Tar sands
Between 35,000 and 50,000 people rallied in Washington, DC on Sunday, Feb 17th in the largest global warming protest in U.S. history. The primary demand: ditch the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
Between 35,000 and 50,000 people rallied in Washington, DC on Sunday, Feb 17th in the largest global warming protest in U.S. history. The primary demand: ditch the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
Read some testimonials here from women who traveled to DC to protest the pipeline.
Meanwhile, in spite of vague promises to take action to avert catastrophic global warming, Obama’s administration is gearing up for a big fracking push to accelerate natural gas mining.
JULIAN BOND, BILL MCKIBBEN, MICHAEL BRUNE, AND OTHERS ARRESTED IN FRONT OF WHITE HOUSE IN CALL FOR ACTION ON CLIMATE
JULIAN BOND, BILL MCKIBBEN, MICHAEL BRUNE, AND OTHERS ARRESTED IN FRONT OF WHITE HOUSE IN CALL FOR ACTION ON CLIMATE
WASHINGTON, D.C. — This morning, 48 environmental, civil rights, and community leaders from across the country joined together for a historic display of civil disobedience at the White House where they demanded that President Obama deny the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and address the climate crisis.
Among the notable leaders involved in the civil disobedience were Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club; Bill McKibben, Founder of 350.org; Julian Bond, former president of the NAACP; Danny Kennedy, CEO of Sungevity; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Connor Kennedy, and Daryl Hannah, American actress.
After blocking a main thoroughfare in front of the White House, and refusing to move when asked by police, the activists were arrested and transported to Anacostia for processing by the US Park Police Department.
“The threat to our planet’s climate is both grave and urgent,” said civil rights activist Julian Bond. “Although President Obama has declared his own determination to act, much that is within his power to accomplish remains undone, and the decision to allow the construction of a pipeline to carry millions of barrels of the most-polluting oil on Earth from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast of the U.S. is in his hands. I am proud today to stand before my fellow citizens and declare, ‘I am willing to go to jail to stop this wrong.’ The environmental crisis we face today demands nothing less.”
“We really shouldn’t have to be put in handcuffs to stop KXL–our nation’s leading climate scientists have told us it’s dangerous folly, and all the recent Nobel Peace laureates have urged us to set a different kind of example for the world, so the choice should be obvious,” said 350.org founder Bill McKibben. “But given the amount of money on the other side, we’ve had to spend our bodies, and we’ll probably have to spend them again.”
“For the first time in the Sierra Club’s 120-year history, we have joined the ranks of visionaries of the past and present to engage in civil disobedience, knowing that the issue at hand is so critical, it compels the strongest defensible action,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “We cannot afford to allow the production, transport, export and burning of the dirtiest oil on Earth via the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama must deny the pipeline and take decisive steps to address climate disruption, the most significant issue of our time.”
If approved, the Keystone XL pipeline would boost carbon pollution tomorrow by triggering a boom of growth in the tar sands industry in Canada, and greatly increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has estimated that this tar sands pipeline will boost annual U.S. carbon pollution emissions by up to 27.6 million metric tons – the impact of adding nearly 6 million cars on the road.
However, new research by Oil Change International (OCI) shows that the government’s estimates of the carbon emissions associated with Keystone XL underestimates the full impact of tar sands because a barrel of tar sands produces significantly more petroleum coke than conventional crude, which is more carbon-intensive than coal. The research can be found at: http://priceofoil.org/2013/01/17/petroleum-coke-the-coal-hiding-in-the-t….
OCI’s research shows that Keystone XL will produce enough petcoke to fuel five U.S. coal plants. The emissions from this petcoke have not yet been included in climate-impact analysis of the pipeline or the tar sands industry and OCI shows that it will raise total emissions by at least 13 percent.
Earlier this morning, Stefan Warner, a youth pastor who was born and raised in Harrah, OK, locked himself to machinery being used to build the toxic Keystone XL tar sands pipeline through Creek land near Schoolton, OK.
Warner is taking action to protect the health of the North Canadian River, communities and land that this pipeline would run through from being irreversibly damaged by diluted bitumen (tar sands) leaks and spills. He is sending a clear message that the current day colonialism and disregard for the health and sovereignty of indigenous peoples in Alberta, Canada, and along the pipeline is unacceptable—from a Christian perspective, as well as a human perspective.
