Midnight Confiscation of Drilling Equipment at New Brunswick Anti-Fracking Protest

 

15 July 2013 Elsi­pog­tog First Nation, New Brunswick – ”We’ve tak­en it to the next lev­el,” said Grand Elder Ray Robin­son of last night’s events. “The bub­ble is about to burst, if it hasn’t already been burst.”

At approx­i­mate­ly 12 mid­night last night, locals began hear­ing boom­ing sounds char­ac­ter­is­tic of the South­west­ern Ener­gy (SWN) seis­mic test­ing trucks, or ‘thumpers,’ as well as oth­er less famil­iar indus­tri­al sounds near­by. After an online call-out express­ing con­cern that SWN might be attempt­ing to begin drilling under the cov­er of dark­ness, locals and camp mem­bers began to search for the source of the sounds.

Local Elsi­pog­tog war­rior Jason Okay recounts what fol­lowed: “We stopped to ask for direc­tions from a lady’s house that was near the sounds. We told her where we thought the sounds were, and she said ‘No way! That’s my [pri­vate­ly owned] land!’ We said ‘sor­ry ma’am, but your land’s get­ting drilled.’”

Camp mem­bers and locals entered the for­est on the woman’s prop­er­ty to find a crowd of RCMP offi­cers and pri­vate secu­ri­ty forces pro­tect­ing two SWN trucks. Pro­test­ers con­front­ed the RCMP, stat­ing that SWN was oper­at­ing on pri­vate prop­er­ty with­out con­sent and must leave imme­di­ate­ly.

Accord­ing to Okay and oth­er camp sources, pro­test­ers were fol­lowed onto the site by a group of indi­vid­u­als iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as UN inde­pen­dent observers, who pro­ceed­ed to talk with the RCMP. Fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion, it is report­ed that the “observers” con­vinced the RCMP to escort SWN offi­cials off the prop­er­ty, aban­don­ing the trucks. Elsi­pog­tog res­i­dents con­fis­cat­ed the trucks, tow­ing them onto the Elsi­pog­tog reserve where they are still being held.

Fol­low­ing the aban­don­ment of the site by SWN secu­ri­ty and the RCMP, locals went deep­er into the for­est and dis­cov­ered what are report­ed to be unmanned SWN drilling trucks. Upon inves­ti­gat­ing the sur­round­ing area, a series of large holes in the earth were dis­cov­ered. War­riors and pro­test­ers remain camped out in the area await­ing means to trans­port the equip­ment to the reserve.

Police remain camped out near the entrance to the site of the drills, block­ing any attempts by pro­test­ers to trans­port the equip­ment off-site. Unmarked police vehi­cles dot the high­way near the camp site, and SWN secu­ri­ty vehi­cles have been sight­ed dri­ving past the camp fre­quent­ly. A Glob­al News crew attempt­ed to set up with­out con­sent in front of the camp at approx­i­mate­ly 5:00am this morn­ing, but were evict­ed by camp mem­bers before film­ing began.

Ques­tions about UN observers

 Chief Aaron Sock of Elsi­pog­tog states that he con­tact­ed the UN last week­end to request UN obser­va­tion, in order to main­tain peace between the RCMP and locals due to recent secu­ri­ty con­cerns. Two indi­vid­u­als iden­ti­fied by them­selves and local lead­er­ship as UN Inde­pen­dent Observers have been present on camp for two days since, con­duct­ing inter­views with camp mem­bers, col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion, and last night, pro­vid­ing a medi­at­ing role in con­fronta­tions.

How­ev­er, upon con­tact­ing Wilton Lit­tlechild, Chair­per­son of the Unit­ed Nations Expert Mech­a­nism on the Rights of Indige­nous Peo­ples (EMRIP), Lit­tlechild stat­ed that while he was con­tact­ed by Chief Sock in regards to secu­ri­ty con­cerns at the camp, he had not direct­ly deployed any observers as of yet.

Mean­while, a source in the office of the spokesper­son for the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the UN con­firmed to rabble.ca that there are cur­rent­ly no UN observers any­where in Cana­da.

Despite this lack of clear ver­i­fi­ca­tion, camp mem­bers and First Nations lead­er­ship hold that the indi­vid­u­als have a rela­tion­ship with the UN, point­ing to the RCMP’s respect for the observers’ role as medi­a­tors in last night’s con­fronta­tion as fur­ther evi­dence.

Update – 11:45pm EST: Upon fur­ther dis­cus­sion with local lead­er­ship and the indi­vid­u­als iden­ti­fied as ‘UN Inde­pen­dent Observers,’ it has been made clear that the term ‘Inde­pen­dent Observ­er’ was intend­ed to com­mu­ni­cate that the indi­vid­u­als were not direct­ly employed by the UN. They have been appoint­ed by local lead­er­ship to main­tain a peace­keep­ing role in the camp, and com­pile a report based on their obser­va­tions of the sit­u­a­tion to be inde­pen­dent­ly sub­mit­ted on behalf of the com­mu­ni­ty to the Expert Mech­a­nism on the Rights of Indige­nous Peo­ples (which has been con­firmed by the UN via Wilton Lit­tlechild, Chair­per­son of EMPRIP). The titles of the indi­vid­u­als have been switched to ‘Peace­keep­ers’ to avoid future con­fu­sion.

Claire Stew­art-Kani­gan is a writer from Mon­tre­al cur­rent­ly report­ing from the anti-frack­ing protest camp. See her first dis­patch here. 

Pho­to: Jason Okay