Lockdown Starts Against Line 9

25 June 2013, 4 peo­ple are locked down at the Enbridge Pump Sta­tion near Hamil­ton, Ontario.

We are appalled that Enbridge is attempt­ing to resolve this sit­u­a­tion with an injunc­tion when we know that this con­flict is root­ed in their refusal to mean­ing­ful­ly con­sult and seek con­sent from impact­ed com­mu­ni­ties. First, Enbridge tried accom­plish­ing this rever­sal through stealth, then through trick­ery, and now, final­ly, they are try­ing to do it through force.

Trish Mills is one of the indi­vid­u­als cur­rent­ly con­tained with­in the struc­ture. She issued the fol­low­ing quote this morn­ing:

“This isn’t Enbridge’s land to order us off of. It’s stolen. Even if it wasn’t, this com­pa­ny and this indus­try exploit and destroy land. It is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to stop this exploita­tion. While a spill might not be on pur­pose, when it does hap­pen — 1 every 5 days — they look at it only as a mon­e­tary fig­ure; I look at it as the irre­versible mas­sacre of an ecosys­tem.”

Anoth­er indi­vid­ual named Sigrid, who is seat­ed on top of the bar­ri­cade, has issued the fol­low­ing state­ment:

“I’m doing this because I have to, for the future. Because some­one has to do some­thing now.”

Swamp Line 9 was start­ed by a group of 60 region­al activists con­cerned with the Line 9 pipeline expan­sion. Over the past 6 days it has caught the atten­tion of activists and tar sands resisters across Tur­tle Island and become part of some­thing much big­ger.

Since tak­ing this site last Thurs­day, we have seen Enbridge spill 750 bar­rels of oil into a fresh water stream in North­ern Alber­ta. To the East we have seen a bru­tal police crack­down on anti-frack­ing pro­tes­tors in New Brunswick. Our strug­gle here in West­over is part of a broad­er pic­ture. We stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with all com­mu­ni­ties who are resist­ing against end­less resource extrac­tion and the destruc­tion that these com­pa­nies cause.

Today’s coun­try-wide day of sol­i­dar­i­ty has been declared as the first offi­cial action of the Sov­er­eign­ty Sum­mer called for by Idle No More and Defend­ers of the Land; Enbridge’s West­over Ter­mi­nal is on the ter­ri­to­ry of the Hau­denosaunee Con­fed­er­a­cy and there have been indi­vid­u­als from 6 Nations on site all week. We demand that Enbridge acknowl­edge this land as Hau­denosaunee ter­ri­to­ry, and that no con­struc­tion can take place until they have received free, pri­or, and informed con­sent from the Con­fed­er­a­cy.