The Dominion - Martin Lukacs

RCMP Spied on Protesting First Nations

Miles — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:19:33 +0000

Intelligence unit collaborated with partners in energy and private sector

TORONTO—The federal government created a wide-ranging surveillance network in early 2007 to monitor protests by First Nations, including those that would garner national attention or target “critical infrastructure” like highways, railways and pipelines, according to RCMP documents obtained through access to information requests.

Formed after the Conservatives came to power, the RCMP unit’s mandate was to collect and disseminate intelligence about situations involving First Nations that have “escalated to civil disobedience and unrest in the form of protest actions.”

According to an RCMP slideshow presentation from the spring of 2009, the intelligence unit reported weekly to approximately 450 recipients in law enforcement, government, and unnamed “industry partners” in the energy and private sector.

A RCMP spokesperson said the unit was never considered “permanent” and that last year it was “dismantled as it was determined to be no longer needed by its clients.” But the Mounties can’t say if the work is continuing in the field.

“Since the dismantling of the Aboriginal JIG [Joint Intelligence Group], the work done by the JIG is no longer performed at RCMP HQ Criminal Intelligence [CI]. However, we cannot confirm that RCMP divisions are not performing Aboriginal JIG activities under another name of program.”

An annual Strategic Intelligence Report, dated June 2009, indicates the surveillance at the time focused on eighteen “communities of concern” in five provinces across the country. These included First Nations in Ontario such as Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI), Ardoch, Grassy Narrows, Six Nations and Tyendinaga, which have made headlines over the last few years for road and railway blockades and opposition to mining and logging on their territories.

The report states that the causes of unrest are “common issues” that could “seriously impact” Aboriginal peoples across the country—issues such as poverty, lack of funding for child and family services, and disputes over sovereignty, resource extraction and environmental concerns.

The so-called Aboriginal JIG that gathered the surveillance was run by the RCMP Criminal Intelligence branch and the RCMP’s National Security Criminal Investigations (NSCI), which has teams of officers in strategic locations across the country that deal with “threats to national security and criminal extremism or terrorism.”

It billed itself as a “central repository” of information about First Nations protest activities, assisted by an “extensive network of contacts throughout Canada and internationally” and an undisclosed number of field operatives acting as its “eyes and ears.”

The list of private sector businesses receiving weekly reports was chosen by the RCMP NSCI's Critical Infrastructure program, though the RCMP refused to share any of their names. Businesses also provided the intelligence unit with information about "current criminal threat environment for their facilities," according to the RCMP spokesperson.

Its yearly strategic intelligence report “identifies individuals who are causes of concern to public safety,” but any mentions of individuals were redacted in the copy obtained via access to information.

News of this RCMP surveillance comes on the heels of revelations that the Aboriginal Affairs ministry has spied on Cindy Blackstock, a long-time advocate for aboriginal children. In October it was also revealed that the Canadian military is keeping tabs on Aboriginal organizations. Alongside Aboriginal Affairs’ on-going “hot spots” surveillance, it suggests a massive, coordinated scaling-up of surveillance of Aboriginal peoples by the Harper government.

According to a previously obtained copy of a RCMP presentation to the Aboriginal Affairs Ministry in March 2007, the “vast majority” of the monitored protests and actions are “related to lands and resources,” and “most are incited by development activities on traditional territories” of First Nations.

As Canada has undergone a shift towards a more resource and especially energy based economy, industry has come increasingly into conflict with Aboriginal communities who claim rights over many of the lands exploited for mining, forestry and oil, and often oppose such development for environmental reasons.

The Mining Association of Canada has noted in a publication that “[m]ost mining activity occurs in northern and remote areas of the country, the principal areas of Aboriginal populations.”

The spectre of heightened Aboriginal protest has become a source of anxiety for government and industry.

An RCMP presentation to CSIS from April 2007 states, “There is a growing concern among high-level governmental officials and the policing community about the potential for unrest in Aboriginal communities, and an increasing sense of militancy among certain segments of the Aboriginal population.”

Recent political stand-offs have proved this concern to be prescient.

A high-profile $5.5 billion Enbridge pipeline that would carry tar sands oil to the Pacific through northern British Columbia has hit a wall of Indigenous opposition, whose “constitutional and legal position” former Cabinet minister Jim Prentice has called “very strong.” In the same province, the Tsilhqot’in Nation have to date blocked the controversial New Prosperity gold and copper mine, which would have turned a lake they consider sacred into a tailings dump.

In northern Ontario in 2008, the KI First Nation prevented Platinex from establishing a platinum mine on their traditional territory; Platinex's mining claim was eventually bought out for $5 million by the McGuinty government.

When shown the RCMP documents, KI Chief Donny Morris expressed surprise and said he and his community were "insulted", remarking that there is “nothing extreme” about protecting their territory.

Morris and five of his councillors served more than two months in jail for peacefully blocking Platinex, before an Ontario Court of Appeal released them and directed the provincial government to negotiate with the First Nation.

“Protecting the land is a mandate from the Creator that we must fulfill physically and spiritually,” he said. “There is no reason to make us into criminals just for protecting what we believe in.”

Although the Strategic Intelligence Report’s profile of KI is heavily redacted, as with all the “communities of concern,” it states that KI First Nation “remains committed to ensuring their concerns related to the impacts of mining and forestry are addressed by the Ontario government” and “possible future disputes could result in blockades and demonstrations.”

The Strategic Intelligence Report notes that environmental concerns often spark confrontations with aboriginal communities: “Mining, oil drilling, logging, garbage dumps, construction of dams, highways, and expanding the industries such as the oil sands can produce permanent impacts on the land, resources and people.”

The report makes mention of other legislation and policies that are a source of “unrest,” including the Matrimonial Real Property Initiative currently being legislated by the Conservative government, which it states “will not address the real issues faced by some Aboriginal families.”

“The documents indicate the government is aware of the harmful impacts of their policies and actions,” said Russell Diabo, an independent Aboriginal policy analyst who has seen the RCMP documents. “But when some Aboriginal communities are refusing to accept these policies, the theft of their resources or pollution of their lands, the government [is] criminalizing them rather than resolving the human rights violations which are the root of the protests."

While doing surveillance on selected First Nations, the RCMP unit also assessed the “unique opportunities for civil disobedience” in 2010.

According to the report, the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, Paralympics and torch relays, and the G20 summit in Toronto could be “leveraged by Aboriginal communities and groups who support Aboriginal issues to draw attention to outstanding issues and grievances” and to “garner national and international attention.”

These events, ongoing “unresolved issues in many Aboriginal communities, and the pattern of convergence among activists groups,” contribute to “increased uncertainty and concern” and the “potential for large numbers of protestors attending these major events, and the potential for violence and criminal acts.”

One of the central tasks of the RCMP intelligence unit was to closely monitor protests against “critical infrastructure”—blockades of highways and roads, and demonstrations, protests, or gatherings “concerning energy sector development.”

The 2009 strategic intelligence report states that it assesses acts outside the category of “legitimate dissent.”

In what may be a pitch to the private sector, the RCMP slideshow presentation states that the Aboriginal intelligence unit can "alleviate some of your workload as we can help identify trends and issues that may impact more than one community." It can also "provide information on activist groups who are promoting Aboriginal issues within your area."

“The JIG was an essential tool that helped us gather information to understand if in fact critical infrastructure was at risk in certain areas,” the RCMP spokesperson wrote in an email. “This in turn helps the RCMP attain its goal of safe homes and safe communities, which includes Aboriginal communities.”

The “communities of concern” were chosen based on such potential factors as “militants operating within the community," “threats against critical infrastructure,” “external influences like activists groups, government policies, [and] major events,” and a “history of violence.”

But the documents note that “within the last 12 months, no violent acts” occurred, and that "overall, occupations and protest in Canada associated to Aboriginal communities have experienced low levels of violence."

The yearly report lays out infrastructure in proximity to First Nations by province. Though heavily redacted, it reveals an exhaustive detailing of protests targeting road, railways, and pipelines, classifying them as "incidents."

This includes the targeting of oil sands developments such as the legal challenges of oil sands concessions on their territory undertaken by the First Nations of Fort Chipewyan and the Woodland Cree.

