West Moberly chief takes anti-Site C message on the road
West Moberly First Nation Chief Roland Willson is taking his anti-Site C message down south this week, with three speaking engagements in Victoria, Vancouver and Kamloops, respectively.
Willson will be joined by members of Amnesty International on the speaking tour, which is sponsored by the Peace Valley Environment Association, the Sierra Club of B.C., Amnesty International and the Western Canada Wilderness Committee.
Billed as "the gathering," these lectures will focus on Treaty 8 First Nations and land owners opposition to the Site C dam, focusing on a federal-provincial joint environmental review panel's findings that the project would cause impacts to First Nations lands that cannot be mitigated.
On Friday, a federal judge agreed that Treaty 8 will be able to argue against the dam in court this July.
The First Nations case centres around whether Site C would violate treaty rights. Those rights include the ability of First Nations people to hunt, trap and fish — which were guaranteed by the Crown when Treaty 8 was signed in 1899.
The Doig River, Prophet River and West Moberly First Nations, along with the McLeod Lake Indian Band, brought the case.
The $8.8 billion dam would flood 5,340 hectares of land, and provide enough power for 450,000 homes. The first major Site C contract, to build a camp for workers on the dam, was awarded in April.
