Work on the Trans Mountain pipeline resumed last week at Jacko Lake in British Columbia after a diversion was approved on Indigenous land that would be spared from the project.
Trans Mountain had agreed with the nation to lay the pipeline under the sacred land lake known locally as Pipsell, using a tunneling method to construct the project, Global News reported on Sunday.
Spokespeople for the nation say the area “holds significant spiritual and cultural value” to them.
However, digging beneath the lake proved too difficult due to the rock formations, according to Trans Mountain spokespeople. Because of this, the company went back on its word and chose the open-air trench formula to lay the pipeline on the ground.
State officials said they originally agreed to the project because they were assured it would have minimal impact on the landscape.
“Without this place, we lose an important part of our identity,” Mike McKenzie, a knowledge keeper from Secwépemc, told Global News.
The indigenous nation says the desecration of this sacred land is a continuation of the cultural genocide it is facing.
“It is our Vatican, our Notre Dame, this place that gives our people an identity and has always anchored us,” Mr. McKenzie said, according to English-language media.
Canada’s Energy Regulator approved the diversion in late September, avoiding a nine-month extension to construction on the project.
The Secwepemc Nation says it did not give advance and informed consent to the diversion as agreed to in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The pipeline was purchased by the federal government for $4.5 billion in 2018 when previous owner Kinder Morgan Canada Inc. threatened to destroy it amid pressure from activist groups and new regulations. The Trans Mountain project is the only one connecting Alberta and the West Coast. This expansion is expected to increase transport capacity from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels per day.