The Trans Mountain Pipeline is 'Economic Small Pox' -- Voices from the Salish Sea Assembly

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, November 2024

SEATTLE -- They never stopped fighting. Even when they cut off his grandfather's finger as a child in residential school because he couldn't speak English, even when they put them in jail for protesting the Trans Mountain Pipeline, they never stopped fighting. Even when the Appeals Court decided that shipping the dirty tar sands oil was more important than the survival of the Orca whales in the Salish Sea, they did not surrender.

"Even though we're almost extinct, we are still here," Rueben George, səlilwətaɬ, Tsleil-Waututh Nation, said at the Salish Sea Assembly in Seattle.

Speaking on the long fight to stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline, George said, "Now they're trying to sell it to First Nations and I talk to them and I say, 'You know what, don't take it, it's economic smallpox, they're giving you sickness you're never going to make money out of it, and they're tricking you, it's economic smallpox."

Paul Chiyokten Wagner, WSANEĆ (Saanich) shared the history of defending the water from the Salish Sea to Standing Rock and beyond.

The Protectors of the Salish Sea baked camas on their ancestral island for the first time in one-hundred years, occupied the Washington State Capitol, and journeyed to Standing Rock to build warm structures for the elders, which helped them survive the life-threatening water sprayed on them by law enforcement in freezing temperatures, during the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

"Our people hold the road map to paradise. Our people have that memory within us." Chiyokten said at the three day Salish Sea Assembly, State of Emergency for the Salish Sea, at the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center, Nov. 6 --8.

Matt Remle, Hunkpapa Lakota from Standing Rock, describes how the Dakota Access Pipeline used Standing Rock Lakota Nation's map of burial places against them, and brought in attack dogs as the pipeline bulldozed their sacred burial place.

Remle, whose Lakota name is Wakíƞyaƞ Waánataƞ (Charging Thunder,) said it was then that they made the decision to target the banks and financial institutions that funded this pipeline.

"They didn't have a permit -- and they still don't have a permit to be operating, that's why we shifted focus to the financial institutions, and launched a very targeted campaign," Remle said during the panel at the Salish Sea Assembly.

The powerful Salish Sea Assembly magnified the voices of the Coast Salish Water Warriors, the struggle to shut down the Trans Mountain Pipeline, and the flow of dirty oil from the Alberta tar sands to the Salish Sea.

It was censored by all major media.

"We are not just activists, we are revolutionaries and we're radical and militant and we want to keep it that way, we don't want to get soft in our older years," said Kanahus Manuel, Secwepemc and Ktunaxa, describing her family's struggle to protect their land and stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline in British Columbia.

Speaking of the "State of Emergency for The Salish Sea," Kanahus said, "We are the title holders to the land."

Read the new series at Censored News: Voices from the Salish Sea Assembly

Rueben George: We Are People of the Water: Voices from the Salish Sea Assembly
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/11/rueben-george-we-are-people-of-water.html

Paul Chiyokten Wagner: Protectors of the Water: From the Salish Sea to Standing Rock
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/11/protectors-of-waters-from-salish-sea-to.html

Matte Remle: When Standing Rock Burials were Bulldozed, They Went After the Banks
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/11/lakota-matt-remle-when-standing-rocks.html

Coast Salish Water Warriors: The Salish Sea Assembly in Seattlehttps://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/11/coast-salish-water-warriors-voices-for.html

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