We Take Care of Our Land - Passamaquoddy natives

A handcrafted 16' 4" Passamaquoddy ocean canoe is being auctioned at Reserve price US $15,000 plus shipping & handling, to help us protect the bay that has long sustained us. It is museum quality, made by native craftsman and artist David Bridges. The purchaser might wish to donate it to a museum or gallery.

Passamaquoddy natives have been fighting three proposed liquified natural gas terminals in world-renowned Passamaquoddy Bay, a shared waterway between New Brunswick and Maine at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. The 3-Nation Alliance consists of Save Passamaquoddy Bay-Canada, the Conservation Council's Fundy Baykeeper, and Save Passamaquoddy Bay-US.

Similar battles are taking place in Rabaska near Quebec City, Oregon, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Ireland and Wales.

In all cases, governments and corporate interests -- ignoring their own health, safety and environmental standards -- have turned a deaf ear to the local population. Except local businesses, whose leaders have been bought off with crumbs from the table. Billions in profits will be made by the Russian state monopoly Gazprom and Wall Street financiers. Russian gas, supposedly imported to supply local energy needs, is in fact destined for the lucrative industrial and big-city markets, leaving others to bear the environmental impacts and the dangers. Political debates on the issue pay no attention to reducing our addiction to fossil fuels.

The Society of International Gas Terminal and Tanker Operators (SIGTTO) is the de facto world authority on LNG safe practices. Their publication, Site Selection and Design for LNG Ports and Jetties warns against locating LNG terminals where a release or spill could affect civilian populations. The proposed local LNG projects violate that standard.

The Passamaquoddy native group has incurred serious legal costs as they have also been fighting
against the lease of tribal land for one of these terminals which the Pleasant Point Reservation governing council approved on the promise of millions of dollars. The canoe sale is part of their fundraising to keep up this battle.

Submitted by Vince Zelazny, New Brunswick MM, currently attending Canadian Yearly Meeting, who forwards it from Janice Harvey, a good friend and well known to Quakers in New Brunswick.

See Wikipedia on LNG and Gazprom -- a major prop of the Putin dictatorship.
We Take Care of Our Land
Save Passamaquoddy Bay
First People's Fund