 The disaster at the Mount Pauli mine that happened two years ago is part of the second gold rush in our territory and where the The the tailings down broke it was built too high. It wasn't secured well enough the engineering was they were there were there were a lot of problems that the the Investigations have revealed and the problems had to deal with engineering putting profits before safety You know the government laws weren't strong enough to to deal with all of the things that were happening and so 26 billion liters of mining waste were released into the environment the tailings came down On the mountain and in this area. It's an interior rainforest. So it's a very special Ecological place within our territory and there are things there that we can't get anywhere else in the middle of this dry forest We have cedar trees and doubles club and abundance of fresh water in the mountains in the springtime Rivers create coming down the mountains from the runoff from the snow And so it's a very unique place and when this disaster happened that entire watershed was compromised from the Waste that came down and the government response was to dismiss it and to minimize it and to say that it was little more than it was Similar to an avalanche that happens everywhere and that the water You know once the tailings settled would be perfectly fine to drink And they had all of these things and and people in the area were devastated in our communities It was like a death because we knew The importance and the value of that area and we're still connected to that area. It's where we hunt It's where the salmon is a nursery for the salmon in the river There's tons of medicines out there and all of the elders talk about when When is the the mountain huckleberries that grow there that don't grow anywhere else and they say that's our ball That's the goal of the mountains is the window and so the impacts that came from this You know a lot of the the damage is still unknown because it takes so long for that to really fully understand And the government and the company response is everything's okay. It's fine. Don't worry about it You know the lake is so big it'll it'll dilute it so that you don't even have to worry about it And so that's not good enough for us. And so we've been speaking out about You know wanting to know more or the salmon safe to eat the salmon are such a critical component of our culture Everything in the summertime revolves around the salmon, you know, we're going as families down to the river We fish at night on the rocks in this these canyons. It's very dangerous But it's also a great time of excitement and the community comes together And the families are there this this whole traditional lifestyle is getting is getting more and more difficult to live And as a result our children have never fished on the Fraser River because of the impacts from mining the impacts from over logging the impacts from pulp mills and The mines discharging directly into the Fraser River and people don't know this and it's important that you know I'm so excited that so many of you are here today