After decades of seeing their lands sold off by the province and exploited by resource companies, Blueberry River First Nations won a landmark case in 2021. A B.C. Supreme Court judge ruled the province had breached the nation’s treaty rights by allowing so much disturbance it was impossible for the community to maintain its way of life. That ruling led to an agreement with the province in January that gives Blueberry River the power to determine where and how new development proceeds. The implications go far beyond Treaty 8 territory. The nation sits on what researchers call a “carbon bomb” — that, if fully tapped, would become Canada’s largest source of greenhouse gasses and among the largest in the world.

First Nations and environmentalists say they are angry the federal and British Columbia governments continue to stonewall American requests for a joint investigation of cross-border contamination from coal mining as meetings of the panel that mediates such issues wrap up. "They can sit on every fence they want, but at the end of the day, we're going to do what's right," said Heidi Gravelle, chief of the Tobacco Plains First Nation, one of several bands upset over selenium contamination in southeastern B.C.'s Elk Valley from coal mines.