August 22 (Iskut, BC): Members of the Iskut First Nation blockaded Royal Dutch Shell yesterday, preventing the company from gaining access to the Sacred Headwaters (Klappan) area to resume its coalbed methane project. The blockaders are opposed to Shell’s project because they fear it will damage their traditional territory, which they depend on for hunting and trapping.

First Nations elders from Iskut first evicted Shell from their territory in 2005. Shell cancelled last summer’s drilling program due to widespread opposition. Last month, 14 environmental groups including Greenpeace, Sierra Club, NRDC, and the David Suzuki Foundation sent a letter to Shell urging the company to back off its coalbed methane plan in the Sacred Headwaters. To view pictures from the blockade, click here.

By Merran Smith. Published: June 12, 2007, TheTyee.ca

When Royal Dutch Shell’s directors took the reins of Shell Canada earlier this month, they inherited a brewing resource conflict in a remote corner of British Columbia that bears a striking resemblance to Royal Dutch’s difficulties in other parts of the world. The setting is a remote alpine basin southeast of Dease Lake, where the shared origin of the Nass, Stikine and Skeena Rivers gives the area its local name: the Sacred Headwaters. A stunning, expansive wilderness, it is the territory of the Tahltan people, who have hunted and trapped there for generations. It also happens to be underlain by one of British Columbia’s largest potential coalbed methane deposits, to which Shell Canada — and now Royal Dutch Shell — holds drilling rights.

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Tuesday » September 12 » 2006. New northern mine worries natives. Great-grandmother arrested for joining blockade to stop ‘threat’. Ethan Baron The Province

A native great-grandmother has been arrested in a bid to stop B.C.’s first new metal mine in 10 years. BCMetals Corp. believes the Red Chris mine in northern B.C. contains almost a million tonnes of copper and 1.2 million ounces of gold. But Tahltan elder Lillian Moyer, 67, who was arrested Saturday, says the proposed open-pit operation south of Dease Lake would violate sacred ground, threaten traditional hunting land and ruin fisheries.

“The land means so much to our people,” Moyer said yesterday. “We don’t want to see any development up there because it is sacred land. I am doing what I can, with great feelings in my heart, to stick up for our rights and for the land, for the future generations of young children.” Members of the Tahltan set up a road blockade June 16 to keep BCMetals from driving heavy equipment through a fish-spawning creek. On Sept. 1, the company’s application in B.C. Supreme Court for an injunction to remove the protesters was granted.

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Native groups rally against mining in north By Mark Hume, Globe and Mail, Canada

VANCOUVER — First nations in northern British Columbia are banding together in a bid to get more control over resource development after a battle over a proposed coal mine near Dease Lake. After a weekend conference, several key native organizations in the north issued a joint statement yesterday at a rally outside the courthouse in Terrace, where a trial involving 15 Tahltan protesters was set to begin.

The trial was called off at the last minute, when the Crown dropped contempt-of-court charges against the Tahltan members, many of whom were elders. The native protesters blocked a mining access road for two months last summer despite an order from the Supreme Court of British Columbia not to interfere in the work being done by Fortune Minerals Ltd. The Ontario-based company wants to mine more than 200 million tonnes of coal near Mount Klappan, about 300 kilometres northeast of Prince Rupert.

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Tahltan Caravan Fundraiser Oct 25, 2005

Featuring: Leela Gilday, Manik, Lady Sincere, Sista Hailstorm, Stoneboy, Chief Ian Campbell. With Host Archer Pechawis and more local performers and guest speakers
El Cocal Restaurant. 1037 Commerical Drive, Occupied Coast Salish Territories (Vancouver, BC). Friday,October 28th,2005 at 8:00pm –Doors Open at 7:30 pm
Cost – Sliding Scale: $5 or more

In September 2005, 15 Tahltan Elders were arrested at Klappan Mountain in the struggle to protect the Sacred headWaters of the Stikine, Skeena and Nass Rivers. The Tahltan elders are in serious opposition to industrial development by Shell Oil and Fortune Minerals. The elders did this to protect their lands and people against Fortune Mineral’s open pit coal mine and Shell’s coalbed methane proposals. The Tahltan Elders and youth were arrested when an RCMP injunction was granted against the tahltan blockade.

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