Miles Morrisseau
ICT
The salmon and ooligan that spawn in the Unuk River have no say in the expansion of the Red Chris copper and gold mine. Neither do the Alaskan tribes that live on the same river.
The power lies across the border in British Columbia, where the mining company, the provincial government, the Tahltan Nation and the Canadian government have joined forces in a modern-day gold rush.
The investment of a half-billion Canadian dollars supporting the expansion of the mine by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has heightened an international conflict between the Native peoples and others in southeastern Alaska and the First Nations people in Canada who support the project.
“This is all for the Unuk River,” said Cindy Wagner, Haida/Tsimshian, who lives downstream on the Annette Islands Reserve in Alaska, where she was born and raised.
“It’s a major salmon river, an ooligan spawning river, a mackeral spawning river,” Wagner told ICT, “and vital to southeast Alaska.”
Numerous attempts by ICT for comment from the Tahltan Nation were unsuccessful. Gordon Infantini, who handles media relations for the nation, responded to requests for interviews by stating that no one was available and that “ChatGPT could provide you all these answers real quick.”
A waterway in transition
On the American side of the border, tribes have been living with the impact of the mine for decades and have been fighting, to no avail, to stop the mine from expanding.
On June 19, however, the province of British Columbia approved the transition of the Red Chris mine from an open-pit mine to a block cave mine that would largely be underground. On July 2, the Canadian government approved the funding support.
The Tahltan Nation in British Columbia has signed on with the mine’s owners and operators, Newmont Corporation and Imperial Metals, and will look for profits and opportunity to roll in for the life of the mine, which experts pin at just over a decade.
The outlook is not as rosy downstream. The Annette Islands Reserve of the Metlakatla Alaska Native Community is Alaska’s only reservation, with other Native lands transferred to Alaska Native Corporations under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA.
The reserve sits on the pristine Alexander Archipelago about 250 miles south of Juneau.
Wagner has lived off the river for most of her life, and in recent years has been defending the water against mining development in Canada.
“I have always been fishing, even as a child,” she said. “My parents brought us out, all four of us, on a little 35-foot boat … I met my husband. The first time I helped him was down on his brother’s boat. He was selling ooligan and he didn’t have anyone to help him, and so I helped him.”
The Unuk River is part of the transboundary watershed, a collection of rivers, streams and tributaries including the Stikine, Taku and Salmon rivers that flow south from British Columbia into Alaska and then on to the Pacific Ocean. The watershed is crucial spawning grounds for salmon and other fish, and provides sustenance to Indigenous people and others along the river.
Wagner and her husband Louie Wagner Jr. had always watched the water and taken note of how clean and deep it was, and how the fish changed in appearance and in number. Then, in 1999, they noticed that industrial waste was piling up in the low part of the river.
“We are way up this river,” Wagner said. “How does a rusted-up oil drum get this far? How does all this plastic and old tarps and old pallets get up here? This looks to be an important part where the moose stepped into the river to get across, and it’s blocked with junk.”
They eventually learned that construction was underway for the Red Chris mine across the border in Canada.
The fish noticed, too, she said.
“In about 2001, we started noticing the ooligan bypassing the Unuk River,” she said.
Ooligan are different from mackerel and salmon, which return to the waters where they were spawned. Ooligan go to where the water is best.
Wagner and her husband knew that the contaminants in the river were keeping the ooligan away, but also impacting the salmon and mackerel, which had nowhere else to go.
Dramatic escalation
The river was beginning to recover from construction of the open pit mine when a mining boom began on the Canadian side, in an area in northwest British Columbia called the “Golden Triangle.”
In 2022, two mines were in operation, BruceJack and Red Chris. But four mines were proposed, seven were under development and seven more exploration projects were underway, mostly to dig for gold, according to a provincial report on mines. The ore extracted from the ground is then processed to pull out the valuable gold and copper that it can contain.
Guy Archibald, executive director of the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission and a self-described “reformed miner,” said the transition from an open-pit mine to a block cave will mean a dramatic escalation involving hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, a controversial method also used for extracting natural gas.
