollution by mining and he cannot stop laughing.
Many people are worried about Mr. Battison's lack of conscience including his mining counterpart Copper Mountain CEO Jim O'Rourke after Taseko's “unsolicited takeover...approach of interfering with the company's financing [which] could deprive [their] shareholders of substantial benefit.” (Vancouver Sun, 2009)
Not once in this orgy of destruction has Mr. Battison pronounced the name of the nation whom he is about to wipe out.
The unilateral decision of the government of British Columbia which wrongfully approved Taseko's destruction project, their issuing of a long-term mining lease to the company without the consultation with the involved First Nations, the Schedule 2 of the Fisheries Act, which encourages mining waste dumping into pristine lakes, the incendiary calls for the outright destruction of the Tsilhqot'in First Nation by the surrounding self-interested settler groups, the narrow focus on the safety of the tailings by Environment Canada, the barbaric language used to vitiate the rainbow trout of Fish Lake, the obvious absence of language used to overlook the victim, euphemistic descriptions of genocide as serving economic good and the silence of the general population, and a history of unpunished genocides of First Nations has created a context in which committing mass murder feels comfortable, and in fact socially sanctioned and desirable. In this context, committing mass murder becomes the easiest job you and I as normal, ordinary people, highly educated, professional people can have.
Hitler built his social welfare state on the foundations of mass extermination. Concentration camp staff were public employees whose jobs came with benefits, and also volunteers.
“[P]eople are the weapons by which genocide occurs” (147) reminds us James E. Waller. “Perpetrators of genocide. They are you and I,” (149) says Waller in his grounding and eye-opening explanation of the reality “difficult to admit, to understand, to absorb,” (148). It takes “ordinary, 'normal' people [to commit] acts of extraordinary evil” and this “ordinariness does not diminish the horror of their actions, [but] ...increases it.” (148).
“For most of us, it is usually important to cross the first threshold in order to be able to cross the last” (Welzer 2008, 179).
We, the people of British Columbia and Canada have been set up as anonymous killers by the bureaucratic-industrial machine of mass extermination. We have to resurrect our own personal responsibility in order to face and address an overarching structure of manipulation and control which prioritizes extermination of many for the benefit of some.
A nation, so gentle, so peaceful, with en economy so sophisticated that it exists in harmony with the environment and people, with a way of life so ancient and so unique is about to be swept into ditches by the charging mining bulldozers.
NO!!!
NEVER!!!
No to BC mine, National Chief
http://www.bclocalnews.com/bc_north/northernsentinel/news/99866174.html
August 04, 2010 6:00 AM
Before the federal government decides the fate of the Prosperity gold and copper mine proposed near Williams Lake, people will know what it means for the struggling Cariboo-Chilcotin region and for the aboriginal communities who oppose it.
Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Minister Bill Bennett says an economic impact study is being prepared for the federal cabinet(PM Stephen Harper), which is to decide this fall if the long-proposed mine can proceed..
The Tsilhqot'in National Government and its local aboriginal bands strongly oppose the project, and reject the proposal to construct a new lake to replace the lost trout habitat in its traditional territory. Last week the national Assembly of First Nations backed the Tsilhqot'in and warned Ottawa there will be confrontation in and out of court if the mine gets the green light...
The chiefs' assembly voted to "advise the federal government that First Nations across Canada are watching its decision to see whether there remains any value or integrity in environmental assessments for major projects, or whether First Nations must turn to litigation and other means to assert our rights and protect our cultures."
Assembly of First Nations (AFN) leaders from across Canada have backed National Chief Shawn Atleo's call for the federal cabinet to reject the Prosperity gold and copper mine proposal near Williams Lake after more than a decade of study.
We are calling all people and organizations of conscience and lack thereof to action to prevent the impending genocide of Tsilhqot'in First Nations.
Civility is a chosen state, not a natural condition... and being aware of our own natural capacity for evil and how to ... curb that capacity is the best safeguard we can have against future genocide and mass killings” (Waller 2008, 163).
Paradigm
Shift Environmental Alliance(a homeless network of transborder
activists, students, academics, Aboriginal etc.) psea does not do media
interviews since july 2007,we thank all media for their inquires.
Please feel free to use anything on this site.
http://www.floodiceorfire.wordpress.com
Abolition King Coal, Fossil Fuels, Nuclear Power and Weapons Everywhere!
The Great Struggle Continues….
