The Dominion - British Columbia

Peace Region Boom

Miles — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 09:22:50 +0000

Growth in northern town leaves residents feeling the pinch

WINNIPEG—Home to 12,000 permanent residents, Dawson Creek, BC, is surrounded by productive agricultural land and is known as the place where the Alaska Highway begins. Located 600 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, Dawson Creek has seen many cycles of “boom and bust” since the Second World War. During the war, this town was home to a US Army base that built a highway from Dawson Creek to Delta Junction, Alaska—a distance of 2,700 kilometres through the bush—over the span of only eight months.

But this small town, located in the South Peace region of northern BC, has become a stage for controversy, as natural gas development continues to pump millions of dollars into the local economy, despite concerns that some people feel left behind. Currently, the community is experiencing likely the largest “boom” period in the town’s history.

“The development in our area has helped add stability to our economy,” says Mayor Mike Bernier in an email. Bernier has professional history in the natural gas industry, having moved to Dawson Creek in 1993 to work for Pacific Northern Gas. He has been mayor of Dawson Creek since 2008.

“We have seen many companies choose to move to Dawson Creek to capitalize on the opportunities," he says. "Our developers are building as fast as they can to keep up with the demand.”

But in the town, which has been recognized provincially for its progressive municipal planning, opinions remain divided regarding the pace of development, especially when the economic driver is the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” to get at shale gas reserves.

The area was put on high alert in 2008 and 2009 when several EnCana gas wells were bombed in protest. While RCMP conducted a massive investigation, including an intensive search of convicted oil and gas “saboteur” Wiebo Ludwig’s nearby property, so far no charges have been laid in the case. A $1 million reward has been offered.

Ludwig has been an outspoken critic of oil and gas development in the area since the 1990s, when his family, and his livestock, began to experience negative health impacts. Ludwig claimed these impacts—which included rashes, headaches, nausea and still-births—were a result of living in close proximity to a natural gas flare. He was convicted in 2000 of five charges related to industrial sabotage of oil and gas wells in the area surrounding Hythe, Alberta, a 30 minute drive from Dawson Creek. Ludwig served two-thirds of his 28-month sentence before being released in 2001. In 2011, Ludwig was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus.

“For people living in outlying areas with gas batteries in their backyards and stuff, they don’t like it one bit,” says Andrew Triebel, a local tattoo artist. “But at the same time, these [companies] are paying for our public programs. We just have to face the fact that this world is reliant on fossil fuel and this part of the country is rich in it, but there’s got to be a happy medium between corporate profits and ruining our resources forever.”

Marilyn Belak, a former city councilor from 2002 to 2011, and resident of Dawson Creek since the 1970s, says the city’s “greatest challenge is the ‘hurry-hurry’ traditional character of the oil and gas industry.” During Belak’s time on council, Dawson Creek was recognized as a provincial leader in developing and implementing municipal sustainability policy.

“The general industry ethos is to hurry in,” says Belak. “Everything is hurry up and drill and stockpile and pipe. The Oil and Gas Commission services the industry needs above all and the environment and public interests are not addressed in any meaningful and coordinated way.”

Despite opposition from some residents, natural gas development shows no signs of cooling anytime soon. Recently, PetroChina made a billion-dollar investment in Royal Dutch Shell’s massive Groundbirch shale gas project just north of Dawson Creek, making PetroChina a 20 per cent shareholder in the project. And in a recently released report, BC’s Ministry of Energy and Mines detailed how natural gas production—the bulk of which is produced in northeastern BC—could almost triple over the next decade, going from 1.1 trillion cubic feet annually to three trillion cubic feet by 2020.

“With demand growing quickly, prices in Asia are up to four times [what] they are in North America,” wrote Rich Coleman, Minister of Energy and Mines and Minister Responsible for Housing, in the introduction to the report. “BC is ideally positioned to compete for a share of that lucrative market.”

Even though the demand is growing, particularly from Asian countries, full exploitation of the resource is still dependent on variables that are not yet in place. Three major liquid natural gas (LNG) plants in Kitimat, BC, are in the proposal stage. These plants would prepare natural gas from northeastern BC for transport via tanker to markets in Asia. These LNG plants, and any pipeline network needed to transport gas from the Peace Region to the northwest coast, have yet to pass environmental review.

