A pair of Indigenous landowners shut down teams at a fossil fuel pumping station in British Columbia on Saturday, promising to continue resisting a government-owned pipeline that harms the climate, environment and people of the United States. First Nations lands without yielding crossing.
“We have never provided and will never provide our collective, prior and informed consent, the minimum international standard, to the Trans Mountain Pipeline Project.”
—Tiny House Warriors
Pipeline protesters — self-described on social media as “accomplices” of braided warriors and Tiny House warriors — locked themselves in a crane at Trans Mountain Corporation’s Blue River pumping station.
The Trans Mountain Pipeline, owned by the Canadian government through the subsidiary Trans Mountain Corporation, transports crude from the bituminous sands of Alberta to the British Colombian coast. It is widely considered the crudest oil in the world.
In addition to the damage caused to the climate and the environment, the pipeline has serious social costs. According to First Nations advocates, desecrating sacred indigenous lands and transient workers housed in male camps are often perpetrators of crimes against indigenous women, girls, and people with two spirits. Murder, rape, human trafficking and other crimes abound, contributing to the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women, girls and people with two spirits (MMIWG2S).
Two accomplices of Tiny House Warriors and Braided Warriors are locked in the equipment at the TMX pumping station, in the territory of Secwepemc without yielding. pic.twitter.com/n41nkjVmHr
– Braided Warriors (@BraidedWarriors) April 3, 2021
Proponents of Secwepemc territory have strategically built small houses along the 518-kilometer (321-mile) pipeline route “to enforce Secwepemc’s law and jurisdiction and block access to that pipeline.”
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“We have never provided and will never provide our collective, prior and informed consent, the minimum international standard, to the Trans Mountain Pipeline Project,” the Tiny House Warriors website states. “The Tiny House Warrior movement is the beginning of the re-establishment of village sites and the vindication of our authority over our uncredited territories.”
Explained Kanahus Manuel, land advocate for Secwepemc and Tiny House Warrior The Sparrow Project—A news thread of non-profit public interest focused on amplifying stories of struggles for social, economic, racial and environmental justice – that Trans Mountain “does not have the consent of Secwepemc and the failure to recognize the title of Secwepemc, land rights and indigenous jurisdiction will only result in more conflicts, direct actions, blockades and occupations of indigenous lands, which will increase the risks and economic uncertainty for Trans Mountain and its construction deadlines. “
The Braided Warriors, an indigenous organization that promotes the rights and sovereignty of First Nations in the territories of Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish and Musqueam, said on its Instagram page that “we stand in solidarity with the Secwepemc people in their struggle to stop the foreign invasion of theirs to protect their lands, waters, animals and peoples “.
“Our role is to be complicit in the defenders of indigenous lands and to put ourselves on the line of stopping the ongoing colonization of indigenous territories and peoples.”
—Barriers Warrior
“Our role is to be complicit in the defenders of indigenous lands and put ourselves on the line of stopping the ongoing colonization of indigenous territories and peoples,” Braided Warriors said. “This pipeline will affect us all and all future generations, but in the first place it will affect the nations and peoples of this route, including the people of Secwepemc.”
“Today we stand on secwepemc land without ceding, without surrendering and illegally occupied to prove that we will not stop until the pipeline is finished and the land is returned to the rightful title holders,” they added.