Hundreds join anti-pipeline march from Vancouver Island to Metro Vancouver
Posted May 27, 2017 1:58 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – From Victoria to Burnaby, that’s how far people are walking to show their opposition to the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline. Hundreds of people are taking part in the four-day “Walk 4 the Salish Sea”, marching 75 kilometers.
Demonstrators are hoping their movement will help get talks on climate change moving, and gain more support against fossil fuel development and tanker traffic through Indigenous lands.
Audrey Siegl is from Musqueam and says the Kinder Morgan project poses significant environmental, health and social risks… especially for these groups.
“We have the very real global impacts of climate change and what it does… the most directly affected communities are usually the indigenous communities, the poorest, the most isolated communities,” says Siegl. “We’re bringing together so many impacted communities to stand collectively to unite and rise and say no, and not just no to this, but to say yes to protecting, yes to actually marking what is sacred and caring for it in a way that honours who each of us are who the land is and who the ancestors are that cared for this land before.”
She says the march has attracted a lot of support, both from within communities — and within the government — but activists are looking for more representatives to step up and use every ability and resource they have.
“We need governments that are moving completely away from fossil fuels to readily available clean energy options right now.”
Siegl claims officials need to move away from a thinking that puts consumption and profit ahead of the well-being of communities and the environment, and says people need to rethink their priorities.
The march will end on Sunday at the Westbridge terminal gate in Burnaby, where guests like Federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May, Grand Chief Stewart and many others are expected to speak.