Committing long-term to Asian markets is dangerous for Canada’s long-term energy security, argues veteran geoscientist David Hughes.

“Canada has had no energy strategy since the demise of the National Energy Program (NEP) in the mid-1980s other than ‘let the markets rule,’” Hughes wrote in a recent paper on the subject. “As a result, short-term corporate needs for profit and growth rule the day, often at the expense of the longer-term energy and environmental needs of Canadians.”

Blair Lekstrom, MLA for the South Peace region and former mayor of Dawson Creek from 1996 to 2001, believes that the pace of development in the Peace region is sustainable over the long term. While Lekstrom has had his ups and downs with the provincial Liberal party—at one point he resigned his cabinet position over opposition to the provincial HST—he is currently the minister for transportation and infrastructure.

“The natural gas industry is extremely important to the northeast part of British Columbia, as well as the entire province,” he told The Dominion via email. “It is the single largest contributor to the economy of BC and creates thousands of jobs for families of our region.”

But not every worker coming to the region is necessarily bringing a family in tow, and a migrant workforce has created problems of its own.

The influx of hundreds of workers has created a surge in demand for the hospitality industry in Dawson Creek, and has subsequently driven the cost of housing for permanent residents skyward. For a standard, three-bedroom, 1000-square-foot, 30-year-old house, Blaine Nicholson, a real estate agent in Dawson Creek since 1978, estimates prices to be between $200,000 and $250,000, prices comparable to urban centres like Edmonton.

“That’s kind of your starter home,” Nicholson says. “If you wanted to get into something nicer you could get into a brand new home, in a new subdivision, three-bedroom, 1200 square feet, full basement, unfinished...they’re starting at $360,000.”

Despite the negative effect of increased housing prices, Bernier and others continue to argue that these developments are good for the town.

“There have been five new hotels built, new apartment buildings, and lots of residential development,” says Bernier. “The past three years have been the best in our city’s history for private investment.”

Nicholson confirms Bernier’s position.

“It’s never been this busy before,” he told The Dominion. “Most of the hotels in town are operating at 95 per cent occupancy right now, and the only reason they’re not 100 per cent is because of turn-over. Oil patch guys are getting their ‘living out’ allowances, so they’re living out of hotels, paying between $100 a night and $175 a night, and they’re staying in for weeks or months at a time.”

According to a recent article in the Vancouver Province, the increased demands on the hospitality industry has led to a shortage of kitchen and cleaning staff for some hotels and restaurants. The same article says hotels have applied to employ temporary foreign workers through the federal government. If their applications are approved, it would allow them to access temporary labour at lower wages than they would have to pay for local labour. The minimum wage in BC is $9.50 per hour.

With production from gas wells expected to continue increasing over the next ten years, many long-term residents are beginning to feel as though they are lost within their home community.

“It used to be you could go out and anyone you saw, you either knew them or you knew their face, had seen them somewhere before,” reflects Jason Reinitz, a lifelong area resident. “Now it’s just becoming faceless...People appreciate the money it’s bringing in and all. But, and I’ve heard this from a lot of people, it’s not the same place anymore.”

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, editor and song & dance man living in Winnipeg.

Dawson Creek

My Story of Domestic Violence and Child Apprehension

mccabe.melissa — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:34:42 +0000

A dispatch from the In our Own Voices writing project

VANCOUVER—I was abused by my ex-partner, who is also my children’s father, for ten and a half years. I had four children with him—Angela, Rosalie, Mike and Jackson. I was beat all throughout my first pregnancy, and as a result my girl Angela was born a month early. She did not develop properly and was born with her heart on the right side of her body. She was a Mother’s Day baby, born on May 13, 1973, at 5 lbs 11 oz. I named her Angela Michelle because she looked just like an angel. She only lived to the age of 16 and died on January 17, 1990, in Prince George.

It is for her and in her memory that I tell this story.

