Price of Gas

As the government of British Columbia rolls in dough from gas leases on aboriginal territory, pipelines from the questionably legal, highly-toxic wells have started blowing up. Six of them since October. As RCMP snipers and SWAT teams with machine guns run around the countryside harassing local Indians who’ve filed suit against the province, the not-so-little question of ownership of B.C.’s subterranean minerals, on lands never ceded by treaty, possibly renders the issue of sabotage into one of self-defense against toxic pollution. Self-defense by sovereign indigenous nations, something usually associated with Indians in the Andes or Amazon, has perhaps returned to North America as well. As an abiding principle of survival, self-determination is not something that only happens on paper; sometimes it reemerges in our reality.