Page 284 [284]
DENISA KRASNA
border crossing. Even though the organizers negotiated a special group permit
for the canoes, crossing by land was still difficult for those lacking identity
documents or crossing with regalia or cultural objects." Potlatch, one of the
most important traditions in the Pacific Northwest, reguires transportation of
many objects, which is, again, complicated by the border. On one occasion, a
man traveling to a relatives potlatch was detained by the US patrol officers for
"smuggling [...] two hundred blankets across the border." Spirit dancers and
medicine men often run into similar problems at the border. Refusing to share
information about the transported objects due to cultural protocols further
criminalizes them in the eyes of border agents. Despite the many challenges,
Coast Salish people persist in their cultural restoration efforts as they believe
cultural traditions can help heal their communities of intergenerational
traumas caused by colonization and assimilationist policies.
Apart from cultural events, Coast Salish people from both sides of the
border also organize themselves to address environmental problems that
threaten their ecosystems, communities, relatives, and traditional way of life.
Their cross-border co-operative actions, which also receive help from local
governments and non-native allies, have already achieved many victories,
that were termed the “thin green line” by the media as they have significantly
limited the export of fossil fuels to Asia. Among others, these achievements
include blocking the Otter Creek coal strip mine and the Gateway Pacific
coal terminal.‘ Now, Coast Salish peoples are primarily concerned with the
proposed construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which threatens the
ecosystems and communities on both sides of the border as well as “the Salish
Sea and our people, salmon and killer whale relatives.” The Trans Mountain
pipeline is a project proposed in 2013 by Kinder Morgan that would ship oil
from Alberta tar sands fields to the coast of British Columbia. The amount
of transported oil is projected to triple, which would lead to an instant rise
of greenhouse gas emissions and a significant increase in oil tanker traffic in
the Salish Sea. As a result, endangered marine species, such as the orcas and
salmon that Coast Salish peoples consider their relatives, would face even
greater risks. A potential oil spill, that is very likely to happen, could even
lead to the resident orca’s extinction as they would not survive in the already¬
contaminated Salish Sea.™ Like Inuit in the Arctic, Coast Salish peoples from
both US and Canada are finding ways to transcend the borders to lead protest
actions to safeguard their environment and culture.
60 Singleton, Not our borders, 9.
Miller, quoted in Starks - McCormack - Cornell, Native Nations, 61.
Cladoosby — Forsman — Gobin — Julius, The Trans Mountain pipeline, n.p.n.
Ibid., n.p.n.
Ibid., n.p.n.
61
62
63
64
+ 282 +