Tar sands pipelines have a horrendous track record: the existing Keystone 1 pipeline leaked 12 times in its first year, and at least thirty times to date. In 2010, the added dangers of tar sands pipelines were demonstrated by Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline spill of more than a million gallons of diluted bitumen into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. The Kalamazoo tar sands spill is the costliest inland spill in U.S. history, draining the oil spill coffers and placing the $800 million and rising price tag onto the backs of local and federal taxpayers. But it is not the monetary burden that weighs heaviest. It is the toll on human life and the health of local ecosystems that is immeasurable, especially the toxicity of the diluted bitumen and undisclosed proprietary chemicals has proven devastating.
In addition to the immense dangers posed by the Keystone XL, TransCanada has been misrepresenting the economic effects of the pipeline. The majority of construction jobs are temporary and have been filled by Wisconsin-based contractor Michel’s, not Oklahomans and Texans. Despite TransCanada and the State Department’s rhetoric of energy independence, the diluted bitumen transported by the Keystone XL is destined for export to foreign markets after being refined in Gulf Coast refineries, and the National Resources Defense Council asserts that the KXL will increase domestic gas prices.
“I grew up in a town where the North Canadian River runs right through, and we can’t let the North Canadian become another Kalamazoo,” said Oklahoman youth pastor Stefan Warner. “I figure folks have to take action to stop our beautiful Oklahoma from being marred by a foreign corporation, and stand up to fight big corporations who think that poisoning people and stealing land is acceptable so long as they make a profit.”
Warner is acting with Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, a coalition of Oklahomans and allies fighting to prevent construction of the Keystone XL which will bring dangerous and toxic diluted bitumen from the biome-consuming tar sands gigaproject to refinery communities in the Gulf. This action comes in the wake of dozens of similar actions which have actively fought construction of the Keystone XL in Oklahoma and Texas. In light of reports of shoddy welding by TransCanada whistleblower Evan Vokes and the recent release of photographs depicting holes in the weld of a pipe buried in Texas, the struggle to keep the Keystone XL from being completed is even more urgent.
Updates
At 8 a.m., direct support for Stefan was arrested without warning and placed in police car. Six other people on site are being detained.
At 9 a.m., six people detained now arrested. Seven police vehicles are on scene. Workers have lowered side-boom in disregard of Stefan’s safety and OSHA regulations. Stefan is still locked to machinery but lying painfully face-down on the lowered arm. Police are obscuring Stefan from view and not allowing anyone within photographing distance.
At 9:15 a.m., another individual arrested. This person was not initially detained but was prevented from accessing her vehicle since 8 a.m. Stefan
is still holding strong. It also appears that this action is also blockading an active frack site.
On Friday, January 25th, a group of activists agreed to a se
On Friday, January 25th, a group of activists agreed to a settlement in TransCanada’s lawsuit against Tar Sands Blockade, Rising Tide North Texas, Rising Tide North America, and nineteen individuals. The SLAPP suit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) alleged that direct action against Keystone XL has cost TransCanada $5 million. This contradicts frequent public statements by TransCanada’s spokespeople that blockaders were not impeding construction in any meaningful way.
The eight Texans who came to court to defend themselves on Friday, some of whom had not been actively involved with Tar Sands Blockade since protests in August, were threatened with losing their homes and life’s savings if the lawsuit went forward. In order to protect the livelihoods and dependents of brave activists like Tammie Carson, who locked herself to a truck carrying Keystone XL pipe, the activists agreed to settle the lawsuit. The corporation will not seek the $5 million in financial damages, and the named defendants and organizations agreed to not trespass on Keystone XL property in Texas and Oklahoma or face additional charges.
Despite this legal setback, members of Tar Sands Blockade are as determined as ever to stop Keystone XL. The sustained direct action campaign will continue. Here’s a chronology of all the direct actions taken since August 2012.
Defendants made the following statements in response to the settlement:
Tammie Carson, a lifelong Texan, grandmother, and defendant from Arlington, TX, said:
“I took action for my grandkids’ future. I couldn’t sit idly by and watch as a multinational corporate bully abused eminent domain to build a dirty and dangerous tar sands pipeline right through Texans’ backyards. I had no choice but to settle or lose my home and everything I’ve worked for my entire life.”
