NEW YORK, NEW YORK--(Marketwired - May 12, 2016) -
Editor's Note: There is a photo associated with this release.
First Nations leaders from northern British Columbia took a strong stance at the United Nations on Thursday in opposition to plans to build a liquefied natural gas project in their ancestral lands. They called upon member nations of the world body to support their demand that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government reject the proposed Pacific Northwest LNG project being advanced by Malaysia's state oil company, Petronas.
"We will not sell our salmon future for any price," said Algmxaa, Murray Smith, one of the House Leaders of the Gitwilgyoots Tribe - one of the Nine Allied Tribes of Lax Kw'alaams that has expressed deep concerns about the threat posed to wild salmon habitat by Pacific Northwest's $36-billion fossil fuel project proposed for the mouth of the Skeena River.
"We are not against development, but we are against this dangerous, irresponsible, foreign- owned and illegal intrusion into our sacred homelands," Smith said. "We stand against this project for all the peoples of this world. We don't want money, we want justice. We invite you to join our battle, to add your voices to our struggle to protect the only home we have ever had."
Smith was joined at the United Nations by Li'dytsm'Lax'nee'ga Neexl, Christine Smith-Martin, of the same tribe; by Na' Moks, John Ridsdale, a Hereditary Chief of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation and spokesperson for the Office of the Wet'suwet'en, an up-river tribe whose salmon resources are also imperilled by the project; and by HapWilxsa, Kirby Muldoe, of the up-river Gitxsan First Nation.
Their appearance at the UN came just two days after the Canadian government earned cheers at the 15th session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, at which Canada pledged to abide fully with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
"Right now, in our ancestral lands, everything the Trudeau government has pledged to get right with Canada's Indigenous peoples is in danger of going very, very wrong," Ridsdale said. "It is 2016, and Petronas is the wrong project in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"We are not here to pick a fight," Smith-Martin said. "We are here to respectfully entreat our government to do the right thing - and we want the world to bear witness to our concerns. The Prime Minister talks of building a nation-to-nation relationship. Well, our nation is again telling Canada that it cannot build this project, and we are telling the world that we will continue to fight this project. It simply will not get built in the Sacred Tidewaters of our Salmon Nation."