Last Updated on April 8, 2025
In a remote corner of northern British Columbia lies the Sacred Headwaters, a vast alpine basin that is the shared birthplace of the Skeena, Nass and Stikine Rivers.
Sometimes referred to as “the Serengeti of the North”, the Sacred Headwaters are home to rich populations of wild salmon, grizzly bears, mountain sheep, wolves and caribou. The Tahltan First Nations people have hunted and trapped in the Sacred Headwaters for millenia.
And yet, it is a paradise in peril. Shell desperately wants to frack for coalbed methane gas in the region.
Things were looking up in 2008, when the B.C. government placed a moratorium on Shell’s fracking plans. However, as many pointed out the time, the hard-fought victory would not last forever.
Indeed. The moratorium expires just ten weeks from now, on December 18, 2012. We have until then to defend the Sacred Headwaters from a company that would permanently disfigure the region with more than 4,000 wells and 3,000 kilometers of road; and contaminate it with Coalbed methane wastewater which is usually high in salts and often contains heavy metals like cadmium and mercury.
Across the world right now, Indigenous peoples are facing a renewed assault on their lands, rights, and ways of life.
From extractive industries pushing deeper into ancestral territories, to governments rolling back hard-won protections,
the threat is global—and it is growing.
What makes this moment especially dangerous is how little attention it receives.
Stories like this are disappearing in real time. Mainstream media
barely covers it and the coverage is fragmented. The public is left without the context
needed to understand what is truly at stake.
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