Alton Gas criminalizing grassroots Mi’kmaq water protectors
15.2.18
For immediate release
February 12 2018
Alton Gas criminalizing grassroots Mi’kmaq water protectors
Efforts to protect treaty rights and water result met with aggression and threats of legal action
Sipekne’katik/Fort Ellis — Alton Gas
has posted signs outside the Treaty Camp at the Shubenacadie River
naming water protectors on site as trespassers and criminals.
Grassroots Mi’kmaq water protectors
have been holding down a protection camp at the Shubenacadie River for
nine months to prevent Alton Gas from dumping thousands of tons of salt
brine into the sacred river every day. They
are outraged by Alton Gas’ bully tactics and intent to resume work on
the project without allowing Sipekne’katik to complete its community
consultation process.
The Alton Gas project proposes to
create two salt caverns by solution mining an existing salt deposit,
dumping the salt brine in the Shubenacadie River, and filling the
resulting caverns with gas. The company’s mixing channel, designed to
mix the brine into the river water, filled with mud almost immediately
upon its creation. Additionally, Alton Gas is eight years behind
schedule, has a number of lapsed and defunct permits, and has cancelled
two of the four caverns it originally planned to create.
“Alton Gas has been interfering with
Sipekne’katik’s self-made consultation process,” says grassroots
grandmother water protector, Dorene Bernard. “The band has recently
hired a person to do Community Consultation on this project and others.
Now, the company is trying to intimidate and harass water protectors,
and paint us as criminals.”
“This camp is peaceful, and
principled,” says Bernard. “We’re here as Mi’kmaq and treaty rights
holders to defend our right to this river and this place. Defending this
right is our responsibility. Alton Gas is trying to paint us as
criminal for protecting our Treaty rights and doing our sacred duty to
protect our unceded lands and waters.”
“Sipekne’katik has been developing its
own consultation process – we want to tell Canada how we will be
consulted, and not have that dictated for us,” says Bernard. Mi’kmaq
Rights Initiative (KMKNO) does not represent Sipekne’katik. “Alton Gas
is trying to bully us here at the river by calling us criminals, and
bully our band council into signing an impact benefit agreement. All
we’re doing is defending our treaty right to this river and protection
of the watershed.
“The RCMP officers come with Alton Gas
when they try to do work or hang up signs like these ones. They are
protecting Alton Gas’s interests more than they are protecting us as
peaceful water protectors and treaty rights holders,” says Rebecca
Cope-Moore.
Treaty Camp water protectors are
calling on the Government of Nova Scotia to stop Alton Gas from
proceeding with their project while Sipekne’katik completes its
consultation process.
Contact:
Dorene Bernard (902) 758-5152 dorenebernard@hotmail.com
Rebecca Cope-Moore (902) 403-8507 designsofthedawn@gmail.com
Alan Knockwood (902) 758 2653 alknockwood@bellaliant.net
Read the full article …
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