REFERENCES
http://www.tsilhqotin.ca/news.htm
http://www.protectfishlake.ca/
Aboriginal Women's Action Network (AWAN). Statement Opposing Legalized Prostitution and Total Decriminalization of Prostitution Dec 6, 2007 http://www.awanbc.ca/articles.html
Bakan, Joel. (2004). Corporation: the pathological pursuit of profit and power. Toronto: Penguin Canada
Bloxham, Donald. (2008). The organization of genocide: perpetration in comparative perspective. in ed.Olaf, Jensen., Szejnmann, Claus-Christian W. (2008). Ordinary people as mass murderers: Perpetrators in comparative perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. (July 2, 2010). Federal Review Panel Issues Environmental Assessment Report for Proposed Prosperity Gold-Copper Mine Project http://news.gc.ca/web/article-eng.do?m=/index&nid=545069
Crawford Tiffany. (June 4, 2010). Fish-bearing lakes to be destroyed to become tailings ponds: CoC to sue feds. Vancouver Sun
Evenden, D. Matthew (2004). Fish versus power: an environmental history of the Fraser River
Executive Summary of the Environmental Assessment Report July 2, 2010 http://www.ceaa.gc.ca/050/document-eng.cfm?document=43937
Findlay Andrew, (August 27, 2009). Fight looms over fish lake. Georgia Straight
Haggerty Modern Serial Killers - 168-187 CMC_335714.indd
Kennedy, Peter. (June 23, 2010). Taseko confident despite legal threat. http://www.stockhouse.com/Community-News/2010/Jun/23/Taseko-confident-despite-legal-threat
Oilsands Truth. AFL denounces “out of control” import of “disposable” foreign workers in Alberta
http://oilsandstruth.org/labour-afl-denounces-“out-control”-import-“disposable”-foreign-workers-alberta
Olaf, Jensen., Szejnmann, Claus-Christian W. (2008). Ordinary people as mass murderers: Perpetrators in comparative perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan
'Nothing to Report'
Submission of the B.C. CEDAW Group to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:IZszRZ-cHo0J:http://www.cccabc.bc.ca/res/pubs/pdf/CEDAW_report_Dec2009.pdf+nothing+to+report&hl=en&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjzQd0LuoGdfOz8D25M7wKmJDwShRNKrxvG82W6F9-vtldtiojqwIQSgedQTZwXKz0CNcHtEWRxEDQr7KNBfmx0y5cncL7rcoGn2enGx4C0s_70XdIz3Afcn6qTwuvFyrjKkOwE&sig=AHIEtbSC3UAt_yuCCabNHoZTbhtQIZ0I-w
Rengstorff, Santiago San Francisco State University Department
of Geography. The Biogeography of Rainbow Trout
http://bss.sfsu.edu/holzman/courses/fall01%20projects/rainbow%20trout.htm
Schultz, G.A. Hydrology of Natural and Manmake Lakes (Proceedings of the Vienna Symposium, August 1991) IAHS Publ. no. 206. 1991
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:g8rQ6JpndXEJ:iahs.info/redbooks/a206/iahs_206_0139.pdf+hydrology+of+natural+and+manmade+lakes+schultz&hl=en&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESi9kTVmJ1vWw1jVuGSupvTxVG9-qHJzTaPKDUO8UFd_PgYXBO9u4exqNfu9Z2vYPowBbwWJ8svMppp4UmPnWzpSAgOg6dsiJ2xJKB0ehfQpos0oQhlDXmFTBSay8JwabgaWK68G&sig=AHIEtbSNbDtEFxrbHqvpYbVVpZOcEQC69A
Sinoski Kelly. (August 6, 2010) Fraser River to get a green makeover for tourism: Metro Vancouver aims to develop a 300-kilometre, land-and-water-based recreation system of parks, trails, campsites and boat docks, Vancouver Sun
Szejnmann, C.C. (2008). Perpetrators of the Holocaust: a historiography. in ed.Olaf, Jensen., Szejnmann, Claus-Christian W. (2008). Ordinary people as mass murderers: Perpetrators in comparative perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Tait, Carrie. (July 5, 2010). Taseko drops 20% on impact report. Financial Post
Vancouver Sun. (September 18, 2010). Copper Mountain rejects Taseko bid.
