PAM PALMATER ON INDIGENOUS LAND DEFENDERS IN CANADA
Police Arrest Indigenous Land Defenders After Trudeau Demands an End to Blockades

February 25, 2020

Indigenous lawyer Pamela Palmater says Canada’s government is unduly influencing law enforcement. 

Story Transcript

This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Dimitri Lascari…: This is Dimitri Lascaris reporting for the Real News Network from Montreal, Canada. As the Real News reported last week, blockades of critical infrastructure have been erected across Canada in solidarity with land defenders on Wet’suwet’en territory. Those land offenders have been peacefully resisting the construction of the fracked gas pipeline on their lands, situated in Northern British Columbia. For days, federal and provincial law-enforcement reacted to these solidarity blockades with relative restraint. But all of that changed on Friday, February 21st, when prime minister Justin Trudeau demanded that the blockades be dismantled. Here’s what the Prime Minister had to say on that day.

Justin Trudeau: Canadians have been patient. Our government has been patient, but it has been two weeks and the barricades need to come down now.

Dimitri Lascari…: This morning, February 24th, Ontario Provincial Police forcibly arrested indigenous land defenders in Tyendinaga Mohawk territory, which lies between Toronto and Montreal. Their indigenous land defenders had set up a rail blockade, which among other things had brought passenger rail traffic between Canada’s two largest cities to a standstill for weeks. Now here to discuss these latest developments with us as Pam Palmater. Pam is a Mi’kmaq lawyer and a member of the Eel River Bar First Nation. She currently holds the Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University. She’s also a frequent media commentator, author and former spokesperson and educator for the Idle No More Movement. Thank you so much for joining us again, Pam.

Pam Palmater: Thanks for covering this.

Dimitri Lascari…: Pam, I would like to start by getting your overall reaction to the developments of the past few days. Trudeau claimed in his press conference last Friday that his government had been patient. He claimed to have engaged in dialogue with indigenous land defenders. He claimed that his government had “come to the table” or that the hereditary chiefs at the Wet’suwet’en had failed to come to the table. What do you make of all of these claims by the prime minister?

Pam Palmater: Well, this was a lot of propaganda for the benefit of Canadians, knowing full well what was going to happen. The Wet’suwet’en people’s and the hereditary leaders and clan members have been asking for a nation-to-nation meeting with Canada, the Prime Minister and the BC Premier John Horgan since January. They have been asking for a real nation-to-nation discussion, but they had said they can’t have this discussion at gunpoint. So, the RCMP had to leave their territories so that they could engage in a way with, there’s no violence or intimidation. Canada refused to meet those demands. While the RCNP said that they were going to leave the territory, they never did. We saw the pictures and videos. You have a situation where the Prime Minister sends a very strong message to the police forces in this country. These blockades must come down, when in effect, governments are supposed to have no role in how different police agencies conduct their business.

Up until that point, like you said in your introduction, the OPP, the Ontario Provincial Police had shown some degree of restraint. So, that message comes out and it’s no shocker then that they move into arrest the Mohawks at Tyendinaga Mohawk territory. But at the same time the RCMP, were also rolling into Wet’suwet’en territory, and both of those are being reported at the same time. This is really, really inappropriate. It’s undue influence on the police, and it’s something that should never happened. You know what else? It sounds eerily familiar to what happened during the Ipperwash crisis, and if you’ll recall an OPP officer shot and killed an unarmed land defender. So, the OPP of course should never have done what they did, but it’s this undue influence by political leaders saying, “Get the Indians on the park. Remove the blockades. Enforce the rule of law.” But no rule of law for indigenous peoples.

Dimitri Lascari…: So yes, it seems rather a fortuitous that the police moved in so shortly after the Prime Minister declared that the blockades must come down. Hard to believe that the two events are unrelated. But, I want to talk to you about another aspect of the narrative, Pam, that is being promulgated by the mainstream media, and particularly the right-leaning politicians in this country. They, some of them have derided the notion that the hereditary chiefs speak of the Wet’suwet’en speak for the Wet’suwet’en people. Some have implied that there’s something vaguely anti-democratic about giving precedents to the will of hereditary decision-makers. I’ve even seen some people, including persons who would describe themselves as progressive, described the hereditary chiefs as royalty as though they’re not unlike European monarchies. Could you talk to us about why in indigenous culture, the voices of hereditary chiefs are authoritative and whether in fact, they bear any resemblance at all to traditional European monarchies?

Pam Palmater: Right. I don’t think they bear any resemblance to monarchies, first of all. But I mean that’s a really good comparison. If you’re going to complain about something, you need to look at your own systems. But for indigenous nations across the country, like the traditional indigenous nations, there’s all different kinds of traditional governing systems. Some have hereditary systems, others have systems of matriarchs. Others have others have systems where the leaders are identified at birth. There’s a whole bunch of different traditional systems. We’re not all the same, but in the hereditary system, it’s not like someone is just anointed and then they’re there for life. If they don’t do the will of the people, if they don’t follow their traditional laws, if they’re not looking out for the entire nation, they can be removed. In fact in the Wet’suwet’en nation, hereditary leaders have been removed for not acting accordingly.

There’s a whole bunch of culture and traditions and laws and rules and regulations around it. It’s not at all like the monarchy and it’s about traditional laws and customs. There’s something far more democratic about traditional laws that work on the basis of consensus and trying to get everybody on board, versus a 51% rule. I mean, that’s not even a real majority in any sense of the word. Then when you take into account, so few people vote, you’re really talking about a fraction, where traditional governments, really it’s about everyone getting a voice, everybody working towards consensus. If you can’t get 100% consensus that are working to accommodate concerns in a fair way, and that takes time. Democracy skips all that for convenience. I think these traditional forms of governance are far more effective and far more representative of the people. If you think about democracies in general, it’s supposed to be about governance by the people, for the people, and traditional governments do that far better than the electoral system.

Dimitri Lascari…: Now, on February 19th, two days before Trudeau’s tough guy, press conference on Friday, the polling firm, Ipsos Reid issued a poll showing that 61% of Canadians say they disagree that the protesters are conducting justified and legitimate protest while 39% take the opposite view, agreeing that the protests are both legitimate and justified. Ipsos Reid noted that in 2013, a poll of Canadians reacting to indigenous blockades taking place at that time showed that 31% thought the blockades were justified compared to 69% who didn’t. So, support appears to have risen significantly in the past seven years. Moreover, the corporate community hasn’t shied away from painting the blockades as the work of extremists, but when nearly 40% of the Canadians appear to agree with what they’re doing, can they fairly be characterized as extremists. What do you make these polling numbers overall?

Pam Palmater: Well, I mean polls are problematic because it tends to be those with some degree of affluence who are polls. So, people who have access to cell phones and computers. You think about all of the remote territory’s who won’t be accessed. You think of all of the people who are homeless or precariously-housed people in prison, all of the most impoverished, tend not to be the ones that are polled. It’s a small group of people that are constantly pulling themselves. So, I always take that with a grain of salt. Second of all, human rights are not … They’re not a popularity contest. If they were, women wouldn’t be in politics right now. If it had been left to waiting for a majority of men who agree that women should have rights, we would still be fighting it. And that’s what human rights are.

It’s meant to be a pushback against the majority who are oppressing and anti-human rights. It’s the same thing with native rights, except at a much, at a much higher level. And no, of course, the people involved in this are not extremists. I’m involved. I’m a lawyer. I have four university degrees. There are academics. There are lawyers. There are doctors. There are massive numbers of unions, teachers groups, standing on these protests. There’s Canadians. There’s kids that are doing this. I mean these, even some of the rail workers were saying that they were offering support. This is not about extremism. But these comments show something very clearly, that they are worried. It’s a lot easier when it’s just a few native people because it’s easier to vilify people and cut out their voices in the mainstream media. But when you’re talking about thousands and thousands of Canadians, protesting in Toronto, protesting at the Parliament today, doing rolling barricades, shutting down ports and legislatures, that they’re quite worried about the fact that Canadians continue to grow in support of us and well they should.

