This story was originally published in our March/April 2022 issue. Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one.
In the bitter cold winter of 2017, British Columbia’s minister of energy and mines discovered that someone had staked a mining claim in his actual backyard. The request had come without notice or warning. If approved, it would allow the people behind it to pan for precious minerals in streambeds on his Cranbrook, B.C., property, less than 50 miles north of the U.S. border.
“The claim is not going to pay off for them,” then-Minister Bill Bennet told The Province at the time; his home sits high and dry on a forested hill with no streams to explore. But the people behind the permit weren’t looking to strike a claim. They were a group of First Nations women led by Bev Sellars, a former chief of the Xat’sull First Nation, who had purchased the mining claim from the comfort of her home hundreds of miles away, for $129.89 Canadian ($105 USD). Rather than looking to get rich, Sellars wanted to make a point: In B.C., mining permits are too easy to come by, regulations are too weak and the effects are felt well beyond their source.
