Indigenous Youth & Elders at COP25 Protest Canada’s Support of Dirty Tar Sands Projects
On Monday, indigenous youth and elders gathered outside the
Canadian Embassy in Madrid to protest the Canadian government’s support
of the Alberta tar sands extraction and new fossil fuel infrastructure,
including a pipeline that would cut through indigenous lands to carry
tar sands oil from Alberta to Wisconsin. We speak with one of those
demonstrators: Eriel Deranger, a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First
Nation and the executive director of Indigenous Climate Action. “Canada
comes to these meetings touting themselves as a global leader in
addressing the climate crisis, as having great relations with their
indigenous peoples,” she says. “But the reality is … not a single
project that has ever been proposed in the Alberta tar sands has ever
been denied.”