Slaying Giants with Grassroots

This post was submitted by Patagonia grantee Monty Bassett from the Sage Foundation.

January 17th, 2005, in a remote village in the middle of a vast British Columbia wilderness, Roy Quock, an 84-year-old elder of the Tahltan tribe, discovered that his band chief had been touring the world, at the invitation of the World Bank and the Canadian government, promoting the benefits of industrial mining on aboriginal lands. Roy heard on the radio that his chief had been speaking in Guatemala at a mining conference and boasted that he’d negotiated for six mines – four of them open pit, and a giant coalbed methane project – all to begin in his territory within a year.

“Enough is enough!” said Roy and he and his younger brother, Bobby (83), trundled down to the band office. Upon discovering that the chief was away (meeting with Shell in Calgary) they said, “We’ll wait.” and they did. With three dozen other elders they waited for eight-and-a-half months until their Chief was turffed, thus starting an environmental fight that would lead to barricades, arrests, and a protest ad appearing in the London Financial Times.

Slaying giants, real giants, is something we all consider, but seldom do. Not just giant mountains or huge waves. I’m talking real giants like the second largest petroleum company in the world, Royal Dutch Shell. And not for penny-ante stakes either. What Shell and other giant companies are after are, purported by the British Columbia Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, billions of tons of coal and trillions of cubic feet of coalbed methane gas, all slated for a wilderness area twice the size of England. Shell’s purported interest in the coalbed methane project could alter three of the west coast’s most important salmon bearing watersheds – the Nass, the Skeena and the Stikine – and severely threaten the health of North America’s Serengeti.

Now imagine that these dragon slayers are the least likely activists you could think of: Elder Tahltan Indians, mainly grandmothers and great grandmothers, in a remote region of northwest British Columbia – isolated, voiceless, seemingly powerless. In fact the only things they have going for them are a passion for the land so strong they slept on their band office floor for a 265 day protest occupation, and enough courage to face down bulldozers and be arrested repeatedly over the last three years. Add then the ferocity of a sow grizzly bear protecting her cubs, in this case the elders’ unborn great grandchildren, and grassroots support, including the Patagonia grants program, and there you have it: a force to be reckoned with.

Yvon Chouinard has said that to change governments, start with corporations. To save the planet, or at least slow down our rate of destruction, empower grassroots movements. Who better to look after the very thing they know best? The Tahltan elders of Telegraph Creek, B.C. are a case in point.

Amazingly, after three years Shell has yet to drill one hole. But Shell has vowed to start drilling this summer. The Tahltan have been joined by the downstream native nations in the affected watersheds, virtually all of the residents of the North, and a who’s who of environmental NGOs. The battle is far from over.

Stay tuned throughout the summer to skeenawatershed.com for updates and opportunities to take action. If you think extracting coalbed methane from this beautiful area is a viable energy option for British Columbia, let us know why you feel that way in the comments.

Sacred Headwaters Basin: Origins of three west coast salmon-bearing watersheds.

Double rainbow in the Sacred Headwaters Basin.

[All photos courtesy of Monty Bassett, Jeff Thompson and Brian Huntington.]

Comments

[Trevor Calder]

They will be successful in their cause because ultimately "They are right".

Now we to do our part in this grass roots effort. We need to join them and stand shoulder to shoulder with these heroes.

[monty]

Yes, we are going to win this! Shell has just announced that they will not be pursuing a drilling campaign this summer! And while they have yet to pack up their tents and skulked back to den Hague, we have bought time to strengthen our resolve. Grassroots can slay giants. Keep up your interest.

It is not the end, but certainly the beginning of the end!

[Randall Rodger]

Your article states they have not drilled.They have and a drill report on one well showed problems with produced water at 170 meters and they cancelled drilling the one test well shown at 310 meters.Yet a Shell spokesmen said in a press statement they encountered no problems with produced water.My self and four hundred others seen this report at the sumitt in Hazelton.Go to u-tube and look up the destruction of a hi-pressure pipeline burst in Nigeria it will shock you at the way shell has dealt with this incident will they do better here?

[monty bassett]

To clarify the drill program question, Shell has not drilled a single hole since the Tahltan resistance began in 2005. The three previous holes were drilled before the initial blockade.
The company's statement that they incurred no water problems is not the truth. In fact one well was artesian and had to be capped.
The meeting of four hundred people held in Hazelton, B.C. was a summit of downstream Native Nations and non-Natives concerned about Shell's proposal to drill in the Sacred Headwaters. A resolution has been signed stating their collective will against Shell's plans.

[Michael Simpson]

Wanna know how big the giant is? If you want to take on a giant best to understand how it fights, how it breathes and how it thinks and exactly where is the achilles heel on that beast. No better place to understand Royal Dutch Shell than to see how it behaves in Nigeria where it has been breathing fire for 50 years. "When Gas Explodes" is a brief overview regarding Royal Dutch Shell, the Sacred Headwaters and Nigeria available at www.onesky.ca

[monty bassett]

When this blog entry was first posted, it seemed that Shell was
unstoppable. In fact one Shell spokesperson bragged that they were
going ahead "no matter what!" Well, it seems that they have
underestimated the will of the people.

First, thanks to help from Patagonia and the "heavy hitters'”
email/letter writing campaign, where we encouraged people to contact people of influence who they know and ask them to submit personal correspondence Shell decided not to proceed with their summer drill program, but vowed they would begin in the fall. Then, in the face of a massive outcry of all the Native nations from the
three affected watersheds, plus municipal governments, regional
district governments, and thousands of Native and non-Native residents,
saying "No", Shell announced on August 10th they were suspending
all-together their 2008 drill program.

Adding further embarrassment to the besieged company, Shell, in
conjunction with Canadian Geographic Magazine sponsored an award for
the outstanding Environmentalist. This year it went to Maude
Barlow founder of Council of Canadians . However, when Ms, Barlow
Accepted her award, she noted the hypocrisy of Shell's philanthropy, while at
the same time planning on drilling in the Sacred Headwaters. As a
consequence she gave the cash element of the Award to the Skeena
Watershed Coalition to help stop Shell's project.

Even their newest international ad campaign, “Shell says No to No” has backfired on them. Does saying “no to no” mean “yes” to destruction of the Sacred Headwaters in spite of the will of the people.

In the end, it would be to Shell's benefit to realize that
they will never get access to the Sacred Headwaters Basin. However,
if they would terminate voluntarily their permits and become
proponents of a world-class, preservation designation for the Sacred
Headwaters, they could garnish their reputation with "green"
endorsements from their erstwhile opponents.