Waller, James. (2008) The ordinariness of extraordinary evil: the masking of perpetrators of genocide and mass killing. in ed.Olaf, Jensen., Szejnmann, Claus-Christian W. (2008). Ordinary people as mass murderers: Perpetrators in comparative perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Welzer Harald (2008). On killing and morality: how normal people become mass murderers. in ed.Olaf, Jensen., Szejnmann, Claus-Christian W. (2008). Ordinary people as mass murderers: Perpetrators in comparative perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Williams, David. (March-April 2009) Fish Lake is Not a Tailings Pond. Watershed Sentinel http://www.watershedsentinel.ca/content/fish-lake-not-tailings-pond
(This document is given to Global Politicians, Banks and Energy stakeholders, Grassroots etc)
Full document with images publicly available at:
http://floodiceorfire.wordpress.com/taseko-mines-and-pm-stephen-harper-embroiled-in-impending-genocide-of-the-tsilhqotin-first-nations-through-proposed-destruction-of-fish-lake/
“Teztan Biny (Fish Lake) is More than just a Lake – It's Part of Our Culture. Our Elders and ancestors have passed the responsibility to protect our lands and way of life on to us. It is not possible for us to agree to the destruction of the land that sustains us.” - Chief Marilyn Baptiste, Xeni Gwet'in First Nation, Tshilqot'in Nation
SUPPORT FISH LAKE & THE SURVIVAL OF TSILHQOT'IN NATION
VIGIL
SEPTEMBER 2, 2010 - 12 NOON
905 West Pender Street (Pender/Burrard)
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Report prepared by Ivona Vujica
Paradigm Shift Environmental Alliance
VANCOUVER, AUGUST 27, 2010
A travel along a river may conjure images of nature-love only those who peacefully commune with their environment may know about. It is a dreamy plan the BC Ministry of Tourism has for the Fraser River. Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley regional districts are working to “give public access to the river” by creating “a continuous walking, canoeing and cycling route,” through parks such as Surrey Bend, Douglas Island and Crescent Island in an attempt to recreate an air of Australia's Great Ocean Walk, Europe's Rhine River walk or the U.S.'s Mississippi trail.(Sinoski, 2010)
“The connectivity” theme in the Experience the Fraser project remains within a safe zone outside the BC's interior or Northern BC and fails to follow the trail along the Fraser River the way mining, fossil fuel burning, hydraulic imperialism of damming and piping lakes and rivers, unsolicited private power projects for exports, tar sands pipelines and the genocide of the First Nations do.
Somehow, the disconnectedness of the connectivity theme serves to refocus attention from what should be of crucial importance to every person in BC and Canada and around the world: the irreversible environmental and socio-economic destruction through current “development projects,” one of them being the proposed Taseko corp's Prosperity gold-copper mine in northern BC.
It may be that Experience the Fraser is creating an inkling of an economy that is hoping to exist in harmony with environment and people. However, with rogue benefits generally drawn from the destruction in the interiors and northern BC, it cannot but remain a self-interested fad for a few for whom the environment and human rights remain out-of-sight-out-of mind phenomenon.
The vision of a dreamy landscape belies the agony of fish, lakes, rivers and people who are awaiting their liquidation moment to make way for a mining corporation,125 kilometres southwest of the Williams Lake.
The agony is wrapped in the silence of those who in two-to-three years will enjoy the “connected” out-of-sight-out-of mind recreation amnesia along the river, and the cheer of those who mistakenly believe themselves to be temporary benefactors of such an enormous and irreversible destruction and genocide.
Sue Redford, president of the Williams Lake District Chamber of Commerce is “comfortable” and calls it “a little sunshine.” “A number of glowing editorials” in the Williams Lake Tribune support her view, and its publisher Lorne Doerksen has stated that he is “at peace.” (Andrew Findlay, 2009)
Shiny euphemisms, used as the plywood of the genocide construction, are “the camouflage vocabulary” to “mask the evil,” (Waller, 2008,156) and make “mass murder .. personally and socially acceptable by portraying it as serving socially worth or moral purposes (Waller, 2008, 155).
The cheerfulness over the hopes of temporary “economic gains” from forcing Tsilhqot'in First Nations out, “taking their possessions and depriving them of rights” (Welzer 2008, 171) seen in the form of mining jobs by the Williams Lake community will surely backfire.
Environmental destruction / human rights abuse - jobs go hand in hand with all other kinds of human right abuses, and are not meant to massage the local economy into its perkiness. Remember, we are dealing with the legislated feudal suzerainty of a “pathological corporation” (Bakan, 2004) over our homelands. Alberta Federation of Labour cries foul over “'out of control' import of 'disposable' foreign workers...who are being misled and taken advantage of by unscrupulous brokers and employers” (Oilsands Truth). “Jobs” are for the imported slave labour not for those who cheer “the genocidal process of the First Nations [they find] useful for [their] career and...social prestige”(Jensen 2008, 12)
The provincial and federal governments have legislated the corporation into an agent of exponential self-serving greed/destruction in our home communities. When the genocide is wrapped in the celofan of “camouflage” labels such as “environmental review,” or “fisheries act” we are faced with “what Gunter Anders calls an 'opportunity for unpunished inhumanity'” (Welzer,167), giving “the signal that [Tsilhqot'in First Nations] have lost all their rights and that [Taseko is] allowed to do to them whatever they like.” (Jensen 2008,12).
