Organizers of the Tar Sands Healing Walk, a 14-kilometre spiritual walk through lands impacted by oilsands (also called tar sands) extraction in northern Alberta, have announced this year’s Healing Walk on June 28th will be the last.

“It was a difficult decision to make,” admits Jesse Cardinal, co-organizer of the Healing Walk. “We felt the original goals of the healing walk of letting local communities know that they had support for the issues of mass industry in the territory and gaining further attention of the issues of tar sands development in a way that was non-aggressive were achieved.”

“Our work will continue in the territory, with the people and communities, but, will look different, so I wouldn’t really call it an end, as a new beginning,” Cardinal told DeSmog Canada. Cardinal is a member of the Kikino Metis Settlement in northeastern Alberta.

The Healing Walk is the only grassroots event to bring people face to face with Canada’s oilsands, one of the largest oil reserves and industrial projects in the world. Participants in the annual event walk through the industrialized landscape, passing by active oilsands facilities releasing toxins into the air, chemical tailings ponds the size of lakes and a barren land in an otherwise lush and green region of Alberta's boreal forest.

But all this is secondary to the Healing Walk’s core theme: hope that the land, water and people drastically impacted by two decades of rapid oilsands extraction will one day heal.

Healing Walk is Not a Protest or a Rally

“We're not going out there for yet another protest, yet another rally. We're out there to be together, to heal, and those two things are very appealing in a context of seemingly endless struggle,” says Chelsea Flook, a Healing Walk organizer since 2010.

“[For participants] the focus on the space being primarily a healing space is a very strong draw,” Flook told DeSmog. Flook is originally from Ontario, but she is currently based in Edmonton and works for the Mother Earth Action Cooperative.

Organizers have been clear from the beginning that the Healing Walk is not a protest. No one shouts out political chants during the walk that takes place just north of Canada’s famous oil town, Fort McMurray. The only banner present is the one leading the procession with the words “Stop the Destruction. Start the Healing” painted on it.

Healing Walk procession in 2013. Photo by Zack Embree.

Instead, participants are led by First Nations elders along the so-called ‘Syncrude Loop’ (oilsands company Syncrude has an operation nearby) as they pray and make offerings in the four directions: north, south, east and west. To complete the loop on foot takes about six hours.

“Making prayers to the four directions woke up the spirit of the land, the water and the people. It has awoken a creative force within the people that will suffocate the destructive force that is the tar sands. That is a pretty powerful warrior to deal with,” says Clayton Thomas-Muller, MC of this year’s Healing Walk and Idle No More campaigner.

Clayton Thomas-Muller with Eriel Deranger of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (left) and Melina Laboucan-Massimo of the Lubicon Cree Nation (right). Photo by Zack Embree.

The Healing Walk is a 3-Day Gathering: Workshops, Communal Meals, Camping

The two days prior to the actual walk have the outward appearance of festival. Tents cluster together (camping is free for participants) in a field on the shores of Lake Gregoire, also called Willow Lake. Communal meals and workshops covering a wide range of oilsands-related issues, from First Nations treaty rights to pipelines, take place at the campsite — an hour’s drive from the starting point of the Healing Walk at Crane Lake Park.

“You come as an individual but you leave as part of the whole which is part of the beauty of the Healing Walk,” says Thomas-Mueller, who is a member of the Missinipi Ethinewak or Big River Cree in Manitoba.

A participant of last year's Healing Walk. Photo by Zack Embree.

“This year, we are focusing mainly on local voices. Some of the people we have speaking, have never been heard of before, but are concerned about what is happening in the Fort McMurray indigenous territory. So more going back to being a grassroots event,” Cardinal says.

Local indigenous voices will include Matthew Whitehead, a traditional knowledge carrier from Fort Chipewyan, Annette Campre and a resident of Fort McKay, who will lead workshops on education and spirituality. The physician who first noticed and researched high rates of cancer among Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation members – Dr. John O’Connor –will speak as part of a health panel.

