Activist is on front lines of indigenous pipeline fight
Vanessa Gray’s hand shakes as she talks about the prison sentence dangling over her head.
The 23-year-old activist says she’s “a little scared,” but also hopeful she won’t be convicted of mischief endangering life when her case goes to trial next year. Crown prosecutors charged Gray and two others last December after they allegedly sabotaged a pipeline in Sarnia.
If convicted, the three could serve time in a federal penitentiary.
Gray, who hails from the Aamjiwnaang First Nation in Southern Ontario, was at McGill University last week speaking about her fight against Canada’s energy industry.
Last December, Gray and her codefendants shut down Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline by manually switching off a valve along the structure. They then used bicycle locks to chain their necks to the machine
until police cut them loose and arrested the protesters.
Her action is part of a larger struggle that aboriginal people across the continent have taken up — challenging projects before the courts, protesting in the streets and, in the most extreme cases, placing their bodies in harm’s way.
Last month, aboriginal leaders met in Montreal and signed a treaty with 50 First Nation groups across North America to jointly fight pipelines that carry bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands. The chiefs fear what might happen to their traditional territory — and drinking water — in the event of a pipeline rupture.
“We’re just at a point where we don’t have any other choice,” said Gray, speaking about her decision to shut down Line 9, which links a terminal in Sarnia to oil refineries in Montreal.
“We want to protect and defend the water and there are many different companies and projects putting it at risk.”
Enbridge, TransCanada and other energy companies have a legal duty to consult with First Nations about any project that could affect indigenous lands, according to a 2004 Supreme Court ruling. As such, they employ indigenous mediators and meet with communities affected by their projects, but critics say that isn’t enough.
In Quebec, First Nations are leading the legal battle against TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline. Chief Serge Simon, who signed last month’s treaty, is challenging TransCanada’s right to build the structure on ancestral Mohawk land.
The pipeline would connect Alberta’s oilsands to a terminal in New Brunswick about 4,600 kilometres east. To build it, the company would have to tunnel under the Ottawa River — where Mohawks still have hunting and fishing rights.
Simon is intent on fighting TransCanada in court, but Simon
This justice system wasn’t built for indigenous women defending the land, it was built for the complete opposite.
also envisions more acts of civil disobedience like Gray’s.
“Even if it means several life sentences, if that’s what they give us, especially when it comes to native people defending their rights, then you’re going to see more resistance,” said Simon, Grand Chief of the Kanesatake Mohawk Council. “There’s a great shift in the social consciousness of human beings, it’s an amazing thing to watch. We’re only growing in strength.”
As the Mohawks and dozens of other nations duke it out in the courts, some aboriginal groups are taking direct action against the energy sector.
A few days after Gray spoke at McGill, police arrested 21 people at a blockade in North Dakota. For weeks, members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe have sought to physically block construction of a pipeline over treaty-protected land.
Meanwhile, in the British Columbia wilderness, an indigenous group calling itself the Unis’tot’en Camp is occupying a swath of territory slated for pipeline construction. Their resistance has led to a number of tense standoffs with the RCMP.
Nick Cake, Gray’s lawyer, says he believes Gray’s case is meant to send a message to other pipeline protesters.
“It almost seems as if (Gray) and the two other people she’s charged with are poster children for a new age of prosecutions that really takes aim at environmentalists,” he said “There’s no doubt in my mind that the police have made an example of these three people by charging them as such . ... I spent years as a Crown attorney and in my review of similar cases out there, not once, to my knowledge, have the police laid the mischief endangering life charge.”
Given no one was harmed during Gray’s alleged sabotage of the pipeline, Cake says it’s excessive for the Crown to seek a lengthy jail sentence for the accused.
“None of these people even have a criminal record,” he said.
When contacted by the Montreal Gazette, neither the Crown nor Enbridge would comment on a matter before the courts.
But people like Simon, Gray and groups like the Assembly of First Nations — which represents over 600 chiefs across Canada — argue the consultation process is deeply flawed.
In August, the National Energy Board — which regulates the country’s pipelines — postponed its public hearings in Montreal after news surfaced that two of its board members met with a pipeline lobbyist before the proceedings.
Speaking to students at McGill, Gray said she has no faith in the regulatory process or the judicial system.
“The (law) is designed to protect industry, the economy and Canada,” Gray said. “This justice system wasn’t built for indigenous women defending the land, it was built for the complete opposite. I think this is exactly what Canada is. Canada is defined by how they are treating the indigenous people giving women sentences like this for defending the land.”
Gray said her campaign against the industry is literally a matter of life and death.
One study by McGill health science professor Niladri Basu suggests a link between the health problems people in Gray’s hometown face and the presence of so many industrial facilities in the southern Ontario region known as “chemical valley.”
The study found women in the Aamjiwnaang First Nation are exposed to higher-than-average levels of hormone-blocking toxins. It hints that there may be a link between this and the unusually low male birthrate on the Chippewa reserve.
Health surveys conducted in the community also found high rates of asthma, chronic headaches and miscarriages in Aamjiwnaang. About 40 per cent of adults on the reserve use an asthma inhaler, according to the 2006 survey.
Asked if community members are considering leaving the chemical valley, Gray was steadfast.
“The same chemicals that you’re finding in our community ... they are all found in our bodies right now,” Gray said. “(For) those of us who live in Aamjiwnaang there’s no moving away from the poison and toxins in my body right now. ... I need to do everything I can to hold big corporations accountable to that.
“The problem doesn’t go away when you remove yourself from it; we are a product of a problem and we need to put an end to it at some point.”