Policing Indigenous Movements by Andrew Crosby

Author:Andrew Crosby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fernwood Publishing
Published: 2018-09-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 4

THE RAID AT ELSIPOGTOG

Integrated Policing and “Violent Aboriginal Extremists”

And we’re protecting [the land and the water], just not for us, we’re protecting it for everybody. The Anglophone, the Francophone, the Irish, anybody, because it says in our treaties, the peace and friendship treaties. Everybody is welcome in Canada provided you don’t ruin the land and the water. (Susan Levi-Peters, former Elsipogtog First Nation Chief, quoted in Skene 2013)

This is my physical mother that I am talking about. My physical mother, if you were to say I have probes that I want to probe her with, I want to fill her full of chemicals, I want to do ultrasounds on her body because she might have something that we want, we think she does. Will you allow us probe your mother? What’s our answer Michael [SWN lawyer]? No, of course. You’re not going to probe my mother, you’re not going to fill my mother, or your mother full of chemicals. Us as children that’s the way we would feel. (quoted in Lane 2013)

“CANADA’S NATURAL WEALTH IS OUR NATIONAL INHERITANCE”

An exchange unfolded at a Mi’kmaw longhouse in November 2013 between SWN lawyer Michael Connors and members of the Elsipogtog First Nation and their supporters. In 2010, SWN Resources Canada Inc., a subsidiary of the Texas-based fracking giant Southwestern Energy Company, had been granted licence to explore for shale gas over large portions of the province of New Brunswick. Thousands of people would oppose the development out of fear it would lead to fracking and contaminate the land and water. Despite widespread resistance, the N.B. government supported the fracking project and mobilized the resources of the security state to suppress opposition. SWN were met by fierce resistance in Kent County around Elsipogtog in the summer and fall of 2013, leading to work stoppages, blockades, and RCMP violence and arrests. At the longhouse, Connors represented the company’s position and pleaded for the blockades to stop to avoid any further violence, but was drowned out by a chorus of opposition. One woman stepped forward to describe to Connors that her mother’s well had been contaminated by industrial development outside of Fredericton, but that the onus was on her family to legally prove that the development had contaminated the well. She continued,

You are standing on Mother Earth. Mother Earth is our spiritual Mother. That is where we are made from, the clay of Mother Earth as Red People. So can I allow somebody to probe my spiritual mother, to fill her full of chemicals, and to fill her full of ultrasounds because we might have something that can give us some money. We can’t stand and allow that to happen. (Lane 2013)

The steadfastness of the Elsipogtog community paid off and SWN were forced to leave the province in December 2013 and have not returned.

But this story begins much earlier and is far more complex than the narrative crafted by the RCMP and mainstream media, which have depicted violent and unruly Natives who deployed unreasonable methods to halt energy projects in Canada’s national interest.

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