i actually support hydro as a means of clean energy generation. they should be investing in solar and building dams. further, the effects to wildlife in the region can, and in fact no doubt will be addressed. just as an example: where i grew up in ottawa, they spent billions rerouting a creek so they could put in a mall. a mall is less important than a generating station, granted. the other side of that argument is that the mall was on the edge of a city, not somewhere deep in the forest. but, the species that they were trying to protect have actually thrived in the enclosures that were built. if you walk around windsor, where i live now, you can see several examples of something similar.
i'm not a primitivist. i won't take the side of de-development or de-industrialization. rather, what i'm describing is the model that we need to embrace: symbiosis. and, who are our biggest influences (as colonizers) in realizing that?
to me, the issue is more about building trust and respecting the rights of local populations to have some say over the things that happen around them. it's not about property rights, or indigenous rights (explicitly) or about ethnic rights of any sort. i don't believe in grouping people together by ethnicity. it's just about democracy at the local level.
i'd rather have seen them slow down and take the time to convince the locals that this can be done sustainably, so they are working with the project rather than against it. now, the locals are going to spend a lot of time fighting something that they won't be able to stop instead of providing positive ideas towards realizing a symbiotic means of modernization. their ideas are important. they understand the land the best. i want them working with us, not against us.
this area is under treaty, which means that the crown has allodial title, eminent domain rights and all of the other powers of control. they really do just need to click a box for consultation. if it was in a different part of bc, or a couple of places out east, it would be different. the law here is not uniform, but broken down into complicated geographical subsets. further, none of the kinds of geopolitical pressures around the pipelines exist for the hydro dams - and for good reasons. worse, there's widespread misunderstanding about "indigenous title" in the activist community. there was a treaty signed, and under the colonial system that treaty is paramount. working within the legal systems of colonialism means understanding their rules. under the state monopoly of force, they own the land - and the "rule of law" upholds their use of force. you can fight that with force, but you're bound to lose.
i'm not blaming the local groups - the state should have waited until it could get enthusiastic consent. that kind of relationship is necessary, more broadly. the more the state ignores it, the longer the process towards integration becomes. yes, it's going to be slow. no, it will probably not happen in the life time of the existing government. but, in the long run, it's all for nought, otherwise.
http://www.desmog.ca/2016/07/29/trudeau-just-broke-his-promise-canada-s-first-nations