You might be wondering why I stayed in a violent relationship for that long? I grew up without a dad and was often called a "bastard." I was always taunted with sayings such as, "Do you even know who your dad is?" It hurt a lot to be bullied and I did not want my own children to go through the same experience. So I silently suffered the abuse. At the time I did not realize that it was equally bad, if not worse, for my children to witness the violence of their father beating up their own mother.

I tell this story for the women who are still in abusive relationships so that they will have the courage to get out. Anyone who controls you and physically and emotionally hurts you does not love you. We have to understand that violence against women is always unacceptable, and as Native women we are five-times more likely than other women to die as the result of violence.

I became an alcoholic while I was in the relationship. The alcohol would numb the pain of being beaten; it would numb me for when he got home in the evenings so I could tolerate all the kicks and punches; it would numb me against his false accusations of me cheating on him when he was the one cheating on me with other women.

As a result of my drinking, the Ministry of Child and Family Development (MCFD) became involved in my children’s lives. I had several visits from MCFD over the years and they told me to stop drinking and to get counseling, but I could not stop drinking. They also told me to leave my ex-partner, but I had nowhere to go. For years, MCFD kept apprehending my children. Sometimes they would take my children away for a few weeks; sometimes it was for a few months.

Then in December 1981, in a surprise visit, MCFD workers came to my home. I was not home, but my children’s father was supposed to be home. However he had left them alone in the house and the upstairs neighbour called MCFD. MCFD apprehended my children, this time seeking a permanent order. That meant that my young children, ages one to five, were going to essentially be kidnapped from me forever.

I broke down and started drinking even more heavily. I felt that if I did not have my children, then I had nothing to live for and would rather drink myself to death. One night in March 1982 I drank so much that I felt my heart was going to stop. That night I decided that I did not actually want to die an alcoholic and that I had to fight for my children.

I quit drinking cold-turkey. I went for alcohol counseling at the Native Courtworkers Society and also enrolled at Native Education Society to get my GED. I finally left my partner. After a few months I was able to get two-hour supervised visits with my children every six to eight weeks, but only after I appealed the decision by MCFD to deny me visits entirely.

After I won my right to supervised visits, I decided to appeal MCFD’s decision to apprehend my children permanently. I did not even know that I could appeal this decision until I was informed by an advocate at Native Courtworkers that I could. I realized that MCFD had not informed me of my basic legal rights as a parent and did not actually care to fulfill their responsibility and mandate to keep families together. I felt that as a survivor of violence and as a Native woman, I was being re-victimized by being labeled as a bad mother who was unable to protect her children.

After four years of fighting in the Court system, I finally won my case and my children were given back to me in 1986. Throughout the four years I often felt like giving up but I knew I had to fight for my family. The MCFD social worker reported to the Court that I was ‘not showing love and affection’ to my children. But the Court-ordered psychologist determined that there was lots of affection between us and said that it was clear that my children wanted to come back home. I thank Dr. Diane Mitchell for helping me win my case by recommending that my children be returned. It is frustrating though that we have to rely on these professionals to validate us.

The whole system of child apprehension is grossly unfair and unjust. From my experience and those of other women I know, it seems that the Ministry is interested in keeping children in the foster system rather than returning them to their parents. Most of the children in MCFD’s custody are Native children. In BC, Native children are 6.3 times more likely to be removed from their homes than non-Native children. I believe this is both a continuation of the residential school experience—where children are torn away from their families and communities are destroyed—as well as a consequence of residential schools, which has forced Native families into social dysfunction with rampant alcohol and drug use and abuse in the home. I feel like the odds are stacked against us, but still we continue on.

I am now 29 years sober and my three beautiful children—Rosalie and Michael and Jackson—are parents themselves. Once I had my children back, I told my boys to never hit a woman because it is like hitting your mother. I still live with the guilt about what happened to my deceased daughter Angela. I also felt responsible when my other daughter Rosalie was in an abusive relationship worse than mine. I felt that she thought it was okay to be abused because she watched me take it. But now my daughter Rosalie is happy and has a beautiful eight-year-old daughter named Kayla. My son Michael is 31 years old and has been clean from heroin for several years now. He is working and has a two-year-old daughter named Tayla. My youngest son Jackson is 30 years old and recently graduated from the Academy of Learning. He has a wonderful ten-month-old baby girl named Gianna. I am so proud of my children and thank the Creator for every new day. Love to all my family and friends.

