MiningPanel

May 2 2025

Panel Discussion: Indigenous Governance and Salmon

Indigenous Governance and Salmon

Transformative Mining and Alternatives Panel

The fourth and final panel on mining in the Yukon, focused on how salmon advocacy, governance, and relationships intersect with extractive industries.

This panel was held on April 24th, 2025 with panelists Dawna Hope (Chief, First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun), Nicole Rondeau (former Chief, Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation), and Nuri Frame (Managing Partner, Pape Salter Teillet LLP). The information shared in this panel remains the intellectual property of the knowledge holder and is being shared graciously for this panel session. You may not reshare or use this information without express consent by the knowledge holder. For inquires to share this information, please email jared.gonet@gmail.com.

“Ultimately, we have cars, we have computers, we’re a part of society and the future. Our kids go to schools and we have modern lives. We also know that things can be done in a better way, and we should really start respecting our resources for the true value that they are and not just for a small handful to make millions upon millions to leave us and our future generations with the cleanup and the cost of those cleanups. Those are toxic generational legacies that we need to [stop], leave behind.”

— Dawna Hope, Chief of the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun

“I work with Indigenous governments across the country and in my experience, Indigenous governments are never anti-development as a bottom-line position. It’s always about development done in a responsible way.”

— Nuri Frame, Managing Partner, Pape Salter Teillet LLP

““[UNDRIP] is something that should be celebrated across the world, UNDRIP and the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and here we are in the Yukon and it doesn’t seem like a celebration. It doesn’t seem embraced. You wouldn’t hear about it and that again has brought disappointment to me on what is occurring.”

— Nicole Rondeau, former Chief of Little Salmon/Carmacks First Nation

“There’s government and there’s governance. As Indigenous Peoples we have our traditional governance and it comes with original agreements. And these original agreements are various across all the different peoples. Us, as Little Salmon/Carmacks, we have original agreements with the salmon in which we were given the direction and responsibilities to follow. If all of these responsibilities were followed by other cultures, we wouldn’t be in the state that we are with the salmon.”

— Nicole Rondeau, former Chief of Little Salmon/Carmacks First Nation

“The Final Agreements that we have today, they were a collaboration to make sure that all Yukoners on a whole have the ability to contribute to what the Yukon means to [them] and develop it the way that local people need and want to see within those areas.”

— Dawna Hope, Chief of the First Nation of First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun

“So much of the discourse you hear in this country from people who are resistant to reconciliation, who are resistant to seeing Indigenous governments be empowered stewards seems to presume that when Indigenous people are given real stewardship and jurisdiction over their lands, development will grind to a halt. And I think that’s such an unfortunate misunderstanding.”

— Nuri Frame, Managing Partner, Pape Salter Teillet LLP

Transformative Mining and Alternatives is a series of four public, virtual panels with thinkers and leaders from across the Yukon and beyond to ask: How can we transform mining to ensure disasters such as the Eagle Mine failure never happen again? What are the alternatives to resource economies?

Supported by CPAWS Yukon, To Swim and Speak with Salmon, and Research from the Front Lines. Organized by Jared Gonet (Director, To Swim and Speak with Salmon, Faculty in Indigenous Governance and Science at Yukon University and PhD candidate at University of Alberta), Caitlynn Beckett (PhD Candidate at Memorial University), and Krystal Isbister (PhD candidate at University of Alberta and Yukon University); all of whom do research on mining or land relations in the Yukon.

Quotes edited for length and clarity.

Other panels in the series

Panel Discussion: Mining on Unceded Territories

Panel Discussion: Alternatives to Mining

Panel Discussion: Future of Mining in the Yukon

Panel Discussion: Indigenous Governance and Salmon

April 17 2025

Panel Discussion: Future of Mining in the Yukon

CPAWS Yukon Blog MiningPanel

Future of Mining in the Yukon

Transformative Mining and Alternatives Panel

Explore how Indigenous Nations can direct how mining happens on their traditional territories and how mining fits within other land-use and land-relationship priorities.

This panel was held on April 10th, 2025 with panelists Jamie Kneen (Co-Manager, MiningWatch Canada), Gùdia MJ Johnson, (Lhù’ààn Mân Ku Dan Elder), and Keyshawn Sawyer (Youth Counsellor, Selkirk First Nation). It was moderated by Jared Gonet and Caitlynn Beckett. The information shared in this panel remains the intellectual property of the knowledge holder and is being shared graciously for this panel session. You may not reshare or use this information without express consent by the knowledge holder. For inquires to share this information, please email jared.gonet@gmail.com.