This is about human rights. Native rights are human rights and they’ve been denied for far too long. This kind of extremist language is really just showing their fear around it.

Finally, Pam, I’m going to ask you to prognosticate again, which is always a dicey proposition, but based on what you’ve seen from the public today, for example, there was a protest in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en in the nation’s Capitol. I’m sure there’ve been numerous others around the country. Where do you expect things to go from here? Are the blockades over or do you envision an escalation in the resistance?

I don’t think the solidarity actions are over at all. Because when you think about it, the Mohawks from Tyendinaga territory, they were doing their actions in solidarity, very peacefully, not even on the rail, but a fire on the side of the rail. So, not technically blocking anything and they get arrested. So, because theirs was done in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en, now you have all of these solidarity actions in solidarity with the Mohawks from the Tyendinaga territory. There’s one thing that that is really, really important here. Of course, there’s going to be more solidarity actions. There’s going to be more actions all across the country and not just by indigenous peoples, by Canadians. I mean, there’s letters being issued by senators and MPS and the lawyers today saying, Oh, what Canada’s doing wrong. But I think it’s important for the viewers to note that United Nations has already called on Canada to stand down, stop violence against indigenous peoples, remove the police officers and their weapons and work towards consent on these projects and not move ahead with them without consent.

So, everything has changed as far as I’m concerned. Canada reached a tipping point. They promised reconciliation. They brought their law enforcement out with their weapons, and now we’re in a scenario where reconciliation looks dead. What gives me hope is that Canadians are trying to keep it alive, and I think if there’s going to be any success here, it’s going to be the push of Canadians on politicians who cannot get their minds out of the colonial mindset.

Dimitri Lascari…: Well, we’ve been speaking again to indigenous lawyer, activist and scholar Pam Palmater about the most recent maneuvers of the Trudeau government and response to solidarity blockades. Thank you so much for joining us again today Pam.

Pam Palmater: Thank you for having me.

Dimitri Lascari…: This is Dimitri Lascaris reporting for the Real News Network.


Canada Sees a ‘Watershed Moment’ in the Struggle for Indigenous Rights
February 19, 2020

Indigenous lawyer Pamela Palmater says ongoing solidarity protests show Canadians grasp more than ever how their government is violating indigenous rights.



Story Transcript

DIMITRI LASCARIS: This is Dimitri Lascaris reporting for The Real News Network from Montreal, Canada.

This past weekend, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cut short an international charm offensive in order to return to Canada to deal with a worsening crisis. Trudeau was on a multi-state trip designed to garner support for a Canadian seat on the United Nations Security Council, but solidarity protests with Indigenous Land Defenders forced him to abandon that trip. The Wet’suwet’en people, whose land in northern British Columbia has never been ceded, had been peacefully resisting the construction on their territory of the Coastal GasLink Pipeline.

The planned pipeline would be 670 kilometers or 416 miles long and would run from a $40 billion fracking project near Dawson Creek to a liquified natural gas facility near Kitimat on the west coast of Canada. There the natural gas would be liquified and prepared for export to foreign markets. The RCMP or Royal Canadian Mounted Police, have responded to the peaceful resistance to this pipeline with heavy handed tactics. As revealed by The Guardian in December of last year, RCMP officers were prepared to shoot Indigenous Land Defenders.

According to documents reviewed by The Guardian, RCMP commanders instructed officers to “use as much violence toward the gate as you want.” On 7 January of this year, RCMP officers dressed in military green fatigues and armed with assault rifles descended on the land defenders’ checkpoint, dismantled their gate and arrested 14 people. Then earlier this month, in a further operation to dismantle the blockade erected by Indigenous level defenders, the RCMP blocked media from bearing witness to their operations.

Jerome Turner of Ricochet Media was detained by the RCMP for eight hours, prompting the Canadian Association of Journalists to denounce the RCMP for acting in blatant disregard of the law in a way that is previously unheard of in Canada and unthinkable in a democratic country. Since early February, solidarity protests have erupted around the country. Indigenous Land Defenders have blockaded rail lines in Quebec, BC and Ontario. Demonstrators have temporarily shut down ports. On February 16th, a solidarity protest temporarily blockaded the Rainbow Bridge between Canada and United States in Niagara Falls.

Now here to discuss this burgeoning crisis with us is Pam Palmater. Pam is a Mi’kmaq lawyer and a member of the Eel River Bar First Nation. She currently holds the chair in Indigenous governance at Ryerson University. She’s also a frequent media commentator, author and former spokesperson and educator for the Idle No More Movement in Canada, defending in Indigenous lands, waters and sovereignty. Thank you so much for coming back on The Real News, Pam.

PAM PALMATER: Thanks for having me and covering this issue.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Pam, as you know as well as anyone, there is a long and illustrious history in this country of peaceful Indigenous resistance to the abuses of Indigenous rights. And this includes of course, the Idle No More Movement in which you played so key a role. But these protests seem unprecedented in one respect. They are causing economic disruption across the country. Do you think we’re witnessing a watershed moment in Indigenous resistance? And if so, why do you think this is happening now?

PAM PALMATER: I do think this is a watershed moment for lots of the reasons that you’ve outlined, but also because Canadians are standing with us in droves. During the Idle No More Movement was kind of the building of these relations and educating Canadians. This time around, Canadians are much more informed. They know to look beyond the headlines. They do their own research and they ask Indigenous peoples what’s going on.

And you’ll notice in many of these protest marches, rallies, blockades, you can see hundreds and hundreds of Canadians organizing this. Not all of them are even Indigenous led. That shows a real shift in Canadian education but also the will of Canadians to tell government, “Enough is enough.” And these are very targeted, very specific actions that Canada has to pay attention to. And I think how Canada responds right now, whether they respond with force or the promised nation to nation relationship, will determine what happens from this point forward.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: And I wanted to come back to the end game at the close of our discussion. But before we get there, I want to dig deeper into an issue. You talked about Canadians understanding the issues better today than in the past. Proponents of the Coastal GasLink Pipeline argue that band councils have consented to the planned route of the pipeline, whereas opponents of the pipeline assert that what matters here for purposes of Indigenous rights, is the consent of the hereditary chiefs, which has not been given. Could you talk to us about the band councils and please explain why their consent is not enough to justify the government’s actions?

PAM PALMATER: Yeah, so this isn’t about one group being better than the other group. This is just a matter of law in Canada. Under the Indian Act, chiefs and counselors, which is an imposed system on our traditional nations, have very, very limited jurisdiction and powers. It’s limited to the reserve lands. They certainly don’t have jurisdiction outside of those reserve lands. The pipeline doesn’t propose to cross any reserve lines. Whether or not the elected council did or did not consent to the pipeline is beside the issue for several reasons. One, it doesn’t cross reserve lands, they don’t have any jurisdiction over it.

And two, the real legal authority over Aboriginal title lands, which is all of the traditional territory, which is far greater than the little tiny reserve lands that had been set aside, is with the hereditary chiefs. And how do we know this? One, we know this because that’s Wet’suwet’en law. That it’s always been the hereditary chiefs who have responsibility according to each of their clans to protect different areas in their territory. And we also know this because the hereditary chiefs went to court to assert Aboriginal title over their territory. And it was the hereditary chiefs who represented the Aboriginal title claim, not the Indian Act chiefs.

