After over a decade of Wet’suwet’en on the front lines of pipeline construction in so called Northern Canada, local Front Range community members and Indigenous activists from the Arapaho nation are joined by water protectors from around the world to turn their attention to the funders of the fossil fuel industry. For the TransCanada coastal gaslink pipeline (CGP) project, JP Morgan Chase is the primary investor. The $6.2 billion Coastal GasLink pipeline is a part of the larger industrial energy project that will build and operate a terminal for the liquefaction, storage, and loading of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the port of Kitimat, British Columbia, Canada called LNG Canada that has also been widely opposed by Indigenous peoples and environmental organizations. The CGP continues to jeopardize vulnerable habitats and various species, all while refusing to acknowledge Indigenous land title in unceded territory.
On Saturday, February 1st, concerned citizens gathered at the Creekside Park in so called Fort Collins (1851 Fort Laramie Treaty Territory of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations)
May we all learn to love our people and be present like Grandma Regina Brave who visited us this weekend. What a gift she is.
All the world’s eyes are on the Wet’suwet’en Nation and their stand against the Coastal GasLink pipeline and the racist Royal Canadian Mounted Police enforcement of colonial and genocidal policies on an unceded Wet’suwet’en Territory.
If we trace the contents of that pipeline, and many others, all the way to their final destination we will find that they end up in watersheds in the atmosphere as CO2 emissions or the oceans as plastic trash islands, but also into the bank accounts of JP Morgan Chase bank. With pipeline constructions come man camps which verifiably increase violence against Indigenous communities and Indigenous women and girls in particular (#MMIW). The staggering number of missing and murdered Indigenous women can be directly linked to man camps and extractive industries. Many Indigenous people perceive Earth as feminine, an ideology which capitalist, patriarchal society exploits, violating and abusing the Earth in the same way it does Indigenous women and girls. Fighting pipelines is fighting patriarchy.
For these reasons the Fort Collins community is urged to divest from Chase Bank and convince friends and family to do the same. Since 2016, Chase Bank has lent $196 million to the fossil fuel industry. The demand is to divest funds from Chase’s exploitative investments and let them know this is not supported. Contact their CEO Jamie Dimon at (212)-270-1111 or Matthew Arnold, the Global Head of “Sustainable Finance” at (212)-270-5097.
The fossil fuel industry’s war on Indigenous communities, on the air and water and land, on our futures and our children’s futures, cannot go on. Please remove all investments from chase bank and support Wet’suwet’en land defenders and the planet.