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Kinder Morgan Surveyor Office Blocked by ‘Pipeline’, Canada

October 7th, 2014

Activists installed a “pipeline” early this moring in front of the downtown offices of McElhanney mapping. The adhoc group says the company was tageted for its part in surveying for the controversial Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion plan on Burnaby Mountain.

The group erected a pvc pipeline, complete with dripping ‘bitumen’ and notices to “Get off Burnaby Mountain.”

From the group’s release:

“Early this morning the entrance to McElhanney’s downtown Vancouver office was blockaded. The doors were locked, a “bitumen pipeline” blocked the stairs and posters were pasted. The action is in response to McElhanney’s participation in surveying for the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion project in Burnaby .

“The proposal aims to increase the number of barrels of Alberta bitumen delivered to Burnaby and the Salish Sea from 300,000 barrels a day to 890,000 a day. This would result in an astronomical and dangerous increase in tanker traffic through the Burrard Inlet. The expansion crosses the unceded territory of many Indigenous nations and is evidence of continued oppressive colonization and rampant capitalist greed. Resistance to this project is strong and unwavering!

“The Secwepemc Women Warrior Society has been vocally opposed to the projects’ intrusion through the heart of their territory, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation has launched a legal battle as well as created a treaty with surrounding nations vowing to protect the Salish Sea, even local mayors are standing up in opposition. Despite the resounding no from affected communities, Kinder Morgan is continuing with the project and hiring companies to do invasive studies that are against Coast Salish law and even “Canadian” colonial bylaws. No means no and the people, led by Indigenous resistance are not backing down to corporations!

“This disruption has been brought to you by a group of friends who refuse to accept, and are committed to resisting, the continued colonization of indigenous territories by corporations and government. We oppose the oppressive nature of the oil and gas industry in our fight for climate and social justice. We stand in solidarity with frontline communities who are fighting destructive and oppressive resource extraction projects.”

The office entrance has now been blocked off by Vancouver police.

All-Woman Tripod and Lockdown Halts Enbridge Line 9 Pipeline Operations for Hours

The third woman at the protest spent hours teetering on this makeshift construction before being removed by firefighters. (Kate McKenna/CBC)

October 7th, 2014

Three activists who chained themselves to a fence at Enbridge’s Montreal

headquarters had their locks and chains cut just after noon on Tuesday.

After spending hours in the cold rain, Alyssa Symons-Bélanger, Jessica Lambert and a third woman were removed from the fence they chained themselves to at Enbridge’s headquarters on Henri-Bourassa East.

She attached herself to a chain-link fence with a heavy chain around her waist and a bicycle lock around her neck.

“I know that today I stand with these people, and these people stand with me also in opposition of Enbridge’s Line 9,” she said.

The group of protesters, who according to Symons-Bélanger are not part of a larger organization, issued a news release Tuesday morning saying they were looking to disrupt Suncor’s refinery operations.

Enbridge plans to reverse the 9B section of its Line 9 pipeline. (Enbridge)

Enbridge transports the crude oil to Montreal via pipeline, where refineries like Suncor process it.

Symons-Bélanger said she is against Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline reversal for a variety of reasons, including safety concerns and improper compensation for people whose land is touched by the pipeline.

She was a member of the group of protesters who walked for 34 days from Cacouna, Que., to Kanesatake in the spring.

Coordinated Direct Action against Maules Creek Mine Suspends Work at Several Sites

Two protesters scaled a coal loader and dropped a banner at Whitehaven’s Werris Creek mine. (photo courtesy Leard Forest Alliance)

October 2nd, 2014

Activists protesting against a coal project have disrupted mining operations at several sites in the Gunnedah Basin, in northern New South Wales.

An anti-coal protest group said about 150 protesters had targeted four mines and a coal loader operated by Whitehaven Coal, which is planning a controversial mine at Maules Creek, near Narrabri in the state’s north-west.

Opponents, including environmentalists and farmers, have said the project and associated forest-clearing pose significant environmental threats including to biodiversity and water required for agricultural use.