In their report to CSIS, the RCMP acknowledge the risks posed by the targeting of infrastructure, mentioning the Mohawk community of Tyendinaga’s high-profile blockade of the CN rail line between Toronto and Montreal in the spring of 2007: “The recent CN strike represents the extent in [sic] which a national railway blockade could effect the economy of Canada.”

“The federal government is afraid of First Nations disrupting the economy in order to demand their constitutionally-protected rights to lands and resources,” said Diabo. “So when communities take action on the ground, the government is using the RCMP and security agencies politically to control and manage First Nations and ensure they acquiesce to unjust legislation and policies or imposed negotiation process.”

Documents show the Aboriginal JIG and a separate Joint Intelligence Group that was set up for the G8 and G20 summit in Huntsville and Toronto were in contact with each other up into 2010. The G8/G20 JIG, which was recently reported to have placed undercover police officers in activist groups for more than a year, was one of the largest domestic intelligence operations in Canadian history.

“Judging by the intensified surveillance initiated by the Harper government, there is every reason to believe the RCMP is continuing its spying alongside other government departments, likely under another name,” said Diabo.

Martin Lukacs is a writer and activist, and a member of the Dominion editorial collective. Tim Groves is an independent researcher and journalist in Toronto.

The original version of this article appeared in the Toronto Star.

****

The RCMP slide show presentation can also be downloaded here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/74793808/Aboriginal-Jig-Ppt

The 2009 Strategic Intelligence Report can also be downloaded here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/74792393/AboriginalJIGreport2009-10

The 18 First Nations identified as "communities in concern" in 2009:
Quebec
- Barriere Lake
- Kahnawake
- Kanesatake
- Litstuguj
Ontario
-Akwasasne
- Grassy Narrow First Nation
- Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug
- Munsee-Deleware NAtion
- Shabit Obaadijwan and Ardock Algoquin First Nation
- Six Nationa of the Grand River
- Tyendinaga
Manitoba
- Peguis First Nation
- Pimicikamak
- Roseau River First Nation
Saskatchewan
- Red Pheasant First Nation
Alberta
- Community of Fort Chipewyan
- Lubicon Lake Indian Nation
- Woodland Cree First Nation

Questions? Comments? Email us at info@mediacoop.ca.

KI Leadership

Canada on Secret Oil Offensive: Documents

Martin Lukacs — Wed, 25 May 2011 05:11:40 +0000

Foreign ministry's tar sands team rebranding Alberta oil in Europe

MONTREAL—The Canadian government has been carrying out a secret plan in Europe to boost investment and keep world markets open for the Alberta tar sands, collaborating with major oil companies and aggressively undermining European environmental measures, documents obtained by The Dominion reveal.

In 2009 the federal government launched a strategy to “protect and advance Canadian interests related to the oil sands," fearing that growing protest could curb European investment in the industry and that EU restrictions on tar sands imports could be mimicked globally.

“Oil sands are posing a growing reputational problem [in Europe], with the oil sands defining the Canadian brand,” states one document released under the Access to Information Act. “Canada’s reputation as a clean, reliable source of energy may be put at risk.”

Run by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAIT) and involving eight foreign missions, working alongside Natural Resources, Environment Canada and the Albertan government, a European “Oil Sands Team” has gone on the offensive against threats to the tar sands: they have monitored green groups, responded to “significant negative media coverage,” helped Canadian policymakers lobby European parliamentarians and organize trips to Alberta, worked to “enhance cooperation” with oil companies, and coordinated regular meetings between top European oil executives and Albertan and federal ministers, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The “pan-European oil sands advocacy strategy” was launched in December 2009 around the time of the United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen. Hundreds of civil society groups there gave Canada a “Fossil of the Year” award for being "the absolute worst country at the talks," fingering a powerful tar sands industry as the driving force behind Canada’s hardline stance against ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets.

The extraction of Alberta’s vast deposits of bitumen, which hold the second largest supply of oil after Saudi Arabia, has been widely criticized as the world’s most environmentally destructive and carbon-intensive industrial project.

One of the main targets of the strategy has been a EU energy law—the Fuel Quality Directive—that would slap a dirty label on tar sands oil as a way of promoting cleaner transportation fuel in Europe.

Europe does not import tar sands oil from Canada, but Canadian policymakers are worried a measure categorizing tar sands oil as an undesirable fuel could spread to other continents. With the Albertan fossil fuel industry—and supportive provincial and federal governments—increasingly looking to Asian markets to sell their crude such precedents would spell trouble.

The obtained documents further reveal that the diplomatic campaign by the Canadian government to “prevent discriminatory treatment of the oil sands under the EU Fuel Quality Directive” was much more co-ordinated than previously understood.

The mission in Brussels took the lead: lobbying the European Commission, engaging in “regular information sharing with industry,” organizing “high-profile events,” and Ministerial visits. The mission provided “reporting with intelligence, analysis and advice” to the Canadian and Alberta governments while the larger Oil Sands Team played a “very useful coordination mechanism” in the campaign.

They appear to have been so aggressive that a European parliamentarian told the Globe and Mail in March that Canada’s lobbying had been “unacceptable.”

The Canadian government was also concerned that a dirty label on the tar sands could galvanize pressure to curb investment by European companies who have been subject to increasingly noisy environmental campaigns calling for divestment.

With the end of cheap, easily accessible oil, European oil giants have scampered to extend their lifespans by turning to unconventional gases and investing billions in the Alberta industry.

A mid-year report of the Oil Sands Team, covering activities between January and July 2010, paints a picture of a Canadian government eager to work closely with these companies to ensure the money keeps flowing.

One section reads less like international lobbying records than a joint playbook. In Oslo, Canada’s mission “holds regular meetings” with largely state-owned Norwegian oil giant Statoil to “update on each others activities and co-ordinate where appropriate.” Statoil has invested more than $2 billion in tar sands operations.

A Wikileaks cable has revealed that in November 2009, a month before the European strategy was launched, then-Environment Minister Jim Prentice described his shock to U.S. Ambassador Jacobsen on witnessing Norwegian public sentiment against investment in Alberta’s “dirty oil,” during a visit to the country. The experience had “heightened his awareness of the negative consequences to Canada’s historically ‘green’ standing on the world stage,” and he believed the Canadian government’s reaction to the dirty oil label was “too slow” and “failed to grasp the magnitude of the situation.”

Each barrel of bitumen Statoil produced in the Alberta tar sands in 2010 released 85 times more carbon than a barrel of conventional North Sea oil, according to company figures.

At Statoil’s annual general assembly last week, shareholders representing nearly 20 per cent of private capital voted in support of a resolution calling for the company to withdraw from tar sands operations.

This was the third year in a row that motions campaigned for by Greenpeace and the Indigenous Environmental Network have dominated the meetings. In November 2010, Statoil buckled to campaigners' pressure and sold 40 per cent of its Alberta tar sands portfolio.

When Prime Minister Harper flew to France for a few hours on June 4, 2010, to meet with President Nicolas Sarkozy in the run-up to the G8 and G20 meetings in Canada, he found time for an unpublicized meeting with Christophe de Margerie, the CEO of France’s oil major Total. Top Total executives have also met with Canada’s Deputy Minister of Trade and regularly meet with Canada’s ambassador.

The released documents do not reveal anything about the nature of the PM's discussions. The company, however, recently announced they plan to spend $20-billion in the oil sands by 2020 in hopes of boosting their production to 200,000 barrels day.

In recognition of the tar sands' new importance to their portfolio, Margerie and the company's international advisory board spent last week in Alberta. During a speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, he acknowledged that environmental criticism has impacted the company's reputation. "In terms of image, it's not good," he said.

Shell, the biggest energy company in the world, holds the most land leases in the tar sands and plans to triple production to more than 750,000 barrels a day. They have been named in five lawsuits related to environmental damages and violations of Indigenous rights, and have faced shareholder resolutions demanding disclosure of the social and environmental risks of their projects.

