"New export terminals along the rugged Pacific coastline have reignited a generations-old debate over identity and environmental stewardship."
"With her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, her arms and legs covered with 20 tattoos, and her compact frame fitted out in athleisure, Crystal Smith, the elected chief of the Haisla people, looked more like the hometown basketball star she once was than the fossil fuel exporter she’s about to become.
Ms. Smith, 45, lives in an apartment that overlooks a nearly 100-mile-long inlet — a fjord, really — whose densely forested shores the Haisla inhabited well before Europeans colonized what is today British Columbia. Through her kitchen window she can see a $31 billion natural gas export project that is about to open for business. Its flare emits a glow strong enough to penetrate the thick fog that can shroud the village of Kitamaat for weeks on end.
Ms. Smith said she likes seeing the flare because it reminds her of the money it will bring her people. Shell, the fossil-fuel behemoth, operates the facility and is helping the Haisla to open their own export terminal just a few miles away.
It will be the world’s first owned by Indigenous people."
Max Bearak reports for the New York Times with photographs and video by Pat Kane December 14, 2024.
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