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Indigenous Lands And Innovation · Cariboo Signals

• 0:00
  Riley: Hey there. On today's episode: a startup wants to build about 456 small nuclear reactors on public land in Utah, and the coverage never mentions tribal consultation. Plus Kebaowek First Nation walks out of nuclear waste talks. And the big question: when consultation gets counted, how far has the count drifted from consent? Coming right up.
• 0:34
  Riley: Welcome to Cariboo Signals, an AI-generated review of the latest tech news and ideas that impact our rural communities. I'm Riley. It's Thursday, October 8th, 2026. Today's theme is Indigenous Lands & Innovation. We're coming to you from the Cariboo region, the traditional territories of the Secwépemc, Tŝilhqot'in, and Dakelh nations.
• 0:57
  Casey: And I'm Casey. Today we're asking who gets to decide what counts as good care of a territory. Out at Horsefly Lake it's overcast and about 7 this morning, with a high of 12 and light drizzle through the day, a 63 percent chance. Williams Lake and Tatla Lake are around 5, 100 Mile House is around 6, and Quesnel is around 7. All overcast.
• 1:18
  Riley: Bring a jacket. Let's get into the news.
• 1:21
  Casey: A lot of today's news sits close to home, and a good share of it is the provincial campaign running into the local one.
• 1:29
  Riley: Start with the Williams Lake Tribune, which reports that a bomb threat at a secondary school in Prince George prompted an evacuation.
• 1:38
  Casey: Also from the Tribune, two B.C. veterans of local government have launched a podcast, pitched as a masterclass in how local politics works. The timing is deliberate. Williams Lake and the Cariboo Regional District vote in their local election on October 17th, a week before the provincial vote on October 24th. Those are two separate ballots with separate candidates, and plenty of people mix them up. A show that walks through what a councillor or a regional director actually decides, and what stays with Victoria, fills a real gap.
• 2:09
  Riley: Different candidates, different offices, different rules. Your school trustee doesn't set the provincial gas tax and your MLA doesn't plow your road.
• 2:18
  Casey: Voters are sorting two elections in under three weeks. Plain-language explainers matter more in a campaign this compressed.
• 2:27
  Riley: On the provincial side, the Tribune reports that Lorne Doerkson, the Conservative candidate in Cariboo-Chilcotin, has announced a plan to "supercharge" the B.C. economy. That's the headline's word. We have the framing and not the article's detail, so the specifics belong to the Tribune. Elections BC results show he has held the seat since 2020, first elected as a B.C. Liberal and re-elected in 2024 as a B.C. Conservative. He faces Kathryn Askew for the BC NDP and Douglas Gook for the BC Greens, per the Elections BC candidate list and CFJC Today on October 7th.
• 3:04
  Casey: Next door, Prince George-North Cariboo, which includes Quesnel, has Sheldon Clare for the Conservatives, Denice Bardua for the NDP and Randy Thompson for the Greens, per CKPG Today and the Quesnel Cariboo Observer. Clare won the seat for the Conservatives in 2024.
• 3:19
  Riley: The show hasn't established more about Bardua, Thompson or Gook than the names and parties. If you know their records, send them in.
• 3:28
  Casey: The NDP made a pledge too. The Tribune's regional archive reports that a re-elected BC NDP government would permanently double provincial funding for public libraries, from $14 million to $28 million a year. That's the party's announcement, reported as such.
• 3:44
  Riley: Libraries are where a lot of the Cariboo gets its broadband, its printers and its help filling in government forms. Whether the money reaches a branch in a small community or stays with the larger systems is the part the announcement doesn't say.
• 3:59
  Casey: Moving to courtrooms. APTN reports that a First Nation in northern Manitoba is taking the province back to court over moose hunting. Court documents say the province's handling is an infringement on Treaty rights. The case is about who manages a food species and by what rules, and it's a return trip, which means an earlier round didn't settle it.
• 4:20
  Riley: In the Yukon, APTN reports the territorial government has asked a court to dismiss a lawsuit from Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation. The government denies it breached its duty to consult. The Nation sees it otherwise, and a judge will have to choose between the two accounts of the same events.
• 4:37
  Casey: Consultation shows up as a legal question again and again. It's a claim about process, and the process is the thing being measured.
