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Alberta Oil Operation Protested in Oregon by United Press International American Banking News, March 21, 2011

American Indians in the Northwest are protesting the use of the Columbia River to ship machines to strip-mine tar sands in Canada.

Members of the Grande Ronde and Warm Springs tribes gathered at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in Portland, Ore., Sunday to sing, play drums and pray, The Oregonian reported.

James Thinn, who uttered a warrior's chant, said the group is objecting to the transport of 207 gigantic oil-factory modules up the Columbia River, across Idaho and Montana, and into Alberta. There Imperial Oil, a subsidiary of Exxon-Mobil, is to assemble them into in an $8 billion operation converting tar-like bitumen into oil.

The protesters said the ceremony addressed all manner of environmental devastation -- scarring the landscape to extract fossil fuels, pollution, destruction of salmon-rich rivers and the loss of a way of life.

The gathering at Kelley Point Park was the first organized action in the Portland area, but protests have raged for months in Montana and Idaho.

Organizer Shayleen Macy of Indigenous People for Sustainable Lifestyles said the Columbia is "ancestral water of all different Chinook tribes. We want to protect this river and help other people protect their indigenous homelands."

Related Pages:
Megaloads, Oil Sands and the Port of Lewiston by Steve Bunk, New West, 3/4/11