Four protesters chained themselves to access points to the Maules Creek project and two scaled the coal loader at the Werris Creek mine and unfurled a banner.

At the Tarrawonga mine at Boggabri a protestor climbed a tripod structure to block access to the site while, three others chained themselves together across the road.

Two protesters chained themselves to a gate at the Rocglen mine near Gunnedah and another pair chained themselves to a gate at the Gunnedah coal handling plant.

Police from Barwon Local Area Command said at least six people were arrested.

They included a 27-year-old environmentalist who chained himself to a rail line near Newcastle.

Police rescue officers had to cut the man free and he was likely to be charged with trespass.

The Australian Rail Track Corporation confirmed the protest had disrupted rail operations.

The rail line, which is used to transport coal into the Port of Newcastle for export, was blocked for more than two hours.

Protesters demand inquiry into ‘flawed approval processes’

Helen War, from the Front Line Action on Coal group, said the protesters wanted the State Government to conduct an inquiry into how the Maules Creek project was given planning approval.

“They’re calling for an immediate stop to work at the Maules Creek mine and for the New South Wales Government to conduct a full inquiry into the flawed approval processes,” she said.

Whitehaven Managing Director Paul Flynn said the protests caused little disruption at Maules Creek, but there were delays at the company’s other active mines.

“The police have been called for each of these activities,” he said.

“The reality of it is, is that it will only be a marginal impact on us for the day, and unfortunately again another widespread consumption of important valuable community resources such as the police and police rescue.

“I’m not quite sure what these people thing they’re doing by targeting just innocent people trying to do their job.”

Greens leader Christine Milne visited an activist camp site near Maules Creek on Sunday to show support for the ongoing protest action.

The party has controversially supported those involved in the unrest, including activist Jonathon Moylan.

Moylan was given a 20-month prison sentence in July after pleading guilty to issuing a fake press release that temporarily wiped millions of dollars from the company’s books.

Ms Milne said Moylan was supporting the Maules Creek farming community and has had his day in court.

“And that is what you do when you’re an activist but the company hasn’t faced the full face of the law and that is what is wrong here,” she said.

“You’ve got community activists who are prepared to take the consequences but the company who gets out of taking the consequences.”

Anti-industrial Sabotage in Southern Quebec in Solidarity with Evicted Algonquin Protesters

October 1st, 2014

by King Ludd and his army of Fenians / Anarchist News

October 1st, 2014

by King Ludd and his army of Fenians / Anarchist News

Brief resume of this communique: A railroad telecom was burned and three residential development panels vandalised in response to an eviction of Native resisters in Gatineau and in solidarity with the 5E3, somewhere in southern K-bekk.

Full version:

So the other night on September 21, we’ve set fire to a railroad telecomm cable linking Brigham to Sherbrooke (Qc) to the US, thinking about the Algonquins people recently evicted from a resistance camp and detained in Gatineau. We took the time to select a railway bridge in the middle of nowhere near Waterloo, so we’d not have to dig to get to the cables or attract too much attention. Some fuel was dropped through an opening in the steel casing of the cables, then set on fire. Nothing fancy. It worked better as we’d guessed, as a few seconds later it already smelled burning rubber a few meters away. The enclosed air in the conduct apparently turned the fire into something like a blow torch. Kind of easy game to be reproduced elsewhere by others, we told ourselves… so that’s a reason to let others know.

Of course it didn’t cause the whole techno-industrial system to collapse! Society is still pretty much functional today. But you gotta start attacking it somewhere. Though it did feel as if an important nerve deep below society had been severed. And this felt good getting off our asses in the middle of the night for this.

