Lillian Campbell (previously Moyer) is a member of the Tahltan Nation and was born and raised in Telegraph Creek, a community north of Prince George near to the BC/Yukon border. At the age of thirteen, Lillian left Telegraph Creek due to medical reasons and returned home in 1979. She was brought up by traditional Tahltan means- on meat her father and brother caught trapping or hunting, or on the fish her mother prepared.
As we spoke, she shared with me what threatens her peoples land. Red Chris, a mining company, is one group that proposes to go through a mountain that is a birthing place for big horn sheep. Fortune Minerals is another company that threatens the land. Exploration and development for coal and metals is most worrying to Lillian who says the companies pretty much come in without Tahltans knowledge and consent.
Being raised in a tent like many other Tahltans from the beginning of time, Lillian’s dad was often out hunting and trapping to provide for her and her thirteen siblings. Drying and canning fish was her mother’s job. Exploration in the territory Lillian knows as home has been going on for quite some time as several gold rushes have brought in numerous outsiders into the area.
Lillian along with fifteen others including an elder in their eighties, protested to protect the Sacred Headwaters- the birthplace of the Nass, Skeena and Stikine Rivers- from Shell Oil. Despite one of the protesters undergoing a stroke, and close RCMP scrutiny- the protesters drummed and took a stand until arrests were made. Lillian has been arrested twice for protesting and charged with criminal contempt. She endured three years of court dates until the charges were dropped. She told me that the blockade was chaotic. A helicopter flew around and there were a lot of photos taken and people worrying for their children. She told me “Fortune Minerals did this. They are there now.”
Lillian believes its important to assert native land rights for the children born and unborn and for the youth. “What will be left for them?” She asks. Tahltans are not treaty Indians and assert themselves as having full rights to the land. Lillian questions why it’s the province and not the federal government that is involved with the land when Tahltans are under federal jurisdiction.
Grassroots efforts have the power and rights to protect title and land rights. Although Lillian is not completely against development, the pace at which it’s being done and the ways her nation is being excluded, matters.
Lillian is courageous in her ability to stand up to council members who try signing their Nations land rights away. Her strength as a Tahltan female leader is firmly rooted in the words an ancestor recently imparted on her- that “Tahltans never lose”.