The Hague mission is “enhancing its engagement with the sector, and with Shell recently.” The London mission is “in regular contact with the private sector including meetings with Shell, BP, and Royal Bank of Scotland [RBS] as well as Canadian oil companies,” and participated in Shell’s Stakeholder dialogue where they were able to “gather intelligence.” Brussels has “worked with Shell by hosting complementary events” including a multi-stakeholder workshop and dinner.

The released documents indicate that government officials believe their efforts have failed to fully “defend Canada’s image as a responsible energy producer and steward of the environment including climate change issues.” They cite tight budgets and a lack of resources. The oil sands team, according to DFAIT, is composed only of 11 officials, working part-time, spread across Ottawa and the European missions.

The report states that they will need an injection of “significant resources” and also suggests that “a professional PR firm may be able to assist us in moving forward strategically with the use of approved but sharpened messaging.” With a "recent increase in the NGO campaigns targeting public [sic], we anticipate increased risk to Canadian interests much beyond the oil sands (e.g. recent campaign targeting tourists to Alberta).”

Rethink Alberta, co-ordinated by an international network of green groups, has run a billboard campaign in Europe and is mailing postcards to travel agents and tourism operators to discourage tourists from visiting Alberta.

European countries have seen a “resurgence of highly critical public campaigns,” including protests that “have become a regular occurrence in London mostly towards BP, Shell and RBS but also towards the High Commission.”

The report also points to “growing media attention to environmental aspects of oil sands developments in Europe,” resulting in “enhanced media monitoring” by most Canadian missions. Media coverage in Paris was especially bad in their eyes: “the negative articles are essentially about pollution, the wildlife, and the health of native peoples and the destruction of the boreal forest.”

Their campaign against the EU’s Fuel Quality Directive law also appears to be failing. The law aims to force fuel suppliers to cut carbon emissions by six percent by 2020. In initial evaluations EU officials assigned tar sands production a high carbon footprint, meaning suppliers would shun tar sands oil in favour of lower-emission fuels from conventional sources of petroleum.

Canadian policymakers jumped into action against the initiative because they worried other countries like the United States and China—who has previously mimicked European emissions standards on air pollution in the 1990s—might adopt the model.

“Our fear is that if something happens in the EU and it is spread in other countries—not only members of the EU—we could have roughly one-third of the world’s population subscribing to regulation or legislation that mitigates against our oilsands,” Alberta International and Intergovernmental Relations Minister Iris Evans told media in the fall of 2010.

Canadian and industry officials have vigorously contested that the carbon footprint of tar sands is higher than traditional sources, but European policymakers gained new ammo when an EU study released this February concluded that production creates 23 per cent more emissions.

After aggressive lobbying from Canadian officials resulted in the removal of the dirty fuel label on tar sands crude in the fall of 2010, a re-emboldened European commission announced this spring that they would move ahead with the plan to discourage tar sands fuel imports.

Ensuring open markets, however, is also the objective of the ongoing free-trade negotiations between Canada and the European Union, which would involve eliminating environmental “barriers” to trade like the Fuel Quality Directive. Negotiators have frequently raised the issue of the Fuel Quality Directive and recent media reports indicate they even threatened to scrap the agreement if the issue was not resolved to their satisfaction.

DFAIT officials told the Dominion that the advocacy plan is an “official level” strategy at the departmental rather than ministerial level, meaning Cabinet would not have any oversight.

The seeds for it may have been planted in a Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade’s (DFAIT) planning document from March 2008. DFAIT's Report on Plans and Priorities for 2008-2009 states that one of its priorities is to “enhance international commercial opportunities for Canadian companies.” It suggests developing an “energy advocacy strategy to brand Canada as a leader in best practices for the development of oil sands reserves, energy research and development, advanced energy technologies, energy-efficient technologies, renewable energy and alternative energies.”

Download the documents: Pan-European Oil Sands Advocacy Strategy & Pan-European Oil Sands Team Mid-Year report.

Martin Lukacs is an independent journalist and a member of the Dominion editorial collective.

clayton climate camp

Leak reveals push to win over First Nations on controversial boreal forest pact

Moira Peters — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 05:42:54 +0000

Environmental organizations and forestry companies seeking buy-in on CBFA as First Nations opposition grows

MONTREAL—A leaked document and email obtained by the Montreal Media Co-op shows major environmental organizations engaging in damage control while speedily attempting to court First Nations' support for the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA). The revelation comes amidst mounting opposition to the agreement from aboriginal organizations, many of which are decrying it as fundamentally flawed. The much-hyped pact between major forestry companies and environmental organizations claimed to suspend logging on 29 million hectares of boreal forest and caribou habitat for three years in exchange for an end to the environmentalists' global boycott campaigns against the industry.

The email—sent at the end of a meeting with some First Nations groups last week in Prince George, British Columbia—was written by Larry Innes, Director of the Canadian Boreal Initiative, and Faisal Moola of the David Suzuki Foundation. It describes a forthcoming First Nations “Declaration on the Boreal” and a letter of understanding (LOU) that lays the groundwork for First Nations cooperation with the CBFA.

In the email, Innes and Moola stress, in bold, that they “strongly urge all ENGO organizations to support [the LOU], as it will provide positive evidence of a positive relationship being established with [First Nations] towards realizing the vision and goals of the CBFA.”

Environmental organizations and forestry companies excluded First Nations during negotiations of the CBFA, despite the fact that most of the lands bargained over were First Nations' traditional territories.

The organizer of the Prince George meeting, the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council, revealed in a press release that David Suzuki and Innes had met with them and apologized. Apologies, however, haven't sufficed for a growing number of First Nations, including leadership from Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, who issued a statement last Wednesday saying the agreement was better left behind.

“The CBFA disrespects our rights and was developed without our consent," said Grand Chief Stan Beardy of the Nishnawbi Aski Nation (NAN), which represents 49 First Nations in Northern Ontario. "The meeting this week in Prince George, BC, is a backdoor approach to coming up with a national First Nations strategy regarding the CBFA as there was no consensus that the meeting was a good idea. If we are going to be discussing our role in the management and protection of the Boreal region, it will be outside any agreements such as the CBFA."

Innes and Moola lament in the email that “as a 'national' meeting it failed to materialize” but they indicated that they are targeting those regions where Indigenous criticism of the agreement is mounting.

“We'll be circling back to Assembly of First Nations to try to get the National Chief to take a more active hand going forward, and continuing our outreach work in MB, ON and QC,” they write. They also indicated that “there are good prospects for a similar outcome [to the Prince George meeting] in Alberta.”

NAN called on the Assembly of First Nations to hold "a national meeting on the future of our forests." NAN was joined in their criticisms the CBFA by the Algonquin Nation Secretariat, which represents two bands in Quebec, and the Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak (MKO), which represents 30 in Manitoba.

In late September, the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador (AFNQL), which represents Quebec First Nations, passed a resolution to boycott any meetings on the CBFA until the organization has conducted a legal and technical review of the agreement.

Rather than address the public criticisms of the regional aboriginal organizations, Innes and Moola pinned blame for mounting First Nations dissent on an independent policy analyst and anonymous individuals.

The AFNQL resolution, and a few withdrawals from the Prince George conference, they write, “created an ideal opportunity for the 'Scrap the CBFA' campaign being undertaken by Russell Diabo and some of our other 'friends' to drive wedges between [First Nations] in the East and West.”

Diabo is a policy consultant who works for the Algonquin Nation Secretariat, but has no affiliation with the Manitoba and Ontario bands that also criticized the agreement.

Avrum Lazar of the Forest Products Association of Canada, the grouping of 21 corporate signatories to the CBFA, also attended the Prince George meetings and told the Globe & Mail that First Nations support for the CBFA is “being courted.”

He also made it clear that industry representatives had deliberately excluded First Nations from the original CBFA negotiations.

“If there was a way to involve all those chiefs and set up some sort of national framework, we would have done it,” he said.

The letter obtained by the Montreal Media Co-op did not include recipient email addresses.

Martin Lukacs is a member of the Dominion editorial collective and the Montreal Media Co-op. This article was originally published by the Montreal Media Co-op.

CBFA leak

New Minister a “Declared Enemy” of First Nations

Martin Lukacs — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 05:47:26 +0000

Indigenous leaders, activists raise concerns about John Duncan's track record

MONTREAL—John Duncan's appointment in August as the new Minister of Indian Affairs was greeted with praise and hopeful expectation from many mainstream Indigenous organizations.

