Mi'kmaq leader joins Plan B protesters

A Mi'kmaq spiritual leader joined protestersMonday to speak against a controversial highway realignment project in Bonshaw, P.E.I.

Opponents of the project held a ceremony to bless the land where the highway is slated to be built.

John Joe Sark of the Mi'kmaq Grand Council said the Plan B Transcontinental Highway goes against everything for which his people stand.

"It's really a blow to the philosophy of the Mi'kmaq people, because in our culture we do not have the right to destroy anything that we didn't create," he said. "We want to bless the land and ask the creator to protect it."

Sark said it is Mi'kmaq land and the trees are sacred.

"The tree is so valuable that when our people wanted to take a tree, they would lay down tobacco as a thanksgiving," he said.

Smudging ceremony

On Monday, Sark and other opponents held a smudging ceremony on the land.

Construction began last week and protesters have been camped in a grove of hemlocks on the site ever since.

Tree clearing was supposed to begin last Thursday after an environmental assessmentclearedthe project.

Protester Josie Baker said the Mi'kmaq support was important.

"This is Mi'kmaq land so we really appreciate that he's coming out and doing this here," Baker said.

The ceremony was important to Ruth DeLong, the woman who bought the land decades ago with the dream of preserving it.

The government expropriated part of DeLong's land to build the highway last week.

"I have to move on from that dream and try to find another one," she said.

"It's very soul-searching. You wonder what things you could do to try to stop something like this; the ceremony itself will help me maybe let go."

Construction is expected to resume Tuesday. Protesters said work crews are getting closer to their site, but they don't intend to move.

The project to realign a portion of the Trans-Canada Highway between New Haven and Bonshaw has been the centre of controversy for months.