Wet’suwet’en Solidarity Action to Block the Port of Montreal

Report on direct action and solidarity rally with the Wet’suwet’en against Coastal GasLink. Originally posted to Montreal Counter-Info. 

While COP15 is taking place in the streets of Montreal and the Canadian government is doing its green-washing dance for the world, construction of the Coastal Gaslink pipeline on Wet’suwet’en territory continues against the will of the nation, whose guardians have opposed oil drilling for years. This ecocidal project threatens the Wedzin Kwa River and the wildlife of the Yintah; while Canada pays lip service to biodiversity at COP15, CGL blasts dynamite and lays pipe through Wet’suwet’en waters*, threatening already endangered salmon, eel, and other non-human life.

Faced with the resistance of the First Nations, the Canadian petro-state has deployed and continues to deploy millions of dollars** in militarized police to force the passage of this monstrous project. Everywhere else in Canada’s state-occupied lands, similar transportation and raw material extraction projects are endangering fragile ecosystems and the people who depend on them, from tar sands to the Ray-Mont Logistics project that threatens the Terrain Vague facing the Port of Montreal.

In the winter of 2020, Indigenous activists and allies mobilized from coast to coast to coast to shut down Canada’s commercial infrastructure in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en. Today, we are ready to confront the extractivist and ecocidal machine that is the Canadian state, its goons, its greenwashing communications teams and its economic apparatus. We are on the side of the living, on the side of Indigenous peoples fighting for their sovereignty. We know that another world is possible, far from their disgusting ecocidal projects that benefit only a handful of billionaires and their parliamentary stooges.

Every day, the port of Montreal sees products from all over the world circulate in ever greater quantities. Yet our living conditions are declining, ecosystems are collapsing, and Indigenous peoples are still the targets of repressive and genocidal policies. The economic system that runs the Port of Montreal is leading us to our collective doom. It demands more oil, more raw materials, more mega-infrastructure, and more land for its mines, pipelines, and container storage. Today we shut it down!

After successfully blocking the port of Montreal and part of Notre-Dame Est, despite a huge and violent police presence the group of activists walked towards downtown to meet the protest in front of RBC called by Sleydo and other Wet’suwet’en land defenders.

Fuck CGL, Fuck the Police, Fuck the banks, Fuck the Port of Montreal, Fuck COP15, and Fuck Canada!
Long live the Wet’suwet’en, Long live the people who resist, Long live the resistance!
Because the Air, Land, and Seas need Revolutionaries!

* https://thenarwhal.ca/coastal-gaslink-wetsuweten-blasting/
** https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/08/16/RCMP-Spent-Almost-20-Million-Policing-Wetsuweten-Territory/