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Indigenous Lands And Innovation · Cariboo Signals

• 0:00
  Casey: Hey there, good to have you. Today we've got a prescribed burn near Williams Lake that's a joint project with the local First Nation, and a Yukon treaty lawsuit over a $150 million claim tied to the Eagle Gold Mine failure. On the Deep Dive, we're asking whether a government can rebuild trust through how it acts after a treaty, or whether it's just spending credit it inherited. Stick around.
• 0:36
  Casey: Welcome to Cariboo Signals, an AI-generated review of the latest tech news and ideas that impact our rural communities. I'm Casey. It's Thursday, October 22nd, 2026. Today's theme is Indigenous Lands & Innovation, and we're coming to you from the Cariboo, on lands that have been cared for by the Secwépemc, Tŝilhqot'in, and Dakelh peoples since time immemorial.
• 0:58
  Riley: And I'm Riley. Today's stories run from a prescribed burn outside Williams Lake to a treaty lawsuit in the Yukon, and we're going to spend real time on both. Quick weather check: out at Horsefly Lake this morning it's overcast and around 3 degrees, with light drizzle through the day and a high of 6. Across the Cariboo, 100 Mile House is around 3 with overcast, Williams Lake around 2 with overcast, Quesnel around 3 with moderate drizzle, and Anahim Lake around 1 with overcast.
• 1:30
  Casey: That's the welcome. On to the news.
• 1:33
  Casey: A lot of today's news lands in our own backyard, and a fair share of it is about the ballot. Starting with the woods.
• 1:41
  Riley: Another prescribed burn is planned, this time in the Esler Road area next to Highway 20. We covered the Siwash burn on Saturday, and this is a different site. It's a joint project of the BC Wildfire Service, Williams Lake First Nation and the Cariboo-Chilcotin Natural Resource District. Smoke can irritate eyes and airways, so the notice points listeners to BC Centre for Disease Control guidance.
• 2:07
  Casey: On October 14th, the Mining Association of B.C. held a luncheon at Chances Signal Point Gaming in Williams Lake, put on with the Williams Lake and District Chamber of Commerce. The talk covered jobs, supplier opportunities for Cariboo businesses, and what it takes to keep the sector going. MABC president and CEO Michael Goehring said he was glad to be back in Williams Lake after several years. Gibraltar mine's general manager, Darren Mawhinney, said the mine directly employs 800 people.
• 2:36
  Riley: Eight hundred direct jobs, in a city of about 10,700.
• 2:41
  Casey: The South Cariboo Health Foundation is asking for $1 million at this year's Starry Nights fundraiser, its biggest ask yet. The money is for a multi-year renovation of the laboratory at the 100 Mile District General Hospital. The foundation has committed $30,000 to a pre-design phase, where engineers and architects assess what the building can handle. Once the options are drawn up, they go to Interior Health, the hospital, and the foundation. The lab is where the community's blood work and heart tests are processed, and the building is about 60 years old.
• 3:15
  Riley: Williams Lake First Nation held its fifth annual pumpkin patch, and it was the biggest one yet, drawing hundreds of families. This year it moved from the Thompson Rivers University campus to Byron Louie Memorial Park, in Sugar Cane south of Williams Lake, a short walk from the community. The event supports social development programming. Vendors sold bannock and ribbon skirts, and local societies ran games. WLFN's manager of marketing and communications, Brandon Hoffman, said chief and council wanted it closer to home.
• 3:48
  Casey: Hundreds of families and a pumpkin to take home. Hard to argue with that.
• 3:53
  Riley: West Fraser has put Forest Operations Map number 3505 out for public comment. The map shows proposed road construction and cutblocks under its forest stewardship plan in the Quesnel Natural Resource District and Tree Farm Licence 52. Comments are accepted from October 28th to November 27th. Once it takes effect on November 28th, it stays valid for three years. The map is online, and it can also be viewed in person by appointment, Monday to Friday.
• 4:24
  Casey: More than 12,000 people in the two Cariboo ridings voted early before advance polling closed Tuesday. Elections BC counted 5,617 votes in Prince George-North Cariboo, which includes Quesnel, and 6,522 in Cariboo-Chilcotin. We've named the fields already this week. In Cariboo-Chilcotin it's Kathryn Askew, Lorne Doerkson and Douglas Gook. In Prince George-North Cariboo it's Denice Bardua, Sheldon Clare and Randy Thompson. Both seats are contested, and voting day is Saturday, October 24th.
