A First Nation near Timmins, Ontario is asking the courts to add up all the damage that a century of mining has done to its traditional territory as well as the ability its members have to exercise their treaty rights.

Taykwa Tagamou Nation (New Post First Nation), a Cree and Anishinaabe community between Cochrane and Timmins on the Abitibi River, has filed a statement of claim over the “cumulative impacts” of environmental damage since prospectors first discovered gold there in 1909.

The case was instigated when the Ontario Ministry of Mines issued a new authorization to the mining company Goldcorp to reopen the Pamour Mine, located within 50 kilometres of the First Nation. The company expects to extract 39 million tonnes of ore from the site over 10 to 12 years. In that process, it will generate 152 million tonnes of waste rock and 16 million tonnes of overburden, along with other environmental impacts.

As consequential as those impacts may be, the First Nation’s statement of claim leans on the bigger picture, claiming that 56 per cent of its traditional territory has been “taken up for development,” while 38 per cent is “under Crown-sanctioned administrative control for mineral resource development activities.”

Taykwa Tagamou Chief Bruce Archibald told Ricochet Media the profits have been extracted with the minerals, while his community pays the toll.

“When these developments happen within our traditional territories, the land is being taken up by these companies that we can no longer use to practice our traditional activities,” Archibald said. 

“For the last 110 years these mining companies have been operating without proper consultation to the community. With the developments that have happened there, we’re the community that is most impacted because of the downstream effects that have happened to our land. We feel the impacts. We see, within the environment, the cumulative effects that have happened over the last 100 years.”

Four other First Nations in the area signed an agreement with Goldcorp in 2014, but Taykwa Tagamou was left out until its leadership approached the company in 2022. The discussions that ensued produced no agreement.

The First Nation’s statement of claim requests the court to order a work stoppage at the mine site until this case is heard, alleging the First Nation alleges Ontario failed to consult in this case. It also names Goldcorp and its parent company, Newmont. It also seeks at least $200,000 in damages, plus legal costs for Ontario’s failure to consult.

Archibald says similar claims have compelled the B.C. government to deliver environmental justice for First Nations there. He wants Ontario, a signatory to Treaty 9, to develop a long-term framework for ongoing consultation and planning, resource sharing, and environmental accountability.

“There has to be some kind of recognition of what happened in the past when it came to how our way of life has been affected,” Archibald said.

“What we’re trying to do is correct the wrongs that were done to our people when it came to proper consultation to the First Nation people who are affected by any kind of developments in our territory. We’re looking out for the next seven generations of our people because our future is the one that’s going to suffer even more from the effects happening in the mining industry now.”

Jon Thompson is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter based in Thunder Bay. Contact him with tips and story ideas at editor@ricochet.media. Sign up here for his newsletter and never miss a story from Northern Ontario.