Condensed comments by Chief Councillor Crystal Smith of the Haisla Nation, in an interview by Edward Greenspon on the WONK podcast from the Public Policy Forum:
- On life at the Nation’s Kitamaat Village:
We have approximately 2,000 Haisla members that reside here, on and in our community, and others that reside elsewhere like Vancouver, Vancouver Island and other areas of British Columbia. Our community is definitely one that fosters our culture, our language, our identity. Our members are very passionate about who they are. We are a very close-knit community when it comes to family and being supportive of one another.
I was so fortunate to grow up with my grandparents. I never would have thought that I was growing up in poverty, just simply because of how well they provided and ensured that my sister and I and my younger siblings were very well taken care of. But when I look back now in comparison to what my two girls have today, it is a very, very drastic difference in regards to how I grew up.
The difference from what I had back then, to what my girls have, is so much opportunity, unlimited opportunity; what we’re able to accomplish with the programs and services that we are able to offer today. My girls and my grandsons can be and do whatever they want. And our nation can help support them to be truly successful.
We’ve built a state-of-the-art health facility in our community. We’ve built a 23-unit apartment complex. And this is all to meet the needs of our people today. We are just getting going.
It is going to be absolutely tremendous to see what the needs of our people in 20 years are going to be, to see what our leadership in 20 years is going to do to ensure that our people are taken care of and supported. And what I hope in 20 years is that our culture is well and surviving and that our people can speak fluent Haisla.
- On becoming a councillor and elected chief councillor:
I came to the Nation in about 2008-2009 and had just come off of an internship with Rio Tinto. (Rio Tinto has operated an aluminium smelter and the Kemano Powerhouse at Kitimat since 1954.) I spent about three or four years being the executive assistant to our leadership.
And it was actually a very pivotal moment in our Nation’s time in our history. In 2009, we had signed our first impact-benefit agreement as Rio Tinto Alcan was going through their modernization project. And as the wheels of the economic vehicle, that we’ve been on since, started turning, then there was a change in our leadership.
Our chief councillor in 2011 was Ellis Ross. I then became his executive assistant. And through that, and seeing how passionate and how daring he was for wanting change in our community, I actually took the plunge and ran in the 2013 election, in which I was successful, becoming a councillor
And then in 2016, Ellis decided that he would move on and become the MLA for our region, which left the chief councillor vacant.
Part of the reason why I wanted to become a part of our leadership was actually hearing Ellis speak at an event in Vancouver. He spoke about the opportunities that our people didn’t have in existence and how we, for generations, have tried to look to different levels of government. He described it as a fight to get our people what they deserved in terms of programs and services and improving quality of life.
And in that speech, he had spoken about how we were finding our way through economic development and becoming a part of more solutions and having actual conversations with proponents that were proposing projects for our territory and how we essentially saw hope through that.
That was actually what sparked me to become a part of our leadership, so that I could participate in helping that dream become a reality. And it has definitely, definitely been a journey in itself. Many, many ups and downs in regards to our participation within the LNG and economic development in our territory.
- On LNG development on Haisla territory
LNG actually started way before LNG Canada in our territory. We own a parcel of reserve land across the Douglas Channel on the west side that we refer to as Bish Cove. Our people, the leadership, in the ’80s actually did a community referendum process with our membership to designate that parcel of land as an economic development site. And it was actually a facility that was proposed as an import facility of LNG.
Now, of course, the discussions have changed to export facilities, not import facilities, the LNG Canada project.
Through impact-benefit conversations, our consulting team thought if we’re going to help support these projects become successful, why can’t we be owners of one? We thought, it’s a no brainer. Let’s see where we can take this.
And so the concept of Cedar LNG a majority Indigenous-owned project, the largest in Canadian history, was born. (The Cedar LNG project is under development as a Haisla Nation partnership [50.1%] with Pembina Pipeline Corporation [49.9%].)
Our Haisla law is called our ‘Nuuyum,’ And from a very young age, we were taught to look after our territory, to look after our world, our environment, protect it. And essentially, I believe that when we’re supporting LNG projects, we’re supporting taking care of the environment in a global perspective.
- On LNG Canada and its final investment decision to go ahead at Kitimat
I sat in my room and cried, thinking our community will never be the same. I think that’s probably something good to cry about. I’ve spoken a lot, passionately, about what it was like personally for me.
We went through the rollercoaster ride with LNG Canada where we were building the momentum up to their FID and then in, I believe it was 2015, 2016, where they actually let us know that they were delaying their final investment decision. They were delaying it because of a numerous amount of different impacts and that they were going to be delaying it for about two years.
And at that time, all the work that we had done up to that point literally came to a stall. And when they told us that the final investment decision was going to be delayed, I’ll never forget that feeling. I’ll never forget the look on Ellis’s face.
The only way I can describe it is that a community member or somebody close to you had passed away. It felt that devastating.
- Aren’t Indigenous people opposed to such developments?
You’re getting that depiction because it sells the headlines. You’re not seeing the great work that has been done along the Coastal GasLink pipeline. You’re not getting the stories of our community members gaining meaningful employment, meaningful careers from this one project.
It’s a sensationalism. It’s a very small minority group. I have felt that backlash personally. However, I felt very passionate about what these projects meant, not just for my community, not just for my daughters and my grandchildren, but what it meant for the 19 other nations along the pipeline and the two to three other nations down the channel of what this economic development project meant for our community.
I have numerous families that have been provided opportunities on the LNG Canada and Coastal GasLink projects, to the point where I’ve seen my younger sister purchase a home even before she was 30, where I’ve seen my nephew who worked on the Coastal GasLink project provide his family a home well under the age of 25.
Where we’re going to see future generational changes is when it comes to the education levels in our communities. We’re going to see our culture and our language become revitalized in our community to the point that we’re going to have very, very strong, very independent and very proud Haisla members that know who they are, know where they come from and have that strength re-instilled in them.
We are definitely supporting the largest amount of post-secondary students that our nation has ever seen. We’re able to provide supports for tutoring, we’re able to provide supports for daycare that will remove every barrier necessary to ensure that our people are successful.
- Listen to the full interview: https://ow.ly/rgut50UPP1Y
