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Suzanne Fournier
The Province
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
When Tl'azt'en elder Sara Duncan died May 15 at the age of 73, she was crippled, balding and demented.
After more than six decades of eating food and drinking water contaminated by mercury, members of the Tl'azt'en First Nation say they are suffering from massive, crippling health problems.
The 1,200 Tl'azt'en people, Carrier Indians who live north of Fort St. James in north-central B.C., cite untimely deaths as well as severe illnesses such as epidemic rates of cancer, arthritis, lupus and kidney disease, birth deformities and crippled limbs.
The death May 15 of elder Sara Duncan filled the Tl'azt'en people with anger and grief, galvanizing them into finally seeking redress.
Once a vibrant cultural leader and fisherwoman, Duncan died at age 73 with twisted, crippled hands and feet, balding head, dementia and the stained purple gums linked to mercury poisoning.
Yesterday, a team of researchers and a lawyer who have been instructed to document health problems and prepare a lawsuit met with Tl'azt'en Chief Tommy Alexis, councillors, health workers and ailing band members.
"My mother was a respected cultural leader and a hard worker who provided for her family, but after years of eating fish and drinking water from Pinchi Lake, she died in pain, her hair falling out, with dementia and all crippled, and her gums purple from the mercury-- just like her mother did and now I have it," said Lucille Duncan, 48.
"I would say 99 per cent of Tl'azt'en people have suffered health problems from mercury poisoning of Pinchi Lake."
Cominco Ltd. operated a mercury mine on the shores of Pinchi Lake, about 160 kilometres north of Prince George, from 1940 to 1944. The company's own reports from that era reveal waste mercury was sluiced into the lake every day and that mercury-laden tailings created a long island in the lake.
Mercury, which converts in the environment to deadly methyl mercury, was consumed for decades by Carrier people who drank the water and ate poisoned whitefish, char, trout, ling cod, suckers, Kokanee salmon, beaver and moose.
Mercury was again mined at Pinchi Lake from 1968 to 1975. Today Teck Cominco Metals Ltd. is engaged in environmental remediation and has spent about $3 million to try to clean up and prevent leachate from the mine.
Mercury levels in Pinchi Lake fish are still elevated and far higher than other area lakes, although levels are declining from peaks in the 1940s and 1970s, according to Cominco's own 1999 and 2001 environmental studies.
"We will work co-operatively with the responsible government and health agencies and the Tl'azt'en people from the area," Teck Cominco spokesman Doug Horswill said. "We have on our own begun our own remediation studies."
It was not until 1969 that signs in English warned recreational fishermen not to eat Pinchi Lake fish and the Carrier -- most of whom spoke little English and relied on lake fish as the staple of their diet -- kept fishing and eating.
Lucille Duncan says she now has the same high blood pressure and tingling, numb, weak and twisted hands that her parents and grandparents developed. She also has been diagnosed with lupus and suffers from tunnel vision.
Her mother suffered two miscarriages. Two of her mother's children died in infancy, two are very ill today and another is severely mentally ill, said Duncan, who herself has three children with learning difficulties and another born with physical and mental defects.
Former Tl'azt'en chief Harry Pierre, now 62, was hired to clean out a mercury-contaminated mine shaft in 1967, before the mine reopened. The non-native workforce of 125 always wore masks, filters and full protective suits.
"We were told to wear a waterproof jacket and pump all that mercury right into the lake," said Pierre, who said his father -- after fishing and trapping near the mine -- suffered heart problems, tunnel vision and crippled hands.
"Cominco told us to use the mercury tailings on the road and we kids used to play with the liquid mercury."
Carl Cameron, 46, said his non-native father worked at the mine and brought mercury home in flasks for the kids.
"We ate all that fish from the lake and no one ever told us it was contaminated and dangerous. When the mine closed, about seven families started panning the mercury, scooping it from the lakes and rocks and selling it.
"The Cominco supervisor and the Indian agent came around and warned us we'd be charged with theft, but they never told us it was going to cause my parents to get sick and die, or me to get sick, or my son to get leukemia."
Victoria lawyer Rory Morahan said he has been instructed by the current Tl'azt'en chief to prepare a lawsuit against Teck Cominco and the federal government, which had a legal obligation to protect the rights of Indians.
Mercury is used in more than 3,000 industrial processes.
Mercury dumped by a chemical plant poisoned more than 50,000 people in Minamata, Japan, in the 1950s. "Minamata disease" killed 40 per cent of the acutely ill and left thousands with varying degrees of brain damage and paralysis.
In 1985, the Whitedog and Grassy Narrows Indian bands in Ontario accepted $16.6 million in compensation from Ottawa and two chemical corporations, which poisoned fish in rivers and lakes by dumping mercury wastes.
sfournier@png.canwest.com