B. has lived in Vancouver for 35 years. She is from Bella Bella. She is currently 29 years sober and volunteers at the Downtown Eastside Womens’ Centre. She loves being part of the DTES Power of Women Group because the group fights for everything she has been through—from violence and abuse to child apprehension—and gives her a voice! She also marches in the February 14th Womens’ Memorial March Committee for her murdered sister and niece.

Recently, B. was in the hospital for two months due to double pneumonia. She went through surgery for her right lung on December 28, 2010. She feels lucky to be alive and would like to thank all her family and friends for their prayers and visits, which meant a lot to her.

This story is part of the Downtown Eastside Power of Women “In Our Own Voices” writing project. For more information and to read more stories, please visit http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group

B. Photo by Joe Philipson

The Strength to Carry on

mccabe.melissa — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:49:20 +0000

Residential school survivor speaks out as part of In Our Own Voices writing project

The stories that make up the In Our Own Voices writing project are the fruits of weeks of exercises, workshops, drafts and revisions. They are personal stories, written by members of the Power of Women Group, who organize out of the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre.

These are stories of incredible hardship, resistance, struggle, courage, and resilience; of grappling with and sometimes overcoming fear, addictions, abuse, and illness; and of persistent state violence and racism, dealt liberally and frequently, and usually without a modicum of justice.

Stella's is just one of the voices that you’ll find on the Vancouver Media Co-op site this month. In the place of fragments, a passing nod at a rally or a quick hello on the street, readers can walk beside these brave, powerful women.

—Dawn Paley

VANCOUVER—I was six years old when I was taken away from my parents and grandparents in Ahousat, BC and forced into a residential school. The Department of Indian Affairs came to our reserve every year in the 1950s, taking Native children away and placing them in residential schools to learn the White way of life.

In residential schools, under the federal policy of “aggressive assimilation,” we were stripped of our language, our culture, and our customs. We had to scrub ourselves clean until we were White. It is estimated that approximately 150,000 Native children were removed from our communities and forced to attend residential schools, with the last school closing only as recently as 1996.

I was forced to attend the Christie Indian Residential School and then the Mission City St. Mary’s Residential School. I felt like I was in a concentration camp. In these schools, we were punished for speaking our language. Our punishment was being kept in isolation in a dark room for the whole day. Often we would be fed food from the garbage and be forced to drink raw cow milk. We were strapped and beaten until we were too sore to stand.

If we did not get up on time in the mornings, the nuns would drag us across the floor, beat us, and make us go without breakfast. I remember every morning they would wake us up by saying: “You are not on the reserve; you are in White Man’s land. Indians are liars, filthy and good for nothing. You don’t want to live like an Indian.”

When we were silent, they made us talk. But when we talked, they did not like what we had to say and persistently hit us while repeating: “God doesn’t like you talking like that.” We were too scared to do anything. We would often go without food and there would be no activities. At nighttime we would often see the children taken out of their dorm rooms and they would come back crying and bleeding.

I was incredibly lonely in the residential schools. The priests and nuns did not like us making friends with each other. Even brothers and sisters were kept apart and forced to act like strangers with one another. From the time I was placed in residential schools, I did not have a single kind word said to me. No one appreciated me for the individual I was, or the culture I came from.

All I remember is being punished for anything and everything. I still have horrible flashbacks. I grew up with a tremendous amount of shame and loss of dignity. I believe that residential schools were prisons for young children.

I managed to get out of residential school earlier than the other children because one day my brother managed to sneak a phone call to my grandparents and told them to come get me. The nuns had beaten me so badly across my head with a stick and a ruler that my ears would not stop bleeding. My grandparents got me out of the school for a special doctor’s visit. The doctor determined that I had permanently lost my hearing in both ears. My grandparents were furious and kept me at home, refusing to send me back to the residential school. When the school called the Indian band office looking for me, my grandparents told the school and the Indian agents that the nuns had given me a severely damaged ear. The officials hung up the phone and did not try forcing me back.

