November, 27 2018, 11:00pm EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Leonard Forsman, Suquamish Chairman, 360-340-0986, lforsman@suquamish.nsn.us
Tony Hillaire, Lummi Nation Chief of Staff, 360-393-0890, AnthonyH@Lummi-nsn.gov
Debra Lekanoff, Swinomish Governmental Affairs, 360-391-5296, dlekanoff@swinomish.nsn.us
Francesca Hillery, Tulalip Tribes, 206-395-4048, fhillery@frogfootcommunications.com
Rebecca Bowe, Earthjustice, 415-217-2093, rbowe@earthjustice.org
Northwest Tribal Leaders Testify in Opposition to Canadian Pipeline Expansion
Threats to Coast Salish Peoples, Orcas, and the Salish Sea Too Great To Approve
WASHINGTON
Opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline from Coast Salish Tribes on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border continued today with indigenous people of the Salish Sea region testifying before the Canadian National Energy Board. Four U.S. Coast Salish Tribes -- the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Tulalip Tribes, Lummi Nation, and Suquamish Tribe -- shared their concerns alongside Canadian First Nations as part of a Canadian federal government review of the proposed pipeline expansion.
The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion would dramatically increase the number of oil tankers moving crude oil shipments through the Salish Sea, greatly increasing the risk of oil spills. An oil tanker disaster would unleash toxic pollution into a sensitive marine environment and devastate struggling Southern Resident Killer Whales, which hold great cultural significance for Tribes. The project also threatens to violate Tribal communities' treaty-reserved fishing and shellfishing practices.
"The Suquamish people have shared the waters of the Salish Sea for thousands of years," said Suquamish Chairman Leonard Forsman. "We have an obligation to protect our people from increasing threats of vessel traffic and oil spills that may irreparably damage orcas, salmon, shellfish, and our cultural lifeways. It is our duty as stewards to maintain clean water and a healthy ecosystem by opposing the Trans Mountain pipeline."
"The Coast Salish people are separated by an international boundary, but the reality is that our people have lived as a connected whole throughout the waterways of the Salish Sea since time immemorial. Our waters are sacred to us, and our culture is dependent on the integrity of these waters. The Trans Mountain pipeline is a threat to our future," said Marie Zackuse, Tulalip Tribes Chairwoman.
The killer whales of the Salish Sea and the Indigenous Coast Salish cultures have a common bond. "Our connection to the killer whale is personal, is relational, and goes back countless generations," according to Lummi Chairman Jay Julius. "Our name for them, qwe 'lhol mechen, means our relations below the waves."
Lummi Nation hereditary Chief Bill James ("Tsilixw") offered testimony at the hearing. "We all saw the grieving killer whale mother carrying her dead calf," Chief James said. "These are messages from our relatives below the waves. It is our Xa Xalh Xechnging (sacred obligation) to listen and learn from them, and honor them."
"Our Coast Salish way of life, economies, culture, and values are intertwined throughout the Salish Sea. Our Coast Salish people share bloodlines, cultures, and heritage, and like the water, salmon, and her resources, it recognizes no border," said Swinomish Tribal Chairman Brian Cladoosby. "In my 34 years of serving at Swinomish Senate and in my lifetime as a fisherman, I see a fatal future ahead of us. Unless we address the elephant in the room together as governments and citizens, that the reality is the Salish Sea is dying, she has too much pressure from growth, pollution, and vessel traffic, and we need to take bold action together. Just as the salmon and killer whales don't recognize a border, neither will a fatal oil spill."
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, President of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, stated, "We are absolutely grateful to our relatives for making the trip north today to stand with First Nations in B.C. in support of Salish Sea killer whales, whose continued existence will be greatly threatened if the Trans Mountain pipeline is expanded. We have a responsibility to do everything in our power to protect these whales, and we will continue to do so, no matter what it takes."
BACKGROUND
The proposed expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline would be built alongside the existing line, connecting Alberta tar sands oil fields to an oil-shipping terminal in Burnaby, B.C. The project would roughly triple the volume of oil delivered via pipeline, from 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000 barrels per day. The tar sands crude would be placed on oil tankers and shipped through the Salish Sea, running through the U.S.-Canada maritime border.
Earlier this year, the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal overturned prior approval of the crude oil pipeline expansion, finding that the Canadian government had failed to adequately consult with and address the concerns of First Nations opposed to the project. The Court also faulted the National Energy Board for ignoring the impacts of marine vessel traffic, including undisputed and grave threats to imperiled southern resident killer whales (protected as endangered species in both the U.S. and Canada). The proposed project is now owned by the Canadian government, after a purchase from Kinder Morgan. The National Energy Board will make a recommendation to approve or reject the pipeline in the spring of 2019; the final project decision lies with the Canadian federal government and the Trudeau Administration.