“I look forward to working with him in his new role,” said National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Shawn A-in-chut Atleo in a press release.

“Minister Duncan understands the issues that he will have to address to deal with the many challenges First Nations are experiencing in this province,” said British Columbia Treaty Commission Chief Commissioner Sophie Pierre in another release.

But other First Nations leaders and activists believe Duncan's past tells another story, and they are forecasting a hostile course as he takes responsibility for steering the Canadian government's relationship with First Nations.

According to them, Duncan has established a record of words and deeds over the last thirty years, as a forester and parliamentarian, that amount to a crusade against Indigenous peoples—stoking flames of racial bigotry, attacking constitutionally-protected aboriginal rights, and advocating for their assimilation and permanent status as impoverished, second-class citizens in Canada.

Guujaaw, President of the Haida Nation on the north-west coast of British Columbia, recalls the First Nations struggles to end MacMillan Bloedel's clear-cut logging of Haida Gwaii's world-renowned old-growth forests.

Duncan was a forester with MacMillan Bloedel on Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii from 1976 to 1993, including a stint as chief forester on Haida Gwaii.

In those years, MacMillan Bloedel was the largest forest corporation in the province, and the Haida's campaigns alongside environmentalists established the archipelago as the key battleground in the coastal forest wars in the 1980s. The company was responsible for shaving bald entire islands, leaving the landscape scarred from poorly-managed clear cut operations and dumping logging debris into fish-bearing waters.

Ethnobotanist and author Wade Davis worked as a forestry engineer for MacMillan Bloedel in the late 1970s.

“Concern for the cultural heritage of the Haida was not even a remote thought,” he said in Ian Gill's book about the Haida, All That We Say is Ours.

Forestry companies fought tooth-and-nail against the Haida, who persevered and won an agreement establishing Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve in 1987, which saved the southern third of the archipelago from logging. They've since made strides with the provincial government, according to Guujaaw, but the federal government has only “stonewalled” them politically.

“If the intention of the present government is to put someone in there who will make sure that nothing happens, maybe they put in the right man,” he said.

“Sometimes it is better to deal with a declared enemy than a pretend friend.”

Duncan left his forestry work to run for election in North Island-Powell River, BC, in 1993 as a Reform Party MP, serving as their Aboriginal Affairs critic from 1994 to 1997. He filled the same role for the Canadian Alliance from 2003 to 2006, while representing Vancouver Island North. After losing his seat in 2006, he was reelected in 2008 and served as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minster of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

He used his parliamentary pulpit to take vocal positions on fishing disputes in British Columbia as First Nations dependent on sockeye salmon from the Fraser River began winning limited legal recognition of their fishing rights.

Ernie Crey, a member of the Cheam Indian Band and a policy advisor for the Sto:lo Tribal Council, which represents eight First Nations in the Fraser Valley, has vivid memories of Duncan “cheerleading” for the BC Fisheries Survival Coalition, an aggressive group that represented non-native commercial and recreational fishermen.

“Some people seem to have been struck by amnesia,” Crey said. “Duncan was one of the most vociferous critics of aboriginal people and their constitutionally protected rights.”

“His alliance with the BC Fisheries Survival Coalition says a lot about him,” Guujaaw said. “[The Survival Coalition] organization has never moved to protect fish from overfishing or offshore drilling or tankers, but rather have organized for the purpose of keeping the First Nations from regaining any rights to a livelihood.”

While Duncan was still working as a forester, the Sto:lo and other fishing First Nations received a boost from the Supreme Court in 1990 when the landmark Sparrow decision recognized they had a constitutionally-protected right to fish for food and for social and ceremonial purposes.

Panic set in amongst government policy-makers and industry. Suddenly there was legal uncertainty about fish sales and quotas, so the federal government responded with a plan to contain and control the aboriginal fishery. They created a commercial licensing regime for aboriginal fishing that included financial support for employment, but also caps on numbers of fish that could be taken by First Nations.

In 1992, the federal government introduced regulations for two native commercial fisheries, one on the Lower Fraser River and the other in Port Alberni.

Critics of the government policy noted that First Nations, by accepting the regulated fisheries, were essentially giving up most of their rights to property and full compensation for stolen resources, in order to be guaranteed a fragment of rights adequate to sustain their economies.

The BC Fisheries Survival Coalition saw it differently. They launched their own campaigns against the Native fisheries, saying they were “race-based," and organized illegal fisheries on the Lower Fraser to show their opposition.

“As a member of parliament, Duncan took up their argument,” Crey recalls. “He associated with groups like these that played the race card.”

“In some summers, I was witness to Indian boats being swamped by much larger commercial vessels apparently manned by supporters of the Survival Coalition,” Crey said.

“Trucks and boat trailers owned by Indian fishermen were damaged and trashed. There were buildings in Fort Langley, close to the mouth of the Fraser River, that were burnt as an act of vengeance.”

In Parliament in 1998, Duncan backed up non-Native fisherman who had engaged in illegal fishing.

“The fisheries minister keeps insisting that a race-based commercial fishery is legal,” Duncan said. “Will the minister ask the crown to drop the charges against 22 BC commercial fishermen who protested his racial policy?”

Provincial and federal courts have consistently ruled that commercial allocations for First Nations are not discriminatory but based on inherent rights that precede asserted Crown sovereignty and provincial legislation.

“My children grew up when Duncan held office,” Crey said. “I can remember my kids telling me, 'When we go to school people spit on us. People call us thieving, poaching Indians.' That was the kind of climate created by people using the race-card.”

John Duncan's office refused repeated requests for an interview.

As the Reform Party's Aboriginal Affairs Critic, in 1995 Duncan helped launch a policy statement, the Interim Aboriginal Policy, intended to transform the government's relationship with First Nations. It advocated for the conversion of reserve and treaty settlement lands into private property, the abolition of the Indian Act and tax exemptions, and an end to federal funding of aboriginal political associations.

In other words, he advocated “full-blown assimilation,” said Arthur Manuel, a member of the Shuswap Nation and a spokesperson for the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade.

With Duncan as Indian Affairs Minister, the Conservative Government recently sent letters to select First Nations requesting their participation in a study on economic successes, a move Manuel says is the latest salvo in a campaign to insinuate private property ownership onto Native reserves, breaking apart and opening to encroachment lands that are still mostly held in collective tenure.

As an Aboriginal Affairs critic, Duncan became one of the most outspoken critics of Canada and BC's treaty negotiations with the Nisga'a Nation of 6,000 in the north-west of the province.

Signed in 1999, the first modern treaty in BC granted the Nisga'a $200 million, access to fisheries and wildlife, rights to a form of municipal self-government, and about 2,000 square kilometres of land, less than one-tenth of their traditional territory.

“I find it incredible that a package like this could be offered to that many people," Duncan told the Vancouver Sun in 1995. “Taxpayers have had it. They're at their wits' end. They're not being represented in this whole exercise. Who is looking after the non-Native Canadian? That's my concern.”

According to Manuel, Duncan was lambasting an agreement that undermined and extinguished the constitutional rights of the Nisga'a, but the terms of settlement were still considered too generous by the right-wing Reform Party.

“The objective was [to] eliminate aboriginal title and rights by replacing them with a new form of reduced and restricted treaty rights,” Manuel said. “Under this model, Indigenous peoples will have to give up their tax exemption, take their land in fee simple, and agree to be under provincial control.”

John Duncan on Aboriginal rights

In Parliament on September 19, 1995, Duncan called the peaceful protest by Stoney Point Ojibway in Ipperwash Provincial Park an “illegal occupation.” He demanded that the government reject negotiations and “enforce the law.”
His comments came two weeks after Ontario riot police had stormed the park and shot at dozens of unarmed protesters, killing Dudley George.

