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OCR
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 alreadycontaminated 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 +
