TL’ESQOX FIRST NATION—It was just after 6:30 a.m. and Cecil Grinder hadn’t slept. Standing next to a smouldering fire, he watched the trucks approaching from the east.
“I tried to get a few hours sleep, but I just couldn’t,” the Tl’etinqox First Nation councillor said, explaining that he was too nervous. Seventeen-year-old Syles Laceese joined him on the tarmac.
At the junction with Farwell Canyon Road, about 40 minutes outside of Williams Lake, B.C., a white pickup and a tractor-trailer towing a bulldozer slowed to a stop at Grinder’s command amid the rolling hills and cattle ranches of Tsilhqot’in traditional territory.
The trucks belonged to Taseko Mining Ltd., which announced plans in June to begin exploratory drilling at Teztan Biny, also known as Fish Lake. It’s preliminary work to pave the way for a $1.5-billion, open-pit gold and copper mine in the heart of Tsilhqot’in territory that the company has been pursuing for 25 years.
This meeting is the latest chapter in a long-running dispute between Taseko Mines, a Vancouver-based mining company, and the Tsilhqot’in National Government. The Tsilhqot’in see Taseko’s New Prosperity mine project as a direct threat to their way of life, jeopardizing food security and sacred land, which is critical to their survival.
For the rest of this article: https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2019/07/02/first-nation-halts-mining-companys-progress-in-fight-over-sacred-bc-lake.html