“Context can mean legitimization, rationalization and justification of acts that otherwise seem illegitimate, irrational and unjustifiable (Bloxham, 2008, 187). Introduced in 1996 by the Conservative government, and currently legally challenged by the Council of Canadians, and St. John's The Sandy Pond Alliance, the Schedule 2 of the Fisheries Act, for example, allows mining corporations to dump mining waste into pristine lakes.
The proposed destruction of Fish Lake and the consequent genocide of the Tshilqot'in First Nation is an example of a “bureaucratically organized and industrially driven extermination process” (Szejnmann, 2008, 33).
The existing context is shaped through the legislation, governmental decisions, the submergence of individual responsibility within the status quo and the silence of the general population which opens the door to such destruction.
“Environment Canada claims it is more environmentally sound to destroy a natural lake than build a tailings pond” (Crawford 2010) Brigitte Lemay, a media spokesperson for Environment Canada describes a natural lake as 'the best storage option” to keep tailings “in a safe and controlled way, as it may have fewer risks of engineering failure...' (Crawford, 2010).
The Environment Canada's sole focus on ensuring the “safety of Taseko's tailings,” by allowing dumping of the toxic mining waste into the pristine rainbow trout-rich lake, which is the food storage (fridge), the water supply, a connection to Creator and ancestors and an expression of a way of life of the Tsilhqot'in First Nations, has eclipsed what should be immediately obvious: a “death march” of people who will be expelled to “perish from exposure, starvation and thirst,” (Bloxham 2008, 192) their impending “everyday oppressions and discriminations,” (Bloxham 2008, 193), and “depredations – rape, kidnap, mutilation and outright killing” (Bloxham 2008,192).
The Environment Canada's preoccupation with the safety of the tailings at the expense of the full blown genocide signals a “shift [of] attention from the morality of what they are doing to the operational details and efficiency of their job” (Waller 2008, 159). James Waller calls this “diffusion of responsibility” through segmentation and fragmentation of the killing tasks” (159)
The destruction of a living base of a people in the north is unsurprisingly flanked by the world of Robert Pictons and Down Town East Sides in the south coupled with “the passivity of the police toward [anti-Aboriginal] violence..and the perception that it [is] good not to be Aboriginal” {Welzer 2008, 170) into which the expelled are liquidated – a true theme of connectivity, Experience the Fraser fails to achieve.
Mass murderers in the south go together with mass murderers in the north. While the two types of characters may differ in scale but not in purpose, the former act as the “release valve” for the latter. In his article “Modern Serial Killers,” Kevin D. Haggerty of University of Alberta says that “murderers embrace and reproduce the wider cultural codings that have devalued, stigmatized, and marginalized specific groups” (180).
As explained by the Aboriginal Women's Action Network (AWAN) in their Statement Opposing Legalized Prostitution and Total Decriminalization of Prostitution Dec 6, 2007
“We have a long, multi-generational history of colonization, marginalization, and displacement from our Homelands (bold added), and rampant abuses that has forced many of our sisters into prostitution. Aboriginal women are often either forced into prostitution, trafficked into prostitution or are facing that possibility. Given that the average age at which girls enter prostitution is fourteen, the majority with a history of unspeakable abuses, we are also speaking out for the Aboriginal children who are targeted by johns and pimps. Aboriginal girls are hunted down and prostituted, and the perpetrators go uncharged with child sexual assault and child rape. These predators, pervasive in our society, roam with impunity in our streets and take advantage of those Aboriginal children with the least protection.”
Drawing on the work of Agamben Giorgio (1995) titled “Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life”, Haggerty notes “western legal systems routinely treat some categories of people as pariahs, effectively positioning such individuals beyond the law, and as a result, providing few if any, legal consequences should they be killed” (179).
According to the Submission “Nothing to Report” of the B.C. CEDAW Group to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women:
“Aboriginal girls in British Columbia have also experienced sexual violence directly from the officials from the justice system. In British Columbia in 2006 Judge David Ramsay plead guilty to charges of procuring and sexual assault on four First Nations Girls who were between twelve and sixteen at the time of his attacks, and who had all appeared before him in youth criminal court or family court. The RCMP began their investigation into Judge Ramsay's assault after a complaint in August 1999. But Judge Ramsay was not removed from the Bench until 2002, three years after the investigation began. According to media reports, his assaults continued until 2001.”
It takes small sparks of imagination to create an economy steeped in human rights and environmental protection. Williams Lake should stand up in fierce solidarity with Tsilhqot'in First Nations, Fish Lake and its unique and intricate environment, and imagine many economic initiatives based on a moral framework which condemns destruction of people and environment.
