Native Activists have been on the front lines opposing the Alberta Tar Sands for years. Native Canadians have frequently borne the brunt of industrial pollution, particularly in Northern Canada. How will the new proposed Keystone XL pipeline affect Native communities both in the US and Canada? Colorlines explains:
In hopes that action would discourage President Barack Obama from permitting an extension to the Canadian Keystone pipeline — also known as the “Keystone XL” — a group of First Nations and American Indian activists protested in front of the White House on Friday.
Before being arrested, the protesters insisted that the extension — which will run from Alberta Canada to Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas — will harm ancestral homelands.
“Our Lakota people oppose this pipeline because of the potential contamination of the surface water and of the Oglala aquifer,” said Deb White Plume, a Lakota activist. “We have thousands of ancient and historical cultural resources that would be destroyed across our treaty lands.”
Even the New York Times’ editorial board came out against the pipeline, writing that it was concerned about oil spills along the route and carbon emissions. “[T]he extraction of petroleum from the tar sands creates far more greenhouse emissions than conventional production does,” the board wrote last month.
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