When I was older, I moved to the Downtown Eastside. Almost 60 per cent of Native people and 72 per cent of Native women now live in urban settings with the erosion of the land base of our communities and Indian Act regulations limiting women’s access to housing on the reserves. I, too, drifted here from the Island and found work at a fish plant. Since then, this neighbourhood has become my permanent home.

Like me, most people here carry deep scars. It is hard to describe all the different experiences that women have, for example the history of abuse that has brought many of us here to the DTES, the brutality of child apprehensions that many of us have borne as a direct result of poverty, the fact that many of us do not know our parents because of the legacy of residential schools and colonization has destroyed our families, the chronic and often fatal illnesses such as AIDS and Hepatitis C that break our bodies, the grief of living through the deaths of our missing and murdered sisters, and much more. People who drive by us every day to work have no idea what nightmares we live with. My heart wants to shatter when I hear some of the stories about why people have turned to drugs and alcohol.

The Downtown Eastside is the poorest part of town. Low-income housing in the DTES is of such sub-standard quality that many prefer to sleep on the streets. Problems in the single-room occupancies include: absence of heat, toilets, and running water; presence of mold, bedbug infestations and rats; and illegal practices by landlords including refusal to return damage deposits, entering rooms without permission, and arbitrary evictions.

In the DTES Power of Women Group, we support our people to get proper homes. The government should provide a living wage and a decent home for all people so that we have somewhere to stay and so that no one has to work the street. A lot of our young people are working for drug dealers. Women who owe drug debts have much harm come to them, sometimes even death, like the murder of 22-year-old Ashley Machisknic last year. A lot of girls who have to work in the sex-trade are further abused by their clients and their pimps and often don’t get paid.

And then there is the constant harassment on the street by police officers. I have seen officers walk by and kick people while they are passed out or sleeping on the street. Our people are not able to defend themselves against guns and tasers. It hurts me to see people slammed to the pavement by police officers just because they are poor and nobody cares what happens to poor people.

But the hidden truth of the Downtown Eastside is that despite the poverty, criminalization, and trauma, we all care for each other and socialize with one another. Especially in the DTES Power of Women Group, where we are like one family and support the community on issues such as police brutality, child apprehensions, violence against women, and housing. Whether people are sober or high on drugs, we listen to each other’s dreams and desires to make this neighbourhood a better place for ourselves.

Stella's is just one of the voices that you’ll find on the Vancouver Media Co-op site this month. Readers can walk beside these brave, powerful women. This story is part of the Downtown Eastside Power of Women “In Our Own Voices” writing project. For more information and to read more stories, click here.

Stella August, from the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation, was born in 1945 in Ahousat, BC. She is a long-time resident of the Downtown Eastside. When she joined the DTES Power of Women Group she learnt that as a woman in this neighbourhood, she has a voice and a collective group through which to support her people. She is also a member of the Feb 14th Womens’ memorial march Committee.

Dawn Paley is a journalist and organizer with the Vancouver Media coop, where the full version of her introduction can be read. Stories from In Our Own Voices can be read on the VMC.

POW members at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre

The Downtown East side Power of Women Group Present In Our Own Voices Writing Project

BC Hydro-St'at'imc Authority Agreement Creates a Wave of Opposition

Moira Peters — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 05:17:30 +0000

Deal opens territory to hydro in new ways, say critics

VANCOUVER—A new agreement between BC Hydro, the province of British Columbia and the St'at'imc Chiefs Council was approved in a nation-wide vote last weekend, but a group of St'at'imc community members say they're still determined to stop the deal.

The six-volume agreement is said to have a net-worth of $210 million. It is payable over the next 99 years through a nation-wide trust and individual one-time payouts for each of the 11 St’at’imc communities.

Confidential talks between St'at'imc negotiators and BC Hydro took place over the last 17 years, and the contents of the agreement were released to St'at'imc people in January 2011. It went to a vote on April 9, 2011. An estimated 45 per cent of St’at’imc people participated, 72 per cent of whom voted in favour of the deal.

"The majority of our people didn't even know about [the agreement]," said Roger Adolph, who was chief of the Xaxli'p band for 21 years. “It was initialed off by the Chiefs in December of 2010, then they started having information sessions in January, February and March,” he said.

