Staring over deep blue waters from the marina dock in Kitamaat Village, Crystal Smith paints a vivid picture of her childhood.
In the first weeks of autumn, she says fragrant smoke from wood stoves would waft above homes in the Haisla Nation, while fumes from the sprawling aluminum smelter — then owned by Alcan — rose in thick, spiralling columns across the Douglas Channel.
She recalls walking to basketball practice in the village, glancing at the protruding site and envisioning her future, “thinking the only opportunities I ever had was to work in our band office or at Alcan.”
“Essentially, that was my exposure as a young Indigenous girl in our community,” she describes. “The difference to what our generations have today and what our future generations have is incredible.”
Years later, as chief councillor of the Haisla Nation Council, Smith says she’s working hard to create the opportunities for youth she never felt she had growing up. If all goes to plan, it means more fumes will join the smelter’s, rising across the water from the world’s first majority Indigenous-owned liquid natural gas project.
“This is transformational, what we’re doing,” Smith says of the unprecedented Cedar LNG project. “Not only in the sense of education and career opportunities, it’s being able to revitalize our culture and our language.
“The impact of that alone is the investment that we were looking at when we decided to support these projects.”
A vision decades in the making
The Haisla Nation describes its mission as building a “powerful, prosperous and proud community, healthy in mind, body and spirit.” That means “careful and appropriate economic development,” according to its website.
The nation, as it’s known today, is an amalgamation of two bands that have occupied the land since time immemorial — the Kitamaat and the Kitlope. It has more than 2,000 members, about 700 of whom live in Kitamaat Village at the base of a stunning, misty green fjord on the North Coast of B.C.
The nation’s people have lived off the bounty of their natural resources for generations.
According to former Haisla chief Ellis Ross, the vision to bring a liquified natural gas project to the richly resourced nation began some 20 years ago inside the band council’s office.
Ross was elected to council in 2003. Back then, he says he opposed resource development of all kinds, but at the urging of a colleague, considered the social and economic realities of his people, still suffering from the intergenerational impacts of colonization.
“Our elders in our community, at public meetings, would talk about how our young people didn’t have jobs. There was nothing to do,” Ross recalls in an interview from Terrace, about 60 kilometres north of Kitimat.
“That’s why we had so much suicide. That’s why we had so much crime. That’s why we had so much poverty.”
Kitamaat Village is just a 15-minute drive from the industry-friendly District of Kitimat, which was forged in the 1950s to serve the aluminum industry. Over decades, the settler town prospered from the smelter, a pulp mill and a methanol plant, but its fortunes were not always shared with the nearby First Nation, whose lands and waters those projects exploited.
Since then, Ross has been a vocal advocate for forestry, mining and LNG in the Haisla Nation’s territory, crediting the band council for sticking to the vision over years of “heartache” and “desperate times.” He says he resigned as chief councillor in 2016 to become the MLA for the riding of Skeena, and help get projects like Cedar LNG across the regulatory finish line.
“It’s no longer a dream, it’s a reality. And I’m thankful my kids, grandkids and future generations will never have to think about the issues I had to think about, like poverty and suicide.”
Cedar LNG is a joint venture of the Haisla Nation and the Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline Corporation.
If its investors give it the green light at the end of the fiscal quarter, a floating LNG facility would be built in the Douglas Channel near the Rio Tinto’s smelter, as well as an 8.5-kilometre pipeline that connects to the Coastal GasLink pipeline, bringing natural gas to the region from Dawson Creek.
Cedar LNG already has an environmental assessment certificate from the B.C. government, a positive decision statement from the federal government, and a pipeline permit from the BC Energy Regulator.
On its website, the project says its guiding light is Nu’yem, the Haisla Nation’s cultural laws informed by the teachings of ancestors and elders.
“Even though it’s Haisla-owned and driven, we are actually assessing the project as if it is not one of our own. We have to be independent,” says Candice Wilson, environment manager for the Haisla Nation Council.
A biologist who specializes in environmental compliance and mitigation, Wilson is on the team assessing not only Cedar LNG on behalf of the band, but whether neighbouring Rio Tinto and LNG Canada meet the environmental obligations for working on Haisla territory as well.
The Pembina Pipeline Corporation declined to comment on this story.
Working toward net-zero emissions
LNG Canada, a Shell-led $40-billion liquefaction plant and export terminal, is the other LNG project coming to the Haisla’s land and waters.
With construction more than 85 per cent complete, tankers are expected to hit the Douglas Channel in 2025, making about 400 visits per year. The project is the single largest private-sector investment in Canadian history.
Wilson said industry has not always been a good neighbour to the Haisla Nation, but LNG Canada leaders are trying to build bridges.
“They provided $3-$4 million worth of research money towards oolichan,” she says, standing on the docks of Kitamaat Village. The oolichan is a small silver smelt used as food and medicine that can be boiled into a valuable pure white grease.
“If it weren’t for LNG Canada having to do an offset project in Minette Bay, we wouldn’t have found the 1,800-year-old fish weir stakes in the ground.”
