Babaamaajimowinan (Telling of news in different places)
Babaamaajimowinan (Telling of news in different places)
At the Coastal GasLink protest in February, Freda Huson, also known as Chief Howilhkat, was the last person singing by the fire when she was arrested by police. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police included tactical squad officers armed with rifles and handlers with dogs, arriving in a convoy of more than 30 vehicles as a helicopter circled overhead. (Amanda Follett Hosgood/The Tyee)
Mike McKenzie felt that he had to leave his home. He says he was no longer welcome in Skeetchestn, a community in central British Columbia west of Kamloops that's one of 17 reserves in the Secwepemc Nation. Three years later, he's still not home.
His uprooting was by choice, but not by preference. McKenzie said he felt compelled to leave because of tensions around his outspoken opposition to the Trans Mountain Expansion Project, which is building a second pipeline to pump heavy oil from Alberta's tar sands to a tanker terminal near Vancouver.
[This story was originally published by Crosscut. Crosscut is a service of Cascade Public Media, a nonprofit, public media organization. Visit crosscut.com/membership to support independent journalism.]
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