Ramsey Sprague, Tar Sands Blockade spokesperson, and defendant from Fort Worth, TX, said:
“TransCanada is dead wrong if they think a civil lawsuit against a handful of Texans is going to stop a grassroots civil disobedience movement. This is nothing more than another example of TransCanada repressing dissent and bullying Texans who are defending their homes and futures from toxic tar sands.”
Lauren Regan, an attorney with the Civil Liberties Defense Center and one of the legal coordinators for the Tar Sands Blockade made the following statement:
“The SLAPP suit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) filed against the people and organizations that are fighting against TransCanada’s unethical and environmentally destructive pipeline will never stop the people’s resistance to the XL Pipeline. TransCanada has repeatedly attempted to violate the law and bully the people of Texas: through corporate corruption and lies, they obtained “common carrier” status in Texas in order to steal private property from low income and hard working Texans; they have attempted to bring the full weight of the police state upon nonviolent activists in an attempt to crush their peaceful resistance–using mace, tasers, and physical brutality.
Despite physical harm, lengthy incarcerations, felony charges, and now civil lawsuits to restrict their right to protest, the people have not been deterred and have only been emboldened in the face of Transcanada’s attempt at repression and bullying. At each attempt by TransCanada to chill the citizens’ rights to protest the XL Pipeline, the people’s lawyers will stand up to defend them in the Court’s. For every protestor that is jailed or beaten, ten more arrive to take that person’s place. For every homeowner who has had their land stolen, and dangerous tar sands oil now threatens their health and environment, people from around the country will band together to protect the next threatened community through a variety of nonviolent tools. Resistance is Fertile. The survival of the planet in the face of global climate change deserves nothing less.”
This morning, British and Canadian supporters joined Clayton Thomas-Muller, from the Mathais Colomb Cree First Nation in Manitoba, to present a petition in support of the Idle No More movement to the Canadian government at its High Commission in London. A group of around 20 gathered on the steps of Canada House in Trafalgar Square. Clayton from the Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign opened with a traditional song and spoke, followed by Melissa Adams from the Nisga First Nation in British Columbia, Jess Worth from the UK Tar Sands Network and James Atherton from Lush Cosmetics.
The Idle No More movement has seen mass protests, road and rail blockades and uprisings across Canada in recent weeks, and continues to grow. Inspirational Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence remains on hunger strike after more than a month, determined to keep fasting until she is able to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Governor General David Johnston. She wants to discuss the ways in which First Nations’ treaties are being undermined by a series of Bills pushed through by the Canadian government, which aim to make it easier for industries, such as those operating in the controversial tar sands, to extract natural resources from Indigenous lands. On Friday, Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation whose health and traditional livelihoods are being devastated by pollution from the tar sands industry upstream, vowed to blockade the main highway to the tar sands if their demands for a reassertion of Indigenous rights over those of industry are not met.
Today’s solidarity protest in London involved handing in a petition to Prime Minister Harper signed by Oxford residents at a protest in Oxford last Saturday. The petition called on the Harper government to ‘stop putting the interests of the tar sands industry and other environmentally destructive companies above the rights of its First Nations’, to uphold the Treaties originally signed by First Nations and the British Crown, and to set aside any legislation that undermines them.
The protest then visited Buckingham Palace, to acknowledge the historical colonial relationship between Britain and Canada. As Clayton said: “2013 is the 250th anniversary of the Royal Proclamation which helped set the boundaries of Canada and established the legal relationship with Indigenous communities. We felt that it would be very symbolic to take a banner to the Queen Victoria statue, given she was the signatory to the treaties in Canada which the Harper government continues to undermine.”
Clayton continued: “The complete gutting of all environmental approval, regulatory and enforcement mechanisms in Canada, through the passing of a series of Bills by the Harper government, mean that the reassertion of Aboriginal & Treaty rights are the last best hope to protect both First Nations’ & Canadians’ water, air and soil from being poisoned forever by big oil and mining corporations. We have a responsibility to stand up and fight against this threat, not just for us but for all those across the earth who are feeling the effects of climate change and water insecurity.”
Jess Worth, from the UK Tar Sands Network, said: “We are standing in solidarity today with Indigenous peoples in Canada who are seeing their right to a healthy life in a clean environment on their traditional territories auctioned off to the highest corporate bidder. As the Canadian tar sands industry seeks to squeeze every last drop of ever-more-polluting oil out of a planet that can no longer take it, we all have an interest in the success of the Idle No More movement which seeks to uphold First Nations’ rights and protect Mother Earth.”
