The Surest Way to Block Open-Pit Coal Mining

Join our Piikani Partners in asserting their constitutional aboriginal right to healthfully consume fish from their traditional waters of the Crowsnest and Oldman Rivers

The Piikani First Nation takes the brunt of selenium poisoning emanating from coal mining in the headwaters of the Crowsnest River system. The mine owner and the Alberta Government are continually abrogating the Piikani’s constitutional right to traditional food sources, including fish from the Crowsnest/Oldman River System.

In 2025, Alberta was forced by its own science to declare trout from Crowsnest Lake to be unfit for human consumption. The same scientific study warned that any additional coal mining in the watershed could extirpate native fish.

The primary culprit is the Australian-owned Tent Mountain mine at the Alberta-BC boundary. Another Australian mining speculator, Northback Resources, wants to excavate downstream Grassy Mountain which would unavoidably add to the selenium load already stressing the Crowsnest and Oldman Rivers. There is no known way to contain all selenium in coal mining and there is no safe additional load for a water system already teetering at the tipping point for trout reproduction.

The poisoning of Crowsnest Lake has denied the Piikani Nation its Section 35 Constitutional Right to harvest fish from its traditional territory. Blasting apart Grassy Mountain would, according to the Alberta Government’s own science, likely extirpate Crowsnest River’s native trout, and further degrade the Oldman River as a source of healthful nourishment the Piikani have relied upon for thousands of years.

The Government of Alberta and the coal mine owners are jeopardizing the physical health and indigenous rights of the Piikani Nation — and of all water users downstream through Fort Macleod, the Kainai Nation, Lethbridge and beyond.

The only remaining recourse is petitioning the federal courts to enforce Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution of 1982. Courts have already ruled that Section 35 guarantees indigenous peoples the right to hunt and fish on their traditional territories. Now, the courts will be asked to assert the primacy of those rights over greed of foreign speculators and mis-management by provincial authorities.

Piikani Member Trevor Bastien, a life-long fisheries steward under the tutelage of his renown father, the late conservationist Harley Bastien, has engaged the Edmonton law firm Ackroyd LLP to undertake legal actions to protect the Piikani Nation’s traditional harvesting of the Crowsnest and Oldman River systems.

Specifically, the federal courts will be asked to order an immediate stop to selenium runoff from headwaters coal mines and to prohibit any further surface or underground disturbance that could disturb aquifers.

The legal actions will likely reach the Supreme Court of Canada for final determination.

This will be a long and expensive process exceeding the financial resources of the Piikani victims. Consequently, non-indigenous partners are funding the Piikani legal action as their own personal and profound acts of Reconciliation.

This is your opportunity to donate directly to the Trevor Bastien retainer account managed by Ackroyd LLP. Not one penny of your donation will be diverted from protecting Piikani constitutional rights to traditional foods.

We thank you for donating directly to Trevor’s retainer account by Interac eTransfer to info@ackroydlaw.com (no security word is required) with a separate email to afryk@ackroydlaw.com and funding@crowsnestheadwaters.ca specifying that the donation is for the #162345 Trevor Bastien trust account #162345

Thank-you for joining this historic assertion of First Nations constitutional rights, one that will create a new defence against destructive mining and deforestation of public lands throughout Canada.

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The 35th Annual Fish Rescue from a provincial irrigation canal on the Piikani Reserve

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The Scope of Section 35 Fishery Rights: A Legal Overview and Analysis

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A Review of the Literature on Blackfoot Use and Occupancy of the Crowsnest Pass & East Kootenays

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