• 4:55
  Riley: Twelve thousand early ballots across two ridings. That's a lot of people who weren't waiting for Saturday.
• 5:02
  Casey: A severed fibre optic cable knocked out internet across most of Northern and Central B.C. on Tuesday, including Prince George and the Cariboo. Quesnel and 100 Mile House were among the communities hit. Rogers says third-party construction crews caused the cut. Major centres were back online Tuesday night, but some communities didn't get service back until Wednesday morning. The company says the cable was the single line that failed.
• 5:29
  Riley: CMHA BC released a survey of more than 2,500 British Columbians ahead of the provincial election. Eighty-eight per cent agree a stronger mental health system means people can get help in their own communities before a crisis. Eighty-two per cent say waiting until someone is in crisis is too late. CMHA Vernon says the findings match what its staff and volunteers see in the North Okanagan every day.
• 5:54
  Casey: Those are survey answers. The parties still have to say what they'd fund.
• 6:00
  Riley: Ballots were a story in Alberta too. Monday's referendum asked whether the province should begin legal steps toward a future separation referendum. Unofficial results from Elections Alberta had about 76 per cent backing staying, with more than 1.8 million votes counted. It was not a direct vote on independence. First Nations leaders say ballot shortages, late-opening polling stations, and identification rules made it harder for some Indigenous voters to cast a ballot.
• 6:31
  Casey: Several nations, including Samson Cree Nation and Siksika, reported running short of ballots and had to request more. Siksika Chief Samuel Crowfoot said there should be a special provision for the next vote. He said the error needs to be acknowledged, even though polls can stay open longer.
• 6:48
  Riley: Acknowledging the error costs nothing. Having enough ballots costs money.
• 6:53
  Casey: Tsuut'ina's chief says treaty rights remain central after Alberta rejected separation.
• 6:59
  Riley: A referendum doesn't settle a treaty.
• 7:02
  Casey: Jonathan Nez, the former Navajo Nation president, is running for Congress in Arizona. He led the Navajo Nation from 2019 to 2023, and he's running to flip the state's largest congressional district by area, now held by Republican Eli Crane. His platform includes the line "water is life and food is medicine." Hyperallergic reports that one in three Diné households lack access to clean water. It's a US seat, not a Cariboo one.
• 7:29
  Riley: Brian Stone, the interim head of the National Science Foundation, plans to retire effective December 31st, according to a memo sent to staff on Tuesday. The nominee to replace him, James O'Neill, has not had a Senate confirmation hearing. Stone's memo says he is working with the White House to figure out who will perform the director's duties if the nomination is still pending on January 1st.
• 7:55
  Casey: Russia released an American prisoner, and President Trump's special envoy praised President Putin as "a humanitarian." NYT's David Sanger reads the release as part of a broader shift in US policy toward Russia and away from Ukraine.
• 8:09
  Riley: Praise after a prisoner release. Hard to read that as neutral.
• 8:14
  Casey: Australia's Federal Court today ordered Apple to allow competing app stores, direct app downloads, and alternative payment services for Australian users from March 1st, 2027. The order follows a 2025 court finding that Apple misused its market power by restricting how apps were distributed and paid for.
• 8:34
  Riley: Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Wednesday that Ottawa will put $1 billion toward a road into the Ring of Fire in northern Ontario, matching Ontario's own $1 billion. The region is rich in nickel, chromite, copper, and gold, and the federal government says development will secure critical mineral supply. The Ring of Fire sits partly in the James Bay lowlands and is home to remote, fly-in First Nations. The governments are announcing the road as part of an $8.7 billion joint plan for tariff-hit industries.
• 9:06
  Casey: Matching dollars from two governments, and a critical minerals argument behind both.
• 9:12
  Riley: The Atlantic describes a grassroots backlash against data centres, driven by the speed and scale of construction. The piece ties it to the sudden spread of generative and agentic AI. For a region deciding what gets built on its land, that pattern matters.
• 9:28
  Casey: Next up is an organization that's been around since 1969. The Cariboo Friendship Society is an urban Indigenous nonprofit that provides housing, youth programs, and crisis services, and it also runs The Hearth restaurant. To see what they're doing or how to get involved, the website is cariboofriendshipsociety.ca. They've been at this work for more than half a century.
