Earth Minute Radio Segment on Blood Tribe Blockade

Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod’s Sojourner Truth show on KPFK–Pacifica Los Angeles radio show for a weekly Earth Minute on Tuesdays and a weekly 12 minute Environment Segment every Thursday.

This week’s Earth Minute covered a blockade by women members of the Blood Tribe in southern Alberta against the construction of a fracking operation.  To listen to the show, go to: http://bit.ly/pF8o19

Text of the Earth Minute:

Late last week, women members of the Blood Tribe in southern Alberta blockaded a fracking operation run by Murphy Oil on the Blood tribe reserve. They were arrested, charged with trespass (on their own land) and fined $1,500.

They point out that Blood Tribe members were NOT consulted during the negotiations of this deal, and that the fracking poses a major threat to human health, wildlife and livestock, and irreversible damage to the land and water on the Blood Reserve.

The women explained their action: “After nearly a year of doing everything in our power to stop fracking from occurring on our land, we felt time was no longer on our side.  With the imminent threat of fracking about to begin on Blood Tribe land, we decided we had to act immediately.”

“For us, this place is more than just land; it is the place that has given life to our people since time immemorial. Our culture, our language, our identity comes from the land and it is to the land that we owe our very existence.  This land is our mother and we must always respect that.”

For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.