Mike Leach, Chair of the St’at’imc Chiefs Council, was one of the key negotiators of the agreement.

“It is definitely a good deal, because we're only dealing with one issue—we're dealing with only the impacts of hydro on the territory,” Leach said. “There is no extinguishment of St’at’imc rights to our lands.”

But the agreement does provide BC Hydro with certainty of access and possession to transmission lines and all their facilities on St’at’imc territory, which lies northwest of the Fraser Valley. St'at'imc territory, which has never been surrendered or ceded, is already home to three dams, two reservoirs and four generating stations, as well as 15 transmission circuits that make up 850 kilometres of transmission lines. In addition, BC Hydro has built 160 kilometres of access roads and four recreation facilities in St'at'imc lands.

“The agreement will provide BC Hydro and the Province of BC with operational certainty for BC Hydro’s existing facilities into the future,” reads a press release put out by the company last week.

“As I read it, Aboriginal title has not been extinguished, but it has been limited,” said Adolph, who is a vocal critic of the agreement, and says the recent agreement will change the parameters of struggle against future BC Hydro projects in St’at’imc territory.

"The Chiefs have agreed that if any individual, group or community that advances a title and right issue [against BC Hydro] through direct action, the Chiefs will come down on those people to stop them,” said Adolph.“It's right in the agreement, in the certainty agreement. I call it a gag order.”

A gag order has already been put into effect at the local level: on April 6, 2011, the publisher of the St’at’imc Runner was locked out of the office where she’s worked for the last five years. The reason given was that the monthly community newspaper ran a four-page ad, paid for by individuals, pushing for a “no” vote on April 9. This came just after BC Hydro provided St’at’imc Nation Hydro with a $500,000 “interim payment," upon the Chiefs’ initialing the agreement on December 17. These funds were used to promote and carry out its ratification.

Spokespeople for BC Hydro and the provincial Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation refused to comment on the agreement.

This is the first time that the St’at’imc people have, as a nation, made any kind of agreement with the province. This raises additional considerations: they now must officially form a nation-level government.

“In order to manage this agreement we will have to put into place a St’at’imc government,” said Leach, who at the moment is interim chair of the St’at’imc Chiefs Council. “Once we've agreed on a format for that government, which we're working on now just to be able to manage this agreement, cause there's a lot involved, there will be an election for a chair once that is done.”

“So if I decided to run, I become the chair, right?” he said, pausing for a moment before adding, “or maybe somebody else.”

But for some, signing an agreement before a structure with a mandate to represent the nation exists is putting the chicken before the egg.

“It's 11 chiefs getting together called the St’at’imc Chiefs Council, now they're calling themselves the St’at’imc Authority, and they don't have a mandate from the people to be there,” said Adolph. “The only mandate they have is for their individual communities, where they've been elected by their people under the Indian Act to run Department of Indian Affairs programs.”

As per the new agreement, a new St'at'imc Authority will be formally constituted with recognition by British Columbia, rather than through a St’at’imc process.

“There is no organization, there's no governance structure, there's no bylaws,” said Adolph in reference to the St’at’imc Authority. “They don’t even have an office, and yet the province and BC Hydro recognize the St’at’imc Authority as having the legal power.”

Adolph and others have promised that they will continue to fight the agreement. “There's a group of us and the group is growing,” said Adolph. “This agreement is more than just past grievances [about existing hydro projects],” he said. “BC Hydro got their wish.”

Dawn Paley is a Vancouver-based journalist. This article was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

St'at'imc power lines

St'at'imc.poster

World Bank Darling Promotes Privatization of Reserves

Moira Peters — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 05:32:29 +0000

Critics say fee-simple title on reserves could further erode Indigenous land base

VANCOUVER—Peruvian economist and World Bank poster child Hernando de Soto visited Vancouver earlier this month to speak in favour of the establishment of individual property ownership (“fee simple”) on First Nations reserves in Canada.

The First Nations Property Ownership (FNPO) conference—hosted by the First Nations Tax Commission—paired de Soto with a select roster of Indigenous leaders, lawyers, economists and scholars from across British Columbia and Canada to promote a proposal that would allow fee simple title on reserves.