“One week after Kluane First Nation signed their land claim and final agreements for self-government, this area was full of helicopters. We had helicopters flying from in the morning until it was dark at night. Everywhere you went out on the land, there was a peg and a red flag everywhere, right up to any protected areas boundaries. This was right through this whole landscape that is a homeland, not only homeland for the 2-legged, but the 4-legged, the finned, the winged, the rooted. We have seen mining in this area here [since] 1907.”

— Gùdia MJ Johnson, Lhù’ààn Mân Ku Dan Elder

“In our final agreements it states [under current legislation] that these claims are put forward and will prevail over the rights and interests of Indigenous people in the Yukon. That’s why with the chiefs and workshop that we’ve had there was a lot of good discussions of how we should carry this forward, implement rights into this new legislation, and really give more power to the indigenous people that are affected by these claims.”

— Keyshawn Sawyer, Selkirk First Nation

“I think one of the only ways that mining really does benefit people is if it creates that secondary layer of expertise, knowledge, and training so that people have skills that are transferable, that help build the whole community. Not just operate a mine, [but] go beyond machinery operators [so] you start getting engineers and tradespeople that can do other things that are helpful.”

— Jamie Kneen, MiningWatch Canada

“Mining needs to fit into land relationship. Not only the relationship of people and the value that people place on the land, but you need to look at the value that caribou place on the land. Where are they raising their young? Where are they wintering. Where is the salmon coming from? How far do the salmon? All the different species of salmon that come up into the water system right up and through to the headwaters, where are there significant areas that we just can’t touch?”

— Gùdia MJ Johnson, Lhù’ààn Mân Ku Dan Elder

“If land use planning is built from the community level, then it responds to those [on the ground] priorities. It responds to those concerns. It’s not responding to outside demands. It’s not responding to international trade pressures. It’s following the land. It’s following the flow of the water and the animals . I think that’s really the key. People have to be working on those decisions from a position of strength. We can talk about free, prior informed consent, but to make to make decisions in your own best interest… [mining] has to be only one of the choices. It can’t be the only escape from poverty, the only escape for development in a region or in a community before we can start making those decisions properly. ”

— Jamie Kneen, MiningWatch Canada

“First Nations young people need to be engaged. They need to be the land monitors. They need to have indigenous monitoring for fisheries, for the rivers turning orange because of the mineralization of [melting] permafrost. The young people do not have to be the workers — they need to be cared for and looked after because they are the future stewards on this land. It is our generation that has to make sure [of] the ability of the next generation to care for the land with the same kind of magnitude of generational care, rather than [being] only one generation that strips this land and all we leave is reclamation for the next two or three decades, for generations to pay for one generation to benefit from that land”

— Gùdia MJ Johnson, Lhù’ààn Mân Ku Dan Elder

“I’m doing my duty as a First Nations leader to really push forward and try to create better mining because we do need mining. Even citizens and Yukoners we can all contribute to these things just by being involved and getting to know the company, trying to understand what mining is. Just you as an individual can make a lot of change just by knowing more about what’s going on in your traditional territory, being at those community meetings, the engagement sessions to put your input in to the company so that they can possibly change their ways of thinking in the long term.”

— Keyshawn Sawyer, Selkirk First Nation

“Each Nation has to pursue legal controls in its own territory, apparently because governments won’t just do what the Supreme Court says needs to be done. That’s with respect to Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution [which is] about consulting and accommodating Indigenous peoples [but] not about free, prior, informed consent or honouring Canada’s commitment to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples… For communities it’s kind of a struggle to regain any semblance of control over what happens within the territory, because legal interest has already been given away by the government.”

— Jamie Kneen, MiningWatch Canada

“First Nations have to do that continually. We’re always having to go to court about something. We’re taking our knowledge systems and getting them tested in colonial laws that don’t even have an understanding of the depth and the magnitude of that law in caring for that land”

— Gùdia MJ Johnson, Lhù’ààn Mân Ku Dan Elder

“With Minto this bigger mining company Capstone came in, took the back strap and the most valuable copper out of out of that mountain, and then sold it to another, a junior mining company [Pembridge] that just started up… Company greed that can really get to these companies, especially small junior mining companies. In my perspective, they should not be able to hold a major mine like that. They don’t have the deep pockets to adequately fund a project. They’re kind of in there just to take what they can get out and go find the next new project.”