Santiago Rengstorff, a student at the San Francisco State University Department of Geography explains in “The Biogeography of Rainbow Trout” that “cold water lakes,” such as Fish Lake, “are perfect for rainbow trout, which belongs to Onchorhyncus mykiss species, and is the cousin of the salmon. It is defined by the reds, violets, greens and yellows on its back, a brilliant reddish band along each side and black spots on the upper body above the lateral line and also on the upper fins and the tail.” It is estimated that about 90,000 rainbow trout live in the Fish Lake.
Brian Battison, vice president of corporate affairs for Taseko mining corp. has described the lake as “overpopulated” with small 'starving' fish that have parasites” (Tait, 2010). “'The fish that are there now are small and unhealthy” says Battison (Crawford 2010).
Enjoying the freedom of “moral disengagement” through “a barbarity of language that dehumanizes the victim” (Waller 2008, 155), and “de-individuation” (159) [or] hiding of [his] individual [responsibility] in the “anonymity” of “situation-specific group norms” (159) derived from the Schedule 2 of the Fisheries Act, and the BC's approval of the project, Mr. Battison, is ready to extirpate the rainbow trout from Fish Lake, and in their stead pour millions of litres of mining waste. From a perspective of the Kensington Mine in Alaska, 900,000 litres of wastewater are dumped per day into the Lower Slate Lake (Findlay 2009).
Can the corporate destruction of the Creator's food storage and fresh water supply, a brilliantly intricate and interconnected aquatic-amphibian-terrestrial environment (Schultz, 1991), and a whole nation of people be justified by execrating the rainbow trout in Fish Lake in a canard statement that they are “starving and unhealthy?”
This is not unlike the attitude of about a hundred years ago, when the Fisheries Act was used to strip Native communities of their fishing rights after the salmon species collapsed consequent, on the one hand, to the frivolous work of the Canadian Northern Railway which triggered the fatal landslides in the Hells Gate canyon in 1910/1914, blocking the salmon from returning to their spawning grounds in cold northern lakes, and the overfishing for exports on the other.
People with a self-sufficient local economy and a holistic way of life rooted in harmony with their local environment “became portrayed as deprived animal killers, destroying the resource that could be profitably put to use” – only because they fished to supply themselves with food and not starve. Some commentators suggested that a ration for natives would be better than preserving their access to fish.” (Evenden 2004, 38).
In line with the current attitude of wannabe miners in the Williams Lake, native fishing traps and weirs of a hundred years ago were cracked on “at the behest of local canners.” (38)
In the voice of Nlaka'pamux who were affected by the catastrophe of the Hells Gate landslides and overfishing: “'The white men are to blame for the scarcity of fish, yet they would take away from us Indians the only means of making a living after taking everything back from us.'” (37)
As UBC Geography professor, Matthew Evenden explains, “rather than contend with the boiler politics of fishing [and development] regulation, fisheries officials used the field of habitat restoration as a regulatory release valve” (45).
The focus has not changed or evolved. The destruction of people and environment is legitimized as long as there is a false promise of a hatchet remedial work involved.
According to Environment Canada, “Companies must develop a habitat compensation plan” and “prove that dumping waste in a fresh water body 'makes the most environmental, technical and socio-economic sense.'” (Crawford, 2010).
The lack of accountability, corruption and an air of the genocidal lack of morality may be seen in the fact that Environment Canada falls for the “evidence” which suggests that irreversible destruction of people, environment and a way of life “makes environmental, technical and socio-economic sense.”
If genocide and environmental destruction is the way to keep “tailings safe,” then it is plausible to suggest that there is no solution for mining, and that we should not create problems which are beyond the powers of our humanity to solve.
Mr. Battison's remedial idea is to create a man-made lake larger and deeper than Fish Lake, to have a hatchery and to introduce large fish for sport fishing (Tait; Crawford, 2010).
Man-made lakes are dead bodies of water without circulation or cleansing power. They become clogged in silt and are sponges for toxic runoff from nearby mines. In them, the fish cannot survive. This is why Mr. Battison is referring to the need for a hatchery. The fish has to be artificially introduced over and over again in order to be found in the lake.
Man-made lakes are fragile construction projects, subject to engineering failure. To make an artificial lake, Mr. Battison, would have to flood a large area of land by splicing a whole watershed of lakes, rivers and tributaries into one body of water pent up behind a man-erected dam, always at risk of bursting out and causing further damage due to numerous reasons. As G.A. Schultz of the Institute of Hydrology, Water Resources and Environmental Techniques from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany explains, manmade lakes are prone to “catastrophes due to potential “earthquakes...incompetent engineering (design and operation), bad structural work or inadequate dam maintenance.” He warns that “creating and operating a manmade lake requires great professional competence and high personal responsibility.” He reveals that “dam break flood waves ...usually hidden from the population, are frightening” (Schultz 1991, 149).
