Editor:

The Prosperity project must be stopped. While the B.C. environmental office was busy approving Taseko Mines’ proposal to destroy Teztan Biny, the Tsilhqot’in nation continues to view the land and water as a living thing. Our bodies are part of this land. If you damage the land, then you hurt us.

For anyone who knows the Taseko area, the mining industry has already left a legacy of dirty water and hazardous waste without contemplation of a clean-up strategy. Camp equipment, diesel barrels, metal pipes, etc. have yet to be withdrawn by “responsible” outfits.

This extends to current mining operations and a general lack of government accountability within the region. After companies have stolen the riches, they leave local indigenous people with all the consequences of their exploitation. This total disregard for the land hurts us personally.

Many settlers from Williams Lake and politicians have promoted the Prosperity project without an honest expression of respect for our home. True owners do not willfully destroy their place of occupancy.

For this reason, it is also difficult to take the B.C. environmental office seriously.

Moreover, in approving Prosperity Mines, public officials have compromised their integrity by failing to account for another 13 years of impact; this omission illustrates an obvious lack of diligence.

For Tsilhqot’in, people of the river, the water is what binds us. Water is a life source; it is a primary resource to the regeneration of plants and animals, which become a part of us.

The priority to be fed by fresh water and clean food is much more valuable physically and spiritually than metals and the invisible market fluctuations of money. So we ask: why persist in jeopardizing the future inheritors for short-term profit?

While fear silences people, our words present courageous love for our place.

Cecil Grinder and

Russell Myers

Williams Lake