Dakota Access Pipeline protest leader shares tips on stopping Kinder Morgan pipeline

Tara Houska, indigenous lawyer and protest leader against the North Dakota Access Pipeline, poses for a photo with Hollywood actor and fellow anti-pipeline activist Mark Ruffalo after a rally in North Dakota in October. FACEBOOK / PNG

Dozens of people packed a free, public event Thursday evening to hear about how direct-action protests have affected the Dakota Access Pipeline, and whether those tactics might translate to Kinder Morgan’s Burnaby Mountain project.

The event, titled “From Standing Rock to Burnaby Mountain,” was hosted at the Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre and was advertised as a forum for citizens to learn about whether direct action against fossil-fuel infrastructure is effective.

Attendees sat silent as footage from the front lines of the anti-Dakota Access Pipeline protests was played. Unarmed protesters can be seen being sprayed and arrested by police in violent altercations.

“It is very hard for me to watch, but these are my friends,” said Tara Houska. “All that is happening for a pipeline, all this violence and aggression.”

Houska is Ojibwe from the Couchiching First Nation and works as an attorney based in Washington, D.C. As a leader in the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, Houska has been stationed at Standing Rock since August and has seen first-hand much of the conflict between those for and against the pipeline.

In this Oct. 27, 2016 file photo, Dakota Access Pipeline protesters sit in a prayer circle at the Front Line Camp. MIKE MCCLEARY /AP

“Although it’s not the best thing to see that and it’s very hard and traumatic and difficult, it’s also elevated the conversation to an international level,” said Houska. “This is so much more than just Dakota Access, it means indigenous rights, it means people’s relationship to fossil fuels.”

Houska also noted the importance of care for those taking on the physical and emotional toll of standing on the front lines of these protests.

“As an organizing tip, having a structure in place to deal with the psychological impacts and trauma is really important,” she said, noting many of the protesters, after being treated for their injuries, returned to the protest immediately. “They went right back into it because the pipeline is still being built.”

The forum comes as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government decides whether or not to let the $6.8-billion Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion proceed. The expansion to the existing decades-old pipeline would nearly triple the amount of oil being transported from Alberta to a terminal in Burnaby and with it, the number of tankers travelling in southern B.C. waters.

That decision is expected by Dec. 19.

Earlier this week, Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam MP Ron McKinnon sent a letter to Trudeau, urging him to reject the Kinder Morgan proposal and to “listen to the collective wisdom of British Columbians.”

The nearly $4-billion Dakota Access Pipeline project is intended to transport crude oil from North Dakota to an Illinois shipping point. The pipeline’s route, however, runs under the Missouri River reservoir, which is a source of drinking water for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. There are also concerns the pipeline could threaten nearby cultural sites.

Locals and environmental groups have been opposed to the pipeline since its proposal in 2014, but things came to a boil this summer when groups staged protests near work sites and tried to delay the project through litigation. Highway road blocks, physical altercations and high-profile arrests have also garnered national attention and support.

In September, the U.S. federal government ordered a pause to the pipeline project. Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, is now awaiting a court decision on whether it has the right to continue building. Meanwhile, protesters have continued their push for the U.S. government to either stop or reroute the pipeline.

— with files from The Associated Press and The Canadian Press

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