Recently, the Swinomish, Suquamish, Lummi, Tulalip tribes, Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish and Musqueam Nations released a joint statement of solidarity to stand together to protect the Salish Sea.
The energy giant, Kinder Morgan, filed an application with the National Energy Board of Canada in December of 2013 to construct a pipeline, dubbed the TransMountain pipeline, from the tar sands in Alberta to Vancouver, B.C. From Vancouver, the crude oil would be placed on tanker ships and exported to Asia.
“We issue a call to all Native Americans, First Nations relatives, and to all people who love the Salish Sea to please stand with us to protect our rights, our health, and our children’s future. It is our generation’s time to stand up and fight. What happens to the Salish Sea happens to our peoples, and to all those who call this unique place home.”
So, with Keystone XL coming to Pine Ridge whether my tribe wants it or not, and the Bakken shale oil having upped the number of rapists the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara have to deal with, AND the number of oil rig workers who are registered sex offenders, many are worried that it might increase the number of rapes against Indian women in South Dakota.
CHRISSY SWAIN, DEFENDING GRASSY NARROWS - Chrissy Swain shares about her connection to the land, the importance of youth defenders, and how some leadership should “smarten up” and be Anishinaabe.
On December 2, 2002, youth and Elders of the Grassy Narrows First Nation established a blockade on a logging road in their territory and sparked one of the longest standing Indigenous logging blockades in Canadian history. The Grassy Narrows community has survived many colonial traumas including relocation, residential schools, mercury contamination, flooding of sacred grounds and burial sites, and clear-cut logging within their traditional territory. However, resistance is strong at Grassy Narrows where youth and Elders are actively defending their territories by re-occupying their lands, reviving their culture, and exercising their rights to manage their land as they see fit.
Today, NRDC – along with 15 other local, regional and national groups – released a new report entitled What’s in Your Tank? Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States Need to Reject Tar Sands and Support Clean Fuels. The report brings to light a major new threat to the region: without action by citizens and policy-makers, the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic will have 11.5% of their petroleum-based transportation and heating fuels coming from tar sands by 2020. Further, if the Keystone XL pipeline is approved, and just a small portion of the fuel derived from Keystone XL’s tar sands crude flows to the Northeast, the portion of tar sands-derived fuels in the region could skyrocket to 14-18%. Because tar sands-derived fuels cause 17% more greenhouse gas emissions than conventionally sourced-fuels over their full life-cycle from extraction through burning, this could be a major setback for a region that has embraced carbon emission reductions with programs like the landmark Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a nine-state pact to combat climate change by reducing carbon pollution from power plants.
Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states are currently almost “tar sands free.” As of 2012, tar sands accounted for less than 1 percent of the region’s fuel supply, but even as soon as 2015, tar sands could grow to account for 5% of the region’s fuel supply. Unless we take action to stop it, this invasion of tar sands will happen in several ways:
Tar sands crude oil will be sent to the U.S. Gulf Coast through the existing pipeline network, along with Keystone XL if it is approved, be refined on the Gulf Coast, and then sent as fuel to the Northeast via the Colonial Pipeline and other means.
If the reversal of Enbridge’s Line 9 and the Portland-Montreal Pipeline are approved, and if TransCanada’s Energy East Pipeline is approved, more tar sands could be sent to the East for refining in Eastern Canadian refineries and Northeast and Mid-Atlantic refineries that supply the region.
“It’s outrageous that the oil industry expects Mainers to fill up our gas tanks with tar sands, given all of the opposition to shipping tar sands through the Sebago Lake watershed and out of Casco Bay,” said Emily Figdor, director of Environment Maine, which co-sponsored the report. “We’re not going to sit back and let the oil industry bring the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive oil on earth to Maine. We’re committed to keeping Maine tar sands-free.”