James Atherton, from Lush Cosmetics, said: “It is greatly important to support and encourage movements like Idle No More, which acknowledge human rights and environmental issues as interlinked. For too long, the voices of Indigenous people around the world have been suppressed by colonial, domineering mindsets that live on in political and industrial systems. The Idle No More movement calls for change which is well overdue, and we support the revolution that is needed to create this positive change.”
For more information, see:
www.no-tar-sands.org
www.idlenomore.ca
www.ienearth.org/what-we-do/tar-sands
www.climaterevolution.org.uk
The petition text in full:
To:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, c/o the Canadian High Commission, 38 Grosvenor Street, London W1K 4AA
We request that the Government of Canada stops putting the interests of the tar sands industry and other environmentally destructive companies above the rights of its First Nations. The government is currently putting through eight Bills that violate existing treaties and will have the effect of undermining and destroying First Nations’ rights, traditions and territories. In particular, Bill C-45 will have significant implications for the ability of First Nations to control what happens on their traditional territories. This Bill is a massive, complex document and needs proper review and consultation with the people that it will directly affect. This has not happened.
This has provoked a country-wide grassroots uprising, Idle No More, which we support.
We request that the Government of Canada upholds all treaties signed between First Nations and the Crown, and immediately sets aside any legislation that could undermine these treaties. We further request that the principles of free, prior and informed consent, as recognised in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, are adopted by the government of Canada when dealing with all issues that impact First Nations.
The world is watching you.
Vancouver, BC / Coast Salish Territories – This morning (15th Jan), six people directly intervened in the Enbridge pipeline joint Environmental Assessment and Energy Board hearings and put climate change on the agenda.
Vancouver, BC / Coast Salish Territories – This morning (15th Jan), six people directly intervened in the Enbridge pipeline joint Environmental Assessment and Energy Board hearings and put climate change on the agenda. The group managed to make their way past police undetected and into the secured 4th floor of Vancouver’s Sheraton Wall Center. Once inside they revealed shirts emblazoned with messages like “Stop the Pipelines” and proceeded to use police tape to cordon off the hearing area as a “climate crime scene.”
“Climate change is killing thousands of people every year, primarily in developing countries and Indigenous communities that are the least responsible for creating this problem. Despite this fact, the Joint Review Panel has instructed those participating in the hearings not to talk about climate change. This is a shockingly irresponsible move considering Canada’s tar sands contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. New fossil fuel pipelines are an irresponsible step in the wrong direction.” said Sean Devlin.
The impacts of climate change have been drawing global attention recently, between Hurricane Sandy, unprecedented deadly typhoons in the Philippines and previously unimaginable temperature records in Australia. In this urgent context the JRP has designated climate change and the carbon emissions of Canada’s tar sands “outside of the panel’s mandate,” a move that officially discourages interveners from raising these critical issues during their oral statements.
“Enbridge and the federal government are using their position of authority within this process to coerce members of the public into silence on these issues. The majority of First Nations and settler communities in the province oppose fossil fuel pipelines. We respect those who are voicing their opposition to the pipelines inside the hearings, but the hearing process is meaningless, especially since Harper has changed the law, giving his cabinet final say on pipeline projects,” said Fiona De Balasi Brown.
Today marks the second day of the Joint Review Panel hearings in Vancouver and the second day that the members of the public have crossed police lines to make their opposition heard. On Monday more than a thousand protesters peacefully forced their way past police onto the Sheraton property drumming so loudly the noise could be heard inside the hearings. Public outrage has been emboldened by a decision to exclude the public from the hearings in Vancouver, a move the BC Civil Liberties Association criticized yesterday as “potentially unlawful.”
News reports are ablaze with reports of looming Indigenous blockades and economic disruption.
News reports are ablaze with reports of looming Indigenous blockades and economic disruption. As the Idle No More movement explodes into a new territory of political action, it bears to amplify the incredible economic leverage of First Nations today, and how frightened the government and industry are of their capacity to wield it.
In recent years, Access to Information (ATI) records obtained by journalists reveal a massive state-wide surveillance and “hot spot monitoring” operation coordinated between the Department of Indian Affairs, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), local security forces, natural resource and transportation ministries, border agencies, and industry stakeholders. These efforts have been explicitly mobilized to protect “critical infrastructure” from Indigenous attack.
