PHOTOGRAPHY about HealthEnvironmentDirect Actionposted on November 27, 2014 by flux
Kinder Morgan Courthouse Lockdown
COAST SALISH TERRITORY - Anti-pipeline activists took the mountain to the provincial courthouse this morning, locking themselves to the front doors of BC Supreme Court building in downtown Vancouver.
From their media release:
In solidarity with Grand Chief's and Ta'ah George's arrests this morning.
The court represents colonial law and it is the only reason the RCMP were called in to defend the rights of the Texas-based corporation to drill hundreds of metres into Burnaby Mountain against the wishes of the local First Nations as well as the municipality.”
In granting Kinder Morgan’s request for an injunction and enforcement order on November 14th, the courts are once again ignoring aboriginal rights and title and breaching their constitutional duty to obtain consent on unceded Coast Salish territory.
These decisions by the BC Supreme Court continually dispossess indigenous people of the territories they have occupied and governed for thousands of years. Squamish elder Sut-lut was arrested last Thursday while protecting a traditional totem pole.
Yesterday, the BC Supreme Court in Terrace granted Imperial Metals a long-term interlocutory injunction and enforcement order, displacing the Klabona Keepers, guardians of the Sacred Headwaters, from their traditional territory. Yet another case in which corporate profits were deemed more important than indigenous land rights.
The caretakers of Burnaby Mountain are taking this action with the hope of shedding light on the institutions responsible for the continued colonization and exploitation of the land and the communities they sustain.
The caretakers stand in solidarity with the First Nations of BC by refusing to recognize the authority of the colonial court.
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