Now government, and of course industry is going to try to confuse Canadians and say, “Oh, but we have this agreement.” They haven’t shown anyone this agreement. And that’s part of the problem. We don’t know even if the Indian Act councils did consent or not. What we do know from one of the leaked agreements is that the Coastal GasLink Pipeline has told first nations that they have to take every action to quell any dissent in their communities, not even allow people free speech, to speak in public or on social media. And that is also against our laws here in Canada.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Now, today, Pam, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Murray Mullen, the CEO of the Mullen Group was quoted extensively in the Canadian Press talking about the rail blockades. The Mullen Group does trucking for the oil patch in both Canada and the United States. Mullen described the rail blockades as quote, ecoterrorism. How do you respond to that charge?

PAM PALMATER: Well, again, that’s just more inflammatory language, trying to turn Canadians against us because there’s literally a groundswell of support from Canadians and I would also add Americans who blocked some rails in Seattle. But this is about racist language. We’ve always been portrayed as dangerous, militant savages, domestic terrorists, and depending on which government is in power, you get more or less of that kind of dialog. All that does is scare people and it’s not based on facts.

Just like the Idle No More Movement, all of these activities which are done in solidarity, have all been peaceful and everyone organizing these have given as their first instruction, that this is to honor the Wet’suwet’en, to stand in solidarity with their land rights and no violence, no weapons, nothing is allowed at the site and that’s the way it’s been. And you know how it is in the media if people can use inflammatory or scary language that maybe people won’t want to support what’s happening. But so far Canadians have looked beyond those really inflammatory words.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: And finally, Pam, so far, the Trudeau government has resisted calls from people like Mr. Mullen and from right wing politicians, most notably the Conservative Party leader, Andrew Scheer, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, to be more forceful in responding to the blockades. And in fact–and I personally found this rather surprising–the Indigenous Services Minister Mark Miller, after meeting with the participants in one of the blockade stated quote, “What I hear back from communities and Indigenous peoples when we talk about the rule of law is that the rule of law for them has been time and time invoked to perpetuate what believe to be historical injustices.”

Now, given its record of enthusiastic support for Canada’s fossil fuels industry, the Trudeau government looks very much to be caught between a rock and a hard place. What in your opinion is Trudeau’s likely end game here? How do you think his government will try to resolve this crisis? And how do you think he should try to resolve this crisis?

PAM PALMATER: Well, that’s a really good question. And we all know Canada is the state perpetrator of genocide and they still haven’t addressed that. For all the nice words that they have used, they haven’t followed that up with actions. The RCMP still invaded and forcibly removed Wet’suwet’en peoples from their homes in fact. What we see though is a categoric difference on a province by province basis. I wouldn’t even say it’s a national response. You see the province of Ontario saying, “Wait, we’re not going to rush in and forcibly remove people. That didn’t work in any of the other protests. It just escalated tensions. We’re not going to do it here.”

And it’s important to remember in a democratic country, federal and provincial governments aren’t supposed to have any sway over law enforcement. Whether or not that’s the case, that’s another issue. But they can’t be telling them go in and get these people or remove these people or not. Thank goodness for its law enforcement restraint. I think Mark Miller so far has had the most relationship focused comments, to actually acknowledge that we’re only here because of a continued denial of our sovereignty, our governing systems, and our land rights; that’s the only reason why we keep having these flashpoints.

And I think on a go forward basis, Justin Trudeau is really going to have to sit back, do business, not as usual, not look to the usual political, “well, we’ll study this or we’ll have a meeting,” and actually sit down and have a nation to nation conversation with the Wet’suwet’en and try to work things out. And if that means no pipeline in Wet’suwet’en territory, they’re going to have to once and for all accept that we have the legal right to say no when we want to. And everybody’s watching nationwide whether or not that right is going to be respected. We’ll see how he moves forward.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Well, we’ve been speaking to Indigenous lawyer, activist and scholar Pam Palmater about a burgeoning crisis in Canada relating to the Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia. Thank you so much for joining us again on The Real News, Pam.

PAM PALMATER: Thanks for covering this.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: And this is Dimitri Lascaris reporting from Montreal, Canada.

Pam Palmater is a Mi’kmaw lawyer and member of Eel River Bar First Nation, currently holding the Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University. She is also a frequent media commentator, author, and former spokesperson and educator for the Idle No More movement in Canada defending Indigenous lands, waters and sovereignty. Media: www.pampalmater.com

A Racist Voter ID Law Targeting Native Americans Just Lost its Punch

February 26, 2020

North Dakota will now provide Native Americans with no-cost identification to vote in a victory against racist voter ID laws⁠—but they still face shocking barriers to the ballot box nationwide.

Story Transcript
This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Kim Brown: Welcome to The Real News, I’m Kim Brown. The efforts to preclude nonwhite citizens from voting have continued to persist in the 21st century. Voter ID is the weapon du jour with conservative state legislatures over the past decade, placing onerous burdens on citizens of colors to in effect show their papers in order to exercise their right to vote. Now, this is what happened to Native Americans in North Dakota. People whose homes didn’t have formal addresses or who didn’t have birth certificates were made to jump through onerous hoops in order to participate in elections. But a new settlement reached last week could ease some of those challenges. And today we’re joined with Jacqueline De León. Jacqueline is a staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund, which is a legal organization defending the rights of Native American tribes, organizations, and people. She has led hearings across Indian country on Native American voting rights and she practices ongoing litigation and legislative advocacy to enable Native American voters to participate in state and federal elections, and she joins us today from Boulder, Colorado. Thank you for being here, Jacqueline.


Jacquelin De Le…: Thank you so much for having me.


Kim Brown: So let’s start with what happened last week and go backwards so that we all can grasp how we’ve arrived at this point. So first off, Native American tribes were set to go to trial in May as the plaintiffs suing the state of North Dakota behind a voter suppression law involving securing so-called proper ID to cast a ballot, but last week a settlement was reached and tell us what happened as a result of that.


Jacquelin De Le…: We were happy to hear that the state was willing to enter into settlement negotiations after years and years of battle, and what the tribes effectively agreed to is that a voter who doesn’t have an address can go into the polling booth and mark on a map where their address is, indicate on the cross streets where it is that their house or where it is, even if they’re homeless, their tent is, and the state will then assign them an address. That vote will become a provisional ballot, the state will assign an address before the final tally of counts is made and then they will report back to the tribes that they have assigned that address and that that vote was counted. So we think that that’s a good solution for individuals that lack addresses. The state will also support the issuance of free IDs on the reservations 30 days before an election and some compensation for tribes issuing IDs and the acceptance of tribal letters to serve as ID.


Kim Brown: So how were Native Americans voting prior to the passage of this bill through the North Dakota legislature? Because it was not this complicated to vote prior to, I believe it was either 2012 or 2014 that the Republican controlled state house as a reaction to the Native American voting block, which helped to not only elect Barack Obama in 2012 but also saying Heidi Heitkamp to this, to the U.S. Senate in 2012. This law was enacted as an outgrowth of that. Can you explain to us how it was prior to the law being enacted and what caused the passage of this GOP initiative?


Jacquelin De Le…: So prior to the law, North Dakota was a very progressive state in a lot of ways. When it came to voting, there’s no voter registration, so an individual could go up to vote. At the time they had a thing called voucher, meaning that somebody from the community could say, I know… If for example, you didn’t have an identification, an individual could say, you know what, I know this person, so this person is from our precinct. And they can vouch for that voter. There also was an individual voter could attest that they were qualified under penalty of perjury. And basically that’s the voter swearing that they were qualified to vote. And that’s the fail safe mechanism that the district judge implemented after our victory in 2016 to allow voters to vote again. And so going back as to why it is that this very open system was changed.


