Outside the Halifax office of Liberal MP Andy Fillmore, a demonstration of about 80 people opposing the Trans-Mountain pipeline project began Monday with an acknowledgement that it was taking place in Mi’kmaq territory.
“The importance of Indigenous consent on pipelines dominates discourse around Kinder Morgan,” said the rally’s organizer Aidan McNally, with the Canadian Federation of Students.
“The same is true for this region. [It] has never been ceded or surrendered.”
The demonstration was one of 100 planned at Liberal constituency offices across Canada to protest the federal government decision last week to purchase the pipeline from Houston-based company Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion.
Following speeches by Indigenous and environmental activists, the crowd marched up to the MP’s office touting signs and a long black tube simulating a pipeline, to deliver a copy of a shared petition with more than 200,000 signatures asking to cancel the deal.
The demonstration was one of 100 taking place at Liberal constituency offices across Canada. (Nic Meloney/CBC)
‘I felt so sick’
“We demand true climate leadership that begins with ending this ridiculous use of taxpayer dollars,” one of the rally’s organizers told staff at the office.
Kati George-Jim, a political science and sustainability student at Dalhousie University, crammed herself into the corridor outside the office in solidarity. She said she was shaken by government’s decision.
“I felt so sick,” she said.
George-Jim is from T’sou-ke First Nation on Vancouver Island in B.C. It’s one of 43 First Nations with reserve lands in the pipeline’s path to show some form of support for the project.
There are 120 communities considered to be in proximity to the pipeline’s corridor or along the marine transportation route for oil tankers.
“You can see it from our window, from our territory,” George-Jim said.
“And [on the] mainland, our relations will see it too, as it barges through their territory.”
George-Jim has been attending university in Halifax since the project was first announced, but said she’d recently spent a number of weeks with her family on the west coast. She said the topic of First Nations supporting the project has been divisive.
‘They are sell outs’
One of the concerns she brought to the demonstration was the “colonial structure” through which consultation is being done with Indigenous communities in B.C. and Alberta. She called her band’s support of the project “frustrating.”
George-Jim said she’s worried involved nations don’t fully understand what they’re agreeing to, and that making “short-term” decisions based on the prospects of financial gain doesn’t align with values she holds as a First Nations woman.
“I don’t think that’s a direction we need to go in as a nation … as many nations,” she said.
Amanda Rekunyk says Indigenous leaders that support the Trans-Mountain Pipeline project are ‘selling out’ Indigenous peoples and beliefs. (Nic Meloney/CBC)
“The way the process has gone forward is using [incomplete] data and tactics to get communities on-board [and] not fully understanding the position they can put themselves in.”
Also among the crowd at the rally was Amanda Rekunyk, from Carrier and Kawakatoose First Nations in B.C.
Rekunyk, a voice in First Nations advocacy and environmental activism on the east coast, said she wasn’t surprised by the government’s decision to buy the pipeline and called it “another form of genocide.”
Equally frustrating, Rekunyk said, was the support for the project being shown by First Nations leaders.
“I’m telling them that they are sell-outs,” she said.
“The chiefs that are signing on for this are doing it for short-term economic and personal gain and it’s detrimental to the next seven generations. They’re selling out our people and our beliefs.”
Demonstrations were also held in cities across the country, from Charlottetown to Whitehorse.