Grassy Narrows Preliminary Comments on Great Bear Gold Project Impact Statement

As a First Nation living immediately downstream from this project, we will live with the consequences for many generations to come. It is our children who will drink the water, eat the fish, pick the wild rice, swim, and learn what it means to be Anishinaabe on this river whose waters will carry the effluent from this gold mine if it is built. It is our people who will search in vain for moose and caribou to hunt on the landscape that has had its forests fragmented and degraded by access roads, clearcuts, seismic lines, pits, trenches, clearings, and mines. It is our people who will be impacted if the tailings dam fails. It is our people who will be poisoned when toxics leach into the water. It is our people whose fear and anxiety, already far too high and fatal due to the mercury crisis, will be heightened by the threat this mining project poses to our wellbeing.

Grassy Narrows does not consent to the Great Bear Gold Project. And Grassy Narrows does not consent to the IS which contains inaccurate, insufficient, unreliable, and scientifically indefensible information about the impacts that are most dangerous to us, the first downstream community. The IS does not accurately nor sufficiently capture and assess the potential impacts of the Project on our environment, health, way of life, and ability to exercise our inherent, Aboriginal and Treaty rights, including the cumulative impacts of the Project and past, present, and future industrial activities.

We urge IAAC not to move forward with the IA until Great Bear has provided a revised IS that meaningfully considers and incorporates our concerns including our Preliminary Land Use and Occupancy Study, the ETR and Grassy Narrows’ experts have had an opportunity to review and comment on a revised Mercury Study Plan and confirm that the Plan is scientifically valid and has been carried out in a sound way that yields reliable information prior to moving forward with a new Mercury Study, and Grassy Narrows is meaningfully consulted, accommodated, and provides our consent to the IS and the Great Bear Gold Project.