It is noteworthy that this railway line is the exact same on which the tar sands train used to pass, taking the lives of a hundred people last year. It is again used to transport oil from the West to the US, though at much smaller rate. Soon it will be replaced by the equally parasitic and devastating pipelines, unless a serious opposition to it rises out from the current apathy so widespread in southern Quebec these days. As the sheep put their trust in the bureaucrats and the “experts” with all their “moratoriums”, legal challenges and “environmental assessments”, the popular beast is tamed and kept in line, the same line that led us to a disaster last year, and keeps destroying the wild life around…

Hence, as bonus, during the following days, panels for rural residential developments were vandalized, each in the name of prisoners Amélie, Fallon and Carlos imprisoned in Mexico, two of which are from Montreal.

Two panels were spray-painted in Sainte-Etienne-de-Bolton (not very far from that sabotage) where “Ecocide” was written, and a large panel by the highway 10 that ties Montreal to Sherbrooke.

Those gestures are far from the intensity of the attacks those three persons are accused of, but they target another end of the same same social machine that destroys and rapes the living, here as in northern Alberta, Mexico and elsewhere.

We take the opportunity to pass on our shared view on fighting the progress of techno-civilization: This fast-growing type of visual pollution plays a key role in the destruction process paving way to the invasion of techno-industrial society, but also are very worthy alternatives to the classic urban vandalism. There’s no geopolitics of vandalism, what matters being just the sensitivity of the target to the infrastructure behind, and this one is sensitive as fuck. Though as countless graffiti in the City will at least express a critique and give a virtual impression of disorder, at best defame the fascists and the cops and capital; suburban sprawl can be stopped or slowed down in direct result from vandalism against those spectacular outlets of capital (in this case, the gangster construction industry and all its parasites who just wanna pay themselves a yatch with easy money out the sale and destruction of fictionally-owned land, who’re pretty much the same fuckers who pay themselves summer residences here with gentrification money in the city. Get the picture?). We have proof of this, by experience… we have seen major real-estate corporations withdrawing from developments, just because of panels being recursively vandalized. We fought this kind of tactic, no matter how low-scale or boring it may look like, deserves to be brought back in the attack menu, at least as appetizers. So, tons of opportunities for subvertive art at the tip of the civilizational spearhead. A good field for spreading anti-civ memes too!

For all the creatures killed or evicted by the death machine of society that keeps spawling.

For the wild!

– King Ludd and his army of Fenians, from the darkness of the forest

Coalition Block Highway Construction on Back-to-Back Days

Tribal Pomo Representatives, AIM elders and Environmentalists Block Filling of Wetlands

[Today (September 28th, 2014) , roughly 30 people blockaded dump trucks at both entrance gates to the Willits Bypass northern interchange construction zone, halting nearly all soil dumping for the day. At roughly 11 a.m., the dump trucks went home for the day. The California Highway Patrol took a light approach to policing the demonstration, making no arrests. We are gathering again tomorrow at 7 a.m. at The Tipi! Only serious rain will prevent us from gathering. Check out the KMUD News report filed by Annie Esposito, which begins at 6:00 into the broadcast.]

Native American Tribal members, including direct descendants of the Pomo peoples who once populated the Little Lake Valley where Caltrans is currently building an oversized freeway Bypass, will join environmental groups in a mass protest on the north end of the project today. Protestors will enter the construction zone north of town in the early morning hours, slowing and stopping the fast and furious flow of dirt-filled, double-belly dump trucks working from dawn to dusk to cover the wetlands and archeological sites the activists seek to protect.
Elders and spiritual leaders from local Pomo Indian Bands and the American Indian Movement (AIM) will lead the way to threatened cultural sites where prayers will be offered for the ancestors. The AIM flag and drum will be present near the construction area where Native American cultural artifacts have been discovered. The sites have been documented and fenced off by Caltrans, but are still slated to be destroyed by being permanently graded and buried under the Bypass as currently designed.

“I hear and feel our ancestors cry to save our villages from destruction. The white man’s history repeats itself. We pray that the Creator will hear our prayers”, said Priscilla Hunter, tribal representative for the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians. “Caltrans placated the interests of local ranchers by giving them permanent grazing rights on the mitigation lands and built the viaduct over the railroad track to preserve it, but yet they don’t listen to the Indians’ concerns for protection of our ancestors’ culture or to our call for downsizing the northern interchange to avoid a large village site.”