— Keyshawn Sawyer, Selkirk First Nation

“There are some [mining companies] who are starting from a position of real collaboration with communities and with nations. [But] the system as it is doesn’t work for that because they can’t compete with the cowboys. While they’re sitting down with the leadership of the Nation and talking about what areas are suitable for mining, where they should be staking their claims, and where they should do their exploration, someone else has already gone in and staked the claim.”

— Jamie Kneen, MiningWatch Canada

“[Mining] could be harmful to our people if we’re not in a right or the right space. If we’re being thrown all these types of dollars for royalty, but we have a drug crisis going on right now, we have a housing crisis. We have all these issues that are arising and depleting the mental health of our people. What’s that money gonna do for us? To put a company forward to consider those things, yeah they’re going to fall off their chair. They’re not going to be able to really understand what that means in the long-term”

— Keyshawn Sawyer, Selkirk First Nation

“Sharing knowledge between communities, between First Nations, between governments is what will enrich the sustainability of the mining businesses, mining sectors, and the mining economy that much of the Yukon continues to base itself on. This kind of sharing is essential, not just for our decision-making right now, but for the generations ahead. We need to continue to look to seven generations ahead and their abilities to be able to sustain themselves within that kind of economy. We need to make sure that we share these kinds of challenges, these kinds of potential solutions. If we don’t share, then continually each one of us is going to try it and fail. Try it and fail. Rather, we [should] bring it all together and strengthen our way forward.

— Gùdia MJ Johnson, Lhù’ààn Mân Ku Dan Elder

“Maybe mining isn’t an all or nothing game but more of a question of where and when and how, and being able to say, ‘No.’”

— Caitlynn Beckett, Memorial University

Quotes edited for length and clarity.

Other panels in the series

Panel Discussion: Mining on Unceded Territories

Panel Discussion: Alternatives to Mining

Panel Discussion: Future of Mining in the Yukon

Panel Discussion: Indigenous Governance and Salmon

March 31 2025

Panel Discussion: Alternatives to Mining

CPAWS Yukon Blog MiningPanel

Alternatives to Mining

Transformative Mining and Alternatives Panel

There’s a lot of focus on the economic need for mining in the Yukon, with little attention paid to alternative economies and investment opportunities. Hear more about alternatives to extraction in the Yukon.

This panel was held on March 25th, 2025 as part of a series of four public, virtual panels with thinkers and leaders from across the Yukon and beyond to ask: How can we transform mining to ensure disasters such as the Eagle Mine failure never happen again? What are the alternatives to resource economies?

Panelists included Helaina Moses (First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun), Steve Ellis (MakeWay), Teri-Lee Issac (Tutchone Tours), Jani Djokic (Na-Cho Nyäk Dun Development Corporation). Moderated by Jared Gonet (To Swim and Speak with Salmon).

“If more money was invested in renewable energy, this could be promoting ecotourism and supporting sustainable industries in the Yukon. It could really reduce its reliance on the mining resources economy”

— Teri-Lee Issac, Tutchone Tours

“I get to look at everything as an economic ecosystem, as a whole — taking a lot of those principles of circular economies and from a community resilience standpoint [to ask], how does each opportunity feed into each other? I think that is a path forward for a lot more sustainability if we are going to reduce our dependence on the mineral resource economy, knowing that there’s still a lot of volatility in some of the other alternative economic models and opportunities.”

— Jani Djokic, Na-Cho Nyäk Dun Development Corporation

“We see this trend in the Yukon of abandoned mines and companies just leaving their projects… It feels like it’s almost left to our responsibility. It feels like Indigenous governments are the ones pushing Yukon government for help, pushing Yukon government for more things to do the reclamation work. I see economic opportunities [there], maybe tree planting or even starting a native seed bank in the Yukon because mining companies do reclamation with out of province sourced seeds… As you look at project timelines, you don’t do reclamation until after the mine is closed, which I think is wrong, and a little backwards. We could be doing things a lot better when we talk about sustainable mining.”

