Video still: Chief Na’Moks and Gwii Lok’im Gibuu lead a march of more than 1,000 people to the AGO in Toronto where a gala dinner is taking place.
The Canadian Press reports: “Prime Minister Mark Carney’s high-stakes pitch for foreign investment is also attracting protests by Indigenous leaders and civil society groups opposed to his agenda.”
That article continues: “Speaking in Toronto on Monday [September 14], Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief Na’Moks said Carney has used U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war to build momentum behind his major projects push. ‘Canada is getting very good at blackmailing the public,’ he said, citing the prime minister’s argument that Canada needs to build more major projects to protect itself from predatory U.S. trade policy. ‘That’s their story. Their story is false, the same way that they think that these projects will go on without your support, without our support,’ said Na’Moks, who has organized opposition to pipeline projects in B.C.”
CBC News adds: “The impact of various projects on the environment was also a prominent concern throughout the speeches. ‘Everybody worries about their own backyard. Our front yard is this entire planet and we must stand together to protect it,’ said Wet’suwet’en Nation Hereditary Chief Na’Moks. ‘They’re taking everything we survive on and are willing to sell it to foreign investors.’”
Chief Na’Moks: “What we need to let the world know is that their reputation, not only of the CEOs, but also their country, that reputation will follow them for the destruction that they are doing to the human rights of this country and to the very environment. …We ask that everybody stand together throughout the world and say, know, there has to be a know. They call us the forces of no, but they spell it wrong. We spell it K-N-O-W. We know the damage that will be done. …We must stand together to protect it. Everything cannot have a price tag on it. Humanity can’t have a price tag on it.”
Gwii Lok’im Gibuu: “I have a message for Prime Minister Carney and his invited guests, that title holders, First Nations people, they’re not to be treated like obstacles that have to be navigated. We have constitutionally protected rights… I have no interest in disruption, I have an interest in keeping what’s ours, if we don’t flex this muscle of a right, it will eventually disappear… We’re being criminalized for upholding our rights, for living and for practising who we are. That is not okay. …We witness an erosion of human rights and a differentiation of human rights and indigenous rights. …Indigenous people around this country and around the world are standing together as one, and that unity empowers all of us, makes us stronger, and it gives us a voice.”
Social media post by Kanahus Manuel.
On page 9 of the prospectus of the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto is the “KSI LISIMS LNG TERMINAL & PRGT PIPELINE PROJECT.
