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But just across the harbour, a plan that would see up to 400 oil tankers a year call on an expanded marine-loading dock is gathering momentum. A decision on the pipeline expansion won’t come for another year, with start-up not slated until 2018. Ms. Thomas, who leads an aboriginal effort called the Sacred Trust Initiative, is determined to stop it. She fears the consequences of an oil spill, she said.

“It’s not even about trying to halt or stop an economy,” she said in an interview overlooking the harbour. “It’s about the health of humans, of the land, of the water, of the air and everything. We all depend on that, so why would we willingly put those at risk?”

Her resistance is a window into long-simmering tensions that now threaten to stall Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s goal of making Canada an “energy superpower.”

With court cases looming against Enbridge Inc.’s rival Northern Gateway pipeline, Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain project has been touted as a more viable option for breaking the energy industry’s reliance on the U.S. export market, where the bulk of Alberta’s crude is sold at a discount to North American and global prices.

But the project remains deeply unpopular with the Tsleil-Waututh, whose name translates to “The People of the Inlet.” The aboriginal group has a population just shy of 300, but it claims much of Burrard Inlet as traditional territory.

Its leaders have refused to meet with Kinder Morgan officials, arguing it’s the federal government’s job to first consult with aboriginal communities potentially affected by industry, as set out in a 2004 decision by the Supreme Court. (The issue is the subject of a legal challenge launched by the band against the National Energy Board and federal government over their handling of the Kinder Morgan file).