— Helaina Moses, First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun Citizen

“My friend mused that actually northern Indigenous communities do a whole bunch of stuff really well, don’t need to build their capacity because they already do this stuff inherently well, extremely strong. Let’s build an economic model that suits what Indigenous Northern communities want to do, what they aspire to do and what they’re already really damn good at. It totally flips the script around. It’s our responsibility to build an economic model that suits the strengths and the assets that are already in our communities in the North.”

— Steve Ellis, MakeWay

“There’s an [extractive] economic model that’s ‘inherently’ good and ‘inherently’ right and northern Indigenous peoples and their communities are [treated] at a deficit to participate effectively. So, all the investment that’s made in the North is about capacity-building, training, and bringing especially Indigenous peoples from remote communities into that workforce. It’s certainly generated some wealth for some individuals and families, but it’s created also environmental problems, social problems, and so on.”

— Steve Ellis, MakeWay

“It’s very important to teach our youth the traditional lifestyle, and if they’re not Indigenous, just having them there. We live in the North, they gotta learn some survival skills on the land in case they have to turn back to the land if anything were to happen in this crazy world that we live in”

— Teri-Lee Issac, Tutchone Tours

“Bringing people together to do the reclamation, the work to heal the land is so important. It brings more healing in communities, because you bring back that reconnection to planting a tree or picking seeds. I feel like there’s a lot of interconnected things that could [arise] if we started a seeding project in the Yukon. We could also focus on medicines or berries. We would be improving food sovereignty for communities. It doesn’t just necessarily need to be trees and grass, we can Indigenize it and make it fun and build relationships with communities”

— Helaina Moses, First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun Citizen

“When we talk about ecotourism, that is an economy in itself. When we talk about restoration, that is an economy in itself. In our current overarching financial systems, at least here in Canada, those aren’t valued as economies. Those aren’t valued as assets. It has been very difficult for me in my role, working in a corporate structure where you have to go to the banks for financing, and you’re constantly having to fight against: But where’s the building? How much is the building worth? How much is the equipment worth? And that’s not what we’re talking about…there are so many other indicators that we need to start developing. We’re only going to do that through partnership and at the local level, to figure out what is it on a very local level that matters and have that feed up into the financial systems that exist.”

— Jani Djokic, Na-Cho Nyäk Dun Development Corporation

“There’s programs and services in tourism that you could really look up [as an] entrepreneur. That’s what really triggered me to start my business, although I had that idea in the back of my mind for 10 years. After taking a 10 month training in tourism, I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to do this…’ Yukon First Nations also just came out with a land-based grant to do on the land-based camp. So I was able to tap into that… I just feel like there’s a lot of support for especially Indigenous tourism”

— Teri-Lee Issac, Tutchone Tours

Quotes edited for length and clarity.

Other panels in the series

Panel Discussion: Mining on Unceded Territories

Panel Discussion: Alternatives to Mining

Panel Discussion: Future of Mining in the Yukon

Panel Discussion: Indigenous Governance and Salmon

March 11 2025

Panel Discussion: Mining on Unceded Territories

CPAWS Yukon Blog, Uncategorized MiningPanel

Mining on Unceded Territories

Transformative Mining and Alternatives Panel

As Yukon mineral legislation is being re-written, explore the history and future of mining on unceded Indigenous Lands in the Yukon.

This panel was held on March 6th, 2025 as part of a series of four public, virtual panels with thinkers and leaders from across the Yukon and beyond to ask: How can we transform mining to ensure disasters such as the Eagle Mine failure never happen again? What are the alternatives to resource economies?

Panelists included Testloa Smith (Kaska Elder), Josh Barichello (Ross River Dena Council Lands Department), Ann Maje Raider (Kaska Elder, Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society), Linda McDonald (Liard First Nation, Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society), and Hammond Dick (Kaska Elder). Moderated by Caitlynn Beckett (Memorial University) and Jared Gonet (Yukon University).

“Our land, we say, is unceded. It means no treaty, and we still maintain that today. [This] does bring the government to our table. It does bring industry to our table. But they have a process, YESAB, which is legislated to look at how projects are being developed and permitted to become a mine. Because of the time they have slotted to do their assessment there seems to be a big gap [in] what our nation understands about the land, about the animals, about the water, and about all the plants. Traditional knowledge has to be incorporated into these discussions. They’ve tried to, but still they’re not getting [it in] the ways that we wanted to see.”

