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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.
Ms. 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 terminal 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.
Ms. 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.