Last year’s Healing Walk attracted well over 500 people, the largest turnout thus far. Internationally known speakers such as 350.org founder Bill McKibben and author Naomi Klein were among them.

Naomi Klein speaking at last year's Healing Walk event. Photo by Zack Embree.

“At last year’s walk, I saw a fundamental shift in energy that let me know we have already won,” Thomas-Muller told DeSmog Canada.

Will the land ever heal? Organizers are optimistic

For many a ‘win’ for First Nations as well as non-indigenous Canadians over the oilsands industry is hard to see. Despite a few pipeline project delays – notably Keystone XL in the U.S. and Northern Gateway in B.C. – the oilsands industry has expanded rapidly and relatively unimpeded under the current federal government.

And yet Healing Walk organizers believe one day the land they have guided hundreds of people through over the last four years will heal.

“I do believe so, but not in my lifetime," Cardinal says. "The destruction is too big. But way down the road when our existence here is different, and more people have demanded an energy future that isn't destructive to the land, air, water and all living beings will we achieve harmony." Cardinal is a coordinator with the Keepers of the Athabasca, the main organizing group behind the Healing Walk.

A sign designates an industrial area under restoration. Photo by Zack Embree.

“It will take a couple of lifetimes for the land to recover, but a metamorphosis will take place and create new life. Indigenous people will be a part of this and those who do not follow their lead will be left behind. The circle of life will continue,” Thomas-Muller says.

Healing Walk organizer Chelsea Flook, who is not indigenous, believes the only way to get there and avoid the catastrophic effects of runaway climate change at the same time is to follow the lead of indigenous peoples.

“We need to take direction from indigenous communities, to honour their ways of knowing and being. It might mean some awkward dancing between worldviews, it might entail some moments of discomfort,” she says.

“But by supporting Indigenous communities' struggle to protect the land [in the oilsands], we can also fight back against the 'business as usual' plans of industry that entail a six-degree climate warming scenario,” Flook said.

Image Credit: All photos by Zack Embree.

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Today, as hundreds of people joined First Nations leaders to walk 14 kilometers through the tar sands in Fort McMurray on the Tar Sands Healing Walk, news of several new oil disasters spread through the crowd and over social media networks.

Details are sparse so far on an oil spill reported in the Athabasca River near the Poplar Grove First Nation. Members of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation oil spill response team report seeing a 5 kilometer-wide oil slick spanning the width of the river. Stay tuned for details. **Update July 11: ACFN testing reveals the oily sheen on the river likely resulted from a blue-green algae bloom.**

Meanwhile, in the eastern Quebec town of Lac-Megantic, rescue workers are searching for survivors of a series of deadly explosions that followed the derailment of a train carrying crude oil originating from North Dakota's Bakken Shale. 

At least one person is dead, an estimated 60 town residents are missing, crude oil has spilled into Megantic Lake and the Chaudiere River, and the inferno has destroyed some 30 buildings. The disaster in the middle of the night led to the evacuation of 1,000 residents.

The first explosion occurred shortly after 1 a.m., sending fireballs through the downtown core, where a popular bar with an unknown number of patrons was reportedly destroyed completely. Residents, who say the first blast felt like "an atomic bomb," ran towards the scene of the first explosion, only to be surprised by several more explosions.

The train, owned by American company Montreal Maine & Atlantic Railway Ltd, was likely carrying the Bakken light crude to a refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick, according to sources familiar with the line.

According to BBC News, "the train's 73 cars reportedly uncoupled from a parked engine and derailed," reportedly at a high rate of speed.

The Montreal, Maine & Atlantic train had five locomotive engines and 73 cars filled with light crude oil, and was parked outside Lac-Megantic during an overnight driver shift-change, a company spokesman told Canada's La Presse newspaper.

The cars filled with fuel somehow became uncoupled, causing them to roll downhill into the town and derail.

Officials have set up a 1-kilometer exclusion zone around the town center, fearing further explosions as fire crews from as far away as Maine battle the ongoing blaze. 

