Whatever the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline, Canada's tar sands oil producers are determined to expand their operations and get their product to market. An alternate proposal called Northern Gateway would pipe the oil west over the Canadian Rockies to British Columbia. (See "Battling Big Oil by Land and by Sea," May/June 2012.) While the fight in the United States against tar sands development is led by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups, Canadian opposition has strong involvement from the country's aboriginal communities, whose territories the proposed pipelines would cross. That struggle has become entwined with the larger grassroots protest movement for aboriginal sovereignty Idle No More, which began last November. Since then, thousands of members of Canada's First Nations have protested across the country, sometimes blockading highways and rail lines.
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