US, Canada tribes to declare Keystone opposition

Indigenous tribes on either side of the United States-Canada border are planning to sign a declaration opposition the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Leaders of Canada’s Blackfoot Confederacy the Great Sioux Nation and Ponca tribe in the United States will gather in Calgary, Alberta, Wednesday to sign the 16-page declaration, the Associated Press reports.

The tribes are calling the declaration historic, representing long-standing bonds among the groups, with together represent tens of thousands of indigenous people.

“There is a historic union between first Americans in Canada and Native Americans in the United States,” Casey Camp-Horinek, Ponca councilwoman, told AP.

“Long before a border ever existed on a map, a fictitious line on a map, we were a united peoples in our approach to care of Mother Earth,” she said.

“Greed knows no limits, and those in the way are simply collateral damage to corporate profits,” said Brandon Sazue, chairman of the South Dakota-based Crow Creek Sioux, said in a statement.

The declaration will reinforce the longstanding beliefs of some tribes that Keystone would violate their treaty rights. The pipeline would not cross any reservation land, but much of its route would be in areas that the tribes had historically claimed.

President Trump gave Keystone its federal permit in March, after former President Barack Obama had rejected TransCanada Corp.’s application in 2015.

The $8 billion project is planned to run from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

It still faces significant hurdles before being built, most notably a drawn-out permitting process in Nebraska.