In 2020, crews discovered an ancient kind of fish trap in a salt marsh northwest of the village, prompting an archaeological mission in tough weather conditions to study and preserve them. At the time, a Haisla member on the team described it as “actual proof” of the stories her people have been passing on for millennia.
While LNG Canada’s construction continues, Smith said her nation plans to make the most of other opportunities in the territory by “holding ourselves more accountable than any other proponent” in the region.
“We felt that was necessary, being majority-owned by our community,” the chief councillor says of Cedar LNG.
“We’re becoming a part of solutions when it comes to global warming and the fact that LNG is a part of the solution to moving away from burning coal.”
Sixteen binding conditions are attached to Cedar LNG’s environmental assessment certificate, including the creation of an environmental management plan for mitigating any air quality issues, waste or accidents during its construction. It also comes with 65 recommendations and nine follow-up programs to address concerns under federal jurisdiction, such as marine shipping, emergency response and greenhouse gas emissions.
Unlike LNG Canada’s Phase 1, which was already underway at the time, Cedar LNG would be subject to B.C.’s new energy framework announced in March. The new rules require all proposed LNG projects to pass an emissions test with a credible plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030.
When B.C. announced those changes, it touted Cedar LNG specifically, crediting it as “one of the lowest-emitting facilities of its kind in the world.”
The Pembina Institute estimates it would initially generate 1.2 million tonnes of emissions from its export terminal and acquisition and production of the natural gas, compared to 2.1 megatonnes for LNG Canada’s terminal alone.
Wilson says Cedar LNG will use renewable electricity as its power source, meaning “it won’t be emitting gas like other facilities will be.” The goal is to develop wetland restoration projects as a carbon offset as well, she adds.
“I think the biggest impact will probably be the number of ships coming in and out of our area, but I think, like anything else in this world, we’re adaptable, and I think the ecosystem will adapt around the traffic.”
Once the natural gas arrives in Kitimat, Cedar LNG would treat it, cool it until it becomes a liquid, then load it on tankers to ship through the Douglas Channel to Hecate Strait, where it can make its way to Asian markets. That journey would take place around 50 times a year, delivering some 1.5 million tonnes of LNG beginning in 2027.
The project is still waiting on a final investment decision in December, as well as approvals from the BC Energy Regulator, Transport Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and more.
Economic reconciliation
According to the B.C. Ministry of Environment, Cedar LNG is supported by other First Nations in the region, including the Gitxaala and Kitselas, with no opposition to its environmental assessment certificate from the Gitga’at and Kitsumkalum.
Smith says she hasn’t encountered much resistance to the proposal, but is aware that the Coastal GasLink pipeline has been fiercely disputed by the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. That nation’s elected council agreed to the pipeline, but the hereditary chiefs have expressed concerns for their sovereignty and the health of ecosystems on their unceded land.
“It has weighed on me,” Smith concedes, adding that she wouldn’t change her support of the pipeline “for the world.”
“I was fortunate enough to attend our Coastal Gaslink celebration for the near completion of their project within our territory, and as I sat there and listened to other dignitaries and leaders speak, I thought about my personal experience through the phase of the final investment decision, through the blockades and all the negative press that the project received.
“The experience in itself helped me personally grow, but like I said, we truly believe that these projects are an investment into our people of today and tomorrow.”
Wilson, meanwhile, says she’s convinced that Cedar LNG will contribute to “endless opportunities” for her 10-year-old daughter. One day, it may even fund her PhD.
While other First Nations decide what sovereignty and governance means on their territories, Smith and Ross see Cedar LNG as a tool to unlock the Haisla’s self-determination. The project would create up to 500 construction jobs and 100 long-term jobs, in addition to providing funds through its community investment program.
“It wasn’t just about economic reconciliation for our band, it was economic reconciliation for our region and the province,” Ross insists.
“As I’m watching all these progressive First Nations understand that they have to be more assertive with the B.C. government than the federal government in terms of achieving their goals — the more proud I am that we were a part of that in 2003. We were in the initial stages of dreaming that big.”
For Smith, steering the nation’s participation in Cedar LNG has come with both the burden of “wearing the stress” and the privilege of “indulging in those moments” of success.
“I usually can’t find the words to be able to describe what it is to be essentially trendsetting, trailblazing, in this area. It is absolutely inspiring,” she says, her voice wavering slightly.
Smith reveals she has a twin sister — a fluent Haisla speaker who teaches language and culture at the nation’s high school. She says she often receives recordings and videos of what’s happening in the classroom and sees results that have never been achieved through any government initiative.
“It always makes me so emotional because growing up, we never had that opportunity,” the chief councillor explains.
“That is the reason. That is the purpose,” she adds emphatically. “Our people have experienced so much trauma in regards to residential school and the ’60s Scoop that removed a lot of our identity.
“Through these projects and partnerships, up to date with both the feds and the province, we’ve been able to accomplish so much more than just an LNG project.”
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