A photo of a sign warning of high pressure oil passing through the TransMountain pipeline. On Earth Day, Rita Wong is asking readers to consider ways of healing the land.
The Trans Mountain Pipeline which runs alongside the Yellowhead Highway carrying oil from Edmonton, Alberta, to Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Pictured here is a warning sign referring to the high pressure petroleum that runs through the line. Credit: David Stanely / Flickr Credit: David Stanely / Flickr

I’m often asked how I keep going in the face of so much mass destruction that is pushing humanity and the climate—which are inseparable—in the wrong direction. From the TransMountain pipeline expansion to the CGL pipeline to the Site C dam in B.C., it feels bleak as these mega projects, which all violate Indigenous laws, lock us into more climate destabilization. However, it is crucial not to give up right now, especially on of all days, Earth Day. 

My response tends to focus on the larger, more powerful system than the capitalist economy driving us toward mass extinction: that is the Earth itself. As long as the rivers flow and the ocean regulates our climate to keep it livable, we have to keep going too, and remind one another of how we depend on the earth’s health. 

This Earth Day, I invite everyone to support and join those who are doing so much to reaffirm a reciprocal relationship with the Earth. Thankfully, there are many inspiring examples I can point to where we can dedicate our time and attention, transforming climate grief & anxiety into relationships of mutual respect and care. 

While the pandemic has been hard on everyone, Tsleil Waututh community members have nonetheless continued to stand strong for the unceded Coast Salish lands that have sustained their ancestors since time immemorial. As the people of the inlet, the Tsleil Waututh have been healing the land and waters, bringing back clam harvests, restoring salmon habitat, re-introducing elk, and more. Their work reminds us of how joyful and deep people’s relationship with the land can be, when we take the time to honour these relationships. 

During the pandemic, many of us have learned how connecting with nature is crucial for our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health. Both locally and globally, we owe an immense debt to the Tsleil Waututh and their Coast Salish kin for their efforts to restore what colonization has attempted to destroy. We all have a responsibility to support these efforts to heal the land, which is also to heal the people. 

The Tsleil Waututh Sacred Trust has compiled a comprehensive environmental assessment, doing their due diligence where the federal and provincial governments have failed us. All this is in danger, as the TransMountain pipeline expands, threatening to accelerate climate destabilization even more. With a skyrocketing price tag of $21.4 billion dollars and counting, this is a pipeline no one can afford. 

After the past year of floods, forest fires and heat waves, the land is speaking loud and clear. It is a terrible mistake to expand pipelines. We need to reduce our consumption of the earth’s resources and make a fast pivot to renewable energies. We need an economy focused on mutual aid and meeting basic needs, not profit at the expense of ourselves and the climate. 

Many of us have been standing with the Tsleil Waututh community and thousands of other people in the struggle to uphold Indigenous law and protect these unceded Coast Salish lands from the TransMountain pipeline expansion for many years. I have spent time in jail, and it was a small price to pay because the scale of climate disaster we face is even more terrifying than the prison industrial complex.

Earth Day is a good reminder to speak and act from a place of love, respect, and deep interconnectedness, what Coast Salish people call nawt’samat—one heart, one mind, one spirit. Nawt’samat is what guides the Coast Salish Watch House which sits on top of the old pipeline at the east gate of the TransMountain tank farm on Burnaby Mountain. 

Recently, the Tsleil Waututh Sacred Trust held a rally to call for an end to this pipeline expansion, inviting Indigenous leaders and knowledge keepers from across Turtle Island to join everyone in walking the talk of respect. It was inspiring to hear Ta’ah, Pamela Palmater, Guujaaw, Na’moks and many powerful speakers upholding Indigenous laws and values. 

I invite everyone who has ever made a land acknowledgement, to support Indigenous-led efforts to protect the land and waters. Collective action grounded in respect for the land and its peoples is needed for us to have a livable planet in the decades to come. It is very late, but not too late, to put our prayers, bodies and money where our words lead us—to heal the land and waters. This is not only possible but necessary, as Tsleil Waututh community members have been showing us. 

In order to heal the land, the destruction needs to stop. It has been heartbreaking to witness TransMountain pipeline contractors clearcut thousands of trees in the Lower Mainland, destroying the efforts to heal the Brunette River that volunteers have contributed over many decades. The pipeline is destroying habitat for the endangered nooksack dace, the hummingbirds who no longer have a place to nest, and so much more. As the film Co-Extinction, which features Tsleil Waututh member Will George, makes clear, what’s at stake are the lives of both orca whales and their human relatives.  

Whether the pipeline becomes a stranded asset through divestment efforts, ongoing civil disobedience, or sheer climate destruction (more floods and fires to come, faster and faster), it is going to die. Or it will kill us all. It’s clear that we need to step up and end this pipeline expansion. Trudeau’s greenwashing is not only misleading, but irresponsible, given what we know of the climate science.

There are many ways to remove the social license for this criminal pipeline expansion. On May 7, people are organizing for instance to hug Burnaby Mountain. This mass hug is a gathering to strengthen our relations with one another, and with the land that holds us together.

Located on Burnaby Mountain, Simon Fraser University is in immediate danger in the case of an accident or explosion. Burnaby Fire Chief Chris Bowcock has said “a tank fire would have “immediate life and safety impacts” and require a “very strong” fire department response within the first 10 minutes to protect people, property and parkland outside the tank farm fence from heat, fire and toxic smoke.” 

What if those horrific tanks on Burnaby Mountain were turned into anerobic digesters to transform food waste into energy? What other uses could those tanks and pipes be put to? Now is the time to transform the drive toward mass extinction into a renewal of life. 

As Ta’ah, the daughter of Chief Dan George, reminds us, it’s time to Warrior Up. In ways both big (as a flood) and small (as a hummingbird), we need to continue building relationships and momentum for the long haul. If there is any hope for us as a species, the TMX pipeline must become a stranded asset. As Ta’ah’s granddaughter, Kayah George, writes, “This pipeline is nothing short of genocide against my people.” 

Showing real leadership in responding to the threats posed by climate crisis, Quebec has banned fossil fuel expansion. The rest of so-called Canada needs to follow the wisdom shown by Quebec, the Tsleil Waututh people, and so many more who remember that we are part of the earth, which needs to heal from us.

Photo of Rita Wong

Rita Wong

Rita Wong is a poet-scholar who has written several books of poetry. She understands natural ecosystems as critical infrastructure that must be protected and cared for in order to survive climate crisis....