— Testloa Smith, Kaska Elder

“Back in 2014, the Kaska Nation challenged Yukon government’s free entry into their mining claims and the claims [that] were staked by exploration companies without consultation, because it was adversely affecting aboriginal rights and titles and interests. To date, we’re pushing hard to make sure that any mining companies that have an interest in setting up shop in our traditional territory [are] going to be faced with that prospect of consultation and accommodation. We’re out there, and we’re quite observant about what’s going on.”

— Hammond Dick, Kaska Elder

“For the most part [the people who are there developing the land], they’re from all over the world, or from other parts of the world, whereas Kaska people and other people are living there. The word Kēyeh, for example, I believe comes from the word ‘foot’ or ‘boot’. We’ve walked on the land, we know the land, our ancestors knew the land, and that’s the relationship to the land. There’s a huge difference just in the perspective and the respect for the land.”

— Linda McDonald, Liard First Nation, Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society

“If you’re being compensated for something, is that, in a way, just an easy way for the mining companies and governments to [get] a green light to do the damage in the first place… How are you going to compensate for a caribou herd? What kind of dollar figure are you going to put on that?”

— Linda McDonald, Liard First Nation, Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society

“The mining companies and legislation do not allow looking at the gender-based analysis when it comes to mining and looking at perpetrators of violence coming into these mining camps. What’s not factored in YESAB is the cultural relevance, the social relevance of mining, what happens to our community, the addictions. None of that is factored. It’s time we look at YESAB and we look at mining legislation that really does protect our lands and our rights to the land.”

— Ann Maje Raider, Kaska Elder, Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society

“I think what has been happening in our territory is that they’ve been stomping on our aboriginal rights and title because they know we don’t have the money. They come and stomp more, [like] the most recent decision with a mine in our backyard. You know our people are saying no. But they don’t want to listen because it means money in the back pockets of government… Our people still live in poverty. The mines come and go, and who’s left with the toxins? We are. Our land is precious to us as it was to our ancestors, but they don’t want to hear [that], so our only recourse is always courts.”

— Ann Maje Raider, Kaska Elder, Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society

“When I listen to many stories of what happened during the land claims discussions, [there’s] rationale for that powerful decision that Kaska made. There were many reasons, but one thing that I hear again and again, is that dividing the land, putting boundaries and borders, and treating different lands differently, was a challenging thing to reconcile for those elders who had a responsibility to all of their territory, to all of their land. Cede, release, and surrender became part of crown lands, the lands that were not chosen to be settlement lands, [and that] was hard to reconcile.”

— Josh Barichello, Ross River Dena Council Lands Department

“They have applications to go and make their trail, to go and drill further on the same area as the [proposed BMC mine]. Now we say the same thing as [with] the mine. We say we got concerns about the caribou, about the water, about our plants, and our gophers, our small animals that we harvest. Yet [they] say you guys are talking about mine permitting, we’re talking about drilling. But it’s the same area, the same concept, the same thing. That’s what really frustrates us. That’s why you hear about colonialism, of things that they try to separate… Our people understand water goes out past the footprint; the animals go past the footprint of the mine.”

— Testloa Smith, Kaska Elder

“The Lands Department, especially in the context without a final agreement, are so underfunded and don’t have the mechanisms that came from the UFA to really get involved in the same way, and so everybody else sort of has a leg up in terms of their ability to engage. At the same time, we’ve been bombarded, absolutely suffocated with all these outside interests. If you look at a map of mineral claims in the Ross River part of the Kaska Nation, I think it’s about 16% of the area has been staked, the rocks have been given away with no treaty on unceded land, with no Kaska consent, or very little consultation in many cases.”

— Josh Barichello, Ross River Dena Council Lands Department

Supported by CPAWS Yukon, To Swim and Speak with Salmon, and Research from the Front Lines. Organized by Jared Gonet (Faculty in Indigenous Governance and Science at Yukon University and PhD candidate at University of Alberta), Caitlynn Beckett (PhD Candidate at Memorial University), and Krystal Isbister (PhD candidate at University of Alberta and Yukon University); all of whom do research on mining or land relations in the Yukon.

Quotes edited for length and clarity.