• 4:46
  Riley: Wildfire Today carries a study on the Kimberley region of northern Australia. It finds the number and size of large, destructive fires have fallen significantly over the last decade, mostly because of Indigenous-led burning. Small, planned fires early in the dry season leave fewer fuels for the big ones late in it.
• 5:05
  Casey: That's an outcome you can count. Fewer big fires across a decade, tied to people managing the land on purpose.
• 5:13
  Riley: The Cariboo has lived through the opposite. Years of suppression, then fires that outran everything. Whether cultural burning scales here depends on who holds the drip torch and who holds the liability.
• 5:26
  Casey: The Guardian's Global Development desk reports that Guardian readers have funded life-changing surgery for a Somali boy injured in a US airstrike.
• 5:36
  Riley: Back to the courts. APTN reports that the NunatuKavut Community Council in Labrador is in Federal Court fighting Canada's decision to deny the group Indigenous rights. The denial is under challenge, and what's at stake is recognition itself, since rights flow from it. A community can be on the land for generations and still be told on paper that it doesn't qualify.
• 6:00
  Casey: WIRED has an investigation into the National Design Studio, which it describes as something of a successor agency to DOGE. It reports that some members are on loan from a nonprofit run by the general counsel of SpaceXAI, and that the nonprofit pays their salaries.
• 6:15
  Riley: So the people designing government services are paid by someone with a stake in the technology.
• 6:22
  Casey: That's WIRED's finding. It's a U.S. story, but the question travels. When a vendor's people sit inside a government office, who is accountable for what comes out of it?
• 6:32
  Riley: The Eagle Feather News reports that Carry the Kettle First Nation is calling on the provincial and federal governments to pause a Bell Canada AI data centre in the Rural Municipality of Sherwood, Saskatchewan, just southeast of Regina. We touched on this earlier this week, and the Nation is the one pressing the pause button.
• 6:54
  Casey: Kebaowek First Nation has suspended its consultations on a proposed nuclear waste facility, saying other parties failed. APTN reported the announcement, and we had it earlier this week. A nation walked out of the process rather than keep lending it legitimacy.
• 7:09
  Riley: A walk-out is a hard thing to put in a spreadsheet.
• 7:12
  Casey: Ha. Unless the column is "consultations completed."
• 7:16
  Riley: On a lighter note, CBC Arts reports that actor Hudson Williams wore a blue-and-black journey knit cardigan by Indigenous designer Justin Jacob Louis to an event in New York, with an orange ribbon marking National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The designer's business then went viral, which is a reminder that a single photo can do more for a small studio than a year of marketing.
• 7:40
  Casey: Adobe Premiere is now on Android. It's free, with no ads and no Creative Cloud subscription, but it needs at least 5 gigabytes of RAM and Android 13 or newer. A lot of phones in the Cariboo won't meet that.
• 7:54
  Riley: And the New York Times reports that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking in Greece, said Western nations must embrace an earlier ethos of exploration and conquest to remain "at the head of the world."
• 8:06
  Casey: Choosing "conquest" as a selling point lands differently when you live on land that was conquered.
• 8:12
  Riley: Today's deep dive picks up the data centre and nuclear threads. First, a community spotlight.
• 8:18
  Casey: The Quesnel Tillicum Society, also known as the Native Friendship Centre, has served Quesnel since 1972. It runs drug and alcohol programs, family support, youth outreach and cultural programming, plus the annual Pow Wow. Its website is quesnelfriendshipcentre.com.
• 8:34
  Riley: Fifty-plus years of showing up. That's a long track record.
• 8:37
  Casey: Now to the harder question.
• 8:40
  Riley: Valar Atomics has proposed something called Project Beehive to the Bureau of Land Management. It's more than 9,000 acres of public land near Price, Utah, plus about 650 acres of state land. The plan calls for about 456 helium-cooled small reactors with a reported output of 9.6 gigawatts, a nuclear fuel production facility and nuclear waste storage. NPR and Interesting Engineering covered it, and Resilience.org notes that Senator Wyden introduced a bill to ban new data centres the same day it surfaced. Planetizen calls the startup "Trump-backed."