The SEITC is a consortium of 13 Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian Nations that are “upholding their sovereign rights and defending the transboundary Stikine, Taku and Unuk Rivers from rapidly expanding mining development occurring in the Canadian headwaters.”
Archibald, an environmental chemist, has been with the commission since its inception in 2014. Before that, he worked in the uranium industry in southeastern Utah and the oil shale industry in western Colorado 1970s and 1980s, he said.
Archibald explained the process behind a block cave mine.
“They’ve mined out the ore body that’s closest to the surface, and in order to go deeper, they’re going to have to access it underground,” he said. “They’re going to drive a ramp underneath the ore body, and then … they’re going to fracture the ore body pretty much the same as they do hydraulic fracturing, fracking for natural gas.”
The crumbled ore falls into the ramp and is carted above ground, he said.
“They’re going to just start scooping it out from the bottom as this cavity, this cave, just naturally collapses in,” he said. “It’s just going to turn into a big crater in the earth, and that’s block cave mining.”
The practice is not new, but in the past miners would use drilling. With this project, they’ll use fracking.
“Block cave mining has been around for a long time,” Archibald said. “The only difference I see with the way Red Chris is doing it is by doing the hydraulic fracturing from the surface, drilling down and then pumping high pressure water into the ore body to break it up.”
The introduction of fracking to the block cave operation is a major concern to the SEITC. Officials say the mine can’t contain its current tailings, which already end up in the groundwater.
“The studies have been showing the tailings dam leaks into the groundwater 26 percent of its volume every year,” Archibald said. “Those tailings have to be constantly covered with water so that they don’t oxidize and turn acidic. We already have downstream pollution problems in groundwater and surface water … Using more water to frack this ore body is not going to help that situation.”
‘A critical step’
The Red Chris mine operation is a joint venture partnership between the Newmont Corporation, which owns 70 percent, and Imperial Metals, which owns 30 percent.
The Red Chris was one of 18 major projects named by Canada’s Major Projects Office, the new federal department created by the Carney government to push forward his “Build Canada Strong” strategy. The half-billion-dollar investment may be just the beginning.
“With the authorizations granted by the Province and the support of the Tahltan Nation, the stage has been set for the development of Red Chris into a Block Cave mine.” said Imperial President Brian Kynoch, following the approval of the British Columbia government. “These approvals are a critical step in advancing a final investment decision by the joint venture partnership … expected later this year.”
Newmont officials welcomed the news in a statement promising that not only would the project increase Canada’s copper production by an estimated 15 percent but that the infrastructure could be a hub for mining for decades.
“The project is expected to extend the life of the current Red Chris mine by approximately 14 years and sets the foundation for decades of potential additional mining,” Newmont stated. “It represents a significant opportunity to create long-term value for Newmont’s shareholders, strengthen critical mineral supply chains, and deliver long-term benefits for local communities, Indigenous partners, British Columbia, and Canada.”
Archibald sees it differently.
“Subsidizing the Red Chris just furthers the privatization of profit while transferring the risk on to the taxpayer,” he said. “If Newmont and Imperial Metals can’t afford their own infrastructure, what assurance do we have that adequate funds will be available for long-term tailings management, closure, and cleanup to protect the Stikine River for hundreds of years into the future?”
Looking ahead
Downstream, Wagner and her husband are seeing more and more boats hauling material north to the dam site. They can only imagine the size of the massive project based on the garbage that piles up in the river.
“The Stikine and the Taku are really big rivers and they have those airboats going up and down with freight,” Wagner said. “They are very loud and … they’re sucking in water and blowing it out the end, so anything in the way is going to get chewed up.”
Wagner has a message for the Tahltan Nation whose members will profit from the mine’s expansion.
“I think they should be more aware of what’s coming down the river, because it’s not staying up there on their territory,” Wagner said. “It’s coming down on my territory, my tribe’s territory, all southeast territory, and we have to deal with it.”
