B.C. Coastal First Nations declared today - on the 21st anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill - their unified opposition to the proposed $4.5-billion Enbridge pipeline.
The pipeline would transport crude from the Alberta tar sands to Kitimat for export by tankers to markets in Asia, and perhaps the U.S. West Coast. The tankers would pass through Douglas Channel and the Hecate Strait, along the coastal territories of the First Nations.
"We will protect ourselves and the interests of future generations with everything we have because one major oil spill on the coast of British Columbia would wipe us out," Gerald Amos, director, Coastal First Nations, an alliance of nine First Nations, said in a statement today. "This bountiful and globally significant coastline cannot bear an oil spill. This is where Enbridge hits a wall."
The Coastal First Nations issued a declaration from their First Nations governments:
...in upholding our ancestral laws, rights and responsibilities, we
declare that oil tankers carrying crude oil from the Alberta Tar Sands
will not be allowed to transit our lands and waters.