The Coyote Valley Tribe requested government to government consultations with the Army Corps of Engineers in June, but to date has received no response. Hunter stated that Caltrans was likely in violation of the Clean Water Act 404 Permit General Condition # 3 which specifically references the protection of archeological sites and Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. At this time, Caltrans has refused to provide any further information about the recent cultural findings to Hunter.

The Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians letter to the Army Corps of Engineers and their Resolution for Government to Government consultation can be found here.

Over thirty additional sites and more than one hundred artifacts have been identified since Bypass construction in the valley began. One site is thought to be the ancient village site of Yami. After initially assuring the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo that construction on this large, known site would be avoided, Caltrans destroyed the village completely in the summer of 2013. Equipment operators did not stop work and did not notify the Tribes, as required. Caltrans admitted the destruction months later, calling it “accidental” and blaming faulty maps. Artifacts in Little Lake Valley are so plentiful it has been described by archeologists as an Archeological District.

Some of the cultural sites being “discovered by bulldozer” are on the so-called mitigation lands, acres Caltrans is relying upon to compensate for environmental damage to public values, called “temporal loss”. When cultural sites are identified, the area is set aside, reducing the acreage available for mitigations. Caltrans needs every acre of scarce mitigation land to make up for the temporal losses already incurred by its chronic failure to perform mitigation measures now two years overdue.

Bypass opponents have proposed a smaller, lower impact design to reduce the amount of mitigation lands needed to satisfy requirements that would also save time money as well as some 30 acres of wetlands while avoiding cultural sites. Caltrans had committed to finding ways to reduce the amount of fill used on the northern interchange as one of the conditions of reinstating its previously suspended 404 Operating Permit under lead agency Army Corps of Engineers. Caltrans has proposed only a minimal 3.5 acre reduction carved from minor design adjustments, without evaluating other, less destructive options.

The Coalition to Save Little Lake Valley and others including Save Our Little Lake Valley, Earth First!, the Willits Environmental Center and Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters are demanding an immediate halt to all fill activities on the northern interchange pending a significant reduction of impacts to protect both wetlands and cultural sites.

9/24 Protesters Come Back!

Despite impending rain, activists returned today for a second day of protest against the bitterly contested Caltrans’ Bypass, after shutting down fill operations on the northern interchange all day yesterday. On Tuesday, two groups of activists held long cloth banners with the messages: ”Caltrans Kills Wetlands” and “Caltrans: Paving the Road to Extinction” stretched across the entrance to two haul roads off highway 101, blocking ingress and egress from the construction zone.

A third group, including Priscilla Hunter, Tribal Representative for the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians and other Native Americans of lineal descent to the area’s Pomo ancestors, succeeded in reaching the ancestral cultural site they want to protect, remaining there for some time with the American Indian Movement (AIM) flag, to drum and pray. The activists then blocked a third stream of dirt-filled trucks, effectively stopping work.

Protesters’ numbers have increased lately due to the participation of Native American Pomo Tribes, including those from Coyote Valley, Sherwood Rancheria, Potter and Redwood Valley, all of whom were represented at the protest.

There were no arrests on Tuesday. CHP officers were present in one squad car and one van, but did not tell protesters they were trespassing and did not ask them to leave, as erroneously stated by Caltrans Public Relations official, Phil Frisbee in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat on Tues. Sept. 23.

“We came back again today to insist on our demand for a less destructive, less expensive design for the northern interchange to protect cultural sites and wetlands”, said Naomi Wagner of Redwood Nation Earth First!

from Save Little Lake Valley

Video: “Chipmunks” Obstruct Work at Utah Tar Sands Mine

On Tuesday, Sept. 23rd, three brave “chipmunks” stopped word at US Oil Sands construction site, on the East Tavaputs Plateau, by physically putting their bodies in front of the machines being used to destroy this amazing land in order to strip-mine tar sands.

