Stars are asking Royal Bank to get support for the Coastal GasLink pipeline

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Actor Mark Ruffalo leads the Hollywood star constellation asking the Royal Bank of Canada to sell from the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline through northern British Columbia.

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Ruffalo and more than six dozen actors, musicians, and others in the entertainment industry have signed an open letter to RBC, urging them to stop financially supporting the project.

“The genetic chief of Wet’suwet’en never agreed to build this pipeline through their territory, which would endanger the sacred headwaters of the Wedzin Kwa River,” Ruffalo said. , No More Dirty Banks mentioned in the video to launch the campaign. (Wedinqua is also known as the Maurice River.)

He said the genetic chief was ignored while the company traded exclusively with elected wet sweatshirt leaders “established by the colonial government, not legitimate title holders.” rice field.

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Elected leaders are selected by members of the community under the Indian Act.

Ruffalo has a history of supporting indigenous groups against fossil fuel development, including a finally unsuccessful campaign for the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline.

In the video, Pipeline protester spokesman Sleydo'(Molly Wickham), arrested for an indigenous-led blockade, said Coastal GasLink “competed to complete drilling into a microtunnel under Wedzin Kwa. I have. ” Hereditary chief.

“Due to the financial relationship between RBC and this project, RBC is responsible for endangering our drinking water and salmon and making us criminals for moistening the people of their land.”

She equated Royal Bank’s support for the project with “financing genocide.”

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The federal and state governments sought to arrange a meeting with the genetic chief at the end of last year to discuss rights and ownership. However, the chief refused to attend after police arrested 29 people in two separate cases.

“That’s it,” said hereditary chief Na’Moks (John Ridsdale). “How can we have some kind of discussion when we are staring at the barrel of a gun?”

An open letter to the RBC, signed by Ruffalo et al., Claims that the chief and his supporters were subjected to violence and harassment by the RCMP.

“For more than a decade, members of the country and their supporters, the Wet Sweaten Heritedy Chief, have protested this pipeline — at great risk to their own lives.” It’s reading. “In the last three years, they have suffered from multiple police attacks, arson suspects burning cabins, extreme police harassment, and armed violence.”

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The petition to the bank calls for “stop funding fossil fuel expansion … RBC must end funding for extreme fossil fuel expansion projects, especially hydrocrushing and oil sands.”

Signatories of No More Dirty Banks include Scarlett Johansson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr., Jane Fonda, Taika Waititi and Mariska Haj Thai.

Postmedia News is asking Royal Bank for an answer.

— Use files from PrinceGeorgePost

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