AMAZING NEWS!! Kinder Morgan Canada Limited today announced that it is suspending all non-essential activities and related spending on the Trans Mountain Expansion Project. KML also announced that under current circumstances — “specifically including the continued actions in opposition to the Project —” it will not commit additional shareholder resources to the Project.
You guys, it’s working. Our sustained and principled opposition to this project is wearing the company down. This is far from over but a great reason to cheer each other on and to celebrate with Indigenous protectors whose voices, and prayers, are being heard.
The lesson of today is Indigenous rights, when they are exercised, defended and enforced, are really scary to industry. That is why we need to support actions like this and why standing with Indigenous Peoples so they can access justice is not only the right thing to do — it’s a gamechanger.
Read the transcript of Naomi Klein’s statement from her visit to Burnaby Mountain on April 8th and if you can, support RAVEN with a donation.
Click the image below to watch the video or click here :https://business.facebook.com/121099651233937/videos/1868879973122554/
Full transcript of Naomi Klein’s statement:
“What happened here today was pretty incredible. So: for weeks anyone who was seen to be violating Kinder Morgan’s injunction was arrested.
Today, the entire executive of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs including Grand Chief Stewart Philip announced ahead of time that they were going to risk arrest; that they were going to do exactly what all the protesters before them had done. They were ready to be arrested, and they been waiting now for hours and the police have not showed up
What’s really interesting about that is that it’s Kinder Morgan who decided to shut down the action today and not to send in the police to enforce the injunction. They did that clearly because they did not want an image of the Grand Chief of the UBCIC to be arrested and to expose the lie that there is indigenous consent for the Transmountain pipeline expansion.
I think they were very very afraid to have images beamed all over the world of all these powerful indigenous Chiefs being arrested because they oppose the pipeline.
So rather than have those images out in the world, they shut down production! I think that tells us something about the power of indigenous rights about the power of indigenous leadership and what really scares Kinder Morgan. I don’t think people are leaving with any sense of defeat: they’re leaving actually realizing the power and that Kinder Morgan was scared of a photograph today.
This is a long struggle and everybody knows that. I spoke with the Chiefs who are ready to be arrested: they’re leaving today fully aware of why they didn’t get arrested of what Kinder Morgan is afraid of. They are all the more determined to demonstrate that without Indigenous consent this project violates the UN Declaration of the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
I’m glad I got to witness this. I’m glad I got to be part of this historic day, and I am leaving today all the more convinced that the most powerful tool, the most powerful weapon against these projects that are completely incompatible with a livable planet is respect for Indigenous rights.
And that means that all of us who are not Indigenous have a really sacred duty to defend those rights and help to strengthen those rights. This is the time to show up in numbers.
A year ago I was in Kamloops and I was privileged to be part of a ceremony on the banks of the Thompson River in Secwepecm territory. People were absolutely resolved to fight the pipeline in the interior of BC. The Secwepemc territory is the largest swath of land along the pipeline route in the BC interior.
And then there are the tar sands themselves. Many people saw the film that Avi Lewis directed based on my book “This Changes Everything.” In it we met an amazing woman named Crystal Lameman and members of the Beaver Lake Cree who are part of the TarSands Trial lawsuit that they’ve been fighting for a long time. It’s a lawsuit against the Alberta government, the Federal government and the Crown— the British Crown — for thousands and thousands of treaty violations because of tarsand development that has so damaged their land that they’re unable to exercise their treaty rights right to hunt and gather. So it’s an incredibly important lawsuit that’s continuing and they need our support.
The lesson of today is: Indigenous rights, when they are exercised, when they are defended, when they’re enforced, are really scary to industry and that’s why kind of Morgan didn’t want to have an image of the Chiefs being arrested. They didn’t want that image being beamed around the world. They didn’t want their investors to see it. If their investors to get their investors get scared and they start to wonder, “is this pipeline really going to be built? Is this pipeline worth it to me? Am I going to be facing boycott because of this pipeline? Say I’m a bank, say and I’m invested in this: “is this going to be another Dakota Access Pipeline where the financiers were targeted?” So they are afraid of Indigenous rights and that’s why we need to dig in and also support Indigenous lawsuits. People who are watching can look into Raven Trust (https://raventrust.com).
They understand if these images go out, that their investors will see that Indigenous people who are directly affected by this pipeline are not consenting. We know that it violates the Paris Climate Accord which the Trudeau government helped negotiate. Investors are trying to figure out is whether it’s going to get built anyway: whether it’s going to be built even though it violates indigenous land rights, even though it denies rights that have been confirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada, even though it violates the paltry commitments that the Canadian government signed with the Paris Accord and even though it makes a mockery of the temperature targets for a liveable future.
Basically what investors want to know is: how seriously are these agreements going to be taken when it comes to the Trudeau government? They’re doing everything they can to say “don’t worry we’re not going to take them seriously, our word is garbage.” The thing is, people don’t agree! And you know the movements that are rising up, that are saying “no, we’re going to hold you to your treaties! We’re going to hold you to the UNDRIP. You may not take it seriously, you may be willing to make a mockery of agreement you negotiated, but we’re going to hold you to it.” When investors see that— when they see people committed and even be willing to be arrested —then they see that sense of urgency. Investors get spooked.
I think we saw some pretty vivid evidence of that and that Kinder Morgan would rather shut down production than risk having images beamed out.
(end transcript)