And again, remember North Dakota is not a very populous state. What may not be feasible in a more populous state was very feasible in North Dakota where voters largely knew each other in very small communities. But in 2011 the legislature considered an ID bill and they ultimately decided that that ID bill would be too onerous to people who didn’t have an identification. And they were also informed at that time that Native Americans lack residential street addresses, and so they wouldn’t be able to comply with an ID requirement that required an address. And so they rejected a voter ID bill in 2011. In 2012 Heidi Heitkamp won a surprise victory for U.S. Senate. And immediately in the session following that election, the legislature passed the ID bill. It’s important to note that Heidi Heitkamp’s election was considered to be attributable to the Native American vote.


She won by 1% and so the Native American vote was seen as a block that carried her to victory. And so the passage of the ID bill in the subsequent legislative cycle in 2013 we think was a direct response to that election. They did not consider any other viewpoints. They didn’t open up the floor to debate. They used a legislative maneuver. Basically they attached the ID bill to another bill so it could be voted on without any discussion. And the effects in 2014 were immediate and severe. And that’s when NARFE got the call that many Native Americans were being turned away from the polling place.


Kim Brown: And it’s not a reach to say that the Native American voting blog helped deliver Heidi Heitkamp her U.S. Senate seat because she lost reelection in 2018 with this voter ID law firmly in place. Can, can we attribute her loss to Native Americans being denied access to the ballot box?


Jacquelin De Le…: So I think that what led to her victory in 2016 was a host of factors. She was facing a especially weak candidate due to some scandals that that candidate had and the Native American vote carried her over the top in that instance. And it was, I think widely acknowledged that it was the Native American vote that secured her victory.


In this last election cycle, she was facing a more formidable opponent. North Dakota is a traditionally Republican state. And there was, in this instance, exceptionally high turnout among Native Americans. And the reason was is that with the articulation of the injustice, with these years of litigation with us saying to the Native American tribes, you are being disenfranchised. And then with I think a national spotlight being put on North Dakota because the balance of the Senate was at play at the time, a ton of donations came into North Dakota to try and mobilize the native vote. And tribes issued, hundreds of IDs for free using those donated funds. And they also assigned addresses and tried to compensate for the suppressive effects of the law. And so it led to sort of a historic turnout. Now, if the law were to remain in place and the settlement hadn’t been reached, we think that the suppression would’ve continued when there weren’t sort of this surplus of money coming in due to national attention. And we think that that barrier would have led to decreased turnout over the years.


Kim Brown: So broadly Jacquelin what are the challenges surrounding voters in Indian country and what are some of the ongoing barriers to participation? Because it’s not easy for people of color across the spectrum to vote at all. And we know that Native Americans are the OGs of bearing the brunt of this colonial state, especially when it comes to oppressing people’s human rights, basic human rights, but certainly rights as citizens and trying to do that as voters. So what are the challenges that Native Americans are still dealing with in 2020


Jacquelin De Le…: So Native Americans face unreasonable barriers I think that would shock the conscience of everyday Americans. In the Duckwater Reservation in Nevada, individuals have to travel 140 miles to register. That’s crazy. Given the fact that there’s mountains in the region and road conditions, that’s a four to five hour trip one way. In order to cast a vote in person, tribes throughout Nevada have to travel over 100 miles. These kind of distances are unreasonable and they are prevalent throughout Indian country. Other tribes regularly face 40 or even 20 miles. But the problem is, is that those distances are on dirt roads and individuals have to leave a reservation in order to cast their ballot. And that can be incredibly costly, not just in the tank of gas that it takes to get and the hours that you have to commit to. I’m going to go vote, but also in childcare and other barriers that pop up when you have to travel those kinds of distances.


But I think that those distances also critically communicate to Native American communities that their votes are not important and that they don’t matter. And so Native Americans face just unreasonable distances when it comes to casting a ballot and registering. Other issues that face Native Americans are a digital divide. So 99% of tribes lack broadband access. It’s not uncommon for me to go onto a reservation and then immediately lose service. And so as states progress towards online registration, tribes are left out of that calculus.


Voter ID continues to be a problem in Indian country in South Dakota. They recently considered a bill and a decided that tribal ID wouldn’t be allowed for online registration. Native Americans also face hostility when they vote outside of their reservations. So not only do they have to travel these unreasonable distances to go and cast their ballot when they go outside of the reservation, there are tensions between the border town and the reservation and they have to go to these hostile areas.


For example, in Arizona, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians describe how their flow of water is regularly blocked by individuals in the border town, racial tensions are so high. And so when you place a polling location where there are really high racial tensions, people don’t feel comfortable going there. In Wisconsin, they also have a polling locations inside of a Sheriff’s office, which is a huge deterrent for individuals going to go vote. It’s intimidating. There’s also disrespect shown in South Dakota, native Americans were forced to vote out of a repurposed chicken coop and described the humiliation they felt when they saw feathers on the floor and no bathroom facilities. And so it’s a really discouraging landscape out there.


And I will also say that when you go to a border town that is hostile, that also communicates that your vote is unwanted and that border town does not necessarily have to host the polling location. There’s no reason why a polling location isn’t on a reservation. For example, in Crow Creek, they placed the polling location in Gann Valley, which has a whopping population of 12 people, instead of Fort Thompson that has a population of 1,200 people in a largely Native American population.


Kim Brown: Wow. These are issues that are numerous and indefinitely complex and in my opinion, absolutely under-reported. So hopefully we can check in with you in the future, Jacqueline, and you can bring us up to speed-


Jacquelin De Le…: Yes, I’d love to.


Kim Brown: On some of the challenges that our brothers and sisters in Indian country are facing. Jacqueline, we appreciate your time today. Thank you so very much.


Jacquelin De Le…: Thank you so much.


Kim Brown: And thank you for watching The Real News Network.

ExxonMobil Got Congress to Trade Arms for Offshore Gas
By: Steve Horn and Lee Fang | February 6, 2020

In collaboration with:


MQ-9 Reaper in flight. Image Courtesy of U.S. Air Force

In a bitterly divided Congress, lawmakers still managed to come together to help ExxonMobil pass major legislation that could remake the geopolitics of the Middle East and Europe.

During the holiday season legislative blitz in December, legislators tucked an obscure provision into the omnibus spending package that lifted arms restrictions and boosted a controversial pipeline deal in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

The omnibus includes provisions from the Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act, legislation introduced in the House and Senate last year. It promises a range of U.S. assistance for the development of natural gas resources off the coasts of Israel and Cyprus, including support for constructing pipelines and liquified natural gas terminals and the creation of a United States-Eastern Mediterranean Energy Center in the region run by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Cyprus, one of the smallest states in the European Union, has come under increasing pressure from Turkey, which opposes the development of new gas fields off the disputed coasts of the island state and has used its navy to threaten drilling vessels.

In response, the legislative text also repeals the prohibition of weapons transfers to Cyprus put in place in 1987, promotes greater U.S. military assistance to Greece and Cyprus, and instructs the U.S. to maintain its newly situated predator drone fleet in the region.

While the provision received scant coverage in American media, its passage prompted a flurry of activity.

On January 2, leaders of Israel, Greece, and Cyprus appeared together to sign a trilateral deal to build a new $6.7 billion pipeline to bring gas from offshore fields in Israel and Cyprus to Greece, Italy, and Bulgaria. The new EastMed pipeline could transport as much as 20 billion cubic meters of gas to those countries annually, pitched as a way to lessen Russian and Turkish energy influence in the region. Days later, Russia and Turkey announced plans for their own joint venture, the TurkStream Pipeline.

The authorization of the military assistance and pipeline support never received a single hearing, an up or down vote, or any open debate. Its inclusion in the must-pass spending package reflects the powerful lobbying coalition that came together in support of the deal.