Taseko corp's Battison is not interested in creating a lake. It is a remedial action. No remedial action has ever worked in the history of environmental destruction. Corporations are not here to remediate anything. A glimpse into the enormity of the proposed destruction of people and environment paints “remediation” as a cruel joke or rubbing some more salt into the fresh wound.
Historically, the Canadian Northern Railway demonstrated a very “reluctant response to the federal department's demands for assistance” (Evenden 2004, 31) after its 'hurried construction' (24) caused the landslides at the Hells Gate, which affected the salmon runs for three decades to come.
Cariboo Hydraulic Mining Company, which in 1890s built a dam on Quesnel River “blocked a system of lakes and rivers...and cut off many thousands of miles of the best spawning grounds in the province” (70-71) according to then the Fraser River Canner Association Secretary W.D. Burdis. Before the dam was built, “Quesnel Lake and Horsefly River had been the largest single spawning habitat in the basin (72).
In the words of an engineer at the dam, the “'fish had died in enormous numbers while struggling to pass upstream... So many salmon had expired at the site that workers had placed them in great heaps on the shore and burnt them.' No federal or provincial water officials expressed interest or concern” (70).
“The danger of a dam break” (bold added) was cited as a reason to remove the dam, after the fad of gold was forgotten, leaving behind the horrific environmental damage.
The remedial measure of adding a fishway so that salmon can pass upstream, legislated by the federal Fisheries Act, did not work (Evenden 2004, 70-71).
Few fish could pass.
As it was discovered in the case of the Coquitlam Buntzen dam on Coquitlam river, those few salmon that did swim upstream through a fishway caused pollution of the drinking water. Simply, the stale waters behind the dam lacked circulation to clear the rotting fish bodies after spawning. No compensation was paid to the Coquitlam First Nations Band after the dam construction destroyed their fishing grounds.
Another failed remedial antidote to dam developments was “to relocate thousands of spawners” after a dam on Alouette Lake “cut off salmon habitat and disturbed spawners in the lower Alouette River” in 1927. Kwantlen Band was cut off from their food supply, but “there is no evidence that the Stave Lake Company...concerned itself with these problems” (Evenden, 2004, 76-77).
Before damming Nechako River in the early fifties, Alcan Aluminum did “'not care about any remedial steps until they have gained their full water rights'” according to Milo Bell, an engineer with the International Pacific Salmon Fisheries Commission (Evenden 2004, 164). After Alcan received a legal right to dam Nechako River, Alcan vice president McNeely Dubose, “informed Minister of Fisheries Robert Mayhew, that the remedial work was unnecessary and too expensive” (Evenden 2004, 170).
“'We have compromised and accepted maximum risk. The Company had done nothing.'” (bold added) were the words of the then Department of Fisheries scientist A.L. Pritchard. (Evanden 2004, 174)
The “stirring white water” of the Nechako River from the glossy brochures, the government used to woo developers, met their still death, and the environment became an industrial zone. The Cheslatta Ten First Nations were fooled into signing papers, “which gave Alcan legal title...without a full understanding of the consequences or a third party advice. Department of Indian Affairs simply asked them to “abandon the territory” while those who were not informed were simply “evacuated.” “The dam flooded several lakes into one large circular reservoir chain as well as the ancestral burial grounds and the fishing and trapping territories of the Cheslatta Ten Peoples.
Currently, tying the tubes of the watershed into an artificial lake is considered a remedial action to the destruction of a natural rainbow trout bearing lake of the Tsilhqot'in First Nations. But what is the remedial action for the man-made lake itself?
As documented, throughout history, Canadian government has used “remediation” solely as a justification for environmental destruction that really cannot be remediated.
If gold and copper, Taseko hopes to excavate, lie under the lake as reported by David Williams (Williams 2009), an issue not transparent in the communication from the Environment Canada, Fish Lake will have to be completely drained and the surrounding area flooded, another natural lake would have to be found for mine waste disposal, and other lakes and rivers would have to be rerouted and dammed to create a remedial artificial body of water. So Taseko's dalliance with the government is more than about Fish Lake. Many more lakes and rivers in the area will be destroyed.
The artificial lake Mr. Battison is talking about is neither meant to create the food storage for the Tsilhqot'in First Nations, nor the sport fishing tourism. Taseko needs cheap power for an energy intensive mining operation, a more useful purpose its remedial action can be put to.
Fiercely independent, the Tsilhqot'in First Nation's the Xeni Gwet'in people of 300 or so residents who in a landmark court case had won their hunting and fishing rights over the territory which includes Fish Lake, but due to a “technicality” according to Justice Vickers could not secure their Aboriginal title, were not included in a Joint Environmental Review Process (ERP), in which the BC Minister of Environment made a decision that a public open review process will not take place. (Williams, 2009).