There will be a press release, and a statement from the “chipmunks” will be available on Sept. 30, 2014 at: http://www.tarsandsresist.org/chipmunks/

http://youtu.be/zdjZOMizYyM

Oil Train Opponents Blockade Tracks at Port Westward (USA)

September 18th, 201

September 18th, 2014

Clatskanie, OR—Climate justice activists, local Clatskanie farmers, and oil train opponents from all over Columbia County are blockading the tracks that lead to Port Westward on the Columbia River. The blockade consists of a 20-foot-high tripod of steel poles, its apex occupied by 27-year-old Portland Rising Tide activist Sunny Glover.

Any train movement would risk her life, as would any attempt to remove her from the structure. A banner suspended from the tripod reads: “Oil trains fuel climate chaos.” She has vowed to stay as long as she is able. Massachusetts-based Global Partners ships oil by rail from the fracking fields of the Bakken Shale to the blockaded facility.

From there, it is loaded onto oceangoing vessels bound for West Coast refineries. The facility was constructed with public clean energy loans and tax credits to manufacture ethanol in 2008. The owners declared bankruptcy almost immediately, and in a twist of savage irony, it became a crude oil terminal.

“Fossil fuels are catastrophically destructive,” Glover said. “Extraction ravages land, water, and the health of local communities – transport results in deadly explosions, toxic spills and dust – and as they are burned, the Earth is forced ever deeper into immense climate instability. Fossil fuel production is violence, and on an incredibly vast scale.”

Dozens are joining Glover on the tracks.

The increase in US oil production in recent years, and the consequent rise in oil train traffic, has outraged a diversity of groups and communities. Rising Tide activists, hoping to deter the most severe effects of climate change, are demanding a rapid dismantling of fossil fuel infrastructure throughout the region and the world.

Residents of areas effected by oil train traffic are horrified by the propensity of Bakken crude trains to derail in fiery explosions—a May, 2014 emergency order by the US Department of Transportation describes the trains as an “imminent hazard.”

Residents of the patchwork of farms, dikes, and waterways north of Clatskanie are fighting to protect agricultural land and salmon habitat from industrialization.

“When the crude oil trains began rolling through Columbia County, we had no prior warning—not from DEQ, not from the Port of St. Helens, not from the county, and not from the State of Oregon,” said Nancy Whitney.

“With the close proximity of our towns, and particularly our schools, and considering the track record of crude oil derailments, my fear is that the potential devastation from leakage or explosion could be astronomical—and it will happen unless these trains are stopped.”

This is the fifth oil train blockade in the Pacific Northwest since June.

“This is only the beginning,” said Noah Hochman. “We will continue to blockade until it is financially, logistically, and politically untenable for oil trains to threaten climate and communities.”

Update:

Police Risk Protester’s Life to End 9-Hour Oil Train Blockade

Yesterday afternoon, climate justice group Portland Rising Tide and allies from Columbia County erected a 20-foot-tall tripod of steel poles to blockade the Port Westward oil terminal. Dozens of police, working at night under floodlights, were mobilized to remove 27-year-old Sunny Glover from the tripod’s apex. After an initial attempt to remove her with a bucket truck—which she foiled by locking her neck to one of the tripod’s poles—the police resorted to far more drastic and perilous measures.

In a surreal scene, the amassed law enforcement officers began using a circular saw to cut through the tripod’s legs in approximately foot-long increments, gradually lowering the structure to the ground amidst a shower of sparks from the saw. Glover’s neck remained locked to a pole the entire time. Each precarious cut threatened to topple the structure. About 40 protesters shouted words of encouragement from a nearby road until she was arrested and driven from the scene around 11:30pm.

“The courage my friend Sunny exhibited tonight was tremendous,” Scott Schroder said. “Unfortunately, she lives in a world of terrifying scenarios. She can either have her life jeopardized by the police or by catastrophic climate change and exploding oil trains. She chose to resist because she understands acquiescence is the greater peril.”

