Notes From Day Seven: First Nations drums vs. chain link fence

Do First Nations people in New Brunswick deserve your support? Images of native protestors near Rexton, New Brunswick, are easy to find online. Actually the pictures reveal that the protestors include many non-aboriginals. One of the videos follows a group of perhaps a thousand marchers. Playing drums, holding hands, and singing together, the marchers move towards an area enclosed by a chain link fence. There isn't much the marchers can do except surround the compound. The compound is apparently the site of the seismic testing that a hydro-fracking company is using to look for natural gas.

The company is SWN Resources, based in Texas. We should pause here to think: a U.S. -based energy company. Anyone Googling hydro-fracking will soon discover that the practice of fracturing shale rock to allow trapped natural gas to escape is highly controversial in the U.S.

On the one hand, people concerned to protect the environment are raising the alarm that hydro-fracking contaminates local water supplies and is a dirty industry. They claim that the industry destroys surface land, leaves behind spent wells (which typically last only five to 10 years), broken roads, and many pollutants in the air, water, and land.

On the other hand, in the U.S., people seem desperate to escape from dependence on oil from the Middle East. The talk-show journalists on networks such as Fox News are roasting Matt Damon for his film, Promised Land. In it, a smooth-talking salesman tries to get the residents of a small town to sign away their land rights so that a hydrofracking company can come in and make them all rich. According to Damon's attackers, he is an unpatriotic American in cahoots with something called Image Nation Abu Dhabi, which they say is backed by the government of the United Arab Emirates. So now Damon is trying to keep America dependent on “foreigners.”

Being dependent on foreign influences, however, does not seem to be a problem for many Canadians. The government of New Brunswick allows SWN Resources to try to exploit Canadian resources. Yes, no doubt jobs could be created and New Brunswick's provincial debt could be reduced. But I would guess that in the end SWN is not much concerned with the Canadian environment, government indebtedness, our fresh water supplies or the First Nations communities that will be impacted by their fracking operations. It is concerned to slake the American thirst for energy and the thirst of its shareholders for profits.

However, this is not a case of the big bad U.S. taking advantage of Canadians and First Nations people. It is also a case of First Nations people presenting non-First Nations Canadians with an uncomfortable reality. Canadians are just as thirsty for oil, gas and profits as Americans.

What the Rexton protest really presents us with is a question: Is there any sacrifice that we are willing to make to spare the world from the environmental damage caused by burning fossil fuels? Is there any change in our way of living that we would be willing to make to slow down or reverse the warming of the planet that is caused by fossil fuel emissions? Up to now, the answers to those questions have been, well, disappointing.

The people of the Mi'kmaq Elsipogtog First Nations in New Brunswick deserve our attention. They are calling into question the exploitation of our created home, an exploitation that is already having disastrous results around the planet. Through their protest, we all — First and non-First Nations people — are being asked a question of the greatest importance:What is our responsibility to the Creation, our environment, and what do we owe to the future generations what will come after us?

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