Over the last few decades Canada has largely devolved into a Petro State. With the Robber Barons of Alberta dictating Canada’s energy policy.
Protesters have blocked railways and barricaded ports in wave of dissent – and the pressure on Justin Trudeau has increased
By Amber Bracken at Unist'ot'en Camp and Leyland Cecco in Toronto
As armed Canadian police officers advanced through snow towards their camp, the group of Indigenous women was absorbed in a drumming ceremony to honour the spirits of missing and murdered Indigenous women across the country.
Rows of red dresses hung from a fishing line slung across the road, and from pine and spruce trees in the surrounding forest – each one a memorial to the thousands of Indigenous women killed or disappeared in recent years.
The long-simmering conflict came to a head this week, as Canada’s national police force deployed helicopters, armed officers and dogs to enforce a court injunction and clear Indigenous activists who had been blocking work crews from the route of the C$6.6bn (US$5bn) Coastal GasLink project.
Twenty-eight people were arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, including three Wet’suwet’en matriarchs – Tait, Freda Huson and Brenda Michell.
“I felt overwhelmed with sadness, and pain over the fact that we were being removed from our territory,” said Tait, remembering the moment she was escorted past the fluttering red dresses towards a police vehicle. She made sure to touch each dress as she left.
But she and the other “land defenders” remain defiant. Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, who oversee 22,000 sq km of territory, have stubbornly opposed the project and remain locked in a battle with the courts, the pipeline company – and the government of Justin Trudeau.
And in recent days, their fight has been taken up by other groups across the country.
For more than a week, members of the Tyendinaga Mohawk have blocked freight and commuter rail traffic in Ontario, in support of the Wet’suwet’en. Elsewhere, protestors have blocked roads, barricaded access to shipping ports and occupied the offices of elected officials in a wave of dissent.
More than just a row over a pipeline, the Wet’suwet’en protests also reflect Canada’s often fraught relationship with First Nations.
“Ever since colonization, the aim has been to dispossess our people from our lands. To impoverish us. To assimilate us. To eliminate us,” said Tait. “We know that our self-determination, our sovereignty, our very identity, is based on us having control over our lands.”
By Jason Hanna and Dave Alsup
(CNN)Protesters blocking Canadian railways have shut down large portions of the nation's passenger and freight train service this week, knocking out a travel option for thousands and spurring a business group to warn the cross-country flow of food and other goods will slow.
The protests started last week when police started arresting members of an indigenous group that was blocking a road to a construction site for the
Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline in British Columbia,
CNN network partner CTV reported.
Indigenous groups and allies blocked railways
and government
buildings around the country in solidarity with the British Columbia group. Some rail blockades have ended, but others remain, including near Belleville, Ontario.
Because of the remaining blockades:
• Canadian National Railway (CN) on Thursday said it's started to progressively shut down its eastern freight network, essentially east of Toronto.
• Passenger service VIA Rail, which largely uses CN railways, said Thursday its
suspended most of its runs across the country until further notice, after small-scale cancellations earlier in the week.
Near Belleville, a two-and-a-half-hour drive northeast of Toronto, activists with the Tyendinaga Mohawk group have placed vehicles near the tracks -- not across them, but too close for trains to safely pass,
CBC reported.
"This particular movement going across the nation around is so very important for the next generation," Pauline Maracle, who has been cooking for the camped-out protesters for a week,
told CBC. "At the end of the day, it's the people for the people."
While Canada’s First Nations make up 4.9% of Canada’s population, they constitute the majority across the vast tracts of land in Canada’s north.