During the Second World War, the federal government had expropriated Stoney Point's lands, including a cemetery, and failed to follow through on its promise to return the land after the war.
When the BC provincial New Democratic Party revealed in 1995 that it had established a five per cent ceiling on restitution of lands in treaty negotiations with First Nations, Duncan called it “progress” and credited Reform Party pressure.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has repeatedly criticized the Canadian and provincial governments for only recognizing rights to small portions of First Nations' traditional territories while extinguishing their rights to the majority of their land.
When the Supreme Court handed down the Marshall decision in 1999—a landmark ruling that affirmed the Mi'kmaq's treaty right to maintain a moderate living from commercial fisheries—Duncan demanded the government repeal it.
“The Marshall decision establishes a race-based commercial fishery on the East Coast,” Duncan argued in the House of Commons. “Why will the government not ask the supreme court to stay the Marshall decision, and clarify it?”

Duncan floated the idea of Reform MPs using their free-mail privileges in Parliament to shower British Colombians with a 14-page document that attacked the Nisga'a deal.

Such a suggestion won him the label of “dinosaur” from John Watson, then Director-General of the Department of Indian Affairs' Pacific region.

Duncan also spoke out frequently against the British Columbia Treaty Process, province-wide negotiations over unextinguished Aboriginal rights and title to land that began in 1993. The Nisga'a "extinguishment" agreement is widely considered a template for these negotiations, which the federal and provincial governments are eager to complete.

“The public is clamouring for a new approach,” Duncan claimed in 1998 in Parliament. “What will the minister do to create an affordable process and reduce Aboriginal expectations so that BC can support modern treaties?”

Reducing aboriginal expectations, Manuel said, is a euphemism for the federal government's continuing strategy to keep Indigenous peoples impoverished, which he believes will continue with Duncan's appointment.

“Bluntly put, they want the province to be rich and us poor,” he said. “The federal and provincial governments want to maintain exclusive jurisdiction over our lands. The results we'll get from Duncan and his bureaucracy will be the same as we got from Indian Affairs Ministers Jean Chretien, John Munro or Chuck Strahl."

Since his appointment as Minister, Duncan has toned down the rhetoric, and in late August issued an apology to Inuit from northern Quebec who were forcibly relocated to the High Arctic in an attempt to establish claims of Canadian sovereignty in the 1950s.

Ernie Crey, for one, isn't convinced.

“Just because 20 years later he is putting on pleasant appearances—that’s not good enough,” he said. “It's hard to believe that people can turn around and say the leopard has changed his spots. I think he needs to be held to account for all the things he did and said.”

Martin Lukacs is a member of the Dominion editorial collective.

Indian Affairs Minister John Duncan

Testing

Powers of Eight

dru — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:20:04 +0000

powersofeight.png

The G8 accounts for a small portion of the world’s population, but a majority of its power. Through their influence over international financial institutions and their economic and military dominance, the G8 countries shape the world’s economic structures.

Download a pdf version of this infographic.

From Queen Charlotte to Haida Gwaii

dru — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 05:18:39 +0000

The ascent of the Haida and the struggle with Canada

All that We Say is Ours: Guujaaw and the Reawakening of the Haida Nation
Ian Gill
Douglas & McIntyre: Vancouver, 2009.

MONTREAL—Metaphors greet you everywhere in Haida Gwaii. Visiting the storied archipelago cradled by northwest British Columbia last summer, I walked into the office housing the Haida’s renewable energy project—a bold plan to build Canada’s first offshore wind farm. The Haida aim to install more than a hundred 50-metre turbines on their coastline, in partnership with the province and a private energy company. At a price tag of $2 billion, of which the Haida would cover $240 million, it is projected to power 130,000 homes on Haida Gwaii and throughout BC. Despite criticism about the costs and the technological uncertainties of gigantic turbines, the Indigenous nation’s leadership has forged ahead confidently.

As I sat down to peruse some pamphlets, I was disturbed by a screeching noise. The secretary insisted it was construction outside. But as I looked around the office, I located its real source: a replica wind-turbine, barely a half-metre in height, was grinding and whining on its gears, struggling to achieve its purpose as window decoration.

Fanciful towers, a floundering toy—the irony of the episode was inescapable, and a poignant reminder of the tension between the Haida nation’s enormous ambitions and the mundane obstacles they must still overcome. The obstacles are those faced by Indigenous communities across this country: poverty and economic dependency, cultural and linguistic dislocation, low education rates and poor health—the constellation of problems spawned by decades of dispossession and debilitating government policies. The Haida, however, have refused to be hindered as they unwind the past and remake their future, a story well told in Ian Gill's recently published All That We Say is Ours.

Haida Gwaii (or the Queen Charlotte Islands) has long been celebrated for its natural splendour and cultural heritage. Its 150 islands, often called the Galapagos of the north, have a biological diversity rivaled by few places in the world. Magnificent cedars, spruce and hemlock and unique species of plants and wildlife flourish in old-growth forests many thousands of years old. These have supported and inspired the Haida's carvings, totem-poles, and the ornate clothes worn during potlatch ceremonies. The dramatic red and black lines of their crest designs—Eagle, Raven, Killer Whale—are immediately recognizable. It is a delightful surprise to discover the Haida's language does not in fact have a word for "art." It's as if its creation were second-nature to them. Today, Haida art graces Canada's paper money; a massive bronze sculpture of a canoe sculpted by Bill Reid sits in front of the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC.

But if Canada has embraced the culture of Indigenous peoples, especially the Haida, it has been a great deal more resistant to their political claims. The provincial and federal governments jealously guard their exclusive reign over the land. The outcome for First Nations' traditional territories has usually been straightforward: its undisturbed apportioning-off to private industry. In Haida Gwaii, the old growth treasures proved irresistable to timber barons, who brought industrial logging to the islands in the early 1900s. Enormous, tough spruce trees became the favoured material for WW2 fighter planes. As part of British Columbia's "resource industrial complex," Gill writes, forestry operations were guaranteed deep support from politicians, in exchange for healthy contributions to government coffers. All the big corporate names— MacMillan, Rayonier, Brascan—eventually took part in the lucrative island industry. They laid bare hillsides with mechanized savagery, moving assuredly to take more and more, from one island to the next.

The Haida began to mount a challenge in the 1970s. One of the most famous wilderness battles anywhere was launched by an act of “kitchen table cartography,” as Gill puts it. Over a late night in a hamlet, Gary Edenshaw—soon to be known as Guujaaw—and an American adventurer named Thom Henley drew a line on a Haida Gwaii map, imagining that all the southern islands below it would be spared full-scale liquidation. The Islands Protection Committee, a meeting of minds between Haida and non-Native island sympathizers, was born that morning. By 1985, pictures of dozens of Haida—including elders on the front line—being arrested during marathon logging blockages were beaming across the country and the world.

Though intertwined with its famous cultural revival, the story of the Haida’s political renaissance is not widely known. Gill, a veteran journalist who has been travelling to Haida Gwaii for a quarter century and made it the subject of two previous books, is well placed to tell it. At the centre of the story is Guujaaw, the President of the Council of the Haida Nation, who has become a kind of reluctant symbol of the Haida's cultural and political transformation.

Gill chronicles Guujaaw's younger exploits, as he drifts from one end of the archipelago to the other, defying the stormy Pacific Ocean on paddling adventures, mapping cultural landmarks in the old-growth forests, and collecting the oral stories and songs of Haida elders. His peers meanwhile scoured the museums of the world to rediscover the artistic techniques of their forebears. As they pieced together their culture and traditions, the Haida began to emerge from the long shadow cast by government bureaucrats, white missionaries and disease. These forces had parceled off Haida lands, asphyxiated their culture and decimated their population, which plummeted from tens of thousands before contact to a mere 350 by 1900. As I visited workshops and studios across the islands, I saw the fruits of the Haida labour in the confident gazes of skilled young artists—sculptors, carvers, or jewelry makers—who have overcome the despair and aimlessness that are all too common symptoms of teenage life on reservations.

I met Guujaaw at his favourite cafe in Skidegate, one of the islands' two reserves. It is within view of a magnificent $26 million art centre and museum, composed of five longhouses, a canoe and carving studio and a hall for traditional ceremonies, which opened for business in the summer of 2009. (In keeping with noted obstacles hindering Haida ambition, the staff complained to me that it was already suffering financially.)

