Touting a reconciliation strategy of negotiation over litigation, BC government often chooses to advance the province’s struggling mining industry by offering rich settlements to Indigenous nations following closed-door dealings on land claims.
Rather than risk another loss in court, the province voluntarily ended its historic “free miner” program after a BC Supreme Court judge ruled in 2023 that prospector mineral claims require indigenous consultation before they can be issued. After winning that judgment, the Gitxaala Nation pressed on, with an appeal demanding that B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) be applied to all provincial laws.
Again, the Gitxaala won, this time to the apparent surprise of Premier David Eby and his attorney general, despite Eby having introduced the DRIPA-related laws referenced in the Gitxaala ruling. The province filed a notice to appeal the decision and the case is now headed for the Supreme Court of Canada.
Back in 2023 at the bargaining table, the Gitxaala took aim at the Yellow Giant gold mine property on Banks Island off the north coast, with its troubled history of tailings contamination from gold and silver processing, and bankruptcy that saw the original owner convicted of environmental offences.
By this time, the Yellow Giant mine had long been under new ownership. MCC Canadian Gold Ventures says it was invited in to clean up and restart the high-grade underground ore site during the term of former BC Liberal mines minister Bill Bennett. The company subsequently obtained a 10-year lease from the province in 2014.
After spending a decade and unspecified millions on engineering, environmental studies and other work, MCC was talking with the province in 2024 about renewing permits when it suddenly learned the site had a new name, according to a notice of claim filed by MCC against the government in the Supreme Court of BC on June 12.
Under two cabinet orders issued March 7, 2024, most of Banks Island became the Lax K’naga Sts’ool Mining Deferral Area. The declaration is similar to the series of old-growth forest deferral areas declared by the BC NDP government in recent years to prohibit logging on selected indigenous-claimed Crown lands.
Read the full article at Northern Beat: Mine operator sues BC government, alleges mineral rights revoked to appease Gitxaala.