KITAMAAT, British Columbia – With her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, her arms and legs covered with 20 tattoos, and her compact frame fitted out in athleisure, Crystal Smith, the elected chief of the Haisla people, looked more like the hometown basketball star she once was than the fossil fuel exporter she’s about to become. Smith, 45, lives in an apartment that overlooks a nearly 100-mile-long inlet — a fjord, really — whose densely forested shores the Haisla inhabited well before Europeans colonized what is today British Columbia. Through her kitchen window she can see a $31 billion natural gas export project that is about to open for business. Its flare emits a glow strong enough to penetrate the thick fog that can shroud the village of Kitamaat for weeks on end. Smith said she likes seeing the flare because it reminds her of the money it will bring her people. Shell, the fossil-fuel behemoth, operates the facility and is helping the Haisla to open their own export terminal just a few miles away. It will be the world’s first owned by Indigenous people. Canada’s lofty ambitions to transform itself into a major gas exporter rely to a large extent on Indigenous communities that control swaths of coastal territory. The expansion, which spans British Columbia’s 600-mile coastline, is controversial for a nation that has also pledged to move itself away from planet-warming fossil fuels. The gas will be shipped to Asia to power some of the most energy-hungry economies in the world. And it will bring an influx of cash to remote Indigenous communities that have long struggled to find a place in the modern economy. But this new rush recalls the scars of past ones. This region’s land and sea have been exploited for fur, fish, gold and timber, while Native populations have been ravaged by disease, poverty and forced assimilation. The promise of billions of dollars of gas investment has renewed a generations-old debate over Indigenous identity and environmental stewardship. Smith and the Haisla have gone all in on gas. But some members of a neighboring tribe are preventing gas companies from even setting foot on their land. The divisions run deep — within communities and within people’s hearts. “Some people call me an apple — red on the outside, white on the inside,” Smith said. “But am I really a sellout, am I really colonized, if I can invest in modern technology? If I realize Asia needs cleaner energy options and I capitalize on that for my people? Is that so far from my values as an Indigenous person?” Her mentality is one Canada’s government is banking on. Canada is offering First Nations along its Pacific Coast billions of dollars in loan guarantees, promises of equity and other financial incentives to encourage gas development on their land. The United States dominates exports of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, and Canada wants some of the action. Its Pacific Coast terminals can offer faster and cheaper deliveries to South Korea, Japan and China than terminals on the U.S. Gulf Coast. (The U.S. gas industry has made only fitful starts toward developing its own Pacific Coast outlets.) Billions of dollars in revenue, and the longevity of Canada’s fossil fuel industry, are at stake. Canada is the world’s fourth-largest crude oil producer and comes fifth in gas. Shell and its partners are spending an estimated $12.6 billion on the first phase of their LNG Canada terminal alone, according to a spokesperson for the joint venture. In recent decades, Canada’s courts have given Indigenous people more authority over their land. The Haisla are using it to broker agreements on jobs and payouts, while some neighboring Gitxsan and Nisga’a people are using that same new authority to fight gas companies. “We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” said Brad Starr, a Haisla artist who makes wood carvings in a studio across the street from Smith’s apartment. “But every one of us and our children will get money in the bank from this. It’s that simple. We have so much to rebuild.” A bear crosses a road near Gingolx, British Columbia, near the Ksi Lisims natural gas terminal project site. | Pat Kane / The New York Times Starr plans to carve a panel that features a crane erecting a bridge to Shell’s terminal, the machine imbued with depictions of local wildlife. And in a May referendum, he joined 97% of the Haisla in voting yes to gas development. Many put aside their fears that the terminals and tankers might harm whales and fish that have both economic and spiritual significance, to say nothing about the contribution of gas emissions to climate change. A history of discrimination and forced displacement, which has entrenched poverty and cultural loss, is what Smith hopes to counter with the new investments. The tribe could barely afford a photocopier in the years before the gas companies started courting the Haisla, she said. “We had no solutions for our people. The money — the detox programs, the suicide prevention, housing, language classes — it’s a chance, maybe our only one.” On a recent night, Smith took her 15-year-old daughter, Emma-Leigh, to basketball practice at a gym that Smith hopes to upgrade with gas proceeds. Its walls were lined with championship banners stretching back to 1965, just five years after Indigenous people in Canada were granted full voting rights. Lonely road, long history “Road Closed,” says the sign, down a dark and lonely dirt road through the forest. The weathered board looks over a locked metal gate and a smashed-up old Acura festooned with another warning sign. The message is clear: Gas business not welcome. As humble as the barrier is, it is symbolic of the power Indigenous people in Canada are trying to assert, through courts and protests, over what can and cannot be done on land where they have aboriginal title under Canada’s constitution. Through the 1970s, loggers cut down and trucked out
