Above the Stikine River, the Canadian government is boosting a huge mining project you've probably never heard of

A major copper-and-gold mining project in the rugged mountains of northwestern British Columbia — upstream from a Southeast Alaska fishing town — is poised for a boost from the Canadian government.

Canada's department of natural resources last month announced that it plans to inject about $15 million U.S. into a massive copper and gold development just 25 miles from the Alaska border. The project is perched above tributaries of the Stikine River — a major salmon-bearing waterway that flows into Alaska's Inside Passage between the small towns of Wrangell and Petersburg.

The public funds would pay to build a key 27-mile stretch of road at Galore Creek, which is evenly owned by two major mining corporations, Teck and Newmont. The project is located within the traditional territory of the Tahltan First Nation.

Galore Creek sits on more than 600 square miles of mineral claims, including areas directly alongside the glacially fed Stikine.

The new government-funded road, providing access to a proposed processing site, "will help unlock the project and the broader region's substantial critical mineral potential," Bernard Wessels, an executive at Newmont, said in a prepared statement last month.

Canada's push to help Teck and Newmont unearth some 12 billion pounds of copper and 9 million ounces of gold at Galore Creek is part of a bigger effort by the country's federal government and British Columbia's provincial government to promote mining in the remote, largely roadless mountains near the Alaska border.

In the past three months, Canada and B.C. have announced that they're directing roughly $185 million toward mining-related infrastructure in the area. A good chunk of that money comes from a national $1 billion fund intended to boost production of minerals that Canadian officials have deemed critical for energy and national security.

The investments have added to concerns long held by Alaska Native leaders and conservationists who live and fish downstream of Galore Creek and other projects that are under development.

"Rather than honoring Indigenous sovereignty and its treaty obligations, Canada is staging our traditional homelands and waters to be the sacrifice zone to benefit the British Columbia mining industry and its shareholders," Richard Chalyee Éesh Peterson, president of Southeast Alaska's largest tribal government, the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, said in a statement to Northern Journal.

Multiple rivers in the region span the U.S.-Canada border, and tribal governments and environmental groups on Alaska's coast fear that new mines in northwest B.C. could pollute those rivers and harm lucrative and culturally vital fisheries. Concerns mounted over the summer after a cyanide spill at a major Canadian gold mine in the watershed of the Yukon River, Alaska's biggest transboundary waterway.

Following that spill, Alaska's congressional delegation sent a letter to the Biden administration urging the president to support "binding and enforceable international protections and financial assurances for any potential impacts in transboundary watersheds," including the Stikine.

But the letter stopped short of calling for some of the measures requested by Southeast Alaska tribes and advocates.

Those include a permanent ban on dams holding back mining waste above transboundary salmon-bearing rivers. They also include a temporary pause on mineral exploration, development, and permitting on the Canadian side of those watersheds until Canada and the U.S. reach an agreement on protections developed with Indigenous governments.

The tribally led Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission has said that Canada and B.C.'s regulatory systems don't adequately protect transboundary rivers and traditional lands — and that those governments have failed to obtain consent from Alaska tribes.

"This isn't something that they're building in some far-off area. It's literally in our backyard," Esther Aaltséen Reese said of Galore Creek. Reese is the commission's president and the administrator of the tribal government in Wrangell, the Wrangell Cooperative Association.

In addition to the Galore Creek road, Canada's federal government intends to spend money on highway upgrades and a study of power transmission lines linking northern B.C. and the Yukon Territory. That infrastructure is intended to support copper, molybdenum, nickel, cobalt, tungsten and zinc mining projects, according to Natural Resources Canada.

In particular, according to a spokesperson for the federal agency, the highway upgrades could aid seven mining projects in B.C. Those include Galore Creek; another big copper and gold project near the Stikine River called Schaft Creek; and KSM, an enormous proposed gold and copper mine in the transboundary Unuk River watershed, south of the Stikine.

The power line project, meanwhile, could support eight mining projects in various stages of development in the Yukon Territory, including a few in the transboundary Yukon River watershed. It could also benefit two more mineral developments in northern B.C., according to the agency.

Natural Resources Canada says the highway project would also boost public safety by widening shoulders, creating new pullouts and expanding Wi-Fi access on three roads in northwest B.C.

Those improvements have been endorsed by representatives of several First Nations in the region - including the Tahltan, whose traditional land covers a large swath of northwest B.C.

But the Tahltan Nation also wants to "control the pace and scale of development in our territory," said Beverly Slater, president of the Tahltan Central Government.

The mining industry has provided jobs for many Tahltan citizens, Slater said in a phone interview, though she also emphasized the need to protect water and animals like moose, elk, and salmon.

"We're not unlike other nations having to respond to the encroachment of the mining industry and demand for critical minerals," Slater said. "Yet we're trying to protect as much as we possibly can for future generations."

The Tahltan government is currently negotiating with the B.C. government to establish a joint framework for reviewing proposed changes to the Galore Creek project. That would be the third in a series of joint decision-making agreements between the provincial and First Nation governments on mining projects in Tahltan territory.

In 2006, Tahltan leaders signed an agreement with NovaGold, a company with offices in Salt Lake City and Vancouver that owned half of Galore Creek at the time.

The agreement, which the project's owners say is still in effect, guaranteed minimum annual payments of $1 million to a Tahltan trust fund, or as much as a 1% royalty on mineral sales revenue once the mine is operating. It also calls for cooperation between the First Nation and the company during the environmental review and permitting process.

Galore Creek received a key environmental approval in 2007, paving the way for construction of an open-pit mine. But development stopped by the end of that same year, owing to higher-than-anticipated costs.

At the time, Teck and NovaGold predicted that building the mine could cost $5 billion.

NovaGold, which also owns half of the Donlin Gold project in Southwest Alaska, agreed in 2018 to sell its stake in Galore Creek to Newmont, an American company, for up to $275 million.

Teck, which owns the other half of Galore Creek, is headquartered in Canada but also operates the huge Red Dog mine in Northwest Alaska, in a partnership with the Alaska Native-owned corporation NANA.

Galore Creek Mining Corp. - the joint venture between Teck and Newmont - is now working on a new study of the project's potential. It's due to be completed next year, according to the company's website.

The company also says it intends, by the end of this year, to seek regulatory approval for a number of changes to the original project, including increased production and a new location for storing waste.

A Galore Creek spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for British Columbia's Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy declined to comment, citing a policy in the run-up to the province's Oct. 19 election.

That agency oversees environmental assessments for major mining projects in the province.

"I can see where Canada has a lot to gain," said Brenda Schwartz-Yeager, a lifelong Wrangell resident who runs riverboat tours on the Stikine River. "But we stand everything to lose here."

The Stikine is "one of the last great really wild rivers left on the planet," she added. "So it's a bit of a conundrum, right?"

This piece was originally published in Northern Journal, a newsletter published by journalist Nathaniel Herz. Subscribe at northernjournal.com