Street Roots • June 12-18, 2015
GORGE, from page 12
giant cardboard heads. If that wasn’t
unsettling enough, posters started to pop up
all over town showing a sickly-looking Hales
flanked by oil wells, covered with the text
“Fossil Fuel Charlie for Mayor 2016.” On
May 7, the day after fossil fuel Tories were
thrown out of office, the mayor finally
dropped his support for the $500 million
project, and urged the company to leave
Portland.
The activists who rattled the mayor are
part of what they call “the thin green line” -
a network of environmental activists in
Oregon, Washington and British Columbia
who are working to stop more than 29 fossil
fuel expansion and export projects in the
Northwest, citing damage to air quality,
waterways, coastlines and the global climate.
And in front of that thin green line is B
fierce red one, made up of Native Americans
with deep spiritual connections to the local
landscape. These Native Americans carry an
intergenerational struggle to protect their
lands from a style of development that is, by
any historical standard, utterly foreign to the
North American landscape.
Consultation and accommodation:
A tale of two cultures
A glimpse of this cultural conflict over
land can be seen in over-confident
statements from Port Director Wyatt, who
argued back in September that massive
shipments of propane in the Columbia Gorge
“add tremendous value to the river” by
accelerating the transformation of the river
through dredging and jetty expansion. Paul
Lumley, executive director of the Columbia
River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, begs to
differ. “Adding value to the river means
restoration of natural resources for the
benefit of all members of the public,” he
said. “Destroymg the river, or even parts of
it, does not add value.”
Despite signing treaties of mutual
accommodation, there is an obvious
difference between the European and Native
approach to making a living on the land. Too
often, the story of European development in
the U.S. has taken on the qualities of what
environmental essayist Barry Lopez has
called “a ruthless, angry search for wealth” -
a religious crusade to mine commodities
from landscapes instead of living within
them, poisoning water and wrecking food
sources in the process.
This situation has not changed nearly as
much as we would like to believe. “Gold is
excellent, gold is treasure, and he who
possesses it does whatever he wishes in this
life and succeeds in helping souls into
paradise,” wrote Christopher Columbus.
“Energy is the lifeblood of America’s
economy,” Fox News personality Sean
Hannity said to a conference of Bakken oil
executives last year. “What you have been
able to show this country is nothing short of
a miracle.”
In May the Lummi Nation held a treaty
rights conference in Seattle that gathered
more than 150 people to strategize on how
to support indigenous struggles, rather than
talking past them, in the fight against fossil
fuels and climate chaos. The Lummi told the
audience that their fight to stop the biggest
coal export project in the U.S, is crucial to
mankind’s survival. “Our resistance is your
resistance. If we lose, you are lost,” said
councihnember Jay Julius.
Commentary
Although we usually speak of Oregon and
Washington as fossil fuel roadblocks, the
westward shipment of fossil fuels would also
cross the territory of at least 38 sovereign
First Nations in Oregon and Washington, and
many more in British Columbia. One of
these is the Unist’ot’en Band of the
Wet’suwet’en, which has blocked multiple
pipelines for several years by occupying their
unceded territory, and building traditional
houses in the path of the pipeline. Affirming
the rights of those nations to assert their
sovereignty and to receive full recognition
from government entities that owe it to
them has become an increasingly loud
demand in the fight for climate justice.
Page 13
scope of their decision was very limited - an
opinion that has actually landed them in
court with environmental groups, who say
they did not even estimate their air pollution
impacts properly.
According to Lumley, “These trains would
be going right by our traditional fishing sites,
right by our river-side communities. The risk
of an explosion, particularly for a propane
train, or of an oil spill and derailment, would
be very devastating. The loss of life is not
something we want to risk, and my member
tribes have expressed serious concern about
this.”
In the run up and immediate aftermath of
the April 7 Portland Sustainability
Commission’s vote, Tom Armstrong and the
" I te stifie d before the PSC th a t eeasaltatloa lias aot ooearred» Tea
w e a ld th la k the oae message they eealda^t take away was th a t
they i l l o ea sa ltatlo a f b at they did« People who knew better waab
ed to fast cheek the box aad say eeasaltatloa happeaed beeaase X
spoke« T h a fs aot how eeasaltatloa w o rks/*
' ;
‘
'
PAUL LUMLEY
C X E C U T IV E D IR E C T O R O F T H E .C O L U M B IA R iV E R IN TE R T R IB A L FISH C O M M IS S IO N
mayor’s staff effectively said that sending
Government-to-Government Relations (It’s
unread ¿-mails to tribal representatives is
really not that hard!)
consultation enough, and gave no indication
One way to estimate the extent of such
that they searched for potential impacts to
recognition is through the official process of
cultural resources.
government-to-government consultation.
