No Pipeline through Native Lands

Canada needs better education, health care, a better society-- not a pipeline, says Thomas King

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By William Doyle-Marshall

“Now as far as sticking a pipeline through Native land, if the people don’t want that pipeline there, to hell with it, I don’t want the pipeline there either. Those things are not safe; they are leaky as hell. It’s another example of over-reaching, that humans do and I think this gets us into all sorts of trouble.”

Thomas King the Native Indian author, winner of the 2014 RBC Taylor Prize of $25,000 for literary non-fiction made the preceding comment in an exclusive interview Tuesday (June 17, 2014) at the Harbourfront Center. He and Leanne Simpson, recipient of the inaugural RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award were there for a special event observing National Aboriginal Day (June 21).

 “Pipelines: yes, what we need is a pipeline, not better education, not better health care, not a better society, not jobs,” King continued. The multi-talented individual who was awarded $25,000 earlier this year for his book “The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America” noted that jobs come and go. There has never been a private company who has created jobs out of the goodness of their heart, he stressed. They don’t even create jobs because governments give them money but they create jobs because they need work done and they do it reluctantly because it adds to their overhead, King affirmed.

 “So that’s why we have layoffs. As soon as the production goes down to a certain point, companies lay workers off because they can’t afford to have them there because it hurts their percentage of profit and what I would say to them is: reduce the damn percentage of profit guys. Live like everybody else, be part of the society. I’ve got very little patience for the super-rich,” the prize winning author counselled.

                                Thomas King, signs his award winning book for a fan

                              Leanne Simpson King Ph.D. with Thomas King

                                                          at Harbourfront Center

  With respect to industrialization of Native lands, advises one of the questions that is going to come up every year is: what are we going to do with Native lands? What are Native people going to do with their own lands? Pondering are we going to develop those lands or we are just going to let them sit in their natural conditions some place in between? The author, professor and community advocate says emphatically that is not a question he can answer, not is he happy answering, and he is definitely not comfortable answering. “That’s going to have to be answered by the people themselves and each Nation is going to have to answer that on their own,” he said.

   Commenting directly about the pipeline that has been sanctioned by the Cabinet of the Stephen Harper Government, King described it as a whole different thing. Hew notes a couple of problems with the pipeline. One is, an assumption by some politicians and capitalists that they are going to drain this planet of every ounce of oil and they are not going to slow down until it’s all gone. That view he considers really foolish. “I think we’ve got to back away from the kind of reliance that we have on oil; I think we have to develop other sources of fuel and we have to cut what we actually do, back,” King advises.

 With little hope that such action will be taken, the 2014 TBC Taylor Prize winner strongly exhorts action in this direction. “We are going to run right to the grave, right to the end and we are going to turn around and say ‘what the hell happen? How? Nobody said anything. Well, we have been saying things. Climate change, over use of resources, we live high on the hog, we are going to kill that poor hog before we’re done. The pipeline is just a symptom of that,” he explains.