The Healing
Walk through the Tar Sands July 6,
2013
On Saturday, July 6, I participated in the 5th
annual Tar Sands Healing Walk organized mostly by the Athabasca Chipewyan First
Nation with some other First Nations and environmental groups helping out. Workshops
and speeches the day before as well as camping for the 500 or so participants took
place at the Gregoire Lake campground on the Ft McMurray First Nation. The
theme of the walk was “Stop the Destruction, Start the Healing”.
Participants came from every part of the continent, and were
of every age. There was even a baby born at midnight on July 4th in
a tipi set up for the purpose. The baby boy’s mother, Nitanis, Cree for “My
daughter” and her husband and one of her children, were visiting her mother and
grandmother on Ft McMurray First Nation.
I talked to participants from all over Alberta including
current and past Oil Sands workers. I talked to people from Vancouver and from
several coastal First Nations including Stewart Phillip, the Grand Chief of theUnion
of BC Chiefs, who is convinced that the federal government will try to push
through the Northern Gateway Pipeline even if the Review Panel turns it down;
and Brenda Sayers, a Band Councillor for the Hupacasath First Nation in Port Alberni
who is suing the federal government over the China Foreign Investment
Promotion/Protection Agreement which will affect Canada’s sovereignty over
jobs, environment and FN treaties.
I talked to people from Regina (including two members of the Muskowekwan
First Nation which is negotiation over a potash mine on their territory, people
from Toronto, and a youth contingent
from the Ammjiwanaang First Nation near Sarnia, which is home to more than 40
petrochemical companies and one of the most toxic environments on the
continent. I spoke to Chiefs and other
dignitaries who had come from the NWT, which is further downstream of the Tar
Sands development along the Mackenzie River and were also here to meet as
members of an organization concerned about the entire Arctic watershed, called
the Keepers of the Water. I spoke to people from Texas, California, Minnesota, Pennsylvania,
and even an American living in Japan.
I spoke to John O’Connor and his wife Charlene, who both work
for the Ft McKay Health authority, he a doctor and Director of Health Services and
she a nurse and Ft McKay Health Services Manager. John has spent five years fighting attacks
from Health Canada and Alberta Health including complaints by both to Alberta
College of Physicians over his concern over the high number of young adults
with cardiovascular disease and cancer. Recently, the complaints were
mysteriously dropped.
Visiting the Crane Lake Nature Trail
On both Friday and Saturday there were speeches. Winona LaDuke,
the Native American activist and author who was Ralph Nader’s running mate in US
Presidential elections in 1996 and 2000, gave her most memorable line when she
said “I do not consider myself an activist. Just a reasonable person: I want clean air and water.” My favourite
advice that she gave was that the harder we fight, the more expensive it is for
the companies and the more likely they are to give up. Tzepora Berman, a
long-time activist for Greenpeace and co-founder of Forest Ethics, talked about
her 11-year-old asking her why the government thought she was a terrorist after
Joe Oliver’s infamous open letter about the Northern Gate Pipeline hearings last
year. Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca
Chipewyan FN expressed his disappointment that there are not more Canadians
fighting the Tar Sands. Other speakers of note included Bill McKibben, founder
of 350.org and Naomi Klein, the author of No Logos and Shock Doctrine.
The
atmosphere was mostly highly charged. There was a sea of tents and some great
local food. I could be seen the last evening gnawing on a deer knee joint (although
they did have vegetarian food, I thought eating deer was vegetarian food: deer
are vegetarians, aren’t they?)
One interesting thing about the whole region is that
everyone is either directly or indirectly dependent on the Tar Sands. Everyone
knows that shutting it down is going to bring difficult change and of course it
is already highly contaminated. But everyone in the back of their minds seem to
know that it is not a good thing. Same way that most addicts know that their
addiction aint a good thing.
The trucks and equipment on the highways is gigantic,
continuous, and overwhelming. How else to maintain the biggest industrial
project on Earth??
Another upgrader
The walk started at a nature trail courtesy of Suncor.
Ironic to call it a nature trail as many of the participants sported dusk masks
to protect themselves from the toxic dust in the area. In previous years, many
participants have reported severe headaches, sore throats, and respiratory problems
after the walk.
While there were some areas of woodland either small token
areas replanted or small areas between the various mining projects, most of the
area was dominated by desolate sandy deserts where extraction was completed
(with signs saying “Restoration in progress”, which appeared to be more hopeful
than actual), and enormous upgrader plants with steaming smoke stacks which was
where the sand and bitumen (tar) were being separated using hot water . There
were also enormous lifeless bodies of water unlike anything I had ever seen,
surrounded by fences and signs prohibiting entry. (Were the companies afraid of
the liability if tourists were to go swimming here among the upgraders, and
sink below the goo, or die a horrible death a few months later? Undoubtedly.)
Ducks! Do not swim here! There. They have been warned. Not Suncor's fault now.
There were four stops both to rest and for Native elders to
make prayers. On the last prayer stop, one of the elders was praying but she was
also weeping openly as she talked to her Creator about all the destruction that
she was seeing. It just brought home to me once more what a bad idea this whole
thing is.
VI. Thanks to rapid tar sands development, Canada now produces
more oil than Texas or Kuwait. Since 2001, Canada has surpassed Saudi Arabia as
the largest single exporter of oil to the United States. Canadian crude now
accounts for nearly one-fifth of all US oil imports. If development continues unabated,
Canada will soon provide the fading US empire with nearly a third of its oil,
while half of Canada’s own citizens remain dependent on insecure supplies from
the Middle East.
- "Declaration of a Political
Emergency" in Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent by Andrew Nikiforuk 2010.
