It’s the same everywhere; that’s what the Mi’kmaq is helping show the world. ?Dissent is becoming more and more criminalized.? That or the illusion of the right to dissent is simply wearing thin.
After the successful capture of Texas-based SWN Resource?s thumper trucks earlier this month (equipment used in exploring new regions for potential fracking), RCMP showed up early Oct. 17th dressed in paramilitary garb–complete with snipers and attack dogs–to face down men, women, and children.
Protestors were armed with dance, with prayer, and song, sounding their drums and holding feathers in the air to defend the land and water.? They were shot, beaten, choked, kicked, pushed, tear gassed, and threatened with dogs and snipers.
RCMP eventually arrested 40 protestors by force, cleared the blockade, and freed the invasive company’s equipment, thereby promising SWN’s return and continued efforts to frack the land, the water, and the sovereignty of Canada’s indigenous people.
One officer was quoted that morning as shouting, “Crown land belongs to the government, not to fucking natives!”? That’s some bit of news to people whose ancestors walked and honored the land long before Canada was even a word, let alone a country.
And the Mi’kmaq honored the land for how long, without fracking it all up, permanently ruining the water supply?? Nothing and no one has ever managed to find a way to permanently ruin the world’s water supply, not until unbridled, white corporate America came along anyway.? Not until Dick Cheney, the Koch brothers, and a slew of others got involved, exempting themselves from any liability in the process.? Not even the American industrial age managed that.
The aftermath of the settler raid has the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society, and its supporters, scrambling to rejoin, assess what has taken place, and form plans for their next move.
While there is some confusion, plenty of disinformation, and a good deal of systemized punitive procrastination by the Crown to release the final six Warriors arrested little more than a week ago, protestors remain steadfast in their dedication to bar fracking in the region.
Simultaneously, of course, opponents of the land and water, the frackheads currently causing a worldwide epidemic, are scrambling to not only carry out their own intended agenda of fracking without consent, but to also undermine, if not eradicate, the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society, and some are wondering if Elsipogtog Chief Sock and his aides may be complicit.
The speculation comes on the heels of a handful of notes that were found after an Oct. 9th meeting between Chief Sock and Premier David Alward.? Details in the notes suggested highly that Chief Sock knew of the looming raid ahead of time, but some, until recently, had been in doubt as to who had truly authored the notes.? Chief Sock has since admitted to penning the notes, according to Miles Howe, a local reporter who has been witness to the Mi’kmaq protest for the last several months, leaving many wondering where Sock’s loyalties lie despite his being arrested on the 17th, himself, in the second round of arrests.
Examining Chief Sock’s advisory team, their history and roles in the local communities, both provincial and indigenous, in addition to Sock’s discovered notes, and the synchronicity of the RCMP raid on the Warrior Society’s blockade last Thursday, will certainly paint a less than sacred fire for protestors, but perhaps it is not so much betrayal as a differing in tactics.
Chief Sock has recently voiced that the real fight is not with an individual gas company but with the Crown, itself, with treaty rights and whether or not Canada will, in fact, honor the sovereign rights of indigenous peoples, which includes control of its natural resources.? He plans to seek legal action in the courtroom as a civil means of prohibiting fracking in the area, as well as addressing countless other settler transgressions.
He sees a bigger fight, and if he is sincere, there is nothing wrong with that by any means.? That is certainly a just and worthy fight that could eventually lead to such a proclaimed end, but it will not stop fracking in the meantime.? Let him have the benefit of the doubt, however.? He is simply a politician working the channels in which he is comfortable.
And as he continues to work toward that means by surrounding himself with advisors and liaisons with ties to provincial government, if not the gas and oil industry, as he publicly denounces fracking and privately meets with big moneyed interests and those known to spy on and subvert indigenous grassroots efforts across the nation, so he has also replaced the more pro-active Mi’kmaq Warrior Society’s leadership with a War Chief willing to work in a manner that does not impede traffic, governance, or most importantly, business.? Could this tactic aide in reducing the Warrior Society’s influence?
But who is to say the new imposed leader will be accepted by the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society?? Who is to say they will allow him to lead in such a manner; one that makes a statement but essentially rolls over and allows fracking to storm right in, changing nothing?
There is certainly division in the ranks, to be sure, and that division comes down to largely where the camp should reside–Highway 134, near the strategically preferred Highway 11, or Highway 116, essentially nowhere but near the Elsipogtog First Nation.? Warriors want to stay put, and newly imposed War Chief leader, John Levi, wants folks to move back to 116, allegedly for their safety.
In all this, at this pivot in the unfolding struggle between the corporate lords and the people of the land, one hopes the Warriors see clearly what their choices are.? They can bend with Levi and switch to the less obstructive site in order to peacefully protest and make a statement, following in the more passive, easily dismissed approach Chief Sock encourages, leaving the struggle’s fate in the hands of a settler-dominated court system. Or they can decide to remain where they are in order to more directly prohibit the possibility of fracking in the area, working not necessarily against Chief Sock but in compliment to him.? While that is not Chief Sock’s favored approach, one hopes he would continue to stand by his people, and the earth.
The question as to whether or not Chief Sock is sincere in his intentions or bought and sold by the gas and oil industry remains to be seen, but as for the fracking fight, by and large it is irrelevant.? Chief Sock will inevitably choose his path and fight (and it is a good one), and the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society will do the same.? One can only hope they will choose to keep up their presence and pressure, so long as they have the proper support.
By any means necessary and through all channels, all together, all at once, always.? From the streets, to the courts, to the highways, from America, to Canada, to the rest of the globe, let us all stand up and sound the drum.? The Mi’kmaq has lit the fire.? They have shown us, yet again, the price that is paid for dissent.? Let us now show the frackheads of the world the cost of solidarity!
Mi’kmaq Warrior Society, we are with you…
Edited by SS
