An American Indian environmental activist was “praying” Hurricane Harvey would hit Texas hard in order to disrupt the Valley Crossing Pipeline and cost energy companies more money, according to a Facebook post.
“Yes I am praying the Hurricanes hit full force to stop the illegal no federal permit permit Valley Crossing Pipeline,” Texas’ Carrizo-Comecrudo Tribe chairman Juan Mancias posted a day before Harvey made landfall in Texas. “It will cost Enbridge and Spectra more $$$$.”
Posted by Juan B. Mancias on Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Hurricane Harvey hammered the Gulf Coast of Texas August 25, killing dozens of people and damaging or destroying hundreds of thousands of homes. Harvey’s destruction is estimated to cost as much as $180 billion, according to Reuters.
Mancias posted a video on Facebook August 30 trying to clarify his earlier post.
“To say that I am a cold-hearted person and wishing the worst from the storm on everything, I think they took me out of context and misquoted me, too.” Mancias said in the video. “It’s a metaphor about how Harvey was … the same as, or even worse, or not even worse, than the genocide they brought here 500 years ago and the ethnic cleansing that still goes on in Texas.”
“I pray for all the hurricanes to come in and affect Spectra and affect Enbridge. Those are corporations. Those aren’t human beings. They need to be affected,” Mancias added later. “They need to understand that they’re not the people that can come in here without permission and do whatever they want just because they want to claim their white privilege at that time.”
Mancias leads protests against fossil fuel energy projects and developments and has worked on protests with other environmental groups such as the Sierra Club.
Steve Everly, the spokesman for Texans for Natural Gas, condemned Mancias’ comments.
“Pipeline protesters trashed the environment in North Dakota, and now one of their leaders here in Texas is celebrating a natural disaster that destroyed homes and displaced tens of thousands of people,” Everley said in an email to The Daily Caller News Foundation. “There’s plenty of room for discussion and debate about our energy future, but I hope we can all agree that wishing harm on people who work in the oil and gas industry is appalling and wrong.”
Watch Mancias’ Facebook live video. Quotes were taken at around the 3:50 and 13:10 minute marks, respectively.
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