Tribal leaders assert their protest is about 'solidarity'

In seeking to stop megaload shipments across Idaho and U.S. Highway 12, Nez Perce tribal leaders said they are defending the sovereignty of their homeland, speaking for the environment and standing in solidarity with other native peoples across North America.

A shipping company is hauling a 21-foot-wide, 255-foot-long evaporator owned by General Electric Co. from the Port of Wilma to the tar sands of Alberta, Canada. The remote landscape covered by boreal forests is being quickly developed for its vast oil deposits. Critics have said mining of the oil and the process that extracts it from the soil are devastating to the land and water and local native tribes - and contributes to global climate change.

"This is solidarity," said Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee Vice Chairman Joel Moffett. "Our brothers and sisters up in Canada where this piece of equipment is destined for, the tar sands - it is poisoning their land and their water up there - we want to stand in solidarity with them. They are just getting run over up there."

Tribal Chairman Silas Whitman said the development of the tar sands affects more than just the people and environment of Alberta. The controversial Keystone XL Pipeline would transport oil mined there to refineries in Texas. The route of the pipeline crosses the land of several American Indian tribes where there are concerns about effects to sacred sites and spill-related human health and environmental problems.

"It's been the rule of thumb for corporate America to roll over those who can not speak for themselves. The depressed, oppressed, those who cannot defend or speak for themselves. It is time that ends. We have to make a stand," Whitman said.

Whitman said efforts to stop the shipments through talking and collaboration have failed. The U.S. Forest Service has told hauling company Omega Morgan that shipments are not authorized to cross national forest land and that authorization will not be given until the agency has a chance to consult with the tribe in government-to-government talks.

Last February, federal Judge B. Lynn Winill ruled the Forest Service has authority to review the Idaho Transportation Department's issuance of over-legal load permits. The transportation department issued a permit to Omega Morgan Friday allowing it to transport the 644,00-pound evaporator for GE, but also told the company it should work with the Forest Service.

The company sent the Forest Service a letter Friday announcing it would proceed with the loads starting Monday. The agency then sent the company a letter saying it "does not consent, approve or otherwise authorize" the shipment prior to consultation with the Nez Perce Tribe.

Because Omega Morgan appears to be defying the Forest Service and its insistence on consultation, tribal leaders said the company is treading on their sovereignty.

"That consultation process has not taken place and that is what we want," said executive committee member Brooklyn Baptiste. "We want consultation to take place. If they don't do it, what they are doing, we deem to be unlawful."

Anthony Johnson, executive committee secretary, has made a populist appeal for other Americans to stand with the tribe.

"I would encourage anybody out there who is not part of the elite 10 percent holding 36 percent of the nation's wealth to realize what is happening to you right now and not to look at us as foes but to look at us as people who are standing for what is right and what is just and making our stand based on the promise that was made not only to America but to us as native people," he said.

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Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273. Follow him on Twitter @ezebarker.