Grandmothers create blockade to protect the water
By Colin Graf
WALPOLE ISLAND—Construction of a natural gas pipeline to the Walpole Island First Nation in south-western Ontario will resume on Monday, August 15, 2016, in spite of protests from residents who blockaded the work earlier this week. Walpole council decided Wednesday evening the work would resume after hearing from both opponents and supporters of the gas line in a meeting that spanned two evenings.
Work crews will be mobilized and equipment will return to a compound close to the entrance to Walpole, located at the mouth of the St. Clair River between Sarnia and Chatham, after a unanimous vote by Chief Dan Miskokomon and Council, said John Bonin, a manager with Union Gas, on Thursday morning (August 11, 2016).
A group of Grandmothers from the community blockaded heavy machinery belonging to the company early Monday, August 8, 2016, forcing workers to withdraw from the island.
The gas line excavation was starting “without the people’s knowledge,” Grandmother Corinne Tooshkenig, the first of the blockaders, told Chief Dan Miskokomon and councillors the evening of Tuesday, August 9.
Marie Short, another protestor, told councillors they are doing a poor job of communicating what is going on at Walpole. A notice about the start of the work arrived in island mailboxes Tuesday, the day after the work was to start, she said. Other band members also stated the notice arrived Tuesday.
“Protestors are worried about the safety of gas in the line, and about possible environmental impacts drilling under the Snye River to get the pipeline to the island,” Short said. The gas line will run by the local school, and the protestors worry an accident could “blow up the school,” she told Council.
Union Gas “doesn’t expect protestors to shut the project down,” Bonin said. The company has security in place at the equipment compound, but Council will provide any help workers might need in case of opposition on Walpole Island itself, he said. Work will not resume this week due to the heat warnings in southern Ontario and the time needed to reorganize equipment and workers.
“We’re kind of shocked right now,” Short said following the Council’s decision to proceed with the work. Not only did Chief and Council refuse their request for a community vote, but they also changed the time and location of the second meeting without prior notice, she said.
The grandmothers and their supporters have not decided whether they will blockade the work again, Short said, following the decision. “We’ll be watching and praying. I can tell you that.”
When asked what authorities might do if protestors tried to block the work again, band policy analyst James Jenkins said “they have the right to protest as long as it doesn’t interfere with their safety or the safety of others.”
Union Gas held two public meetings on the island over the last year to explain about the proposed gas line, with around 35-40 island residents attending each one, Bonin said. Company officials were very surprised at the blockade this week because feedback from those meetings had been “very, very positive,” according to Bonin. Only “a couple of concerns were brought forward, he said. “The community has really embraced” the plan for the gas line to heat homes and businesses in winter, he said.
Some band members were unaware of those meetings, according to Marie Short. Half of the island doesn’t have internet access, and some in her subdivision don’t always have transportation to the band office. “There are a lot of people on fixed incomes and there’s no budget for cell phones either,” she said. “We just don’t get the news.”
“We have to protect our water,” said Walpole resident Becky Blackbird at Monday’s meeting, citing worries about drilling 150 meters under the river, separating Walpole from the mainland. The rest of the line will stretch almost 8 kilometers, and will serve up to 60 residences and 14 businesses, according to the Council’s mailbox flyer. The line will also support future growth, it claims.
Young men from Walpole set up a camp on land the pipeline was to cross in June, said Theo Blackbird-John, one of the camp occupiers. They wanted to publicize their opposition to the project, and to demand the Chief and Council hold a community vote. The young men, who ally themselves with the Idle No More movement, collected 250 signatures opposing the line, according to Blackbird-John.
The gas and petroleum industry is a “dying sector,” and Walpole should be looking at renewable energy sources, he said. Residents also oppose natural gas because it is obtained by “fracking,” a process which pumps high-pressure water mixed with chemicals underground to force the gas to the surface. Many problems are associated with fracking in the United States, such as neurological illness and birth defects in families near the fracking zones, Blackbird-John told Council. He said Islanders are sensitive to using fracked gas because their island is on top of the third-largest shale gas deposit in North America, the same type of rock formation as those where fracking is taking place in the U.S.A. “The next thing you know they will be asking to frack here,” he warned Council.
“It’s your choice to have all these modern conveniences that we offend the Earth with,” said Reverend Evelyn White Eye, Anglican Priest on the Island. Some conveniences may not be good for the environment, but “I don’t know where the respect for the Earth was when I put my sewage in the earth,” before modern sewer pipes and water treatment, she mused for the Council and audience. “I’ll probably buy into gas,” she said.
Defending the gas line, Councillor Bill Tooshkenig told the audience he supports the line because it’s too expensive to heat homes with electric heat. “I’m concerned people will get cut off. We have 300 people not paying [their electricity bills] because they can’t afford it, and electricity is going up,” he said. Adding the gas line will save a lot of expense heating the community’s school and will make it cheaper to dry grain at the Island’s Tahgahoning farming company, according to Tooshkenig.
The farming corporation will save over $200,000 in the first year of the gas line, according to a news release by the Council in July 2015.
There was resistance to both the first electricity lines to the island in the 1940’s, and towards the building of the local arena, Tooshkenig reminded the audience, but “everybody goes there regularly for public functions now.” People don’t have to connect to the gas line if they don’t want to, he added.
To add reassurance for the Walpole community, Council decided on Wednesday to invite a regulatory agency in to inspect the work. The Technical Standards & Safety Authority will be invited by Council to check on the construction. The TSSA usually inspects pipelines that start and finish in Ontario, but they have to be invited on to First Nations’ land, Bonin said.
On August 1, 2016, Elders, Councillors, and company officials were joining in a blessing “to respect the cultural traditions”, and it seemed a “great way” to start the project, when Tooshkenig and Short arrived.
The women didn’t plan to block the work, Short said in an interview with Anishinabek News. They just wanted to offer tobacco and pray when the ground-breaking ceremony took place. The workers started a machine behind them and her cousin Corinne “just grabbed on and prayed,” Short said. “I turned around and she was crying.”
Corinne’s crying was “the cry of Mother Earth,” she told the Council and audience. Tooshkenig told her to go “get help; get the Grandmas.”
The Walpole Council approached Union Gas many years ago to get gas service to the island to help reduce energy costs for residents and community services, said Union Gas spokesperson Andrea Stass, but the high expense of the project was a hurdle. Now the project is going ahead because the Federal Government has committed money, she said.
Construction will cost around $1.4 million and will take four to six months, so if the work is delayed for long, winter weather could be a problem, Stass admitted. “We might need to put more workers on or stretch out the time [for completion]”, she stated.
Stass estimates over the past two winters, Ontario homeowners have saved between $1,700.00 and $2,200.00 a year by using natural gas rather than electricity, oil, or propane for heat and hot water.
Expansion of natural gas to Walpole Island has been an infrastructure goal for over 20 years, according to Council’s July 2015 release. The gas line will provide a number of benefits, including: decreased overhead for economic development ventures and governance operations; a more affordable alternative for heating homes and water for community members; and increased ability to attract economic development. The first phase of the project will be funded partially through funding from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada and partially through the Walpole Island First Nation.