“Do not try,” warns the Treaty Truckhouse Resistance in a letter addressed to the CEO and executive members of Calgary-based Rockpoint Natural Gas Storage: “Our collective willingness to defend this land and water persists.”
As reported last month in AllNS.com, Rockpoint is expressing interest in reanimating the now long-defeated Alton Gas project. CEO Toby McKenna (son of former New Brunswick Premier Frank McKenna) asserts that Mi’kma’ki is “an obviously ideal market” for storing natural gas, claiming it will succeed where Alton Gas failed because they will be able to gain an elusive thing called “social licence.”
But the Mi’kmaw Grandmothers, Water Protectors, and allied people of conscience that formed the Treaty Truckhouse Resistance over eight years of treaty-based opposition to the Alton Gas Natural Gas storage project disagree. They are unwavering in their opposition to extractive projects that threaten the water, land and climate and disrespect treaty-affirmed Mi’kmaq rights and responsibilities – and their movement continues to build. As the letter sent to McKenna and executive members of Rockpoint days after the announcement states, “There are many more people standing to protect the water now, more than ever. Mi’kmaw treaty rightsholders have lived on this land, and defended these lands and waters, since time immemorial.”
Rockpoint Gas Storage is a new public spin-off of Brookfield Asset Management (BAM), a company name you might recognize as the one Prime Minister Mark Carney served as VP and Board Chair for until earlier this year, and for which he has faced scrutiny for alleged ongoing financial ties. Testing Rockpoint’s claim that they can win social licence here, their parent company has faced reports of human rights abuses, disrespect of Indigenous rights and breaches of environmental responsibilities. CBC reports that between 2020 to 2024, BAM businesses faced reports of serious human rights abuses in Brazil, Indigenous resistance in Colombia, an ongoing environmental dispute in Maine, and a $100-million lawsuit from Mississauga First Nation over alleged breaches of Indigenous rights and treaty obligations.
Saturday’s ‘Shoulder to Shoulder: We Are All Treaty People’ rally held in Halifax highlights a growing movement among Nova Scotians to support treaty-based land defence as a crucial part of collective resistance against irresponsible extractive project proposals. Many of these projects – from gas plants to gold mines – are being courted by Premier Tim Houston, with the province lifting moratoriums on fracking and uranium mining without Mi’kmaq consultation. In September, they also pushed through the “Protect Nova Scotians Act,” a piece of legislation that targets Mi’kmaw land defenders at Tqamuoeye’katik (Hunter’s Mountain), threatens $50,000 fines and six months in jail for anyone associated with a structure built along a logging road that is “harmful to the economic interests of the crown.”
As rally co-organizer Michelle Paul underlined in a recent interview with CBC Mainstreet, “We will stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies, and we will win, and whoever has invested in such projects, they need to give their heads a shake because they will lose their money… We sacrificed eight years of our life to get that Alton Gas project shut down, and we’re willing to commit to whatever it takes to shut down any and every other project that poses the same threats to our land. That’s how much we love these lands.” Other rally speakers included the revered Mi‘kmaw Elder/Doctor Albert Marshall, eighth-generation Black loyalist Vanessa Hartley, land defenders active at Tqamuoeyekatik and spokespeople from various community groups resisting everything from uranium exploration to attempted sell-offs to develop provincial parklands.
Rockpoint’s unwelcome reboot of the Alton Gas project proposal has been announced as just one in a wave of climate-ignorant resource extraction projects that seek to side-step Indigenous consent, including several being touted by both Premier Tim Houston and PM Mark Carney to be in the ‘national interest.’ But as the Treaty Truckhouse Resistance stresses, the social licence for these kinds of proposals is increasingly unwinnable.
“We can build a better future for our communities,” says Nina Newington, president of participating group Save Our Old Forests (SOOF). “But only if we work together. Houston’s arrogant disrespect for Treaty Rights and democracy, his attempts to reverse the progress we have made – all this has brought us together – Mi’kmaq and settlers, city dwellers and rural people. We’re building a movement dedicated to a liveable future for all.”
Sadie Beaton is a listener, activist and PhD candidate carrying many generations of settler land relations in Mi’kma’ki. She has been allied with the Treaty Truckhouse Resistance for almost a decade.
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