The terminal, operated by Massachusetts-based Global Partners, has been controversial since its inception. At the protest today were residents of the Columbia County towns of St. Helens, Scappoose, and Clatskanie, whose homes and businesses are within the blast zone should an oil train derail and explode. Rising Tide activists are demanding a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels in order to avert a climate catastrophe that would be felt for millennia.

Protesters were critical of the tremendous mobilization of public resources to dismantle the blockade—there were approximately 40 combined fire, police, and medical personnel on site—saying it amounted to essentially another subsidy for the fossil fuel industry.

“Taxpayers have already given Global Partners millions of dollars in clean energy construction subsidies, when we thought their facility was going to be an ethanol plant,” said David Osborn. “Now the public is handing over thousands more to keep the train tracks free of people outraged by their bait-and-switch.”

This summer, Rising Tide collectives have blockaded oil train facilities in Washington and Oregon five times. The groups say they are working toward mass mobilizations that will significantly impede the ability of oil to be transported by rail in the Pacific Northwest.

“We will be back,” Schroder said. “Over and over again. And we’re bringing more people every time.”

PHOTOS, VIDEO, AUDIO: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8Tw30qC0uQib2xlLXk0cERaeVk&usp=sharing_eil

09/18 ACTION PRESS RELEASE: https://drive.google.com/?usp=folder&authuser=0#folders/0B8Tw30qC0uQib2xlLXk0cERaeVk

BACKGROUND ON OREGON OIL TRAINS AND THE CLIMATE CRISIS:http://portlandrisingtide.org/oil-trains-oregon-bakken-shale-uinta-basin-climate-crisis/

Two Arrested in Gas Pipeline Protest, USA

September 17th, 2014

Two men were arrested on September 16 after chaining themselves to pipe being laid for Vermont Gas’ fracked gas pipeline. The action took place a day before the Vermont Public Service Board begins a process which could result in the revoking of the permits required for Vermont Gas to continue construction.

Construction was halted around 3:45, and did not resume for the rest of the day. The two men were charged and released.

“Vermont Gas lied,” said Will Bennington, a spokesperson for Rising Tide Vermont. “They’ve lied about the climate and environmental impacts of the project, they’ve lied to landowners and broken promises, and now they’ve lied about the cost of this project. The Public Service Board, and ultimately Governor Shumlin, have no reason to believe Vermont Gas is acting in the public good.”

In July, Vermont Gas announced a 40 percent increase in the cost of construction for Phase 1 of the fracked gas pipeline. The company hopes to pass this cost on to ratepayers, increasing the price of gas at a time when many Vermonters are already struggling to heat their homes.

Demonstrators oppose the pipeline because it will lock Vermont communities into decades more of dirty fossil fuel use, at a time when a rapid transition away from fossil fuels and extreme energy use is needed. They are also concerned with impacts to local landowners and the lack of transparency surrounding the permitting process.

The Public Service Board is hosting a hearing tomorrow in Montpelier to decide whether or not to re-open the company’s Certificate of Public Good.

“This isn’t the beginning, and this isn’t the end,” Bennington said. “We are going to continue to do everything we can to stop this pipeline. It is morally reprehensible to be building new fossil fuel infrastructure in this day and age, especially in a state that has already banned fracking.”

Local coporate video coverage here and here

Protesters Locks Down on Kinder Morgan Facility (Canada)

13/9/14

Rising Tide Coast Salish Terriories reports that protesters have used bicycle locks to lock themselves to a Kinder Morgan facility in Burnaby, in unceded Coast Salish Territories in so-called British Columbia.

Kinder Morgan has begun surveying and cutting trees in conservation and parkland on Burnaby Mountain, unceded Coast Salish Territories. The giant US oil pipeline company plans to clear parkland in preparation for boring a tunnel through the Northridge of Burnaby Mountain contrary to city bylaws.