What is critical infrastructure? According to an RCMP internal document concerning the risk of Aboriginal protest, “critical infrastructure refers to infrastructure, both tangible and intangible, that is essential to the health, safety, security or economic well-being of Canadians and the effective functioning of government.” RCMP National Security Criminal Investigations have prioritized four critical infrastructure sectors: finance, transportation, energy, and cyber-security.
On January 5 alone, INM protests included five border crossing blockades, bridge blockades, and rail line disruptions spanning the country.
And it’s not only intelligence services that are warning of threats to critical infrastructure.
Conservative military analyst Douglas Bland has also long warned that Canada’s economic vulnerability is based on the “critical infrastructure that transports natural resources and manufactured goods from mines, oil fields, hydro-electric facilities and factories to international markets.” Without these critical systems, he cautions, “Canada’s economy would collapse."
Though Bland has counseled a conciliatory approach to Aboriginals in order to stave off the coming crisis, his alarmism – and that of other right-wing pundits – simultaneously justifies the state’s security and surveillance apparatus by manufacturing a fear of native uprising. But for Bland and others, a coming “Native Spring” is less feared for its potential “violence” and all the more grave for its threat to property rights.
In Bland’s fictional book Uprising, he predicts coordinated attacks by secret native cells on key installations and urban hubs, such as the James Bay hydro-electric dam and the downtown core of Winnipeg. This attack on critical infrastructure tellingly ends in a blaze of heroic Canada-US military attacks on the rebel army. (The US gets involved only when they realize their source of electricity, oil, and gas is at stake.)
Herein lies the real role of right wing alarmists in the INM movement: to maintain the economic status quo, because territory is capital. Land is money. And the circulation of goods, resources and energy through territory is the very essence of capitalism today.
The fact is that critical infrastructure in Canada is at the mercy of Indigenous peoples, who are more rural than Canadians and have access to important arteries for economic flows: transportation corridors, energy sectors, and sites of natural resource extraction.
This vulnerability is deadly to the logistics industry. Logistics is a business science concerned with the management of goods and information through global supply chains. As the World Bank has declared: “A competitive network of global logistics is the backbone of international trade.” For an industry dependent on maintaining open channels for capital circulation, a blockade means massive losses: the trucking industry alone is worth $65 billion and employs more than 260,000 drivers.
In the energy sector, Canada has oil reserves second in the world after Saudi Arabia, though less accessible – 98 per cent of this oil is in Alberta and 95 per cent of it is in the tar sands, where effective Indigenous resistance by Treaty 8 and other First Nations has led to global boycott campaigns and fierce resistance.
In northern BC, the Unist’ot’en Clan, with support from grassroots Wet’suwet’en, have built a community of resistance directly on the GPS co-ordinates of the proposed pipeline route from the Alberta tar sands to the Kitimat port. From this camp they have evicted surveyors working for Pacific Trails Pipeline. Meanwhile, in Ontario, Enbrdige’s Line 9 has been has been opposed by the Oneida, the Haudenosaunee Development Institute, and Aamijiwaang First Nation, who have all vowed to fight the pipeline to protect their lands and waters.
In terms of natural resource extraction, over 10 per cent of Canada’s economy is comprised of the natural resources sectors and earth science industries, which directly employ close to 763,000 people. The greatest concentration and correlation between Indigenous lands and mineral claims are being currently developed in the northern modern treaties and territories, such as Nunavut; Yukon; the James Bay region of Quebec, and the Quebec-Labrador border; on unceded northwestern BC lands (e.g. on Nakazdli, Tzalten, and Tlingit traditional territory); and in northern Ontario’s “Ring of Fire” on historic treaty lands, particularly Treaties 3 and 9.
In addition to mineral resources, over half of large intact forest landscapes are found on lands in historical Aboriginal treaty areas. More specifically, as Global Forest Watch reports, “Treaties 8 and 9 contain about a quarter of all of Canada’s intact forest landscapes and close to half of all the intact forest landscapes that occur within treaty areas. Modern land claim settlements contain about a quarter of Canada’s intact forest landscapes.”
That is not to say meaningful consultation concerning critical infrastructure has not been taking place. The problem is that it has exclusively been between industry and government, instead of between Indigenous peoples and the state. Journalists have been uncovering multiple incidents of high-level co-ordination between industry and government officials. For example, Access to Information requests revealed that the government has been sharing information with the oil industry on environmentalists and Indigenous groups twice a year since 2005 at secret briefings, even on such seemingly irrelevant activities such as participation in anti-G20 demonstrations.
