Photo courtesy of Kaska Mineral Corporation
“That’s part of our issue,” said Witham. “There are three First Nations right around the border, so half the members of the Dease River live in the Yukon, more than half the members of the Dayluu Dena Band live in the Yukon, and of course the Liard First Nation – they go all the way down to Fort Nelson. You have mom and dad living in Lower Post, two kids living in Watson Lake, and the third kid living in Kwadacha.
Witham says this difference of opinion caused the breakdown at the land claims bargaining table. “The federal government is reluctant to negotiate the land claims – in three different jurisdictions at the same time,” he said. “We were very close to having a deal last June. What the issue is here, there’s British Columbia, the Yukon and Northwest Territories land involved. We have band members – beneficiaries – in all three jurisdictions. We have come to terms with it with the Territorial government; the BC Treaties Commission has stepped up to the plate – they’re at the table now; and we’ve come to terms with the Northwest Territories Land Claim Secretariat. Now it’s just a matter of convincing the Feds that this can be done,” he said.
“We don’t want one deal with Northwest Territories and the Feds, one deal with the Yukon and the Feds, and one deal with British Columbia and the Feds. We want it to be homogenous. Like I say, ma and pa in Dena Dayluu should to be living under the same self government regulations as their kids do in Upper Liard. We don’t think that’s an unreasonable desire or unreachable target.”
In the meantime, the Kaska have taken control of their own destiny via the Kaska Mineral Corporation (KMC) established in 2003. The company receives no government funding; its board is comprised of one member from each of the five member councils of the Kaska Tribal Council.
KMC’s near-term goal is to “become substantive equity owners in all mining projects proposed or operational on Kaska lands.” Its long-term goal is to become a world class mining company that creates a stable, sustainable source of income for its shareholders – the 3500 members of the Kaska Tribal Council.
Currently KMC is in joint venture partnership with Teck Cominco. R-15 is “right on the boundary of one of our land claim selections,” said Witham, “On R-15 this summer we discovered an additional small ore body as part of our joint venture. We want to mine it in concert with Teck Cominco. We have a 15% carried interest in the project in the KZK orebody.”
“There’s a third discovery that straddles the boundary of the GP4F,” said Witham. “Between the three deposits, there’s about 18 million tons of significant grades of zinc as well as lead, silver, gold and some copper. We want to mine it as one larger mine – eventually. It’s in a geological environment that would typically hold dozens of deposits, so there’s a lot of exploration work yet to be done.”
“The original KZK, GP4F and now R-15 - that’s already permitted to mine. So it’s a matter . . .of deciding whether we want to mine a small mine or do more exploration and try to establish a larger tonnage mine or possibly mine R-15G before or KZK – mine that at a lower rate of production while we look for more,” said Witham, adding that lead and zinc are in very short supply worldwide. “As a result, zinc and lead prices are both climbing – over 40% in the last 5, 6 months, he said.
KMC is also looking at 20% of North American Tungsten. “We will in all likelihood go ahead with it,” said Witham. “They have had some significant success raising money. They would like to see the Cantung mine in production by June of this year. We have a large tungsten deposit right on the Northwest Territories border, about 140 miles north of Ross River. In that Mactung deposit, there’s about 20% of the world’s tungsten reserves. It’s a large 50 million ton deposit – with grades about .93 percent. That would be the ultimate target at the end of the life of the Cantung Mine which is probably up at this point about four and a half years. We intend to be mining at Mactung at the end of the life. That’s about a 35 – 40 year mine. It’s a very large ore deposit,” he said.
In the meantime, the company is not letting its potential workforce wither. “We’re putting training courses on in concert with the Yukon government,” said Witham. “We put on a Yukon mining technology training program last year,” said Witham. “There’s another one of those running this year, which is sort of entry level, grassroots type of exploration skills – GPS work, GIS work, soil sampling, prospecting, claim staking that sort of thing.
KMC would like to organize a more comprehensive package. “The ultimate goal would be to create a Yukon mining training centre, which would be everything from underground mining to millwrighting to electrical supervisor to accounting to process engineers, right through to janitors, cooks, and truck drivers,” said Witham.
“Our band members or First Nations members are pretty much forced to go someplace else to work,” said Witham. “We’d like to develop a skill set training program available to our members that would keep them closer to home. The impetus is to develop capacity within their own membership. There’s 3500 members at least seven or eight hundred of those have moved away to work other places but they’d certainly like to work at home.”
A proud moment for KMC was when two of its students were involved in a significant find. They “participated in the discovery of a very nice little orebody that the Yukon Zinc Corporation discovered this summer, called the Thunderstruck. One of those students is now at Mount Royal College in Calgary studying to be a geologist,” said Witham. “It was very enlightening for them to be out in the middle of barren bush and come up with more than a couple of shiny pieces of metal in one rock. This was an actual deposit. It’s very exciting for us,” he said.
“We’ve also got a couple of girls going to work for True North Gems eventually. They’re heading there to learn how to cut gemstones and emeralds. This summer we had about 18 Ross River and Liard First Nations individuals working at True North Gems. This coming summer we’ll probably have 25 working there. Ross River is only about 280 people. So to have about 10 or 12 of them from Ross River, that’s a good part of the payroll,” he said.
KMC also plans to become listed as a trust company. “We’re a little uncomfortable with the idea of being a totally public company,” said Witham, “At this point, we would like to keep it relatively closely held until our land claims are settled. At that point, you bet. It’s not that difficult to roll a trust fund into a full grown public trading company,” he said.
After hiring Bruce McKnight, past president of the BC and Yukon Chamber of Mines and a long-time director with the Mining Association of Canada, KMC focused a year and a half on mining strategy for the Ross River Dena. The next step? Applying that strategy and developing a mining strategy for the Liard First Nation.
“We hope within the next three years, we’ll have a mining strategy that covers the entire 350 thousand square kilometres of the traditional territory of the Kaska Tribal Council,” said Witham. “I know it’s unique in Canada and I’m guessing it’s unique in North America. Basically again, it’s life without land claims. We got tired of waiting for the government. Somebody had to do it. We did it ourselves.”