Wednesday, September 30, 2026

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Photo courtesy Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc

Canadian political leaders are condemning a white nationalist demonstration on Indigenous land in British Columbia as “despicable”.

As Dan Karpenchuk reports, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are now investigating the incident.

The group displayed a sign near a former Residential school that appeared to question the existence of children’s remains.

Their demonstration took place on land belonging to the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc reserve near Kamloops.

Police were called and members of the group, wearing masks, moved on through the city of Kamloops.

Police officials say they take the matter seriously and are investigating.

British Columbia is in the middle of a provincial election campaign and New Democratic party leader David Eby condemned the demonstration as disgusting.

“This isn’t who we are as British Columbians. And we have seen a rise in hate, we have a rise in this kind of white nationalist behaviour in the province. So we got to do more to fight it.”

The province’s Conservative party leader Lorne Doerkson also voiced is disapproval.

“What happened yesterday, it was appalling and I hope that our law enforcement does everything they can, and everything that is available to them, to make sure that events like that do not happen in our province.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney called the demonstration both cowardly and abhorrent adding that it had no place in this country.

In a statement, Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosaenne Casimir said it was deeply concerning. She said the safety and well being of band members is a priority, adding that her people had a right to feel safe in their homes and in their community.

According to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, a white nationalist group called The Second Sons views violence as necessary and inevitable to defend their movement, attack opposition, and ethnically cleanse Canada.

The draft of a supplemental report for the possible environmental impact of Alaska’s proposed Donlin Gold Mine was released for public comment this week.

A federal court judge last year required the mine project to reexamine some of those impacts, particularly a larger spill scenario.

KYUK’s Samantha Watson reports on its findings.

The 2025 court order hinged on the possible environmental impact of the dam that would hold back waste from the proposed Donlin Gold mine project, called a tailings dam.

Donlin Gold plans for the construction of a dam taller than the great pyramid of Giza, with capacity to contain millions of tons of production waste.

It has been a focal point for regional opposition to the mine. Many locals have expressed fear about the possible contamination of the nearby land, communities, and the Kuskokwim River should that dam leak, or fail.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers examined potential environmental impacts of the project to inform the federal permitting process. The agency’s 2018 environmental assessment of the project, which was used to permit the proposed mine. modeled a spill of just 0.5% of the tailings dam’s contents.

But Bethel’s Orutsararmiut Native Council argued in federal court that the Army Corps should have considered the chance of a much larger spill. A federal judge agreed on that point.

This week, a draft of that court-ordered report was released for public comment. It examines a spill of 27% of the dam’s contents into the land and waterways surrounding the mine site on the middle Kuskokwim River.

In that catastrophic scenario, the Army Corps’ draft report says a spill could devastate fish habitats and aquatic activity in Crooked Creek, a community about ten miles from the proposed mine site, for decades.

Thousands of acres of wetlands and streams would be buried or eroded.

A spill that large would expose the people in Crooked Creek to contaminants, potentially displace members of the community, or even kill people, the report says.

Donlin Gold said in a written statement last Wednesday that it takes the report seriously.

The company also maintains that “the supplemental review does not mean the risk of a tailings release has increased, nor does it represent a change to the proposed tailings storage facility design.”

In a statement also released last Wednesday, the law firm Earthjustice, which represents tribal opposition to the proposed mine, said that the supplemental environmental review still falls short.

They argue that 27% is still a small percentage of what could be released. They want to see modifications to the design of the tailings dam.

The draft report now enters a 30-day comment period.

 

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Wednesday, September 30, 2026 — The Menu: Blue corn children’s book and a new Native pastry shop