• 9:50
  Riley: Housing, youth programs, crisis services, and a restaurant, all from one organization. That's local infrastructure that outlasts a press release.
• 10:00
  Riley: Now to the Deep Dive, and a lawsuit that started in the Yukon.
• 10:05
  Casey: If a government signed a treaty and then got sued over whether it kept the promise, can it rebuild trust through how it acts next? Or is it spending credit it inherited from the agreement? Start in the Yukon. The First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun filed a $150 million claim in Yukon Supreme Court on December 9th, 2025. The defendants are the Yukon government and the Government of Canada.
• 10:29
  Riley: The claim alleges negligence in the 2024 heap leach failure at the Eagle Gold Mine. It also says the Yukon government authorized nearly every mining project proposed in its territory, and that this breached treaty rights. A final agreement is a legal contract with a court behind it. That's leverage a nation can actually use.
• 10:50
  Casey: Leverage isn't trust. The Yukon and federal governments have asked the court to dismiss the case. The First Nation has also asked Canada's auditor general to investigate how the territory handled the incident. Both sides keep going to the same forums, and only one of them can ask a judge to end the case.
• 11:08
  Riley: A dismissal motion tests whether the claim can proceed. It doesn't decide whether the claim is right.
• 11:15
  Casey: Then I'd watch the mine sale more than the courtroom. CBC has reported that the mine's receiver has sued its contractor for negligence, and that a Singapore-based company has emerged as a suitor. The First Nation says it's neutral on the sale, but it has criticized the process. Who decides what happens to a mine after the operator fails? Control sits there.
• 11:36
  Riley: With whoever holds the receivership file, and that's a court process, not a community one. The nation has standing in the lawsuit. It has a seat at the sale only if the process gives it one. Every filing is checkable, though. Trust in a fight like this gets built in the open, with dates attached.
• 11:54
  Casey: Checkable isn't changed. An auditor general's report is public, and it doesn't come with a budget for follow-through. Who funds the second year of that review? Who reads the sale terms in year three, after the reporters have moved on?
• 12:07
  Riley: The test is whether the record outlasts the news cycle. An audit request is a dated record of who was asked to act. The Yukon government can't later say it never heard it.
• 12:18
  Casey: The record doesn't pay anyone. Operations stopped after a heap leach failure, and nothing I've seen says who pays for cleanup. Paper doesn't clean up a tailings pond.
• 12:27
  Riley: True, but the receiver suing the contractor is a financial path toward cleanup money that doesn't depend on the Yukon's goodwill. Whether it's enough, nobody knows yet.
• 12:38
  Casey: Nobody knows. I'd like that written down somewhere the next nation can find it.
• 12:43
  Riley: Alberta shows the same problem on a smaller scale. Samson Cree Nation and Siksika ran short of ballots on Monday and had to request more. Running short is a logistics failure, and logistics are fixable. Pre-positioned ballot stock for rural polls. Surge supply to any poll where the line runs out the door. A rule for extended hours, written down before polling day. None of that needs a new law.
• 13:07
  Casey: Crowfoot wants acknowledgement that the error happened. Acknowledgement is cheap. The fixes cost money, and nobody in that story is asking who pays for next time.
• 13:16
  Riley: Then build the ballot stock into the next vote's budget, and say so before the vote. A prediction you can check is worth more than an apology you can't.
• 13:25
  Casey: Meanwhile the Tsuut'ina chief says the treaty stays on the table no matter who won the vote.
• 13:31
  Riley: So the trust question is about delivery, not the referendum's outcome.
• 13:35
  Casey: Delivery is where I'd put the money. Take Nenqayni. The Nenqayni Wellness Centre Society has served Indigenous youth, families, and communities for more than 44 years. It announced this month that it's closing permanently in December, citing "funding constraints and the inability to sustain bed-based programming." Staff have dropped from close to 60 to 14. Four decades of trust, ended by a budget line.
• 13:59
  Riley: Built by conduct, spent by a funding structure. But the Williams Lake Tribune reported in November 2025 that Xatsull First Nation decided not to renew the lease on the society's facility, and that the nation would take it over in 2026. That's a second lever. The landlord changed, and the beds lost their building.
• 14:20
  Casey: So the lease went first, or the money did. Which was it?
• 14:23
  Riley: I can't pull them apart from what's public. The society's own statement cites funding. The lease is the physical loss. Either way the beds went with the building.