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
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At Least 95 Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks Including Massacres at Beach Café, Aid Points
"I saw body parts flying everywhere, and bodies cut and burned," said one eyewitness to a strike on the popular al-Baqa Café.
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Israeli forces ramped up their genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip Monday, killing at least 95 Palestinians in attacks including massacres at a seaside café and a humanitarian aid distribution center and bombings of five school shelters housing displaced families and a hospital where refugees were sheltering in tents.
An Israeli strike targeted the al-Baqa Café in western Gaza City, one of the few operating businesses remaining after 633 days of Israel's obliteration of the coastal strip and a popular gathering place for journalists, university students, artists, and others seeking reliable internet service and a respite from nearly 21 months of near-relentless attacks.
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Warning: Photos shows image of death
Survivor Ali Abu Ateila toldThe Associated Press that the café was crowded with women and children at the time of the attack.
"Without a warning, all of a sudden, a warplane hit the place, shaking it like an earthquake," he said.
Another survivor of the massacre told Britain's Sky News: "All I see is blood... Unbelievable. People come here to take a break from what they see inside Gaza. They come westward to breathe."
Eyewitness Ahmed Al-Nayrab toldAgence France-Presse that a "huge explosion shook the area."
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"We were targeted by artillery," survivor Monzer Hisham Ismail told The Associated Press. Another survivor, Yousef Mahmoud Mokheimar, told the AP that Israeli troops "fired at us indiscriminately." Mokheimar was shot in the leg, another man who tried to rescue him was also shot.
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Another 13 people were reportedly killed Monday when IDF warplanes bombed an aid warehouse in the Zeitoun quarter of southern Gaza City, according to al-Ahli Baptist Hospital officials cited by The Palestine Chronicle. IDF warplanes also reportedly bombed five schools housing displaced families, three of them in Zeitoun. Israeli forces also bombed the courtyard of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinian families are sheltering in tents. It was reportedly the 12th time the hospital has been bombed since the start of the war.
The World Health Organization has documented more than 700 attacks on Gaza healthcare facilities since October 2023. Most of Gaza's hospitals are out of service due to Israeli attacks, some of which have been called genocidal by United Nations experts.
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Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 204,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried under rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose casualty figures have been found to be generally accurate and even a likely undercount by peer-reviewed studies.
The intensified IDF attacks follow Israel's issuance of new forced evacuation orders amid the ongoing Operation Gideon's Chariots, an ongoing offensive which aims to conquer and indefinitely occupy all of Gaza and ethnically cleanse much of its population, possibly to make way for Jewish recolonization as advocated by many right-wing Israelis.
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Since launching the retaliatory annihilation of Gaza in response to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have killed at least 56,531 Palestinians and wounded more than 133,600 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which also says over 14,000 people are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Upward of 2 million Gazans have been forcibly displaced, often more than once.
On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated a call for a cease-fire deal that would secure the release of the remaining 22 living Israeli and other hostages held by Hamas.
In addition to Tlaib, the letter to Rubio was signed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Democratic Reps. Greg Casar (Texas), Jesús "Chuy" García (Ill.), Al Green (Texas), Jonathan Jackson (Ill.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Henry "Hank"Johnson (Ga.), Summer Lee (Pa.), Jim McGovern (Mass.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Chellie Pingree (Maine), Mark Pocan (Wisc.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Delia Ramirez (Ill.), Paul Tonko (N.Y.), Nydia Velázquez (N.Y.), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.).
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Some of the names on the list of people crafting the agenda—named Project 2029, an echo of the far-right Project 2025 blueprint Trump is currently enacting—left progressives with deepened concerns that party insiders have "learnt nothing" and "forgotten nothing" from the president's electoral victories against centrist Democratic candidates over the past decade, as one economist said.
The project is being assembled by former Democratic speechwriter Andrei Cherny, now co-founder of the policy journal Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and includes Jake Sullivan, a former national security adviser under the Biden administration; Jim Kessler, founder of the centrist think tank Third Way; and Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and longtime adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Progressives on the advisory board for the project include economist Justin Wolfers and former Roosevelt Institute president Felicia Wong, but antitrust expert Hal Singer said any policy agenda aimed at securing a Democratic victory in the 2028 election "needs way more progressives."
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As national security adviser to President Joe Biden, Sullivan played a key role in the administration's defense and funding of Israel's assault on Gaza, which international experts and human rights groups have said is a genocide.
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