Canada sees ‘opportunity’ in these mines. Alaskans see a threat.
METLAKATLA, Alaska — In rugged northwestern British Columbia, Canada sees “a generational opportunity.” The region holds an estimated $1 trillion in gold and minerals critical to building clean energy technologies as Ottawa and Washington fret about China’s dominance in the sector.
Neighbors in Alaska see an existential threat.
Several working or planned mines are near rivers that run across the border into Alaska. Those that have been tested in recent years have met U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Alaska water-quality standards. But Indigenous people, environmentalists and lawmakers here, recalling a history of contamination and calamity, fear that the mines of B.C.'s Golden Triangle could bring new pollution.
Native groups, whose ancestral lands span both sides of the Alaskan and B.C. border, worry that pollutants from the mines could imperil ways of life that have sustained their people for generations. Several tribes in Alaska are asking Ottawa to recognize them as Aboriginal peoples of Canada. The status would give them more say over mining on the other side of a line drawn across their ancestral lands by a colonial power.
I don't get the washington post and it would not allow me to copy the rest of the storey so you will have look it up. Very interesting , the tribes in Alaska are heating things up. I do hold stock in the Golden Triangle and i hope this doesn't end up court where it stalls everything.