VANCOUVER — Will George has six words for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “This pipeline will not be built.”
George was responding to Justin Trudeau’s announcement on Sunday that the federal government will pursue legislation and financial measures to ensure that Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project will be built.
Trudeaus’s declaration came a week after Kinder Morgan threatened to stop work on the pipeline, and directly after a summit meeting in Ottawa with B.C. Premier John Horgan and Alberta premier Rachel Notley.
Trudeau’s rhetoric will only “ramp up” the protests, which have garnered widespread support in B.C., said George, a member of the Tsleil-Waututh nation and organizer of the Indigenous-led encampment near the Kinder Morgan site in Burnaby.
George said his role at the protest site is spiritual and cultural, not political, but he couldn’t help but notice there were no Indigenous leaders at the Sunday meeting between Notley, Horgan and Trudeau.
George said the lack of Indigenous presence at the Ottawa summit was “highly offensive.”
In Burnaby, the protest site was quiet on Sunday morning, but in a makeshift outdoor kitchen, several people were gathered to share the warmth of an open fire, and pass around a sweetgrass and tobacco smudge in an abalone shell.
Hank Bee, a Mamaliliḵa̱la member of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation, drummed a rhythm on a deer hide drum.
“These ceremonies are not just for display or to show we’re still here,” he said softly. “We are here. We are going to fight for our traditional land and territories.”
Bee had strong words for Trudeau. “He is just like his father, a forked-tongue speaker. Lies to British Columbia. I’m so sick of it. This is our home. We are going to fight for it.”
Although Trudeau said Sunday that the federal government had successfully negotiated agreements over the pipeline with 43 Indigenous bands, 33 of them in B.C., Bee said it wasn’t enough. “There are over 150 bands here in B.C. We all should be included.”
The frustration he feels is about more than the pipeline.
“I am not just fighting the oil companies,” said Bee, “I am fighting the fish farms. We want our livelihoods back.”
Bee’s cousin, Norma Louie, who bounced her six-month-old son Ares on her hip, said she had come to fight for her family’s traditional way of life.
“When I was a little girl growing up in Alert Bay, my granny would always get fish, up to 500 or 1,000. We would harvest and can them for the rest of the year. Today, I am 25 years old and I’m holding on to my one can of fish that was given to me. I’m holding on to it for a special occasion. What has happened?”
Trudeau painted the conflict over the pipeline as B.C. against the rest of Canada and claimed that “hundreds of thousands of Canadians,” including workers in the oilpatch are “hurting” and depend on this pipeline for jobs.
Trudeau said if the pipeline doesn’t move forward, “billions in public funds for health care, for infrastructure, for the environment” will be “lost to the discount on Canadian heavy crude because we can’t get our product to new markets.”
But George isn’t fazed.
“We’re thankful John Horgan is standing up for B.C. and we’re thankful to the people of Canada who support us,” said George. “We will continue our actions.”
Over the past month nearly 200 people have been arrested for blockading or protesting within the court-ordered injunction zone on Shellmont Street which states that demonstrators must not obstruct or prevent access to Trans Mountain facilities.
