Parallel Trauma training, new Line 3 drone footage, and more

In this blog:

• Genocide, Parallel Trauma and Reparations: Moving into Action and Accountability, May 18
• ‘Flying jewelry’ delays Trans Mountain Pipeline construction
• New drone footage of Enbridge Line 3’s Shell River crossing
• Oil field waste is radioactive and poorly regulated

Genocide, Parallel Trauma and Reparations: Moving into Action and Accountability

You are invited to participate in a Zoom meeting on Genocide, Parallel Trauma and Reparations: Moving into Action and Accountability on Tuesday, May 18, 6:00-7:30 p.m.

This presentation is part of a project by Buddhists committed to accountability in relationship to genocide who are participating in the Socially Engaged Buddhist Training Program at Upaya Zen Center in New Mexico.

Space is limited, so we invite you to register here.

Developing wisdom into the present conditions of white supremacy must include waking up to the unacknowledged genocide of Indigenous Nations in the United States. Genocide is embedded in the current racial injustices experienced in the BIPOC communities today. This understanding allows white settlers to go beyond guilt and shame and move into action and accountability.

We are honored to hear from Jewell Arcoren (Sisseton Wahpeton), Chas Jewett (Lakota), and Jim Bear Jacobs (Mohican) in a virtual panel presentation. There will be time for discussion and questions from the attendees.

About the panelists

Jewell Arcoren (they/them/theirs) coined the term parallel trauma, referring to the fact that both the colonized and colonizers suffer trauma from genocide, though clearly in different ways. She is currently serving as managing director of Wicioie Nandagikendan and is committed to language revitalization and early childhood education. Jewell has a strong interest in behavioral health as it relates to recovering our spirits and transcending intergenerational historical trauma in the American Indian communities. Jewell has a BA from Augsburg College.

Chas (Chaz) Jewett (she/her/hers) is a Mni Coujou Lakota enrolled in the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. She is an activist, and organizer, a ranch hand, a gardener, a hiker, a chicken herder, a nibi walker, and abolitionist and a communist. She was at Oceti Sakowin camp most of the time during the Dakota Access Pipeline fight, except when she was forced to return to Rapid City to fight police brutality.  She participated in the Bearing Witness Retreat at Wounded Knee in 2015 and Auschwitz Birkenau Bearing Witness Retreat in 2015 and the 2nd Cohort Peacemaker training held at that time.

Jim Bear Jacobs (he/him/his)is a member of the Stockbridge Munsee Mohican Nation. He is the founder/convener of Healing Minnesota Stories, an initiative to create dialogue, education, healing, and repair between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, particularly within faith communities. He is currently the Director of Racial Justice for the Minnesota Council of Churches. He has degrees in Pastoral Studies and Christian Theology.

‘Flying jewelry’ delays Trans Mountain Pipeline construction

Look, up in the sky. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it is a bird. Anna’s Hummingbird to be exact. No bigger than a ping pong ball and lighter than a nickel, but big enough to bring construction of Canada’s Trans Mountain pipeline to a halt, the CBC reports.

“With their iridescent emerald feathers and sparkling rose-pink throats, they are more like flying jewelry than birds,” said the website All About Birds.

Anna’s Hummingbird. Photo: Becky Matsubara, UC Botanical Garden, Berkeley, CA

The hummingbird nests were found along Trans Mountain’s route. Construction will be delayed until Aug. 20, after the nesting season.

The Trans Mountain Pipeline would carry tar sands crude oil from Alberta to Burnaby, on Canada’s western coast. Originally proposed by Kinder Morgan, the Canadian government bought the pipeline when it looked like the project was going to be stopped.

New drone footage of Enbridge Line 3’s Shell River crossing

Video screen grab of Lne 3’s Shell River crossing.

Enbridge plans to bore a tunnel under the Shell River in Hubbard County for its new Line 3 pipeline, one of 21 sites the company plans to use the horizontal directional drilling (HDD) technique.

Drilling won’t start until late spring or early summer, but videographer John America shared this 5-minute video of the clear cutting that’s been done to accommodate all of the equipment.

The risk associated with HDD is “frac outs.” This is where the drilling mud used to bore the tunnel seeps into subsoil cracks and makes its way back to the surface, in this polluting the Shell River.

Oil field waste is radioactive and poorly regulated

Here’s an issue that wasn’t on my radar. The oil and gas industry produces a lot of waste, much of it toxic, some of it highly radioactive, DeSmog Blog writes. The federal Environmental Protection Agency said the industry creates “an estimated 5 million cubic feet of radioactive sludge a year.”

A 1980 law passed to benefit the industry classified “oil and gas waste as non-hazardous, thereby affording it little regulatory scrutiny,” the article said.

The fracking boom made the waste problem worse.

The post cites a study that said “if oil and gas waste were appropriately characterized, disposal costs could increase by more than half a million dollars for every well drilled.”

DeSmog Blog’s investigative piece focuses on Lotus LLC’s waste storage site in Texas that appears to be very unsafe. Check out the full story.