When previously used, a public review process called a Joint Review Panel, stopped Kemess North Mine north west of Prince George from destroying Amazay Lake on the territory of the Tsay Keh Dene, Takla Lake, and Kwadacha of the Tse Keh Nay Nation, and the Gitxsan house of Nii Kyap. (Williams, 2009)
The January 2010 decision of the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office stated that ”the adverse effects on fish and fish habitat... were justified in the circumstances.” (Report of the Federal Prosperity Review Panel, Executive Summary July 2010).
The Federal Prosperity Review Panel points out that the the Province of British Columbia made their decision without an input from either federal departments or from the public hearings involving the First Nations.
The Xeni Gwet'in have launched a lawsuit hoping to secure a declaration of an Aboriginal Right to fish in Fish Lake also called Teztan Biny. (Williams, 2009)
Their claim is that the mine construction based on the Fish Lake destruction cannot be legally approved by the federal or provincial governments. (Kennedy, 2010)
Mr. Battison, has laughed off the lawsuit based on what he perceives to be a 'standard practice' of BC mines “proceed[ing] in spite of the threat of legal action.” (Kennedy, 2010)
The Federal Prosperity Review Panel (the Panel), appointed on January 19, 2009, announced its decision on July 2, 2010, in which it concluded that Taseko's Prosperity mine project will result in significant adverse environmental effects on fish and fish habitat, the First Nations and the grizzly bears. It reviewed the project's cumulative effect by considering it in the context of past, present and future developments, and was based on a 30-day public hearing in ten communities, which it found “instrumental in gathering information from First Nations ...” (Executive Summary)
The report was submitted to the federal Minister of the Environment and to the Ministers of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Transport Canada and Natural Resources Canada. (News, Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency July 2, 2010)
Mr. Battison has laughed off the findings of the Federal Prosperity Review Panel saying that the Panel did not consider the economic aspect of the mine. (Tait, 2010)
And so will Mr. Battison likely laugh off Taseko's faulty water management plan about which Kevin Morin, an acid mine drainage expert, hired by the Tsilhqot'in National Government, has to say the following: “Taseko has underestimated the acid generating potential and overestimated the neutralizing potential of the rock at the mine site...” (Findlay 2009).
It is possible that Mr. Battison cannot stop laughing about Taseko's Gibraltar Mine's free wastewater daily discharges into the Fraser River (Findlay 2009) nor potential spillage of the wastewater of its proposed Prosperity mine into the Fraser River through a connected string of rivers -Taseko Lake>Taseko River>Chilcotin River- Fraser River (Crawford, 2010).
Mr. Battison is putting on a display the self-fulfilling prophecy of the connectivity of destruction and pollution by mining and he cannot stop laughing.
Many people are worried about Mr. Battison's lack of conscience including his mining counterpart Copper Mountain CEO Jim O'Rourke after Taseko's “unsolicited takeover...approach of interfering with the company's financing [which] could deprive [their] shareholders of substantial benefit.” (Vancouver Sun, 2009)
Not once in this orgy of destruction has Mr. Battison pronounced the name of the nation whom he is about to wipe out.
The unilateral decision of the government of British Columbia which wrongfully approved Taseko's destruction project, their issuing of a long-term mining lease to the company without the consultation with the involved First Nations, the Schedule 2 of the Fisheries Act, which encourages mining waste dumping into pristine lakes, the incendiary calls for the outright destruction of the Tsilhqot'in First Nation by the surrounding self-interested settler groups, the narrow focus on the safety of the tailings by Environment Canada, the barbaric language used to vitiate the rainbow trout of Fish Lake, the obvious absence of language used to overlook the victim, euphemistic descriptions of genocide as serving economic good and the silence of the general population, and a history of unpunished genocides of First Nations has created a context in which committing mass murder feels comfortable, and in fact socially sanctioned and desirable. In this context, committing mass murder becomes the easiest job you and I as normal, ordinary people, highly educated, professional people can have.
Hitler built his social welfare state on the foundations of mass extermination. Concentration camp staff were public employees whose jobs came with benefits, and also volunteers.
“[P]eople are the weapons by which genocide occurs” (147) reminds us James E. Waller. “Perpetrators of genocide. They are you and I,” (149) says Waller in his grounding and eye-opening explanation of the reality “difficult to admit, to understand, to absorb,” (148). It takes “ordinary, 'normal' people [to commit] acts of extraordinary evil” and this “ordinariness does not diminish the horror of their actions, [but] ...increases it.” (148).
“For most of us, it is usually important to cross the first threshold in order to be able to cross the last” (Welzer 2008, 179).
