Blockade of Highway 12 to Stop Tar Sands Megaloads

6th August 2013

 

Near­ly 150 mem­bers of the Nez Perce Nation were joined by Idle No More, Wild Ida­ho Ris­ing Tide (WIRT), and oth­ers in a block­ade of High­way 12 in Ida­ho for three hours late last night to stop a mega­load car­ry­ing tar sands equip­ment.

While most peo­ple stood on the edges of the road to sup­port the block­aders, the man­i­fes­ta­tion includ­ed about 50 peo­ple on the High­way stop­ping traf­fic, and was the longest block­ade since the begin­ning of the mega­loads ship­ments.

The over­sized water evap­o­ra­tor had received one per­mit, but bypassed approval by  the U.S. For­est Ser­vice and Fed­er­al High­way Admin­is­tra­tion. The For­est Ser­vice even raised objec­tions, but the Ore­gon-based ship­per Omega Mor­gan tried to slip the mega­load through unno­ticed. Through the impor­tant activism of Wild Ida­ho Ris­ing Tide and oth­ers, how­ev­er, the mega­load was locat­ed eas­i­ly and tracked. 

Judg­ing by its posi­tion, the mega­load is set to trav­el across Nez Perce ances­tral land and a Wild and Scenic Cor­ri­dor soon, so the trib­al mem­bers decid­ed to take direct action rather than sit around and wait for an injunc­tion.

In a news release, the Nez Perce stat­ed their oppo­si­tion “based on impacts to treaty-reserved resources, trib­al com­merce and gov­ern­men­tal func­tions, fed­er­al­ly-pro­tect­ed his­toric and cul­tur­al resources and Nez Perce nation­al land­marks locat­ed along U.S. 12, and trib­al mem­ber health and wel­fare,””

“I don’t look at this as a sym­bol­ic issue,” explained Silas Whit­man, chair­man of the Nez Perce Tribe. “Oth­er­wise, we’d just issue a press state­ment, put up a few signs and just let it go. No. We’ve run out of time and ini­tia­tives. So that leaves us with dis­obe­di­ence, civ­il dis­obe­di­ence.”

Whit­man was arrest­ed along with more than a dozen block­aders from Idle No More and WIRT after police broke through the block­ade by dri­ving a police car straight through the group of peo­ple. Police used the usu­al tac­tics to break up the block­ade, threat­en­ing peo­ple with mace, push­ing activists, sep­a­rat­ing par­ents from chil­dren, and so on.

Accord­ing to WIRT’s face­book page, “This block­ade last­ed longer than any oth­er region­al mega­load obstruc­tion since the first tar sands extrac­tion mod­ules rolled from Lewis­ton area ports on Feb­ru­ary 1, 2011. Peo­ple are talk­ing about fur­ther block­ades on upcom­ing nights, per­haps in Kami­ah.”

Stay tuned!