That coalition included foreign agents tied to both Greece and Cyprus, the American Jewish Committee, and Christians United for Israel, an evangelical group with close ties to Israel. Greek-American diaspora groups also mobilized to lobby for the legislation. Hellenic American Leadership Council, one Greek American group, touted the passage of the text as the “most pro-Hellenic bill in a generation.”

But disclosure documents reviewed by The Real News and The Intercept suggest that ExxonMobil was at the center of the lobbying effort. The energy giant curried favor to win support for the gas project within the European Union, as well as in Washington, D.C.

The rapid political moves on Capitol Hill came just months after ExxonMobil announced one of the largest gas field discoveries in recent years off the coast of Cyprus in February of 2019—the latest in a series of new discoveries in the region over the past decade.

In 2013, the Hudson Institute was the first major Beltway institution to call for the U.S. to provide military assistance to Cyprus and to promote the development of the new gas discoveries in the region. The following year, the Hudson Institute published a follow-up long report on the issue, after which ExxonMobil disclosed a donation of $15,000 to the think tank. Seth Cropsey, a senior Pentagon official for the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, served as the lead author of both reports.

The new gas discoveries prompted growing coordination between Israel, Greece, and Cyprus.

“We decided to explore this in a very audacious way: to form a trilateral committee between Greece, Cyprus and Israel, to plan the possibility of a pipeline that would take our common resources of gas and export them to Europe via Greece—a pipeline from Israel, Cyprus through Greece to Europe,” Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a press conference in 2016.

Also in 2016, ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum formed a new venture and won a bid to explore offshore blocks near Cyprus. The contract was later inked in a 2017 ceremony in Cyprus, with officials from both companies present, alongside both the U.S. Ambassador and Qatari Ambassador to Cyprus.

“ExxonMobil and our partner, Qatar Petroleum, have a long and successful history of developing gas resources,” said Andrew Swiger, principal foreign officer for ExxonMobil, in a press release at the time of winning the bid.

Lobbying disclosures in the European Union show that ExxonMobil officials quickly went to work, scheduling meetings in March 2018 with an unnamed EU cabinet member on gas exploration near Cyprus. Just three days later, the U.S. military brought the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit to Limassol, Cyprus on the USS Iwo Jima as ExxonMobil commenced exploratory drilling in the region.
Speaking with investors later that year, the company boasted about the Cyprus gas fields as a key area of growth. Asked by analysts about where ExxonMobil sees its greatest future prospects, Neil Chapman, ExxonMobil’s senior vice president, said he “would highlight Cyprus.” Last year, in another conference call with investors, Chapman emphasized that the Cyprus fields “turned out to be a pretty nice discovery.”

The EUobserver, a watchdog media outlet, obtained an email showing that ExxonMobil hosted a lunch in April 2018 with Cypriot MEPs, Cyprus’s highest EU diplomat, and EU commissioner Christos Stylianides, to discuss the company’s gas exploration of the Cyprus coast. The lunch took place at a restaurant located close to the U.S. Embassy in Brussels, Belgium.

In October 2018, the company also served as the lead sponsor of a gala held in Greece at the largest business convention in southeast Europe. In a photo published by the U.S. Embassy in Cyprus, U.S. Ambassador to Cyprus Kathleen Doherty is seen alongside ExxonMobil executives.

Ambassador Doherty with ExxonMobil Officials and Cyprus delegation members at the Gala Reception for USA Honored Nation September 7.

Left to Right: Tristan Aspray, Vice President, Europe / Russia / Caspian, ExxonMobil Exploration Company, Nicos Philippou Noricum Trade & Investments and AmCham Board Member, Michalis Michael, Chairman, Board of Directors, Invest Cyprus, U.S. Ambassador to Cyprus, Kathleen Doherty, Jay Jackson, Exploration Manager, Exxon Mobil International Ltd.

2

Comment

1

Exxon is also active within AmCham Cyprus, a global offshoot of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that receives financial backing from the U.S. Embassy in Cyprus. The company’s office in Cyprus is located next door to the Embassy.

Varnavas Theodossiou, lead country manager for the company in Cyprus, sits on the board of directors for AmCham Cyprus. Praising ExxonMobil by name for its efforts in the region, U.S. Ambassador to Cyprus Judith Garber gave a speech to the AmCham Cyprus this past September.

“We are proud that two American companies—ExxonMobil and Noble Energy—are participating in this game-changing development,” said Garber, according to a transcript of her remarks.

As the corporation—dubbed a “private empire” by investigative journalist Steve Coll—moved to shore up EU support for the deal, the U.S. also brokered a political agreement.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, last March, convened a meeting in Jerusalem with officials from Israel, Greece, and Cyprus to “affirm their shared commitment to promoting peace, stability, security, and prosperity in the Eastern Mediterranean region.” The State Department’s press release from the event noted that the leaders at the meeting “welcomed the recent natural gas finds in the Eastern Mediterranean and its potential to contribute to energy security and diversification.”

The month after the Jerusalem meeting, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., introduced the Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act. Menendez, according to Senate expense filings, traveled to Athens shortly after introducing the legislation to discuss the idea with Greek and Cypriot officials.

The public disclosures only show part of the story. Over the following months, ExxonMobil, Christians United for Israel, the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, and American Jewish Committee mounted a sustained lobbying campaign with officials over the bill (which later became the provision included in the omnibus spending package).

The American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association spent $15,000 during the second half of 2019 lobbying for the legislation, and for another bill which would prevent the U.S. Department of Defense from sending arms to Turkey. The AJC spent $30,000 lobbying for it and two other issues during the third quarter of 2019 alone. And CUFI, for its part, spent $90,000 lobbying for the legislation and other bills during the second half of the year. The group says in its fourth quarter filing that it pushed to get the legislation inserted into the budget bill.

The coalition’s lobbying campaign called for the United States to lift the arms embargo on exports to Cyprus, which began in 1987 after a sustained lobbying campaign by the Turkish foreign agents in the United States, known as one of the most robust foreign lobbying presences in Washington. Cyprus was divided following the Turkish occupation of the island in 1974 in response to a military coup engineered by the Greek government. The Turkish government calls its occupied territory the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is not internationally recognized.

The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus lobbied against the legislation, according to foreign agency lobbying documents, hiring the firm Prime Policy Group to act on its behalf. Prime Policy Group is the successor to Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, a firm that was the namesake of two allies of President Donald Trump, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.

Despite that opposition, the mix of foreign, pro-Israel, and energy lobbying prevailed. Without debate over either the wisdom of lifting the arms embargo or the exclusionary development of Cyprus gas fields in the hands of a few regional governments, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.—citing the bill’s bipartisan support—signaled approval for the vast majority of it to be included in the spending bill. (The spending bill removed language denouncing Russia’s arming Turkey with an S-400 fighter missile defense system in July 2019.)

Concerns about the climate crisis and methane emissions associated with offshore gas drilling, too, went undiscussed. Methane is a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide when emitted.

Pompeo was scheduled to appear in Cyprus to celebrate the signing of the omnibus bill, which boosted the new pipeline deal and the lifted of the arms embargo. The trip, however, was canceled because of the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.

Sen. Menendez then met with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on January 8, the day after Mitsotakis met with President Donald Trump, with Menendez presenting him with a copy of the legislation for a photo opportunity. The senator received $36,500 in defense industry political action committee campaign contributions during his successful 2018 re-election bid cycle, garnering more than $10,000 in campaign contributions from General Atomics, producer of the MQ-9 drones that will continue to be stationed at the military base in Greece under the legislation’s dictates.

For his part, Sen. Rubio received $17,951 in campaign contributions from ExxonMobil during his 2016 re-election bid and another $27,900 from General Atomics during that same cycle. Neither Menendez nor Rubio responded to repeated requests for comment for this story.