The irony is that many corporations are tired of having operations held up by Indigenous protest and are willing to go further than governments to recognize Indigenous rights. The logics of colonialism and capitalism divide here around conflicting objectives of territorial acquisition versus the circulation of goods. But more often than not, the state and industry converge around the common interests of the ruling class. For Indigenous peoples, this becomes a question of co-ordinating leverage.
In conclusion, I want to highlight three main concerns expressed in the risk assessments undertaken by RCMP, CSIS, Indian Affairs, and right-wing thinkers on Indigenous uprising that foreground Indigenous economic power.
The first is that a mishandling of conflict will galvanize co-ordinated efforts of First Nations across the country; hence the relatively hands-off approach taken until now. In the Federal Coordination Framework for the AFN Day of Action in 2007, the proposed solution in the case of co-ordinated mobilization is to “isolate the splinter group.”
Second, the economic cost of even a few hours of such co-ordinated efforts would be crippling and impossible to police given current resources.
Third – and this is one of the most worrisome trends to observers – solidarity and co-ordination between non-Natives and Indigenous peoples will encourage the movement to build.
As a final thought, while the general population might have been taken by surprise by the strength of Idle No More, the government had long prepared for this inevitability. As far back as 2008, when changes were first proposed to the Navigable Waters Act, CSIS’s Integrated Threat Assessment Centre warned about “potential unrest.”
Canada created the crisis of insurgency. Canada’s greed created a situation where Indigenous peoples stand with almost nothing to lose. Therefore, the fight is theirs to take. It is also ours to support.
Read the full article here.
14th Jan 2012.
14th Jan 2012. Indigenous Resurgence Explodes with Idle No More Day of Action
Idle No More grassroots founders and organizers from across Canada, in solidarity with common causes – a new initiative bringing together social justice, environmental, labour and other Activist Groups…
– UNITED we are planning IDLE NO MORE WORLD DAY OF ACTION on January 28th, 2013 #J28.
This day of action will peacefully protest attacks on Democracy, Indigenous Sovereignty, Human Rights and Environmental Protections when Canadian MPs return to the House of Commons on January 28th. As a grassroots movement, clearly no political organization speaks for Idle No More. This movement is of the people… For The People! #IDLENOMOREFTP
The Vision of IDLE NO MORE revolves around Indigenous Ways of Knowing rooted in Indigenous Sovereignty to protect water, air, land and all creation for future generations.
The Conservative government bills beginning with Bill C-45 threaten Treaties and this Indigenous Vision of Sovereignty.
The Goal of the movement is education and the revitalization of Indigenous peoples through Awareness and Empowerment. IDLE NO MORE has successfully encouraged knowledge sharing of Indigenous Sovereignty and Environmental Protections.
This message has been heard around the world and the world is watching how Canada responds to the message sent by many INM Supporters.
INM urges the government of Canada to repeal all legislation; which violates Treaties, Indigenous Sovereignty and subsequently Environmental Protections of land and water.
INM is grateful to many leaders who have supported this vision and the movement of the grassroots people.
“The Treaties are the last line of defense to protect water and lands from destruction,” stated Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper Turtle Clan, Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs.
Please watch and share this video of the Idle No More action in Toronto, and organize events in solidarity with Idle No More within your local collectives:
January 7th, 2013
What: Tar Sands Blockade protesters take over TransCanada Keystone XL offices in Houston, demanding accountability for abuses by TransCanada
January 7th, 2013
What: Tar Sands Blockade protesters take over TransCanada Keystone XL offices in Houston, demanding accountability for abuses by TransCanada
Where: 2700 Post Oak Blvd, Suite 400, Houston TX 77056 (next to the Houston Galleria)
When: Underway now!
Who: 100+ protesters gathered to confront pipeline company over land abuses, toxic legacy and climate change connected to TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline.
The Tar Sands Blockade is a group of environmentalists and landowners working to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline through direct action.
Why: This action kicks off a new phase of the Tar Sands Blockade targeting the corporate and financial infrastructure behind the Keystone XL pipeline. TransCanada’s pipeline uses seized land to transport toxic tar sands oil through Texas and Oklahoma communities, in order to export it from Houston ports. These dangerous business practices and the backlash from communities across the country make this pipeline a toxic investment for our state and TransCanada’s corporate lenders.