The purpose of the tunnel will be to transport crude tar sands oil from the storage tanks at Forest Hill to Westridge Terminal. Many geologists and seismologists are concerned that the Northridge will be subject to extreme shaking in the event of even a moderate earthquake putting at risk the pipeline, the huge oil storage tanks at Forest Hill and the Aframax tankers at Westridge terminal. A moderate earthquake to the huge tanks, pipeline and terminal would make the 2007 pipeline spill at Westridge minor in comparison.

The protesters, at the time of writing, were still locked to the gate.

Update: Six people were arrested after thirteen hours locked-down and subsequently released.

For updates on the situation check @risingtide604

Correction: We mistakenly reported that this was a Rising Tide Coast Salish Territories action.

First Nations Protesters Shut Down Northern B.C. Drilling Site

10/9/14

After a summer of protests aimed at mining companies, members of the Tahltan Nation in northern B.C. say they have shut down an exploratory drilling operation by taking over the site.

“HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!!!!” states a Monday night posting on the Facebook page for Tahltan elders. “The Klabona Keeper members are occupying a black hawk drill pad above Ealue Lake!!!”

The elders’ group, which is based in Iskut just south of Dease Lake, has staged several protests in the area in recent years blocking resource companies from working in a place known as the Sacred Headwaters. The region is highly valued by the Tahltan because it holds the headwaters of three important salmon rivers – the Stikine, Skeena and Nass.

Rhoda Quock, a spokeswoman for the Klabono Keepers, said Tuesday a group of protesters hiked to the remote drill site and took it over.

She said Black Hawk Drilling Ltd., a Smithers, B.C., company that works for Firesteel Resources Inc. of Vancouver and OZ Minerals of Australia, flew its drilling crew out after the occupation began.

Protests against the mine exploration work began in 2006-07, said Ms. Quock, when Firesteel Resources began examining a copper-gold deposit in the Sacred Headwaters region.

The Klabona Keepers set up roadblocks at that time and the company withdrew, before returning earlier this summer, she said.

“In July … we saw drilling equipment near the road,” she said. “We told them they had until noon to remove the drill or we’d take it over. And they did [remove the equipment].”

But Ms. Quock said helicopters were later seen flying overhead.

Company officials could not be reached for an interview, but on its website, Firesteel Resources states that in July it began working with OZ Minerals on a drilling program in the area.

In a brief e-mail, Michael Hepworth, President and chief executive officer of Firesteel Resources, said the drilling crew has approval to do exploratory drilling.

“We are working in the area under [Tahltan Central Council] approval and are fully permitted by the B.C. government to work in the area,” said Mr. Hepworth, who is travelling outside Canada.

Although the Tahltan Central Council is the main governing body of the Tahltan Nation, the Klabona Keepers operate independently. The two groups are sometimes at odds, but generally support one another.

Chad Day, recently elected President of the Tahltan Central Council, could not be reached for comment.

David Haslam, a spokesman for the Ministry of Mines, said in an e-mail that Firesteel Resources “has all the necessary tenures and permits” it needs and the government is working with the Tahltan Central Council “to develop a shared vision for land and resource use.”

Mr. Haslam urged “everyone to remain respectful of one another on the ground while we seek a resolution to the situation with the Klabona Keepers.”

Ms. Quock said members of the Klabona Keepers hiked through the mountains on the weekend looking for remote drill sites.

“They found the drill, the spill tray on it was overflowing with oil and water,” she said. “We shut the drill down. They are staying there and they are not allowing the drill to leave.”

Asked what message she wanted to deliver, she said: “We want them out. Why are they continuing to put more money in to a project that will always be protested? We will never approve it.”

The Klabona Keepers blockaded Imperial Metals’ Red Chris mine in August because of concerns about a tailings pond, but stopped the protest when talks began between the company and the Tahltan Central Council. Last year, the group blocked Fortune Minerals Ltd. from doing work on a coal deposit. On Monday, the B.C. government announced a temporary hold on coal exploration permits in the area.

“I don’t want people to get the impression we’re against all development. We’re not. But these places are sacred and we want to keep it [untouched],” said Ms. Quock.

Klabona Keeper website

Video