Watch a bit of footage following the explosions:   

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Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people from across Canada and the US will walk into the heart of tar sands country to be part of a spiritual gathering called the Tar Sands Healing Walk on July 5th-6th.

They will come face-to-face with the environmental destruction caused by the tar sands industry. Open pit mines, tailings ponds, industrial facilities and more dominate the landscape of the walk near Fort McMurray, Alberta.

The fourteen-kilometre Healing Walk is neither a rally or a protest. Organizers describe the event as a spiritual gathering focused on healing the land, air, water and all living things harmed by the relentless expansion of the tar sands industry.

“Protests, rallies, marches are all good and necessary, but we felt like people needed something more spiritual. Something to create or strengthen a connection to the land,” says Jesse Cardinal, co-organizer of the Healing Walk.

As the international movement to stop the tar sands has grown, the Healing Walk has also grown since its birth four years ago. In its inaugural year the Healing Walk was a one-day event with one hundred participants. Hundreds and very possibly thousands will come to this year's two-day event that includes workshops, ceremonies, internationally-renowned guest speakers and the walk.

Organizers anticipate the 4th Tar Sands Healing Walk to be the largest event yet.

“First-time participants of the Healing Walk need to prepare themselves for an emotional journey,” Cardinal told DeSmog Canada.

This year's Healing Walk is attracting big name speakers such as 350.org founder Bill McKibben, author Naomi Klein, and co-founder of Idle No More Sylvia McAdam.

Invitations have been extended to Alberta premier Allison Redford and federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver to attend. Thus far neither have accepted the invitation.

“We want people to have an understanding of the scale and size of the tar sands industry, but we also want people to leave with a sense of hope for renewal,” says Cardinal.

Cardinal is also the coordinator of the Keepers of the Athabasca, an alliance of First Nations, Inuit, Metis, environmental groups and other concerned citizens advocating effective stewardship of the Athabasca River and Athabasca Lake Watershed. The Keepers of the Athabasca have been the main organizer of the Healing Walk from the beginning.

The Healing Walk will begin with a pipe ceremony at Crane Lake, north of Fort McMurray. First Nations elders and ceremony people will lead participants on the 14-kilometre journey through existing tar sands operations, and tailings ponds. The Athabasca River is less than ten kilometres from these industrial sites that spew toxins into its waters. Prayers for the land will be made along the way.

First Nations tar sands campaigner Clayton Thomas Muller in a recent article recalled being struck by scenes of vast deserts of wet and dry tailings ponds and industrial facilities that could have been straight out of a science fiction novel on his first Healing Walk.

A campsite is available for participants planning on staying over night and some catering will be provided by the organizers. Meet and greets as well as workshops on pipelines, First Nations cultures and tar sands impacts will take place the day before the Healing Walk. A feast and closing ceremony will conclude the event.

The Significance of the Fourth Healing Walk

Four is a significant number in many indigenous cultures. There are four seasons. Four directions. Four parts to life (mental, spiritual, emotional and physical).

“The fourth Healing Walk is significant because it indicates the ending of one cycle and the beginning of another,” explains Cardinal, who is Metis and a member of the Kikino Metis Settlement in northeastern Alberta.

Coincidentally, four organized cross-country treks will arrive in Fort McMurray to participate in the Healing Walk. Two groups are travelling from the US. A third group is coming from British Columbia.

The fourth and longest trek will be made by Dion Tootoosis who left traditional Mi'kmaq lands in Nova Scotia on June 12th and will bicycle over 5000 kilometres to reach Fort McMurray in time for the Healing Walk.

Tootoosis, from the Poundmaker Cree Nation of Saskatchewan, says he wants his journey to inspire conversations about natural resource extraction in Canada, particularly the tar sands, and stimulate discussions about solutions.

“I believe that the answer to the Alberta tar sands, and other locations across Canada where natural resources are being exploited, lies within the people of this country. Only a people know what is best for their community,” says Tootoosis in a statement.

Image Credit: Kris Krug via flickr

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