A woman seated next to us offered to buy "Mr. President" his coffee, with a playful servility reserved for a statesman who is also a master carver, poet, drummer, paddler, and everyday trickster. Guujaaw's mischievousness is legendary. He has tried to use a Haida passport to slip into Hungary; declaims about Haida history paralleling that of the the ancient Middle eastern Essene tribe; and writes endless streams of missives, including one to Weyerhauser, the multinational company whose logging has devastated Haida Gwaii, nominating himself to serve as their director. Like the conniving and waggish Raven of Haida mythology, Guujaaw's mischief has always been in the service of serious ends. Guujaaw helped spearhead the first wave of activism in Haida Gwaii in the 1970s and 1980s, which culminated in a 1987 agreement with Canada and BC to create the 147,000-hectare South Moresby national park "reserve,” known also as Gwaii Haanas. Buoyed by their success, the Haida have kept up their protest. Through court challenges and blockades, they have won protection over an even greater territory, via a land-use planning process that will see them share co-management with outside governments. Today, Gwaii Haanas' northern boundaries almost perfectly match the far-fetched line originally drawn by Guujaaw years ago.

"We've gone from having no say over the resources, to now having half of the landscape under protection, all of it to be eco-managed," Guujaaw told me. "We have knocked down the logging to one-third of what it once was." The Haida have also recently negotiated management plans for wildlife and marine life, extending to the waters surrounding Haida Gwaii.

But the Haida's goal is more profound than environmental protection of their territories. They are staking claim to its fundamental ownership. The Haida's challenge—embodied most explicitly in a court writ that asserts their Title to the entirety of the archipelago—hinges on a "gaping hole in the colonizer's paperwork," Gill writes. During early colonization in British Columbia, the business and political elites of the day refused to adhere to the 1763 Royal Proclamation, binding to this day, which required them to sign formal land surrender treaties with Indigenous nations before proceeding with settlement. This has left the overwhelming majority of lands in the province legally unsettled, undermining the "certainty"—a euphemism for unchallenged sovereign control—that government and industry rely on for secure and profitable investment and development.

The government's preferred method for dealing with this jurisdictional headache has been to pick up where other provinces left off in the early 20th century: extinguishment by treaty. Taking advantage of First Nations' poverty, the government presses them to legally relinquish all their traditional lands in exchange for some cash and the right to call five per cent of it their own. The Haida have shunned these "modern treaty" negotiations, using other means to chip away at the edifice of outside control over their islands.

"It has taken a combination of courts, blockades, building alliances, planning and general artful strategems against the trickery and deceit of successive provincial governments," says Guujaaw.

In recent years the Council of the Haida Nation has even managed to win the support of the islands' municipalities, who have pledged "common cause" with the Haida title case. It is an almost unheard of alliance between First Nations and rural, resource-dependent non-Native communities. There is more than a little clear-eyed self-interest at play—loggers figure they may soon be working under Haida watch—but it is still surprising given the Haida leadership's refusal to give an inch on their title.

"Our people would rather hold onto the notion that this is Haida land, even if this means having no real authority over it, than to have to surrender and end up with just a little authority," says Guujaaw.

"All over the land people have hunted and died. There they remain at rest. No part of that can be surrendered."

Famed Indian fighter Geoff Plant, who the government has dispatched to deal with especially tenacious First Nations, was forced to up the ante with the Haida, dangling 20 per cent of their land as an exchange for their title. This is well beyond what any other Indigenous community has been offered, but Guujaaw dismisses it as "mere mischief." Considering the strength of the Haida's position, his is probably an apt description.

The Haida have already won a landmark decision in the Supreme Court in 2004, when the top judges ruled that governments must consult and accommodate First Nations when they are asserting unextinguished Aboriginal rights. (This in part led to the land-use planning process.) The Title case, which is currently in abeyance, will likely soon restart its long, meandering but inevitable course to Ottawa’s highest court chambers. It will be met there with the unyielding response of the government's own legal rejoinder: "British Columbia does not admit the existence of the 'Haida Nation'."

But if the steady, incremental concessions from the Supreme Court are any indication, it is only a matter of time before a First Nation, likely in BC, wins a full declaration of title. The Haida stand a good chance of being the first. When or if this happens, it may radically reshape relations between governments and Indigenous peoples in Canada and beyond.

Though Gill gives a riveting account of the passage of these events, Guujaaw is no fan of the book, especially what he considers its fixation on the trivial private details of Haida life. He recoils at the thought of becoming the hero of the Haida story. As quoted by Gill, Guujaaw believes himself “fairly normal. Everybody should be fighting for the land, everybody should have a relationship with the land, everybody should be doing something cultural.”

Gill’s book remains an informed and articulate plea to heed the example of the Haida—who are energetically and creatively fusing ancient and modern ways of organizing cultural and economic life. As Gill points out, Indigenous peoples may very well hold the planet’s riches in their hands: they occupy 20 per cent of the world’s land surface; comprise 90 per cent of its cultural diversity; and steward 80 per cent of its biological diversity. If the Haida cannot figure out a sustainable form of relation with the 21st century world, we may have nowhere else to turn.

Gill doesn’t shy away from addressing the difficult issues, such as what the new economies Guujaaw and the Haida leadership talk about building will actually look like. The Haida now have their own forest tenure and are looking to buy the largest Tree Farm License on the islands. But just about every non-Native resource industry labourer with whom I hitched rides hee-hawed about the Haida's dismal early logging efforts. The Naikun wind farm has also recently bogged down in divisive debates, and even more basic economic strains present themselves. Some local Haida criticize Guujaaw and the Council of the Haida Nation for draining millions in the court cases while neglecting programs that would support communities mired in poverty: in Skidegate the unemployment rate is near 40 per cent; in Old Massett, the reserve on the island's northern end, it is in excess of 60 per cent.

Whatever the challenges, the Haida seem on an unrelenting path to reconstitute their nation—raising totem poles, relearning their Indigenous tongue, repatriating their ancestors’ human remains, and defending their lands by the many means necessary. These are the Haida ways of "creating magic," in the words of Haida lawyer Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson.

This past December, Guujaaw signed an agreement with premier Gordon Campbell to officially rename their homeland from "Queen Charlotte Island" to "Haida Gwaii," a long-time wish of the Haida. When Campbell visits the islands later in 2010 he will symbolically return the colonial name to the mainland during his flight home. A name may only be a name, but this ceremonious gesture is a telling sign of the Haida's reawakening as a nation. They know who they are, and they are ready to claim what is theirs. Time will tell if Canada is willing to reckon with such a people.

Martin Lukacs is a writer and activist in Montreal. He hitchhiked to Haida Gwaii in July, 2009.

All That We Say is Ours

The Raven and First Men

Demonstrators condemn US relief and reconstruction plans in Haiti

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:12:00 +0000

On Monday January 25, Montreal played host to a major international conference to discuss the continuing relief efforts in Haiti. In attendance were Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive as well as foreign ministers from Canada, US, France, and Brazil, international banks, as well as relief organizations and UN representatives. Demonstrators outside the conference expressed skepticism that the international powers who have coordinated humanitarian efforts will respect Haitian sovereignty and interests during reconstruction.

Canada in Haiti, Part I (video)

Van Ferrier — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:32:58 +0000

Demonstrators condemn US relief and reconstruction plans at Montreal conference

On Monday, January 25, Montreal played host to a major international conference to discuss the continuing relief efforts in Haiti and lay the groundwork for reconstruction. In attendance were Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, foreign ministers from Canada, the US, France, and Brazil, as well as representatives from international banks, relief organizations and the United Nations.

Outside the conference, community organizations and members of the Haitian diaspora in Canada questioned the US military role in the relief efforts. The demonstrators expressed skepticism that the international powers who have coordinated humanitarian efforts will respect Haitian sovereignty and interests during reconstruction.

With contributions from Malcolm Guy.

Edited and produced by Van Ferrier.

Visit www.dominionpaper.ca/video to watch more Dominion video news and videos from around the web related to coverage in the Dominion.

Serge Buchereau

Mont-Royal to become Open-Pit Mine?

