Our dishy pilot Brice overshot the float plane dock on our descent into Klemtu. His eyes, like ours, were fixed on the splendid two-masted, wood-hulled pirate ship anchored below. Yachties are pretty much the only growth industry on the B.C. coast these days; as Brice said, it's emptier than it has been for 6,000 years. And when I say empty -- this is the longest, most complex coast on the world -- I mean hundreds and hundreds of miles of absolutely bugger all. And this was one special boat, a vintage Norwegian galleus we were to find out later, 72-feet long, built in 1932, a glossy magazine sailing ship for pampered, visually literate billionaires.

Yes, it could. Percy Starr is the wiliest leader I've met since Nelson Mandela and, put together in a room, moral authority to moral authority, they'd be well matched. Klemtu is one of the few B.C. native communities that gave up waiting for land claims to be settled and just got on with it. The Kitasoo started their own fish farm, but by 1994 found the boom and bust cycle of all resource industries too expensive to handle. In '98, they sought out partnership with the largest multinational fish-farmer in the world, Marine Harvest. The band now runs four installations on its vast territory, in full partnership with the multinational. The Kitasoo are on a 30-day lease with the company, and as both Starr and Marine Harvest's representative [Vivian] says, the Kitasoo are boss.

Klemtu is dry, and Starr, a husky 72-year-old who worries about his health, physically threw off two drug dealers recently. At nine o'clock, the curfew horn blows, Starr's solution for teen pregnancy. The 12-step program thrives, and there are giveaway Christian pamphlets on the reception area desk. The roads are pitted with potholes, but the housing stock is better than average, there is a splendid new longhouse, and there is hope. The Kitasoo can see an end to the government tit. "There is nothing like a job to make someone feel good about themselves," says Starr in his office later, signing salary cheques.

Our dishy pilot Brice overshot the float plane dock on our descent into Klemtu. His eyes, like ours, were fixed on the splendid two-masted, wood-hulled pirate ship anchored below. Yachties are pretty much the only growth industry on the B.C. coast these days; as Brice said, it's emptier than it has been for 6,000 years. And when I say empty -- this is the longest, most complex coast on the world -- I mean hundreds and hundreds of miles of absolutely bugger all. And this was one special boat, a vintage Norwegian galleus we were to find out later, 72-feet long, built in 1932, a glossy magazine sailing ship for pampered, visually literate billionaires.

Well, colour me curious.

There was a non-existent welcoming committee, and there were torrents of rain, so we flagged down an Explorer to take us to the band office where we learned the reason for both the non-existent welcoming committee and the ship. Members of the Packard Foundation, which, under heiress Julie Packard, has spent a reputed $30-million funding the drive to shut down salmon farming, along with assorted other enviros, were on a fact-finding mission. Upper-middle class foreign nationals disrupting the livelihoods of people who just want to get off welfare? Too delicious. I turned to my companion, Vivian, accusatory. "No!" she said, hands up, "I didn't arrange this, I swear." "But," she nodded at the band leader, "it could have been him."

Yes, it could. Percy Starr is the wiliest leader I've met since Nelson Mandela and, put together in a room, moral authority to moral authority, they'd be well matched. Klemtu is one of the few B.C. native communities that gave up waiting for land claims to be settled and just got on with it. The Kitasoo started their own fish farm, but by 1994 found the boom and bust cycle of all resource industries too expensive to handle. In '98, they sought out partnership with the largest multinational fish-farmer in the world, Marine Harvest. The band now runs four installations on its vast territory, in full partnership with the multinational. The Kitasoo are on a 30-day lease with the company, and as both Starr and Marine Harvest's representative Vivian says, the Kitasoo are boss.

Klemtu is dry, and Starr, a husky 72-year-old who worries about his health, physically threw off two drug dealers recently. At nine o'clock, the curfew horn blows, Starr's solution for teen pregnancy. The 12-step program thrives, and there are giveaway Christian pamphlets on the reception area desk. The roads are pitted with potholes, but the housing stock is better than average, there is a splendid new longhouse, and there is hope. The Kitasoo can see an end to the government tit. "There is nothing like a job to make someone feel good about themselves," says Starr in his office later, signing salary cheques.

We damply wend our way over to the conference room, sit down and wait for the enviros. A couple hereditary chiefs, a handful of elected band officials, Starr and two wet hens. Home-made bacon and cheese sandwiches and soup out of cans. Coffee. There are jokes about enviros thinking they're on Indian time, so we serve ourselves, and they try to figure out if I know the same people they know on Saltspring.

The foundation people arrive tricked out in Patagucci wilderness wear, carrying a fetching wicker basket covered with a French provincial tea towel, holding antipasto and salad. Real salad in a place where the only milk is long-life! The Tides Foundation, the Packard Foundation are represented; later that afternoon, Greenpeace and Ecotrust will fly in. "All the NGOs holiday up in here," says Vivian, who worked for the United Nations for 10 years. "They just love it."

A younger member of the band council starts the meeting. Percy makes his appeal. He points to the maps of Kitasoo territory on the wall, showing that even in the Pontiac version of their land claim (there is a Cadillac version), they plan to preserve 42% of their land, a decision that will be revisited, by them (he emphasizes), every 15 years. "We have dreams," he says, "it's no good just people in the band office having jobs." He talks about poaching on their territory, about the fishing out of certain stocks, and how grateful he is to the environmentalists for helping them preserve their land.

Then he makes the pitch. Salmon farming, the way they do it, is environmentally sensitive. If you place the farm deep enough, within wide and fast currents, and use the right technology, it is clean. There are no escapes from his farms, the colourings are nutrients, and the so-called PCBs and antibiotics no more pollutant than compounds found in nature. They have no escapes. They are using EBM, eco-based management, they are serious about a sustainable future because they will be there for it. And they are very, very, very grateful to Marine Harvest. Between corporations and government, he picks business every time.

Later in his office, Starr complains about Greenpeace and the Suzuki Foundation, who he says are "the worst." "Some environmentalists are good people who have helped us." Vivian comments that early activism prodded the industry to innovate. I ask him about lice. This earns me a dissertation on his early life as a fisherman and the fact that sockeye have always, always been covered in lice. Lice comes, lice goes. It is part of nature. His band have done hundreds of dives in the last years, inventorying their underwater world. They want to farm shellfish, they are experimenting with abalone.

Our fancy friends swanned off on their yacht the next morning, skipping the actual four-hour tour of the actual salmon farms. It was arduous and a bit boring, I admit, but the natives and whites who run the farms can easily refute any of the stacks of misinformation and scare stories from various outfits which have piled up in my house over the past few weeks. This is an industry driven by clean technology, which answers every complaint with innovation, and is two or three steps ahead of the fear-mongers, their Web sites, their expensive "scouting" trips and their fundraising drives. There could be 8,500 fish farms, instead of 85, on the B.C. coast, revitalizing the hundreds of communities still poleaxed by the last enviro "war."

"Everyone is watching us," said Percy Star to the Packard Foundation. Yes we are, sir. Because you are the future.