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Kinder Morgan puts Trans Mountain pipeline on hold
In a huge development in the battle over the proposed expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline across British Columbia, Kinder Morgan announced it was suspending non-essential activities in the construction of the $7.4 billion expansion project. In the face of relentless protests led by First Nations activists (as we’ve covered in Cascadia Magazine), and opposition from John Horgan’s BC provincial government, the Texas-based company said it was essentially putting the project on hold until May 31, when it would make a decision about the viability of the project. Alberta premier Rachel Notley vowed to do everything in her power to push the pipeline forward, which would increase tanker traffic in the Salish Sea seven times over. In other fossil fuel news, the Seattle Times reports on the Puyallup Tribe’s effective battle against a new LNG plant on Tacoma’s waterfront.
Oregon succeeds in lowering opioid overdose death rate
As deaths from opioid overdoses continue to climb in North America, Oregon has bucked the trend and fatalities have declined over the past few years. OPB reports on why–mainly because doctors are more aware of opioids’ dangers and prescribing them less frequently.
Sleep is a discounted issue for Vancouver’s homeless
Christopher Cheung, writing for the Tyee, explores a basic but often ignored issue of homelessness–lack of quality sleep, and how it effects the physical and mental health of the more than 3,000 people sleeping on Vancouver’s streets.
One of Cascadia’s largest solar plants coming to eastern WA
According to the Spokesman Review, the tiny town of Lind, Washington will be home to a solar energy project with 81,000 panels, one of the largest ever constructed in Cascadia. The project will produce 28 megawatts for industrial customers, the equivalent of powering 4,000 homes.
RYAN! Feddersen, bringing Indigenous issues to installation art
City Arts has a profile of artist RYAN! Feddersen (she intentionally capitalizes her first name) who’s originally from Washington’s Colville reservation, and is bringing a trickster’s playfulness to installation art on display across Cascadia. “The Western art tradition is very artist- and object-based. Artworks are elite things you’re not supposed to touch but pay a lot of money for. Indigenous art practices are community-based. Artworks are things that you use in rituals, share with family and community.”
How basketball unites a small town on the Flathead reservation
The New York Times Magazine has a beautifully crafted long feature on the Arlee high school basketball team on Montana’s Flathead Indian reservation. It’s look inside a rough-and-tumble style of playing and the obstacles the mostly Salish population of the school have to overcome to play in the state’s championship game.
That’s all today’s news and culture from the temporary offices of Cascadia Daily here on Orcas Island, WA. –Andrew Engelson
Correction: the April 5, 2018 issue of Cascadia Daily said that newly hired Seattle school superintendent Denise Juneau, who ran for a seat in Congress in 2016 from Montana, would have been the first Native American member of Congress. It should have read that she would have been the first Native American woman in the US Congress.
Photo credit: screen shot from a YouTube video created by the Arlee high school basketball team on the Flathead reservation to draw attention suicide among Native American youth