Site C Dam fight moves to Vancouver after Treaty 8 Camp dismantled

Opponents to the Site C Dam project in Treaty 8 territory launched a hunger strike outside the BC Hydro office in Vancouver on Thursday morning.

The hunger strike was organized immediately following the “aggressive” dismantling of the Site C/Treaty 8 Stewards of the Land Camp by the RCMP on March 1, according to Tamo Campos, who is the grandson of renowned scientist/environmentalist David Suzuki.

“We set up at 8 a.m. this morning,” Campos told Windspeaker. “This action is in solidarity with all the work the Stewards of the Land put in when they set their camp up in Treaty 8 territory on Jan. 1st.”

The camp takedown came as the result of an application for an interim injunction by BC Hydro. RCMP arrived, read the riot act and proceeded to dismantle the camp.

Campos said the police action was a direct violation of the Treaty 8 Nations’ Charter Rights.

“The RCMP and the court used this injunction to displace Indigenous people off of their traditional territory that they have every treaty right to be on while there are still court cases being heard about treaty infringements and lack of consultation,” Campos said.

The demands are identical to those of the Treaty 8 Stewards of the Land: no dam construction until treaty violations are resolved and the project receives a review by the B.C. Utilities Commission.

“The reason we are using a hunger strike is because the B.C. government is literally starving future generations by flooding the agricultural breadbasket of the Northeast. This is an area with Class 1 and 2 soil that could feed nearly a million people.”

The Site C Dam proposal has been on the drawing board since the 1960s, when B.C. Hydro built a series of major hydroelectric dams on the Peace and Columbia Rivers.

But while those projects have been generating electricity for decades, the B.C. Utilities Commission has repeatedly rejected plans for Site C on the Peace River, on the grounds that the power is not needed and that the project would flood valuable agricultural land.

But in 2010, the B.C. Liberal government removed Site C from under the jurisdiction of the B.C. Utilities Commission and gave the project the green light, despite a plethora of legal objections from both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal stakeholders.

Helen Knott is a member of Profit River Nations and a spokesperson for Treaty 8 Stewards of the Land. Knott said despite the “sunny ways” PR put out by the recently elected Trudeau federal government, the colonialist mindset is still firmly entrenched in Ottawa.

One week before the B.C. Hydro injunction was issued, Knott travelled to Ottawa to see if she could meet with Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett to discuss Site C.

“We were not able to meet with Minister Bennett, but we did meet with one of her senior policy advisors. We showed him a picture and said, ‘This is our home.’ He asked how far it was from our reservation. That told me he was looking at it purely in terms of reserves and not in terms of [traditional] territories.”

Knott said the B.C. government’s steamrolling of opposition to the Site C project should alarm people from every corner of the province.
“If only for the question, ‘Is this in the best interest of the ratepayers?’” she said.

Campos said it is critical for those B.C. ratepayers to understand that, as well as being an environmental nightmare, Site C also has an extremely poor business case to support it. While he is related to David Suzuki on his mother’s side, his father Eduardo Campos was an engineer in both the logging and mining industries.

“I learned my love of the outdoors from my father. I understand the need for industry,” he said. “But you’re talking about a $9 billion project to flood an agricultural breadbasket. If they put a slice of that money into developing food security – organic gardening, organic food production – you’d be creating a whole hell of a lot more jobs, and for a lot longer time.”

Campos interjected that his grandfather has opposed Site C since the 1970s.

“It’s the ‘project that never dies.’ That’s what he calls it.”

Campos said the existing mega-dams on the Peace and Columbia Rivers have indeed provided B.C. with major benefits since they came online, despite serious environmental impacts. But while Site C has been postponed, decade after decade, the industry has changed, he said.

“Big Hydro is seen a lot differently now than it was during the days those projects were being built,” he said. “A year ago, [Christy Clark] was talking about selling [electricity] to California. But California has just put in legislation saying they won’t buy from Big Hydro any more, because it is not a Green source of energy.”

Campo said it is also important to ask what this projected new source of electricity will be used for.

“If it is for more industrialization of the liquefied natural gas industry in the Northeast sector, do we [as ratepayers] really want to be subsidizing the fossil fuel industry in these days of climate change?”
Campos said while Christy Clark has floated the dream of a $100 billion Prosperity Fund based on LNG, it is just that: a dream.

“There have been no royalties coming in from the natural gas industry because of global markets. So they have put $100 million of our taxpayer money into it.”

Back on the streets of Vancouver, Campos said the hunger strike would continue, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.

“It’s an inclusive action. Anyone can get involved, whether they’re striking or whether they’re just coming here to support us. We’ve got live bands playing at different times, and [on Friday], it’s going to be an All-Womens’ Hunger Strike.”

The BC Hydro office is located at 333 Dunsmuir St. in Vancouver.