UPDATE 2:50 PM: Live feed via Edgar on Veetle
UPDATE 2:30 PM: Latest coverage from Global New Brunswick
October 17, 2013, 7:30 AM – about 700 Canadian police raided the Elsipogtog anti-fracking blockade in New Brunswick. Police have descended on a blockade encampment of members of the Mi’kmaq First Nation, who have been holding a weeks-long blockade to prevent the Texas-based company Southwestern Energy (SWN) from conducting fracking exploration in their lands.
Several people have been hurt and all of the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society has been arrested. Over 200 supporters broke police lines to join the blockade. Reports of rubber bullets fired, reckless use of pepper spray, brutality, all at the behest of SWN.
Help flood the phone lines and emails of SWN to denounce their support for this violence!
Corporate HQ phone: 281.618.4700
Email: media@swn.com
New Brunswick Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP): 506-452-3400
Suzane Patles, an Ilnu woman and member of the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society, has called for physical support at the blockade, solidarity actions across Turtle Island on Oct. 18th and a flooding of Kanadian official representatives’ phone and mail lines. The October 18th Day of Action is a response in protest to the court injunction that SWN is now enforcing against the encampment.
The compound, where SWN has over hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment, had been shut down and their equipment seized by local Indigenous peoples. Patles is among many Wabanaki Confederacy peoples asserting their inherent and treaty rights and titles over their territories at an active road blockade since Sept 28th. The HWY 134 blockade is preventing SWN equipment from illegally excavating Mi’kmaq territory and conducting seismic testing in order to begin the process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on unceded native lands.
The road blockade has been estimated to cost SWN over $60,000 a day. The blockade site has the support of Wabanaki Confederacy traditional governance, and widespread community support amongst Indigenous and settler groups. Flood colonial government mail and phone systems with statements of support for the blockade including the demands of the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society. The Warrior Society has issued the following demands to New Brunswick Premier Alward:
- Produce all Bills of Sales, Sold, Ceded, Granted and Extinguished Lands for New Brunswick.
- Produce documents proving Cabot’s Doctrine of Discovery.
- Produce the Treaty of Peace and Friendship 1686.
- Produce Treaty of Fort Howe 1768.
- Produce consents for Loyalists to land in Nova Scotia/New Brunswick.
- Produce records of Townships created and consents by Chiefs to allow this.
- Produce agreements or consents by all New Brunswick Chiefs who agreed to the Confederation of 1867.
- Produce evidence of consents to The Indian Act by all Native Tribes.
- Produce records of Trust Funds.
- Produce agreements for 4% of all mineral shares of finished products in Canada, except coal.
- Produce all correspondence letters pertaining to Numbered Treaties (Promises).
- Produce all documents creating border divisions, that divide the Wabanaki confederacy.
- Produce the Orders from the Lords of Trade to the Governor of the Colonies.
Follow the action on Twitter: #mikmaqblockade, #elsipogtog, #indigenize, and @stimulator for latest updates.