• 14:34
  Casey: The program was originally funded through the First Nations Health Authority, under the National Native Alcohol and Abuse Program. When a funding line gets rebuilt under a new name, who inherits the trust the old one built? The society did. The next funder will have to earn it.
• 14:50
  Riley: Outreach is what the society has now: mobile teams, visits in the community, care delivered where people already are. It reaches the kitchen table, which a bed-based program can't. Whether it replaces beds is the real question.
• 15:04
  Casey: It doesn't. Outreach doesn't keep anyone overnight. When someone in crisis needs a bed at two in the morning, a van is not the answer. Who decides that trade, the society or the funder?
• 15:14
  Riley: The society has the case history. The funder has the money. The fight is over who gets the last word on what counts as success. The nation should be in the room when outcome measures get written.
• 15:25
  Casey: A clause like that is only as good as the copy the nation keeps. Who holds it?
• 15:30
  Riley: The nation, if the contract says so. Nobody has announced that it does.
• 15:35
  Casey: Same question for the Esler Road burn. Williams Lake First Nation is named as a partner. Did WLFN choose the unit, set the timing, and hold a veto if the smoke plan went wrong? A release that lists a partner tells you who's in the photo. It doesn't tell you who decides.
• 15:50
  Riley: The notice doesn't say. Co-delivery still beats a burn planned by the province and sent over for comment. The next step is getting decision rights in writing.
• 16:00
  Casey: The shrub project raises it too. Central Chilcotin Rehabilitation Ltd. planted shrubs with support from Natural Resources Canada's 2 Billion Trees program. The goal is access to culturally important shrubs in community spaces, while the land recovers from repeated large wildfires.
• 16:16
  Riley: A federal program that counts trees is paying for a cultural outcome. Success is defined as access, not seedlings. The program has an Indigenous funding stream and a target of two billion trees over ten years. The Splatsin and Secwépemc-led reforestation program reports more than 1.1 million trees planted and more than 677 hectares restored. A funder can audit those counts.
• 16:42
  Casey: They're counts because they're easy to count. A shrub used in a ceremony doesn't fit in a seedling tally. Who counts access, and who checks it in year five, when the planting crew has gone home?
• 16:53
  Riley: Community members can count. Plants ready to harvest, paths people actually use, who shows up to gather and how often. A shared log, kept on local terms, with dates on every entry.
• 17:04
  Casey: A log only builds trust if the community holds it. Whose server is it on?
• 17:08
  Riley: The community holds the data. The vendor can keep the dashboard.
• 17:12
  Casey: The dashboard goes dark when the contract ends. Keep the log with the nation, and treat the dashboard as a copy.
• 17:19
  Riley: That's a workable structure, and the funder should require it.
• 17:23
  Casey: Monitoring is also the cheapest budget line. Planting gets a press release. Year-three measurement gets a footnote.
• 17:30
  Riley: So put a monitoring line in the first contract, with a name attached. Measure the shrubs after two winters, and publish what you found, good or bad.
• 17:39
  Casey: Two winters is a reasonable first check. Ask whether the people who gather there were the ones who set the test.
• 17:45
  Casey: Further from home, Ottawa and Ontario are each putting in $1 billion for a road toward the Ring of Fire, a region partly in the James Bay lowlands and home to remote, fly-in First Nations. Whose territory does that road cross, and who was at the table before the money was matched?
• 18:00
  Riley: Those questions should be asked. I'd add one: would the monitoring data for that road be held by the nations or by the province?
• 18:08
  Casey: Monitoring data goes to whoever wrote the contract. The nation's log is the piece that can hold them to it.
• 18:14
  Riley: I'd bet the audit gets read. A public record changes what officials feel they can get away with.
• 18:20
  Casey: I'd bet the monitoring budget gets cut in year three, and nobody announces it.
• 18:25
  Riley: Then we disagree on the odds, and we can check in a couple of years. The question I'd put to the Yukon, the shrub program, and any new monitoring deal: can a community hold the record and the right to end the contract? If you've got a story tip or a better idea for holding a monitoring log, write to feedback at cariboo signals dot c-a.
• 18:46
  Casey: Ask whoever signs next who keeps the copy. I'll take the log question with me. Thanks for listening, and catch you tomorrow.
• 18:53
  Riley: Have a great rest of your day.
• 18:55
  Casey: We haven't actually talked with anyone on the First Nations communications side for today's episode, and that's a conversation we'd really like to have, so if you're in that work, reach out to us.