Belén Balanyá, a researcher and campaigner for the group Corporate Europe Observatory, said the passage of this bill symbolizes the clout the ExxonMobil has within the European Union political process.

“ExxonMobil’s lobbying, direct and in association with other dirty fossil fuel companies and their huge web of lobby groups, has helped lock the EU into fossil-fuel dependency for another 30 years,” Balanyá said via email. “That’s why we have launched together with other groups the Fossil Free Politics campaign, where, similar to existing restrictions on tobacco industry lobbyists, we demand a firewall between decision makers and the fossil fuel lobby. Only then can we take the real action we need to leave fossil fuels in the ground.”

---30---

Surviving the Onslaught of Fracking in Argentina

By: Nick Cunningham | February 26, 2020

LONG READ 

Marisol Sandoval, a resident of Sauzal Bonito. 

Photographer: Eduardo Carrera

AÑELO, Neuquén Province, Argentina—With each new tremor felt in the tiny village of Sauzal Bonito, the old adobe houses rattle, creating new cracks in walls and floors. Although a chronic sense of anxiety looms, Marisol Sandoval and her neighbors have grown accustomed to this frightening increase in earthquakes over the past few years. The increase correlates, according to residents and academics, with the arrival of the drilling rigs.

“The ones who are afraid are the children. They do get scared,” Sandoval said. “If it’s strong, they know that they need to get out of the house.”

The children may have learned what to do, but in the moment they panic, cry, and freeze up. Sandoval said that sometimes the earthquakes are short, other times longer. The ferocity of the shaking also varies, but when the trembling starts, they don’t know how strong the quake will be, or how long it will last.

The pile of rubble where a house once stood in the middle of the village offers a grim reminder of the danger.

A house in Sauzal Bonito, destroyed by an 

earthquake. Photographer: Nick Cunningham

People born and raised in the village say they never experienced an earthquake prior to 2015. What they say is backed up by seismic monitoring, which also shows a recent alarming increase in earthquakes. “It’s been three years of movements,” said Sandoval.

Many companies had begun initial drilling in the area. But the Argentine government, under former Presidents Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Mauricio Macri, offered heavy subsidies to oil and gas companies, triggering a fracking frenzy beginning in 2017.

Sauzal Bonito and its residents are the ones experiencing the fallout of the fracking boom.

As 2020 begins, Argentina’s new president is trying to pull his country out of an economic crisis. Like his predecessors, President Alberto Fernández has positioned fracking as pivotal to the recovery. He is preparing a new incentive package for drillers in the Vaca Muerta, Argentina’s enormous shale formation. But as President Fernández seeks to attract more foreign investment, the people living closest to the drilling rigs are already paying the price for the industry’s growth.

A drilling rig in Neuquen Province. Photographer: Nick Cunningham

Argentina’s fracking rush goes back to a 2013 deal between Chevron and YPF (the Argentine state-backed oil company) which paved the way for large-scale drilling at the Loma Camapana field in the province of Neuquén. The deal set off a protracted fight with indigenous communities that call this part of Northern Patagonia home.

Also that year, the Mapuche Confederation of Neuquén, an organization of various Mapuche communities in the province, hosted a seminar at the National University of Comahue in the city of Neuquén for indigenous peoples from all over South America. At that meeting, representatives of the Sarayaku people from Ecuador warned the gathering about Chevron, the American oil giant. Amazonian indigenous communities in Ecuador fought Chevron for years in drawn-out legal proceedings over contamination from Chevron’s oil operations.

“Here we signed a pact of brotherhood and struggle against Chevron,” said Jorge Nahuel, a coordinator and speaker for the Mapuche Confederation of Neuquén, referring to the 2013 seminar. “If Chevron now wanted to come to Argentina, it would not be allowed to come, and if it did, it would be seized and it would have to pay the appropriate fine.”

Jorge Nahuel, a coordinator and speaker for the Mapuche Confederation of Neuquén. Photographer: Eduardo Carrera

As the seminar wrapped up, the Mapuche community of Campo Maripe spoke up, and said that they had already received pamphlets from YPF and Chevron notifying residents that the companies would begin drilling. “We come to denounce what is happening in our territory,” members of Campo Maripe said at the time. The Campo Maripe’s territory just so happened to be where the Loma Campana field was located—the main target for YPF and Chevron in Argentina.

The Campo Maripe lived on their lands long before Neuquén became a province in the 1950s, and long before the arrival of the oil companies. But YPF and the provincial government have disputed that fact, citing the lack of official land titles.

Large-scale drilling required evicting the Mapuche from parts of their land. In response, in July 2013, the Mapuche staged a symbolic protest, occupying a fracking site and planting the Mapuche flag on top of a drilling rig.

A month later, the provincial government in Neuquén prepared to approve the YPF-Chevron deal. The Mapuche staged a major protest in front of the legislature, and environmental groups, students, academics, progressive political parties, and others worried about the impacts of fracking joined them.

In response, the police violently cracked down, shooting rubber bullets and tear gas.

Hours later, the legislature approved the deal. “It was very clear that they didn’t care about legislating against their own people,” Nahuel said. “So that’s how the relationship between the Mapuche community and Vaca Muerta began: with bullets.”

Since then, the various Mapuche communities, especially Campo Maripe, have tried to resist, occasionally blocking roads to drilling operations. But the provincial government and the oil companies have pressed on. “The main problem for Campo Maripe is not fracking, it is land ownership,” Nahuel said. He argues that the Argentine government slow-walks negotiations over land in order to keep the Mapuche in a permanent state of “legal insecurity.”

The battle for control over land is decades old, but the Argentine state’s desire to ramp up fracking in the area has magnified this conflict. “The land problem has never been resolved,” Nahuel said.

Convoys of trucks moving between drilling sites. Photographer:

 Eduardo Carrera

Earthquakes Rattle Neuquén

The fallout from fracking is not isolated to Mapuche lands. With each passing year, the drilling has intensified—and so have the earthquakes in Sauzal Bonito.

In 2018, Marisol Sandoval and a group of neighbors took their complaints in person to YPF in Neuquén, a two-hour drive away. Hoping for some sort of response to the earthquakes, they instead got the runaround, Sandoval said. A YPF representative told them that the relevant staff person at the company was not there, but would follow up with a visit. A year passed, but nobody from YPF ever came or offered any response.

“It feels bad because we’re, I don’t know, in an oil zone and we wanted at least a chat with the town so that they could give us a little peace,” Sandoval said.

She hoped YPF would reassure her that the drilling was unrelated to the earthquakes. The silence has only fed anxiety and suspicion. YPF did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article.

“There’s no other record in the country of activation of a sector like this, like Sauzal Bonito,” said Javier Grosso, a geographer at the National University of Comahue in Neuquén. Seismic monitoring in Argentina registered one earthquake in 2015, but that number shot up to 30 in 2019. More sophisticated seismic monitoring in Chile registered 80 earthquakes in the area around Sauzal Bonito for 2019.

A 10-minute drive away, the Mapuche community of Lof Wirkalew has had a similar experience. Cracks stretch across the floors and walls of several of their homes like spiderwebs, and thick black smoke from a gas flare across the Neuquén River is visible from their farm.

Cracked floors in the house of the Lof Wirkalew 

Mapuche community from an earthquake. Photographer: Eduardo Carrera

A gas flare as scene from the farm of the

 Lof Wirkalew Mapuche community. 

Photographer: Eduardo Carrera

Making a definitive link between the arrival of the oil and gas industry and the emergence of powerful earthquakes is tricky, but the correlation is hard to ignore.

“This isn’t a theoretical supposition but is something that is obviously happening,” Grosso said, pointing to the cracks in the walls of a house in Sauzal Bonito. In the future, “They’re not going to remember these years as the years when the earth was calm.”

