It’s always helpful to be able to watch a documentary on a controversial or divisive issue that is actually making news, now, in this part of the world.

In the case of We Can’t Eat Gold—a film showing at this weekend's Just Film Festival about the threat posed to dozens of traditional Alaskan First Nations communities by a proposed enormous gold-copper mine—it is especially timely.

That’s because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today (February 28) took the rare first procedural steps toward possibly shutting down plans for the development of the massive Pebble Mine proposed for southwest Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed, the richest salmon-rearing area in the world.

The situation is similar to the fight being waged here in B.C. against the proponents of the so-called Prosperity Mine proposed for the Williams Lake area, a project that has, somewhat surprisingly, been turned down twice (most recently less than a week ago) by the federal government’s environmental-assessment procedure.

Mine opponents (mostly Yup'ik, Aleut, and Athabaskan First Nations) have been fighting the Pebble proposal for years, and today’s EPA decision, which comes even before the project gets to the permitting stage, is rare, especially for a project this size.

A rare show of support

If the federal agency uses the Clean Water Act to try to veto the mine—which is backed by Vancouver-based Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. and was touted to be the world’s largest open-pit gold mine (three kilometres long, a half-kilometre deep)—it will be only the 29th time it has ever done so.

If it follows through all the way to prohibition, it will be only the 13th time that has happened.

And that’s good news for the residents of Dillingham, Alaska, and 33 First Nations villages in and around the Bristol Bay area. The bay's pristine environs provide as many as 30 million salmon each year to the indigenous and commercial fishers who depend on the salmon that travel there to spawn in the rivers, lakes, creeks, and headwaters that would have been threatened by the toxic-waste tailings and water extraction connected to the mining venture.

Independent Alaskan journalist Joshua Tucker directed We Can’t Eat Gold (45 minutes) and has been travelling with his doc since last year to various film festivals for screenings and discussions. His effort looks mostly at the aboriginal communities and their people, the ones whose way of life would be destroyed as a result of adverse environmental effects from Pebble.

Salmon the base of culture

As one local resident puts it, the salmon brings people, and especially families, together. “If there were no fish, I think our culture would completely die.”

Surveys have shown that the indigenous population who are subsistence users of the salmon depend on the fish for 55-percent of their diet and that each family needs at least 1,500 pounds of salmon to get through the long Alaskan winter.

Curyung tribal chief Tom Tilden, who has been fishing salmon for about 50 years, compares his people’s reliance on salmon to the Plains aboriginal tribes’ dependence on a similar mainstay: “They just couldn’t survive without that buffalo. We can’t survive without our fish.”

This salmon stock is supplemented by hunting each fall (each family tries to get at least one moose or caribou) and canning wild berries. And if there is a shortage, families help each other out. As another resident matter-of-factly puts it in the film: “If we run out, we get it from someone else.”

Caribou already affected

Unfortunately, drilling and other exploratory work for the mine has alarmed migrating caribou to the extent that local hunters who used to be able to bag one close to where they live now have to make an almost 500-kilometre round trip to add this vital component to their winter diet.

Interviews with First Nations activists, elders, fishers, and their supporters demonstrate the level of support for the fight against a deep-pocketed opponent that has the backing of the state government, despite well-documented environmental concerns.

The mine’s estimated (up to) 10 billion tonnes of waste rock, wastewater, acid drainage, and heavy metals would be stored, supposedly forever, in two artificial lakes held back by about 15 kilometres of earthen dam built over an active seismic zone.

Because of the controversy and determined fight against the proposal, financial backers like London-based mining company Anglo American and Mitsubishi Corporation have divested from Pebble, and mining giant Rio Tinto has announcd that it is considering doing the same.

This Just Film festival screening is a good opportunity to gain some timely and valuable background from the real grassroots, the people who would be directly affected by this project that puts in jeopardy not only the richest single salmon resource in the world but the thousands-of-years-old way of life that depends upon it.