Martin Lukacs — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:15:45 +0000

Gold-digging RoyalOr stakes claim in heart of Montreal

MONTREAL–The RoyalOr mining company formally staked a claim to large portions of Parc Mont-Royal – smack in the centre of Montréal – on May 11, announcing plans to develop a major open-pit gold mine.

Anticipating controversy around the move, RoyalOr’s website reassures readers that “our state of the art mitigation and environmental impact strategies coupled with the project’s tremendous potential for regional development will garner the support of municipal and provincial authorities.”

There’s a catch: the company isn’t headed by jet-setting corporate types, but members of communities confronting destructive Canadian mining companies in Honduras, Chile, Papua New Guinea, Mexico, and Malartic, Qc.

In the days leading up to the staking claim action, organizers with the Québec Coalition on the Socio-Environmental Impacts of Transnationals in Latin America (CQISETAL) hoped the stunt would make Montrealers understand the adverse effects of unregulated mining.

“It might give them a momentary sense of what it must be like to wake up one morning to a mining company busily at work destroying one’s land and community,” says Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, a McGill University history professor and coalition member.

The development of an open-pit mine in the heart of Montréal may seem far-fetched, but Studnicki-Gizbert says Canadian companies tend to disregard communities when in pursuit of precious metals and profits.

In the 400-year-old Mexican town of Cerro de San Pedro, short-listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, residents have been fighting a 15-year battle against Canadian-owned Minera San Xavier’s open-pit mine, which has reduced the town’s landmark mountain to rubble. For local Mario Martinez, a retired engineer, that’s the equivalent of losing Mont-Royal. It hurts him as much, he says, as police intimidation, constant dynamiting, the pollution of the town’s water supply by cyanide-leaching and the company’s refusal to comply with mining regulations.

“That mountain had extraordinary historical and cultural value for Mexicans,” says Martinez. “It was an emblem for the town and the entire state. You could find it in public institutions and on the state’s coat of arms. Three weeks ago, the company blasted its way to the bottom of the hill.”

The idea of staking Mont-Royal came to Martinez when he traveled to Montréal in 2007 to protest Canadian investment in the mine, and to encourage the federal government to adopt mandatory social responsibility standards for overseas corporate behaviour. The Conservatives rejected such standards last month.

“I hope this puts Canadians in our shoes, and makes them feel, even if only for a second, what we feel on a day-to-day basis,” he says.

Closer to home, Ugo Lapointe, a trained geologist with La coalition pour que le Québec ait meilleure mine!, says Québec’s mining system, which the right-wing Fraser Institute has called the world’s friendliest, is in urgent need of an overhaul. One of its most disturbing showpieces is in the northern town of Malartic, where a low grade open-pit mine will displace hundreds of families.

Under Québec's free entry process, a prospector with a $30 license can lay a claim to lands anywhere, on a first come first served basis, which is how CQISETAL will register their Mont-Royal stake with the Ministry of Natural Resources.

“The five communities represented at this action, inside or outside Canada, are living a similar nightmare, dealing with the same problems of weak mining codes and companies operating with no accountability,” he says.

A version of this story was originally published in the Montreal Mirror.

Mont Royal 1

Minister's Memo Exposes Motives for Removing Algonquin Chief

dru — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:05:43 +0000

INAC expected collaboration with new Chief but feared legal repercussions and perception of government sponsorship

MONTREAL–A secret document obtained by The Dominion reveals Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) decided to replace the leadership of Barriere Lake First Nation, which officials considered "dogmatized," with a chief and council offering “improved collaboration."

The memo sent to Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl recommends recognizing leadership claimant Casey Ratt in place of Chief Benjamin Nottaway, but predicts such a move will lead to community violence, erection of barricades, legal challenges and "media pressure" based on the "perception of a council sponsored by INAC.”

Strahl signed off on the memo on March 3, 2008. In an April letter to the Ottawa Citizen he maintains that INAC was following the wishes of the community and was not "backing one group over another."

Ratt's ascent to power in the northern Quebec Algonquin community of 450 has been fiercely contested by Nottaway's supporters, who allege INAC ousted an assertive leadership and empowered a group that violated customary leadership protocols.

The Barriere Lake Algonquins select their leadership not by ballot, but by a strict Customary Governance Code that involves the nomination of candidates by elders and their approval in community assemblies. As Strahl states in his public letter, INAC's "role is to simply acknowledge the outcome and register the results."

But the Elder's Council in Barriere Lake quickly launched a judicial review of Strahl's move, arguing INAC went beyond their legal bounds in deciding who should be in power. In April, INAC motioned to dismiss the Elder's case, maintaining INAC did not make a “decision” reviewable by the courts.

The February 18 memo demonstrates that decisions were in fact made. Instead of carefully assessing whether a leadership selection conducted by Ratt's supporters in late January 2008 accorded with the Customary Governance Code, it focuses on the benefits and drawbacks of three possible INAC responses: recognizing Ratt, maintaining relations with Nottaway, or withdrawing recognition for Nottaway and mediating or imposing an electoral system on the community.

According to the memo, keeping ties with Nottaway would entail "continuity of tensed [sic] relations between INAC and the Band Council, considering its claims." For nearly two decades, Nottaway's supporters have been locked in a battle with INAC and Quebec over the implementation of a landmark Trilateral agreement that would give the First Nation say over resource use on 10,000 square kilometres of their traditional territory.

Despite Nottaway's council's "claim to its legitimacy," the memo expresses preference for a band council headed by Casey Ratt, detailing "positive impacts" that include “improved collaboration of the new council with INAC,” a “new council less dogmatized," and a "new environment more favourable to the development of the community" and a "healing process."

A 2006 attempt by Ratt’s supporters to select a chief and council was dismissed after mediation in 2007 by Quebec Superior Court Judge Réjean Paul, who called the group a “small minority” whose selection process “did not follow the Customary Governance Code." Over that year INAC withdrew recognition from Nottaway's customary predecessor, Chief Jean-Maurice Matchewan, until Judge Paul issued the report affirming his legitimacy.

The secret memo acknowledges Judge Paul’s "approach" and admits INAC "does not have all the information" regarding Ratt's recent selection, but states an independent observer "partly related the process' compliance with custom requirements."

When INAC cited this local court worker's report in a March 10 letter notifying Nottaway he was no longer Chief, officials refused to release it to the community. The Elder Council's lawyers obtained it through court months later and discovered that the observer had in fact stated he "couldn’t guarantee” Ratt had followed the Customary Governance Code.

The memo also dismisses taking advantage of the "shaky situation" in the community to impose an Indian Act election system, because its "major impacts" would require further analysis. Inside observers say such a move, which would unilaterally discard the community's customary selection by a Minister's order, could risk being deemed unconstitutional.

Strahl has come under fire recently after documents leaked to the Globe & Mail revealed that INAC secretly plans to revive the Liberals' First Nations Governance Act, which includes challenging "flawed" or "outdated" customary selections of First Nation leaders.

The memo mentions the possibility of “barricades” and suggests informing the Quebec police to "ensure the supervision of the community in the days following the announcement of the new Council." Community members tried to bar Ratt from returning to the reserve in March, dragging trees along the reserve's access road. Ratt required escort by police, who arrested a dozen people and maintained a heavy presence in the community for two weeks, preventing Nottaway's council from accessing any administrative buildings.

While these earlier incidents received little attention, Barriere Lake acquired a higher profile after Nottaway's supporters blockaded a major Quebec highway in October and November 2008, rallying to the demand that INAC implement the Trilateral Agreement and appoint an observer to witness and respect the outcome of a new leadership selection. Nottaway was arrested and jailed for two months in the winter for his participation, arousing condemnation of the Conservative government from Green Party leader Elizabeth May, the NDP, and major unions.

Ratt issued a press release after the blockades stating the former council "focused too much of their attention on the trilateral agreement" and that it was time the "First Nation moves forward." INAC pulled out of the agreement in 2001.

The secret memo was released by the Ministry of Justice on March 13, almost a year after a request filed by lawyers for the Elder's Council was initially denied because INAC maintained they had not made a “decision” about leadership.

