Tar Sands Oil: Indigenous Communities Under Attack

As a member of an international coalition working to stop tar sands oil development, Honor is focused on bringing Native issues and impacts to the fore of the tar sands debate. Native communities are disproportionately impacted at every stage of the mining, piping and refining of tar sands oil. Tar sands crude oil is strip-mined on Metis, Dene and Cree First Nations homelands (once pristine boreal forest) in Canada. The land, water and air in these Indigenous communities are being poisoned and our peoples’ traditional economies and cultures are being devastated.

The tar sands crude oil from Canada is slated to be piped south, across Indian reservations in the U.S., including the Leech Lake and Fond du Lac Reservations, for further refining. Along with pipelines crossing reservation lands in Minnesota, the first new oil refinery on US soil in 30 years is proposed for the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Indian Nation on the Fort Berthold reservation in central North Dakota to process tar sands oil. These are the direct and immediate impacts of tar sands development on Indigenous communities.

Tar sands oil is three times more carbon intensive than conventional crude, making this project a massive contributor to climate change. Indigenous communities are often the hardest hit by changing ecosystems, droughts, floods and erratic weather brought on by climate change. On every level, we bear the brunt of energy injustice.

The cycle of energy injustice in Native America doesn’t have to continue. Native territories have some of the greatest wind and solar potential in the world. Honor is not only working to resist tar sands and continued fossil fuel development on Native lands, but also to create the community infrastructure necessary to transition to a clean energy future.

Help us continue this critical work.

Watch a video overview of tar sands impacts and then please send it to your friends:  http://www.vimeo.com/6455984