ELSIPOGTOG FIRST NATION, N.B. – Protestors, First Nations leaders and media packed a room on the Elsipogtog First Nation Thursday morning.
Everyone there was in agreement, the anti-shale gas protests are heating up and getting more and more out of control.
“There has been growing tensions in recent days and the possibility for violence has escalated,” said Elsipogtog chief Arren Sock. “Thirty arrests have been made, including young people, women and several of our leaders — that only tells you that my people will do anything to protect Mother Earth.”
The press conference was called to announce the formation of a peacekeeping group led by Tobique First Nation member, Wendall Nicholas.
Nicholas is supposed to act as a neutral member – a liason between the protestors, RCMP and SWN Resources, the company behind the seismic testing program in Kent County.
Protestors say the RCMP have been favouring SWN and that they have a mandate.
But Nicholas believes his job will increase communication between all parties and hopefully calm them down.
“When the issues develop as they do rapidly, rather than trying to contact four or five different people to find out what’s going on, they’ll be contacting me and then I will reach out to community leaders to work to resolve something very quickly,” said Nicholas.
He said public safety will be the top priority, but it’s unclear how they’ll maintain that.
There have been several serious incidents recently leading to this response. Thirty three people have been arrested in total. There have been reports that some workers were swarmed by a group of people. A piece of seismic equipment was torched and destroyed and RCMP are looking into who cut several trees and used them to block a road.
All these incidents have happened around the protestor’s main camp, which, up until Wednesday, was along Route 126. They recently moved it to Bass River, along Route 116.
These incidents have led some to question what the movement’s all about.
“I would say that movement has to be careful because there’s a line that is crossed with violence and it can lose a lot of credibility if the violence becomes wanton and uncontrolled,” said Thomas Bateman, a political science professor at St. Thomas University in Fredericton.
Bateman maintains that grassroots movements are a good thing but the protesters need to watch who’s joining in.
“The problem is that you lose control and other people come in with agendas of their own or with no agendas at all and discredits the whole thing,” he said.
He says the movement needs a clear, reasonable argument, something that could be lost.
“After a time we may not eve know what this is about anymore.”
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