¡ This was likely the source of rumors that
Consultation is a necessary ingredient for
bothered CRITFC. In a brief interview after
any government entities that need to
the hearing, Armstrong told this writer that
accommodate one another, including state
“there are no established protocols” for
agencies Consulting each other, like thé
tribal consultation in Portland - information
Department of Forestry and the Department he left out in his PSC testimony to
of Fish and Wildlife. For tribal governments,
Commissioner Gray.
aiiy potential decision that can affect their
Paradoxically, both state and city officials
trèaty-reserved resources requires that the
contended that they were engaged in a sort
responsible government agencies enter into
of consultation,’but in an ad-hoc manner that
consultation with those tribes. This allows
they apparently hoped would end as quickly
the affected government body to address and as possible. “I testified before the PSC that
resolve the conflict early on, before a
consultationjias not occurred,” explains
decision has been made, and long before any Lumley. “You would think the one message
action has béen taken - similar to relations
they couldn’t take away was that they did
between state agencies or city bureaus.
consultation, but they did. People who know
Failure to doso risks violating federal treaty
better wanted to just check the box and say
rights, state and local laws, federal statutes - consultation happened because I spoke.
and international human rights law.
That’s not how consultation works.”
The city of Boardman, for instance, could
One belief leading to this confusion was
have avoided last year’s conflict over the
the perception that tribes only have
Coyote Island coal export terminal if it had a
influence with the federal government.
local consultation policy in place. Instead,
However, according to Gabe S. Galanda, a
after years of planning, the Department of
practicing attorney in Washington state who
•State Lands shot down the project last year
specializes in defending tribes and Indian-
after tribes told the state it was planned on
owned interests.
top of a traditional fishing site.
“In the Pacific Northwest, the
However, it seems Oregon state agencies,
consequences to a local government for
and especially Portland city bureaus, are
failing to honor the normative tenet of inter
unsure about how to approach consultation
governmental consultation could include
with Native American tribes, and are
significant liability for violation of guaranteed
particularly confused about the difference
federal Indian Treaty rights or destruction of
between desired and required. For instance,
tribal historic or cultural properties. Beyond
when DEQ altered the air quality permit at
that, it is simply a best governmental
Port Westward in Clatskanie, they effectively practice to consider whether the rights of
legalized 1,000 oil trains coming through the
sister governments might be implicated by
Columbia Gorge every year. Did DEQ
local government action.”
consult tribes before letting oil trains start
Paul Lumley highlighted the absurdity of
crowding their fishing sites? According to
the city assuming tribal support for
DEQ’s Tribal Liaison Christine Svetkovich,
Pembina’s project prior to the April hearing.
the answer is both yes and no, DEQ did tell
“Would the city e-mail the state, then
tribes what was happening, but did not
assume they’ve signed off on a project
search for potential impacts to treaty rights,
because they don’t respond? It’s the same
and did not acknowledge that their decision
with tribes - we are sovereign governments
could trigger impacts to treaty-reserved
just like the state of Oregon.”
resources. Instead, DEQ insisted that the
“Free Trade”
vs Indigenous Rights
At the April 1 PSC hearing, Cathy
Sampson-Kruse attempted to emphasize that
point, but Chair Baugh cut her off quickly,
saying his staff would look into the matter.
In a push to support Pembina, he would later
describe barriers to free trade as a form of
colonization, after distracting commissioners
from the indigenous concerns that were
actually in the room. “We industrialized this
nation over the indigenous people here and
told them the same thing and polluted this
planet,” Baugh intoned. “Now we’re gonna
sit here and say ‘no’?”
In reality, it is Pembina Pipeline Corp,
that currently stands accused of
industrializing Canada on the backs of
indigenous peoples by polluting their water
and ruining their hunting grounds, and now
indigenous peoples are saying “no.”
In early March a first-of-its-kind lawsuit
Was filed by the Blueberry River First
Nations in British Columbia, aiming to stop
all new oil and gas developments in their
territory, where Pembina gets its tracked
gas. The tribes say these operations are a
violation of their treaty from 1900, which
promised natives they could continue their
traditional ways of life in exchange for
opening up their lands to European
settlement. Instead they’ve seen over 16,000
oil and gas wellst and over 28,000 kilometers
of pipelines, with depressing impacts on
water quality, fish and wildlife.
It’s worth remembering that two weeks
before planners voted,on its pjpejipe^
Pembina abruptly promised a $3 million
“community investment fund” to help the
city implement its Climate Action Plan - a
kindly gesture to offset its carbon emissions.
In 2008, Pembina also consulted with the
Canadian indigenous environmental group
REAC, promising off-sets to a pipeline right-
of-way through Alberta, Canada for the
Nipisi and Mitsue pipelines, carrying diluent
and tar sands. It promised REAC directors
extensive restoration of caribou habitat,
representing five times the footprint of the
right-of-way: a forest that would be
permanently clear cut to make way for the
pipeline. The promise was exciting enough
for REAC to drop its opposition to the new
pipeline, despite fears that another pipeline
could push the caribou herds into extinction.
What came next? According to REAC
director Julie Asterisk, “The area they
re-planted was miniscule and far less than we
agreed to. We were left with the sickening
feeling that we got suckered.”
According to Doug Badger, another
director of REAC, Pembina prefers to avoid
consultation altogether and regularly gives
out cash envelopes to tribal members
instead.
“Pembina is not to be trusted,” Badger
said. “This is a company that thinks money
can buy them anything - except restoration
for the habitat they destroyed.”
Doug and other indigenous activists of
Alberta remain cautiously optimistic that the
new NDP government can restore respectful
relations with indigenous peoples and
provide redress for habitat destruction
through the Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples.