Editorial prejudged Prosperity mine
Thursday Apr 30, 2009
Re: your editorial "Campbell's Prosperity support welcome."
I am not opposed to mining per se, and I support sustained economic development; but I found your editorial in support of Campbell's comments disturbing. Weeks before the environmental assessment hearings, without any evidence yet in, you have prejudged the mine as beneficial for this area.
It seems to me that your editorial prejudiced the situation in favour of businesses in Williams Lake, and against a fair hearing for other legitimate stakeholders. Tsilhqot'in heritage is a case in point.
Although Campbell may have toured the mine site with Prosperity Mine officials, there is much he could not possibly have been aware of in terms of the cultural significance of the area to Tsilhqot'in.
The area around the lake contains at least 11 graves (Prosperity lists only two in Vol. 7 of their EIS Report). There are at least a hundred significant known sites including house depressions and cache pits; one rare find (T3) is of such great scientific significance that Tyhurst (1993) identified it as one of only three like it in B.C..
This site contains microblades, house depressions, a cache pit, and faunal remains in close proximity, as well as one of the two grave sites located close to the proposed pit. The mining and proposed tailing area also contain one and perhaps two cremation sites; the last resting place of dozens of Tsilhqot'in ancestors.
The cremation sites alone render the area sacred to Tsilhqot'in. As an idea of how personal and traumatic the destruction of Fish Lake can be to Tsilhqot'in, there are elders living who are only two generations removed from some of the latest grave sites.
The destruction of Fish Lake is the cultural equivalent in Tsilhqot'in terms of taking a bulldozer to level Stonehenge to make way for a casino.
You mention $90 million having been spent by Taseko studying the mine project including wildlife, plants, water and consultation. But you do not mention what percentage of the $90 million was actually spent on consultation. In fact most of the consultation process as outlined in Vol. 7 of the Prosperity Report is confined to a list of e-mails. Much of the archaeology was done through flyovers of the proposed access corridor because of time restraints placed upon the archaeologists themselves.
Even so, the limited studies by archaeologists working for Taseko estimate that the areas around Fish Lake have been in continuous use for at least 7,000 years.
Considering this long record of occupancy how many other sites are as yet unrecorded? The cultural and heritage portion of the Prosperity presentation (Vol.7) is the least detailed, the least researched portion of the study, and is riddled with inaccuracies.
In short, it is scant in the scope and depth of its scientific research, and dismissive of the cultural value of the sites. Tsilhqot'in history has yet to be recorded. It is stored in the memories of the elders, and in thousands of unexcavated sites across their territory including those at Fish Lake.
In reading comments in your paper it sounds to me as if the deck has been stacked against the Tsilhqot'in. Perhaps a good article in your paper on the cultural and spiritual importance of Fish Lake would be a good step towards restoring some balance.
Carson Smith
Hanceville
