Across Canada, blockades on train tracks have caused the country’s railway system to come to a halt for nearly two weeks.
And in Port Townsend, on Feb. 23, a group of about 40 protesters brought out signs and megaphones to the side of Sims Way in front of Chase Bank to chant in solidarity with the thousands of First Nations people in Canada who are protesting the construction of a natural gas pipeline set to be built on the territory of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation.
Protesters in Port Townsend held signs that read, “Water is life,” as people did during the conflict at Standing Rock, when hundreds of Americans joined the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016.
The Coastal GasLink pipeline in Canada will stretch 416 miles across British Columbia, shipping natural gas from northeastern B.C. to the coast, according to reporting by the CBC. But part of the pipeline will be built on Wet’suwet’en land, and the tribe’s hereditary chiefs oppose its construction.
Protest camps along the construction zones were cleared out in early February when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police enforced an injunction and arrested protesters. Since then, protesters across the country have set up blockades on railroads, causing Canada’s railway system to stop working.
Protests have popped up across the U.S. as well, in support of Canada’s First Nations.
“We are not only standing with the Wet’suwet’en,” said Sabrina McQuillen Hill, a member of the Makah tribe who lives in Port Townsend, at Sunday’s protest. “We are also standing with indegenous women and girls.”
The Canadian pipeline-building camps will bring thousands of workers to an area known as the “Highway of Tears,” an east-west highway in northern B.C. that has become notorious as a place where dozens of women and girls—most of whom are indigenous—have gone missing or disappeared since the late 1960s.