• 9:17
  Casey: We got into data centres on Tuesday. Today's version is about land. None of the coverage the show found mentions tribal consultation.
• 9:25
  Riley: Firm, carbon-free power for AI is a real need. Public land is where you can site something this size without buying out a town.
• 9:33
  Casey: "Public land" often means somebody's homeland that the Crown calls public. Putting fuel production and waste storage on it hands the long-term burden to people who weren't asked.
• 9:43
  Riley: The reactors are unbuilt at this scale. This is a proposal, not a decision.
• 9:48
  Casey: A proposal shows its shape early. Site first, consult later. We haven't found anything saying otherwise.
• 9:54
  Riley: The show hasn't found a tribal response either way. That could mean nobody has been asked, or it could mean the response exists and nobody reported it.
• 10:02
  Casey: Either way the public record is silent. Silence is what the file will show.
• 10:07
  Riley: And that's the question. When a project like this gets approved, somebody writes down that consultation was done. Signed agreements, meetings held, comment periods open. Those numbers stand in for consent. How far have they drifted from what they were supposed to measure?
• 10:23
  Casey: Far. Kebaowek First Nation suspended its consultations on a nuclear waste proposal and said other parties failed. In the government's file, the consultation count stays where it was.
• 10:34
  Riley: Kebaowek's decision is a data point too. The Nation measured the process and found it failed.
• 10:40
  Casey: In its own terms, not the government's.
• 10:43
  Riley: Same with Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in in the Yukon. The government says it didn't breach the duty to consult. The Nation says it did. Same facts, different yardstick.
• 10:52
  Casey: Mm-hm.
• 10:53
  Riley: The answer isn't to throw out counting. The Kimberley study is a counted outcome: fewer large destructive fires over a decade of Indigenous-led burning. It's a clear number and it points at the right thing.
• 11:05
  Casey: The study's authors picked that number. Would the Traditional Owners have picked it?
• 11:09
  Riley: Fire size is a decent stand-in. Less fire damage means more intact country.
• 11:15
  Casey: More intact country for whom, and doing what? You can have a landscape with no big fires and nobody on it. A clean fire count and an empty territory can look identical on a chart.
• 11:25
  Riley: Which is the Grassy Narrows point. IndigiNews ran a first-person piece on Sunday by Taina Da Silva about Anishinaabe Elder Gwawich, near Grassy Narrows. His argument is that using the land also protects it. Hunting, harvesting and being out there is the stewardship.
• 11:41
  Casey: So the measure is presence. Is anyone still doing the thing?
• 11:45
  Riley: Grassy Narrows paired that with litigation. The research puts the mercury from the Dryden paper mill at an estimated nine tonnes, into the English-Wabigoon river system in the 1960s and '70s. In June 2024 the First Nation sued Ontario and Canada over Treaty 3 duties relating to the mercury. It has also challenged the Ontario Mining Act and the lack of consultation on mining claims. In 2025 it took the Environment Ministry to the Ontario Land Tribunal over Kinross's water-taking permits.
• 12:19
  Casey: That's the cautionary tale. Industrial development left a poisoned watershed and the legal fight has run for decades. The Narwhal reports Ontario fast-tracked a Kinross mine despite the Nation's concerns. A judicial review of the mine approvals was scheduled for May. The show hasn't checked how it turned out.
• 12:37
  Riley: Which shows a Nation can keep winning arguments and still be fighting the next project.
• 12:41
  Casey: It shows the count of wins doesn't tell you whether the river is okay.
• 12:45
  Riley: Then it's a design problem. Treaty rights, litigation and land-based practice working together is a form of innovation. The Elder uses the land, the lawyers use the treaty, and each backs up the other.
• 12:58
  Casey: It's also exhausting. Every project is a new fight, and the Nation carries the cost of proving harm before anyone stops to ask about it.
• 13:05
  Riley: Agreed on the cost. The alternative is no fight.
• 13:09
  Casey: The alternative is a process where the burden of proof starts somewhere else. Nobody has built that yet.
• 13:15
  Riley: So what would you count?
• 13:16
  Casey: Not mine to pick. A Tŝilhqot'in community or a Secwépemc community would have its own list. I can name the ones that get reported. Number of fluent speakers. Number of signed agreements. Those are the numbers that travel.
