Canada Protesters against Coastal GasLink pipeline
Incendiary news service
By Lois Boite, with contributions from Felix Weber, David Martinez
On Monday, protesters in Vancouver supporting the indigenous
Wet’su’weten resistance to the Coastal GasLink pipeline blockaded a
vehicle access route to the port while others blocked a bridge on a
passenger train line, shutting down service for part of the morning.
These actions follow weeks of increasing blockades on railways, bridges,
and roads across Canada that have paralyzed passenger and freight train
service, exacting a major economic impact that has raised the stakes in
the battle against the $4.6 billion pipeline and escalated state
repression of protesters. Protesters block a vehicle route to the Port of Vancouver
Nearly every part of the country has seen protests and blockades in
support of the struggle against the pipeline. In Halifax, authorities
worry that freighters will be permanently diverted as they seek other
ports of entry. Passenger rail in provinces like Ontario, Quebec, and
others have been halted as a result of the blockades. Each time law
enforcement disperses one, others pop up in solidarity. The protests
have not only galvanized the fight against the current imperialist
resource extraction on and through indigenous lands, but have also given
expression to generations of indigenous grievances against the Canadian
state. Police tackle and arrest protesters blocking a rail line in Tyendinaga, Ontario
In a news conference on Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced, “The barricades need to come down now.”
Trudeau is politically weak after a year of public relations
scandals, but this conflict could allow him to reassert himself in the
eyes of his imperialist masters. Publicly, he has not issued any
concrete orders, but in typical liberal fashion he has passed off
responsibility, saying it is a matter for law enforcement and asserting,
“the law must be upheld,” signaling that police will have free rein to
repress the protesters. On Monday, police led an assault on major
blockades, allowing some rails to resume service. The blockade set up by the Tyendinaga Mohawk in Early February.
One of these police actions targeted a particularly militant blockade
headed by the Tyendinaga Mohawks. Since early February, the Canadian
National Railway has been shut down, halting the passage of freight
trains and threatened the supply chains of the oil industry, which has
revenue in the tens of trillions of dollars. The Mohawks have
historically aligned themselves with the Wet’suwet’en, who stood in
solidarity with the Mohawks’ 78 day armed stand-off with the Canadian
state in 1990, also known as the Oka Crisis.
Announcing the Coastal GasLink project in 2012, TC Energy Corporation
intends for the 416-mile long pipeline to transport natural gas from
Northern British Columbia to Kitimat, where it will be converted to
liquid gas and exported for sale on the international market. TC
Energy has earned the hatred of the masses with its disastrous pipeline
projects across North America, most notoriously with the Keystone
Pipeline which saw mass resistance from indigenous peoples and
environmental activists over the last decade. Last October, the Keystone
Pipeline spilled over 300,000 gallons of oil in North Dakota, only
months after US President Donald Trump had issued a new permit. An oil freight train with banners placed on it by protesters.
The pipeline’s path through Wet’suwet’en territory continues the
Canadian imperialists’ practice of dispossession and genocide against
indigenous peoples. The situation in British Colombia is distinct, as
95% of the land is unceded, which leaves ‘legal’ governance of the land
supposedly to the indigenous inhabitants. In these unceded territories,
the nation’s hereditary chiefs have technical jurisdiction over the
land, but this jurisdiction is ultimately not respected by the
imperialist Canadian state.
Canada’s manipulation of Indigenous peoples and territories goes back
to the colonial era, when the Indian Act of 1876 created band council
systems and reserves to interfere with indigenous self-governance. Band
councils do not hold jurisdiction over unceded land, but only on
reserves that have been outlined by treaties.
Despite this, 20 elected band councils have signed agreements with TC
Energy, showing their own subservience to imperialist interests. The
imperialists have cited the support of the elected band councils as
proof that indigenous people back the pipeline, all while disregarding
months of vigorous resistance and the opposition of the hereditary
chiefs.
In the midst of protests against the Coastal GasLink pipeline, Teck
Resources has dropped a $15.5 billion project to further develop
Canada’s notorious oil sands in Alberta, showing imperialists’ growing
concern over the mass resistance to ecologically devastating resource
extraction and the falling rate of profits in general.
As violent attacks from the Canadian state intensify and persist, the
masses have responded with further rebellion. The inspired resistance
of the indigenous people and their supporters is based on a fundamental
fact: bombarding the economic structures of dying imperialist states,
such as distribution networks and sites of production, severely impacts
their economic power and makes the ruling class tremble.
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