Withholding the document, INAC won a dismissal of the Elder's Council judicial review in August but then lost an appeal before a federal court in January. The Judge concluded that a reviewable "decision" had been made and emphasized that the legal status of the Ratt Council remained uncertain, despite recognition from Strahl. After another request for documents, a privacy commissioner green-lighted the memo's release. The court case over leadership will proceed this summer.

Martin Lukacs is a writer and activist, and a member of the Barriere Lake solidarity collective in Montreal.

Secret Memo: Barriere Lake

Barriere Lake Arrests

Coup d'état in Indian Country

hillarybain — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:00:36 +0000

Community members say traditional leadership ousted by the Canadian government

Marylynn Pouchachiche thought the video camera her mother-in-law purchased with residential school compensation money was the perfect gift for building the family album.

But when a massive Quebec police force pepper-sprayed and billy clubbed their way through her small Algonquin community, enforcing the federal government's March 10 decision to oust the traditional Chief and Council and appoint a small faction as the leadership, she took on the new documentary subject with bitter irony.

"It's just another one of the government tactics we've had to face," said Pouchachie, while showing me film of the arrests of ten people, including her husband. The group was protesting the return of Casey Ratt, recognized by the Canadian government as the new Chief of Barriere Lake, despite their already having a Chief and Council in place.

The regime change has left the community of 450, located three hours north of Ottawa, in a political crisis. Pouchachie and others allege that the government is trying to can a co-management agreement Barriere Lake signed with Canada and Quebec nearly twenty years ago – and which has yet to be implemented. Under the agreement, Barriere Lake would gain a decisive say in the management of their traditional territories, benefit from the forestry industry, and preserve their traditional way of life.

Pierre Nepton, the Associate Director of the Regional Office of Indian Affairs, emphasized that the government did not intervene.

Unlike most other reservations, which are mandated under the Indian Act to select leadership through elections, Barriere Lake’s leadership is selected through customary laws. In January, Pouchachie says a small faction of community members organized a separate leadership selection process and then sought recognition from the government.

“We were satisfied by their leadership process, and we recognized the [new] council,” said Nepton. “I want to emphasize that the decision was made by the community.”

But ousted Customary Chief Benjamin Nottaway, who maintains the majority of the community does not support the new Chief, believes Nepton has other motivations for recognizing the new leadership.

"We think the two groups [department of Indian Affairs and the small faction] are collaborating," he said. "The two sides want to cut a new deal for programs and services that ignores the previous agreements we've signed."

The “trailblazing” agreement

In 1961, a priest and the Quebec government negotiated Barriere Lake's 59-acre reservation, which rests on badly eroded sand near a reservoir that flooded the land decades earlier.

In the 1980s, unrestrained clear-cut logging and the depletion of game stock within Quebec's La Vérendrye Provincial Park – a park that covers part of the Algonquin’s traditional territories - threatened the harvesting lines where Barriere Lake community members continue to hunt and trap.

Their initial protests were ignored, but after blockading logging roads under the leadership of their Customary Chief Jean-Maurice Matchewan, Canada and Quebec signed the Trilateral Agreement in 1991.

The Trilaterial Agreement is a forestry co-management and sustainable development plan for 10,000 square kilometres of the Algonquin’s traditional territories, praised by the United Nations as a "trailblazer" and recommended by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples as a model for resolving resource conflicts.

Just before the Trilateral's implementation in 2001, however, Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault pulled out. Nault said the process had dragged on for too long and cost too much.

The regional economy draws $100 million annually through logging, hydro-electricity, and tourism from the surrounding land, but the Algonquin, who live in mouldy, overcrowded housing without electricity from the hydro-grid, have yet to receive a cent.

Disputed leadership

The lack of progress on the agreement has fueled increasingly acrimonious divisions over leadership.

"I'm trying to pick up after the former council," said new chief Casey Ratt, who has already started negotiating an infrastructure plan with Indian Affairs officials. "They [the protesters] were trying to shut down everything, so they could play the victim card."

Michel Thusky, a community elder, says minor infrastructure deals only offer quick fixes and won't ensure long-term development suited to the community’s needs.

"[The new council] is clueless, and they're being used," he said. "It's not Indian Affairs programs and services that are going to preserve and sustain our culture, language, and connection to the land."

Community members say the federal and provincial governments never liked the Trilateral Agreement. If implemented, it would establish long-term measures to protect their harvest lines and areas of medicinal and spiritual importance from logging, conserve wildlife, give them a share in resource-revenue, and not require them to extinguish their Aboriginal title, precedents that other native communities in Quebec and across Canada might like to follow.

Background to a coup

During the Trilateral Agreement's first phase, which provided research funding and interim measures to harmonize logging with Algonquin land uses, Quebec and Ottawa dragged their heels. "It is David and not Goliath who is attempting to sustain the agreement," Quebec Superior Court Judge Rheajan Paul wrote during mediation in 1993. "If one wants [the agreement] to die, one only has to shut off the funding tap."

In 1996, after resuming funding, the Department of Indian Affairs changed tactics. They rescinded recognition of the Customary Chief and Council and appointed a small faction, keen on getting a piece of the logging action, as an "Interim Band Council."

Never subject to the Indian Act's electoral band council system, Barriere Lake's hereditary Chiefs and Councillors are nominated by an Elder's Council and selected in community assemblies. The community assemblies are open only to Barriere Lake adults who live on the traditional territories and maintain a connection to the land. But after the faction submitted a signed petition, Indian Affairs claimed the community's leadership customs had evolved into "selection by petition."

This Indian Affairs-supported leadership was rejected by the community, and forced to rule as a "government-in-exile" from Maniwaki, a town 150 kilometres to the south. Through 1996, the group received millions from Indian Affairs while community members in Barriere Lake were deprived of funding for employment, social assistance, electricity and schooling for more than a year.

"The whole community got together, and survived on the traditional territory," said Thusky, who worries that scenario might be repeated, with a few new twists. "It was the same players then, but we didn't have the SQ [Quebec Provincial Police] to deal with, so we managed to keep the government-supported band council away."

After mediation in 1997 restored the Customary Chief and Council, and Indian Affairs agreed to restore the withheld funding, the community codified their traditional laws into a 'Customary Governance Code.' Superior Court Judge Paul concluded that their customs had not changed, and judicial review later revealed that Indian Affairs had instructed the small group to submit the petition.

Same old government tricks

Community members now believe Indian Affairs is up to its old tricks. In 2006, Jean Maurice Matchewan was re-elected Customary Chief, but a small faction ran a parallel leadership selection, claiming to have adhered to the Customary Governance Code. Indian Affairs refused to recognize Matchewan, and then put the community under Third Party Management – which mandates that an external consultant unilaterally run the community's finances and funding – claiming it was justified by Barriere Lake's large deficit and leadership uncertainty.

The Customary Elder's Council immediately challenged the decision in federal court, arguing the deficit issues could be cleared up if the money owed to Barriere Lake from the 1996 funding deprivation had been repaid as promised.

But in the yearly funding budget, negotiated by the Third Party Manager and Indian Affairs in 2007, the money owed by the government was simply struck from the record.

Associate Director Nepton refused to comment on the matter.

Superior Court Judge Paul confirmed the legitimacy of Matchewan's council in leadership mediation in spring 2007, calling the challengers a "small minority" who "did not respect the Customary Governance Code."

New chief Casey Ratt insists he has majority support this time, but has refused to enter a leadership re-selection process demanded by the Elder's Council to settle the leadership division.

Indian Affairs says it plans to take the new council off Third Party Management, something the previous leadership say was never offered to them. The new council has also indicated it wants to quash the court case challenging the federal government for unfairly imposing Third Party Management and for breaching the Trilateral Agreement.

Meanwhile, Quebec has sat for a year-and-a-half on the recommendations for its Trilateral obligations – including implementation of the co-management regime and a $1.5 million yearly share in resource revenue. But even with Quebec's agreement, the Trilateral could only go ahead with federal co-operation.

Marylynn Pouchachie says the last weeks have taken a toll on everyone, including children, who have acted out the leadership rivalry with name-calling. "I think the government has us where they want us, fighting with each other and forgetting about the real issues," she said. "And they can then keep exploiting our land and renegotiate the outstanding issues on their terms."

Police In Barriere Lake

Barriere Lake Protest