Massachusetts would also undercut its efforts to reduce carbon pollution. The NRDC report found that under current plans, tar sands-derived gasoline supplies in 11 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states (including Massachusetts) would soar from less than one percent in 2012 to 11.5 percent of the total by 2020, due to increased imports from Canadian refineries, fresh supplies of refined tar sands fuels from Gulf Coast refineries, and quantities from East Coast refineries that would obtain tar sands crude via rail and barge.
An influx of carbon-intensive fuels into Massachusetts and the rest of the region, which in 2012 were virtually tar sands free, will hurt the efforts to combat climate change, which has already caused billions of dollars in damage, according to the report, “What’s in Your Tank? Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States Need to Reject Tar Sands and Support Clean Fuels.”
“This report is an urgent wake-up call, one that Massachusetts must heed in order avoid wiping out recent gains in reducing transportation sector carbon pollution,” noted Sue Reid, Massachusetts Director of the Conservation Law Foundation, which co-sponsored the report. “Tar sands-derived gas poses a direct threat to the Commonwealth’s transportation energy mix and our clean energy future.”
“A Native American Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe youth tends to a rice crop on the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota on Aug. 27, 2012. This tribe relies on water to preserve their culture, agriculture and overall quality of life.”
“The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Federal Recognized Tribes Extension Program (FRTEP) is an outreach effort to homeowners to educate them on the importance of how having the sanitation department pump their septic systems could protect the health and contribute to the safety of the environment and their community. USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) administers FRTEP, which provides funding for Extension programs on federally recognized reservations.” - USDA
August 13th, 2011, Klee Benally (Navajo/Diné) chained himself to an excavator at the San Francisco Peaks to stop pipeline construction which would carry sewage water for ski resort snowmaking where indigenous groups gather medicinal herbs. The San Francisco Peaks are located in Northern Arizona and are considered sacred by numerous indigenous groups in the area including the Diné (Navajo), Hopi, Zuni, Havasupai, Hualapai, Apache, Tohono O’Odoham and San Juan Southern Paiute. Construction of the pipeline began on May 25th, 2011. The conflict is ongoing. (Photo Outta Your Backpack Media / Censored News)
Protecting Water for our Future Generations in North Dakota Should Not be Business as Usual, by Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle
If we are to believe that politicians in North Dakota and Tribal leaders in the Bakken area are reasonable and thinking of the future, then why would they be allowing drilling, fracking, and waste dumping to be occurring right along the Missouri River – our life’s blood? This second Bakken oil boom has been taking place for almost 14 years – in that time, the ND Department of Health is now, this month, launching a website which informs the public regarding oil spills, (euphemistically called “releases”), frack water spills, and other incidents (e.g. dumps of radioactive waste, medical waste, etc). We are hearing from community members in the area, that waste water and radioactive “socks” are often simply dumped on the road, as truckers simply don’t want to drive the extra miles to properly dispose of the waste.
Keystone Environmental Reviewer in Bed with Big Oil by Matt Remle
Earlier this week Politico reported that the London-based firm, Environmental Resources Management (ERM), who was contracted by the State Department to write the environmental review on the potential impacts of the KXL pipeline is a member of no fewer than five oil-industry trade groups that are pushing for approval of the KXL pipeline.
ERM is affiliated with Western Energy Alliance, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, and the American Petroleum Institute. Additionally, two ERM staff members sit on the board of the Western States Petroleum Association. Each of these oil-industry trade groups have lobbied for the approval of the KXL pipeline. The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s top lobbying group, alone has spent millions lobbying for the approval of the KXL pipeline. ERM’s draft study, released last March, concluded that “TransCanada’s Alberta-to-Texas pipeline would pose little risk to the environment.”
ERM’s final report on the potential environmental impacts from the KXL pipeline has yet to be released. Climate activists have been actively protesting the State Departments contracting of ERM due to the “potential” conflict of interest. ERM maintains that there is no conflict of interest.
If approved the KXL pipeline would bring Alberta tar sands oil to Texas for exportation. Tribes and environmental activists have strongly opposed the KXL pipeline, and other pipeline expansion projects, due to their impacts on water, treaty lands, sacred sites and global climate change.
Asked by 