Javier Grosso, a geographer at the National 

University of Comahue, shows seismic maps

 to Marisol Sandoval. Photographer: Eduardo Carrera

The experience of earthquakes and fracking echoes peoples’ experiences in the United States. Oklahoma had a long-term average of less than 25 earthquakes with a magnitude of 3.0 or greater per year. That changed when the drilling began to accelerate in the 2010s. The state experienced more than 1,000 such earthquakes in 2015. But fracking itself is not causing the earthquakes. After a well is fracked, enormous volumes of water come back up out of the ground, and drillers reinject that water into much deeper ‘disposal wells.’ It is these wells that increase the likelihood that fault lines ‘slip,’ triggering an earthquake.

As the number of fracked wells in Vaca Muerta multiplies, so does the rate of wastewater injection. The volume of water injected into disposal wells has surged tenfold, from around 18,000 cubic meters in 2013 to more than 180,000 cubic meters in 2018, according to data from the government of Neuquén.

The lack of response from the oil companies, as well as provincial authorities, frustrates the residents of Sauzal Bonito. The Argentine government considers fracking in the Vaca Muerta as a national priority, a source of economic salvation at a time of crisis. The companies themselves are powerful, but government officials at both the provincial and national level also have a lot at stake in accelerating the fracking industry’s growth.

“Every time that we want to ask something about Vaca Muerta, nobody has any information, so something must be going on,” Grosso said.

Living in the Industry’s Shadow

Argentina has the fourth largest shale oil reserves in the world and the second largest shale gas reserves, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The Vaca Muerta is the only shale formation outside of North America that “has already made the transition from exploration to full-scale development,” according to Rystad Energy, a Norwegian data firm.

The Loma Campana field is the flagship project for the Vaca Muerta, and has quickly become one of the country’s most important oil operations. But, in addition to earthquakes, living in the industry’s shadow carries an array of risks. A few miles outside of the boomtown of Añelo, where dust and trucks clog the main street, the Mapuche community of Campo Maripe carries on, weathering the onslaught of drilling. As of late 2019, several drilling rigs sit a short drive up a hill from their farm.

Celinda Campo Maripe said her community has suffered from a variety of new health ailments, including allergies, skin rashes, and respiratory problems.

“And the treatments are very expensive, and health insurance doesn’t cover it. It’s expensive to just do the allergy tests. It can cost 4,000 pesos to do the test where they prick your arm,” she said. The Campo Maripe say their farm animals were born with deformities and they can no longer graze them in open fields. Unusual cases of cancer have also cropped up.

They stopped drinking water from the tap, and are forced to buy bottled water at great expense. “We used it to bathe ourselves and other things, but we all buy mineral water to drink,” said Lorena Bravo, another member of Campo Maripe.

Members of the Campo Maripe community 

on their farm. Photographer: Eduardo Carrera

The Mapuche have long fought against conventional oil and gas drilling, making the latest chapter especially demoralizing for them. Oil extraction in the province of Neuquén dates back to the early 20th century, but old conventional fields began declining in the early 2000s.

“We used to say, ‘Okay, we have a decade of struggle left and the oil will be gone, and we’ll see how we can get these criminals to pay for or repair all the damage they have caused,’” said Jorge Nahuel of the Mapuche Confederation. “When fracking appeared, it was like an extra twist to everything that had happened before.”

Along with the proliferation of drilling rigs, security and surveillance has also increased. Private security checkpoints have sprung up around fracking operations—not just on the drilling sites themselves, but also on public roads nearby. Cameras monitor the well pads. If someone approaches a site, they are immediately questioned by security guards.

“These are all intimidation actions so that we do not get involved with the issue,” said Lorena Riffo, a researcher and teacher in the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences at the National University of Comahue.

Over the course of several days in the heart of the Vaca Muerta last November, I passed through several checkpoints manned by private security guards hired by oil companies. Fortunately, I was with an activist from Neuquén who was very familiar with the area. We passed through without incident. However, I also traveled with a photographer, who at one point was stopped by security guards after taking pictures of a drilling rig from a public road. They aggressively questioned him for 20 minutes before letting him go.

In September 2019, the attack on the Saudi oil facility in Abqaiq rattled global oil markets. In response, the Argentine government used the event as a justification to expand the jurisdiction of the National Gendarmerie to cover the Vaca Muerta shale. Ostensibly, the expansion of the military police’s purview was intended to protect the “vital economic interest” of drilling operations against potential threats.

However, some saw a creeping securitization of the Vaca Muerta. The head of the oil workers union suspected the federal government wanted to suppress labor conflicts. But the Mapuche see ulterior motives as well.

The decision to extend the reach of the military police “is a way to intimidate the Mapuche people who are claiming for ancestral rights to the lands that are part of the Vaca Muerta formation. In this way, [the government] considers a demand for indigenous territories to be a security problem,” Lorena Riffo said. “In recent years, social, environmental, human rights have been eroded, but in a subtle way. You can only recognize them when you connect the different isolated events.” The Mapuche are routinely depicted as violent, lawless criminals in the Argentine press because of their opposition to fracking and because of their broader fight for recognition.

But the conflict is not exactly new. “What is happening with Vaca Muerta today is a long-standing project. What is the role of Patagonia in the economic development of Argentina?” Riffo continued.

Neuquén has supplied raw materials for the rest of the country since the foundation of the province, and ultimately since the Argentine state conquered the territory in the 19th century. The role of resource extraction continues today, but Neuquén is increasingly orienting its shipments to international markets. The whole premise of fracking in Argentina is to export oil and gas abroad, with a particular eye on Asia. Local communities in Neuquén, such as the Mapuche and the residents of Sauzal Bonito, do not stand to benefit.

In 2018, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recommended that Argentina “reconsider” its large-scale fracking campaign in the Vaca Muerta, citing concerns about climate change and human rights violations, including the eviction of indigenous communities from their ancestral lands.

“Vaca Muerta is a symbol of violence, because when the land is polluted, Mapuche community life is polluted and broken,” Jorge Nahuel said. “There is no doubt that Vaca Muerta is a real death threat.”

This reporting was made possible in part by funding from Periodistas por el Planeta.

Nick Cunningham is an independent journalist covering the oil and gas industry, climate change and international politics. He has been featured in Oilprice.com, DeSmog, The Fuse, YaleE360 and NACLA.

SEE
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/03/argentinas-fracking-boom-is-creating.html

Argentina’s Fracking Boom Is Creating Climate Justice Concerns

Big Oil hopes Argentina’s shale oil and gas boom can rival the United States’. Backed by US dollar diplomacy, the boom has come at the cost of climate change, ecological damage, and encroachment on indigenous land.

Story Transcript
This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Greg Wolpert: It’s The Real News Network and I’m Greg Wolpert in Baltimore. 

The government of Argentina together with major transnational oil companies is working on a plan to double its production of oil and natural gas via hydraulic fracturing or fracking as it’s commonly known. The plan though has been running into trouble recently. This week on Wednesday, workers at a fracking sand production mine went on strike demanding a doubling of their wages. Also, the recently elected government of Alberta Fernandez introduced price freezes for fuel to help bring inflation under control, but this has affected investment in the fracking sector. Still, the project moves forward as the world’s second most important fracking effort after the United States. Argentina’s fracked oil and gas production raises series issues however, about the effect it will have on climate change and indigenous land just as it does in the United States. The Vaca Muerta Shale has attracted trans-national oil companies such as ExxonMobil, Francis, Total, Shell, and Chevron. Also, the Trump administration is supporting this project recently providing a $450 million loan via the US International Development Finance Corporation.

Joining me now to discuss Argentina’s fracking boom is Nick Cunningham. He’s a Portland, Oregon based independent reporter who recently returned from a week long reporting trip to Argentina. His investigation resulted in a series of articles, the third installment of which was written for The Real News Network and is titled Surviving the Onsite of Fracking in Argentina. Good to have you on Nick.

