When Janell Jackson was just 13, her father took her out to his trap lines near Buckinghorse to show her how to track an animal, handle a rifle and shoot her first moose.
“We went through the traditional process of how you cut the meat, how to give thanks, what you take (from the animal),” said Jackson, now 22. “I plan to teach that to my two children.”
Jackson was one of dozens of youth and elders from Saulteau First Nation who made their pleas to an environmental review panel Tuesday to stop BC Hydro’s Site C dam proposal, and preserve a way of life they have been practicing for thousands of years.
Those in the community, located about 60 kilometres southwest from the proposed dam site near Fort St. John, say construction of the dam will have deep impacts on their treaty rights to hunt, fish, trap and use a patch of land they’ve called home and the “grocery store” for over a century.
“We want to be given a chance to use those rights and keep them strong for generations to come,” said Ashley Watson, also 22. “We’re the ones who are going to carry forth our traditions and (Site C) puts a big burden on us. We have so many different things coming at us from all sides. Where do we go?”
The Saulteau settled in the Peace River area in the mid to late-1800s, escaping the skirmishes of the Louis Riel-led Red River Rebellion in Manitoba. Their traditional territory covers 50,000 square miles throughout the region, and when they signed onto Treaty 8 in 1914, there was nary a whisper of industrial development to be heard.
The community stands near 950 members today, and is challenged by a growing youth population, which leaders say will need a stable land base to practice and learn the nation’s culture.
Today, Saulteau, as with the neighbouring West Moberly First Nations, have deemed the Peace-Moberly Tract as an “area of critical community importance,” a swath of land south of the Peace River close to the community dotted with hunters’ and trappers’ cabins.
It’s a piece of land they cling to dearly as industrial development muscles its way in for a piece of the region’s supply of coal, timber and shale gas. Testimony after testimony Tuesday highlighted the threats and ever-restricting access that development places on dwindling food and plant stocks Saulteau members rely on for food.
Indeed, industrial development has been so heavy in the region, Saulteau’s treaty and lands department says it can’t keep up with referrals. It’s received some 160 coal tenures this year alone, and there are more than 175 investigative use permits for wind farm development.
“We’re constantly overwhelmed,” said band lands manager Naomi Owens.
All the development hasn’t been kind to Saulteau, said elder Doris Ronnenberg.
She noted the construction of W.A.C. Bennett dam in the 1960s destroyed the social fabric of the Saulteau community. Promised with the prospect of work, band members only got that work near the end of construction, while overseas workers preyed on women and introduced drugs and alcohol into the community, she said.
“The dam, it was not progress for us. It was the beginning of the end,” she said.
Elder Della Owens says life in the community has changed much since industry has rushed in, leading to ever increasing isolation, alienation and loss of culture and traditional values.
Construction of two previous dams on the Peace River have “deeply affected” wildlife migration routes, polluted important rivers and tributaries relied on for fishing, flooded out ecosystems flush with medicinal and edible plants, and scarred the river valley with landslides and erosion, she said, and Site C will exacerbate those same impacts.
“Every working day, Saulteau First Nations is being bombarded from outside resources who want to extract from our pristine land,” Owens said. “How can I teach my children to make dry meat, pick berries or what is an edible and medicinal plant when, in the future, there will be no moose, no berries, no plants to pick?
“We will have nothing for our future generation to learn from,” she said.
BC Hydro has acknowledged the wide range of impacts on Saulteau and other First Nations’ ability to exercise their treaty rights if Site C proceeds.
Trevor Proverbs, BC Hydro’s director of First Nations engagement for Site C, said BC Hydro began consultation with Saulteau in 2007 through the Treaty 8 Tribal Association. However, Saulteau broke off from those joint consultations in 2010, and the two parties have met more than 45 times since.
Proverbs repeated the same list of mitigation and compensation measures it has offered to West Moberly First Nations: a number of wildlife and fish habitat compensation measures, including the “reclamation and enhancement” of wetland habitat and “contouring shoreline sites” to create productive fish habitat; working with the province to designate ungulate winter ranges in the region; monitoring mercury levels in fish stocks and supporting an indigenous plant nursery operated by the Saulteau and West Moberly nations.
It would also remove an existing 138-kilovolt transmission line, offer up Crown land transfers and establish a database of edible and medicinal plants in the area, with the intent to relocate those plants to another site. It would also involve the band in training and contracting opportunities during the dam’s construction, Proverbs said.
Saulteau leadership has so far taken a neutral stance on the project. Chief Harley Davis says the community will vote on whether to accept the compensation measures BC Hydro has proposed.
Councillor Tammy Watson commended Hydro for the work it has undertaken on the project, noting the “hard, hard task” they have had in developing the project and moving it forward.
“I’ve seen the real truth in your emotions,” she said. “It’s not just your job that you're doing. You know that we are people. That’s real relationship-building, when we have this hard thing to consider and work out together.”
Public hearings continue Wednesday and Thursday in McLeod Lake and Prince George, before resuming in January. The panel will issue its report to the provincial and federal governments by spring.
