Solidarity Protests and Blockades Ignite Across Turtle Island in Solidarity with Mi’kmaq

18th Octo­ber

The RCMP retreat from the Mi’qmak block­ade has not stemmed the out­rage against the Cana­di­an government’s ruth­less attack yes­ter­day on the peace­ful Mi’qmak block­ade. As South­west­ern Ener­gy attempts to extend the injunc­tion against the Mi’qmak, sol­i­dar­i­ty protests are spread­ing through­out Tur­tle Island.

Numer­ous infra­struc­ture points through­out Cana­da were snarled by indige­nous block­ades in the imme­di­ate after­math of the state inva­sion of the Mi’qmak. At least 30 sol­i­dar­i­ty protests are also being under­tak­en accord­ing to Idle No More.

Accord­ing to San­ta Cruz Indige­nous Sol­i­dar­i­ty, by 3pm yes­ter­day six peace­ful high­way and bridge block­ades had been errect­ed at Roads in Burnt Church (NB), Tobique (NB), Esgenoopetitj (NB), Hamil­ton (ON) and Six Nations (ON).

The Lis­tuguj Mi’Gmaq built a tipi on the Van­Horne bridge, block­ing traf­fic on the Que­bec-New Brunswick bor­der.

In Win­nipeg, pro­tes­tors tied up traf­fic at the inter­sec­tion of Portage and Main, burn­ing a Cana­di­an flag to protest against the Crown’s his­toric betray­al of First Nations treaty rights. Police appeared to be clear­ing the way for the march, halt­ing traf­fic at numer­ous points.

In Mon­tre­al, mem­bers of the Mohawk nation gath­ered to show sol­i­dar­i­ty. Dur­ing the RCMP crack­down on the Mi’kmaq Block­ade, many observers com­pared the state’s repres­sive response to the 1990 Oka Cri­sis, which saw the Mohawk resist devel­op­ment on their lands for months.

New York, Wash­ing­ton, DC, and numer­ous oth­er cities across the US have also seen sol­i­dar­i­ty demon­stra­tions.

There is a call for sol­i­dar­i­ty for today and tomor­row, which hap­pens to be an inter­na­tion­al day of action against frack­ing (the #glob­al­frack­down http://www.globalfrackdown.org/). The day of sol­i­dar­i­ty will use the hash tag #INDIGENIZE, with orga­niz­ers send­ing report backs and media updates to Reclaim­TurtleIs­land [at] gmail [dot] com.