• 13:29
  Riley: They're the numbers funders and governments can verify without leaving the office.
• 13:32
  Casey: Right.
• 13:33
  Riley: Take language. A fluent-speaker count tells you about elders and about time running out. It matters. But it can't tell you whether kids hear the language at the dinner table, or whether a teenager would choose to speak it with friends.
• 13:48
  Casey: Or whether a place name is on the sign, in the permit and in the ministry's own paperwork. Whether a guardian's report actually stops a project. Those are different yardsticks, and nobody files them.
• 13:59
  Riley: On September 10th we covered guardians, GPS collars and language apps. The question then was whether technology extends capacity or replaces knowledge. This one is a level up: who writes the scoreboard.
• 14:12
  Casey: And who's allowed to revise it.
• 14:14
  Riley: Some of that is written down already. The 2014 Tsilhqot'in title decision rested on the Nation's own evidence of sustained occupation, including its own maps. The court accepted that as the measure.
• 14:28
  Casey: After twenty-five years. It's the Nation's yardstick, but only because it beat a standard built for someone else.
• 14:35
  Riley: It still changed the standard. Title is a recognized legal fact in B.C., and the test came out of that case.
• 14:42
  Casey: That changes how I read the courtroom route. It doesn't change the timeline. A territory can't wait a quarter century between the proposal and the answer.
• 14:51
  Riley: The tools get faster. Satellite monitoring, community-run sensors, guardian patrol logs. If a Nation holds that data under its own terms, it can put a measurable record in front of a regulator in weeks, not decades.
• 15:04
  Casey: If the regulator treats it as evidence and not as a comment. We were on this on July 16th, when it came down to whether Nation-collected data gets weighted equally against consultant data in a permitting decision. Nobody had the answer.
• 15:17
  Riley: Still open, then.
• 15:18
  Casey: Still open.
• 15:19
  Riley: Closer to home, governance is where the measure lives. Esk'etemc First Nation was heading to the polls for its election, which we touched on yesterday. An election is a count too, but it answers a different question: who holds the pen.
• 15:34
  Casey: That's upstream of everything else. Williams Lake First Nation, WLFN, Xatśūll, Esk'etemc and the Tŝilhqot'in National Government each decide what gets counted on their own territory, or they don't. If the pen sits elsewhere, a clean fire count and a stack of signed agreements can be filed as success.
• 15:51
  Riley: Plenty of Nations are already writing the pen into agreements, one clause at a time. It's slow and imperfect, but it's happening.
• 16:00
  Casey: It's happening in the Nations with staff to read the clauses. Smaller communities sign what shows up.
• 16:06
  Riley: Then the practical step is sharing clause language. If a Nation writes a data-ownership term that holds up, others can copy it.
• 16:14
  Casey: If the Nation chooses to publish. Some will keep it quiet because the leverage is in the terms.
• 16:19
  Riley: That's their call.
• 16:20
  Casey: One more question for the Utah project. If Valar's proposal goes through BLM review, what's the measure of consultation? Letters sent? Meetings attended? Or whether any Nation's no stops it?
• 16:31
  Riley: The third, in principle. In practice the file counts the first two.
• 16:35
  Casey: The gap between those is the whole story.
• 16:37
  Riley: I'd argue the gap is narrowing. Kebaowek walked out and made the failure public. Carry the Kettle is asking for a pause in Saskatchewan. Nations are putting their own measure into the record.
• 16:50
  Casey: Into the record, not into the decision. I'll believe it's narrowing when one of those pauses sticks.
• 16:56
  Riley: Then that's the test. A paused project on a Nation's say-so.
• 17:00
  Casey: Right. A Cariboo version is worth a look this month: which proposals touching this region have a Nation-written condition attached, and what happened to it. If you know of one, email us at feedback at cariboo signals dot c-a. Sources and corrections are welcome the same way.
• 17:15
  Riley: Have a great rest of your day.
• 17:16
  Casey: And bring the jacket. The drizzle's real.
• 17:19
  Casey: Look, I'll be straight with you — we didn't get a chance to sit down with any First Nations communications folks for this one, and that's actually a gap I'd like to fill. If you're working in that space out here and want to come talk shop about what's actually working on the ground, we're listening.