We, the people of British Columbia and Canada have been set up as anonymous killers by the bureaucratic-industrial machine of mass extermination. We have to resurrect our own personal responsibility in order to face and address an overarching structure of manipulation and control which prioritizes extermination of many for the benefit of some.
A nation, so gentle, so peaceful, with en economy so sophisticated that it exists in harmony with the environment and people, with a way of life so ancient and so unique is about to be swept into ditches by the charging mining bulldozers.
NO!!!
NEVER!!!
No to BC mine, National Chief
http://www.bclocalnews.com/bc_north/northernsentinel/news/99866174.html
August 04, 2010 6:00 AM
Before the federal government decides the fate of the Prosperity gold and copper mine proposed near Williams Lake, people will know what it means for the struggling Cariboo-Chilcotin region and for the aboriginal communities who oppose it.
Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Minister Bill Bennett says an economic impact study is being prepared for the federal cabinet(PM Stephen Harper), which is to decide this fall if the long-proposed mine can proceed..
The Tsilhqot'in National Government and its local aboriginal bands strongly oppose the project, and reject the proposal to construct a new lake to replace the lost trout habitat in its traditional territory. Last week the national Assembly of First Nations backed the Tsilhqot'in and warned Ottawa there will be confrontation in and out of court if the mine gets the green light...
The chiefs' assembly voted to "advise the federal government that First Nations across Canada are watching its decision to see whether there remains any value or integrity in environmental assessments for major projects, or whether First Nations must turn to litigation and other means to assert our rights and protect our cultures."
Assembly of First Nations (AFN) leaders from across Canada have backed National Chief Shawn Atleo's call for the federal cabinet to reject the Prosperity gold and copper mine proposal near Williams Lake after more than a decade of study.
We are calling all people and organizations of conscience and lack thereof to action to prevent the impending genocide of Tsilhqot'in First Nations.
Civility is a chosen state, not a natural condition... and being aware of our own natural capacity for evil and how to ... curb that capacity is the best safeguard we can have against future genocide and mass killings” (Waller 2008, 163).
Paradigm
Shift Environmental Alliance(a homeless network of transborder
activists, students, academics, Aboriginal etc.) psea does not do media
interviews since july 2007,we thank all media for their inquires.
Please feel free to use anything on this site.
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Abolition King Coal, Fossil Fuels, Nuclear Power and Weapons Everywhere!
The Great Struggle Continues….
REFERENCES
http://www.tsilhqotin.ca/news.htm
http://www.protectfishlake.ca/
Aboriginal Women's Action Network (AWAN). Statement Opposing Legalized Prostitution and Total Decriminalization of Prostitution Dec 6, 2007 http://www.awanbc.ca/articles.html
Bakan, Joel. (2004). Corporation: the pathological pursuit of profit and power. Toronto: Penguin Canada
Bloxham, Donald. (2008). The organization of genocide: perpetration in comparative perspective. in ed.Olaf, Jensen., Szejnmann, Claus-Christian W. (2008). Ordinary people as mass murderers: Perpetrators in comparative perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. (July 2, 2010). Federal Review Panel Issues Environmental Assessment Report for Proposed Prosperity Gold-Copper Mine Project http://news.gc.ca/web/article-eng.do?m=/index&nid=545069
Crawford Tiffany. (June 4, 2010). Fish-bearing lakes to be destroyed to become tailings ponds: CoC to sue feds. Vancouver Sun
Evenden, D. Matthew (2004). Fish versus power: an environmental history of the Fraser River
Executive Summary of the Environmental Assessment Report July 2, 2010 http://www.ceaa.gc.ca/050/document-eng.cfm?document=43937
Findlay Andrew, (August 27, 2009). Fight looms over fish lake. Georgia Straight
Haggerty Modern Serial Killers - 168-187 CMC_335714.indd
Kennedy, Peter. (June 23, 2010). Taseko confident despite legal threat. http://www.stockhouse.com/Community-News/2010/Jun/23/Taseko-confident-despite-legal-threat
Oilsands Truth. AFL denounces “out of control” import of “disposable” foreign workers in Alberta
http://oilsandstruth.org/labour-afl-denounces-“out-control”-import-“disposable”-foreign-workers-alberta
Olaf, Jensen., Szejnmann, Claus-Christian W. (2008). Ordinary people as mass murderers: Perpetrators in comparative perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan
'Nothing to Report'
Submission of the B.C. CEDAW Group to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women:
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For more information:
http://floodiceorfire.wordpress.com/taseko...
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Fact Check
Sun, Oct 23, 2011 2:26PM
Precisely it is Genocide.
Sun, Mar 13, 2011 2:04PM
GENOCIDE???
Thu, Sep 2, 2010 10:49AM
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