Nick Cunningham: Thanks for having me.

Greg Wolpert: So let’s start with some of the basic background information. Where is the Vaca Muerta Shale located in Argentina, and why has it emerged as a second most important commercially viable country in the world for fracking?

Nick Cunningham: Yeah, so the Vaca Muerta Shale formation, which is part of the Neuquén Basin, is located in sort of central Argentina, a little bit East of the Andes in a dry part of the country. It’s an arid step in northern Patagonia. And the reason it’s important is because the USEIA estimates that it has the second largest shale gas reserves in the world and the fourth largest shale oil reserves in the world. So after the United States, actually in terms of gas, it’s estimated to have more gas reserve than the United States. So the geologic potential is massive and the Argentine government wants to take advantage of that. And unlike some other countries, say China, which also has a lot of estimated shale reserves, the Argentine government is very actively courting multinational oil companies to come in and then to develop this. So it’s a little bit slow going, but in the last few years it’s sort of picked up momentum.

Greg Wolpert: Now, president Alberto Fernandez, who came to office in December specifically aimed to reverse many of the Neo liberal policies of his predecessor Mauricio Macri. Now, how does the Fernandez administration view this shale project and fracking as a policy matter?

Nick Cunningham: This is a good question, and in a lot of ways there’s continuity. Last year during the campaign, after Alberto Fernandez won in their version of a primary in August, and he was sort of the presumed president in waiting, there was big questions over what he was going to do with Vaca Muerta. And the industry was concerned that he was going to re intervene in the market which would sort of be bad for them. But he didn’t say much in the next few months. He made a couple of big statements about the state needed more control, but he didn’t say much. And as time went on and he won the presidency and he assumed office, it became clear that he very much wants this to happen. There’s going to be some nuance and some tweaking of the policy. But the Argentine government, now under Alberta Fernando still wants to develop fracking.

And so this is kind of interesting because in the English speaking press and English language press, it’s often framed as as the [inaudible 00:04:22] are sort of anti-market and Macri was very pro-market. But while there’s differences, and Alberto Fernandez wants a little bit more of a state role, they still promote extractive industries, and it’s just a little bit more of a state led approach. And so now he enters 2020 in the midst of an economic crisis and he’s positioning Vaca Muerta as a key part of the country’s economic revival.

Greg Wolpert: Now, your article for us focuses on the impact that fracking is having within indigenous communities in Argentina. Those include both the human rights impacts and also the potential impacts on drinking water as well as earthquakes. Tell us about that and also about who you talked to while you were there.

Nick Cunningham: Yeah, so the flagship oil field for Vaca Muerta and one of the most important oil fields at this point in South America is called Loma Campana. And it’s in the province of Neuquen, and it is a joint venture between YPF, which is the state-owned oil company, partially state-owned, and Chevron, the American oil giant. And so this Loma Campana field is located on ancestral lands for the Mapuche indigenous communities, particularly one community called Campo Maripe. They’ve lived there for decades, at least a century, but the state and the province dispute that fact saying that they don’t have land title. But obviously they were there before Neuquen was even a province.

Nevertheless, the Argentine states permitted this and approved it and YPF and Chevron proceeded and that required evicting Mapuche communities from this land. Now they still live, they’ve kind of been pushed to the side from this field and they live below the plateau, kind of in the industry shadow and there’s a lot of, a lot of negative outcomes from this.

I met with them and they said that they’ve had various health problems, respiratory problems, skin rashes, some cancers. There was one case of a kid, a child getting cancer. They had drinking water problems. They now have to buy water, which is a really hard, a big hardship for a community that doesn’t have a lot of money. Their animals have been sick, some are born with deformities and they can’t graze them as much anymore. And so moving in the industry shadow is very negative for them.

Now, a little bit further down the main highway, there’s another town called Sauzal Bonito. And this is a very small village and it’s sort of in the epicenter of a sudden wave of earthquakes. And I spoke with a geographer from the university there in Neuquen who said that there’s no precedent for earthquakes in this area. Since the onset of fracking, there has been a huge spike in earthquakes and particularly in the past year. And it’s not fracking per se that causes the earthquakes, it’s these disposal wells. When all this water comes out of the ground, they have to reinject that water back into the ground in deeper wells, and it’s these disposal wells that are thought to be causing some earthquakes.

And in this small town, some houses had some severe damage from earthquakes. I saw and took pictures of cracks in walls. And there’s one house that fell to the ground and I spoke with a woman who described living in fear because of this happenings. They wake up in the middle of their night and their children are crying and, and there are earthquakes rattling their houses. They’re old adobe houses, so she’s scared that they’re going to fall down, and one did. So the earthquakes is another problem in this area.

Greg Wolpert: Now, the second article in your series also highlighted the infrared camera shots that showed methane emissions in the Vaca Muerta Shale. What exactly are the risks that are associated with that and with climate change, especially considering that they’re ramping up drilling in this field? And what does the movement against this drilling in Argentina look like?

Nick Cunningham: The important context is that all the oil majors have sort of committed to the Paris Climate Agreement, at least extensively, I’m putting that in quotes, they’ve committed to the principles of the Paris Climate Agreement. Nevertheless, in the past two years, they spent at least $50 billion on new projects that are out of alignment with [inaudible 00:09:20] and that data comes from Carbon Tracker. And they have another trillion and a half dollars in the works on new oil and gas projects. So what does that mean? That means that they’re actively betting against or they’re assuming and betting against that the world would get serious about climate change. They’re very much invested in the world blowing past climate targets. Now, Argentina is one of these places that they are investing in. And Argentina, by all accounts is at the very early stages of this is fracking story.

The U S has been doing this for a decade and a half, and Argentina has been doing a lot of pilot projects and they’re only in the early stages of ramping up. So the oil majors involved in Argentina have no plans of slowing down. They plan to be there for decades and they plan to drill thousands of wells and essentially do what they did in the US. So this is a big climate problem because we already have… Some research suggests that all of the existing production is… We’ll use up the carbon budget and we essentially can’t be developing new frontiers for oil. And some of the activists that I spoke with referred to this as a carbon bomb. The amount of carbon that’s in the ground in Argentina. One study suggested that it’s equivalent to about 11% of the remaining carbon budget. And so the climate impacts are profound, but the story is not written yet. This is still early stages.

As far as the resistance to what’s going on there, it’s pretty weak to be honest. The national government, as I mentioned, is very much in support. The provincial government is very much in support. And Buenos Aires, which is very far from… They’re hundreds of miles away from where the joint is taking place. The press reports on Vaca Muerta in almost uniformly positive ways. And so there isn’t a big resistance in Buenos Aires where most of the population lives. So the resistance is really on the ground in Neuquen and Rio Negro provinces. It’s small, but it’s actually pretty interesting. Indigenous communities and [inaudible 00:11:47]communities work with environmentalists. They work with academics in the city of Neuquen, and there’s a lot of information sharing. I met a geographer who was in a town where all of those earthquakes were, explaining to the residents about the risks. So there is a small but a sort of a cross community movement to slow the industry’s advancement.

Greg Wolpert: Well, I certainly hope we can get your stories out, not only internationally, but also within Argentina, and maybe they can be translated so that people become more informed about this project. Because as you said, it seems like there’s very little information about this. But we’re going to leave it there for now and I encourage people to read your articles both in the DeSmogBlog and also on our website. I was speaking to Nick Cunningham, freelance journalist and author of the TRNN article, surviving the on start of fracking in Argentina. Thanks again, Nick for having joined us today.

Nick Cunningham: Thanks for having me.

Greg Wolpert: And thank you for joining The Real News Network.