Instead of collective title to reserve land held by bands, the proposal aims to give individuals living on reserve access to the same legal private property rights that exists in the rest of the country. Currently, collective title is bound by section 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867 (a guiding provision of the Indian Act), which allocates legislative jurisdiction to the federal government over “Indians and lands reserved for the Indians,” constitutionally protecting existing Indigenous title.

“What [the proposal is] doing is putting a damper on 91(24) lands,” said Harley Chingee of the First Nations Lands Advisory Board. “There’s no internal controls once you take 91(24) out of it. Because then the provinces—and Canada, for that matter—can have control.”

The proposal is championed by conference organizer C.T. (Manny) Jules, Chief Commissioner of the First Nation Tax Commission, former Chief of the Kamloops Indian Band and one of Canada’s foremost proponents of private property ownership on reserves.

The conference came at the crest of an increasingly aggressive effort throughout recent months to generate support for the controversial proposal—a charge led by Jules alongside conservative political scientist Tom Flanagan. Flanagan—a former campaign manager for Stephen Harper—has published a number of contentious books and articles prescribing solutions to First Nations economic development and land management. He most recently co-authored Beyond the Indian Act, which argues for federal legislation that would make way for fee simple on reserves.

In response to this effort, a growing group of Indigenous people and chiefs have been speaking out against the Jules/Flanagan proposal, arguing that fee simple property ownership will leave collective Indigenous title and rights and reserve lands—which are affirmed in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982—vulnerable to encroachment by developers, corporate interests, and federal and provincial control. Chingee has been open in his rejection of the fee simple proposal, as has Arthur Manuel, spokesperson for the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade.

De Soto, president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), is notorious for advocating fee simple property ownership and market-led agrarian reform among Latin America’s campesinos. His ideas are promoted by international financial institutions like the World Bank, as well as the US international development organization USAID, which uses his theory to back their own market-driven development projects throughout Latin America.

He’s also been assailed with criticism from popular and grassroots organizations such as Via Campesina—a global peasant movement—which maintains that the ramifications of de Soto’s economic agenda are the global phenomena of dispossession of Indigenous people and intensified economic stratification.

Like de Soto’s proposal for Latin America, which aims to convert latent or “dead” assets into market capital, Jules and Flanagan aim to transform collective rights into individual titles, which can be openly traded on the market. In Canada, collective land title is understood to be the inherent right of Indigenous peoples.

In a letter against the fee simple proposal published in the First Nations Strategic Bulletin, Manuel asserts the power and protection of collective title. “No single individual can give up or extinguish our Aboriginal title and Indigenous rights. It would be suicide or extinguishment for our future generations to accept fee simple in exchange for our collective title,” he wrote.

Chingee’s response to the proposal warns of the damaging impact of privatizing reserve land. “The change would undermine signed treaties across Canada, undermine our political autonomy, restrict our creativity and innovation and place us in a dangerous position where any short-term financial difficulty may result in the wholesale liquidation of our reserve lands, or the creation of a patchwork quilt of reserve lands, like Oka,” he wrote.

The fee simple proposal has come under further fire for implying that individual property ownership is the sole recourse for economic prosperity on reserves. De Soto’s frequent reference to reserve lands as “dead capital” was wholeheartedly adopted by the conference organizers, who littered promotional material with the promise to unleash this untapped asset.

A recent article by Dan Cayo in The Vancouver Sun explains that a common approach taken by individuals on reserve is to find substitutes for individual property ownership, such as long-term leasing and “certificates of possession,” which are enough to provide sufficient collateral to qualify for business loans.

“Certainly you don’t need fee simple standards to prosper. People have an illusion that’s totally false,” says Chingee, citing examples of First Nations that have achieved economic success without fee simple ownership. “You just have to look at Westbank First Nation out in Kelowna. And there’s countless others, like Squamish Nation in Vancouver, for example, Macleod Lake Indian Band, up north of Prince George, that are prosperous 91(24) lands."

Ironically, the fee simple advocates tried to use Westbank’s economic success to their advantage, adding former Chief Ron Derrickson’s name to the conference’s list of speakers and promotional material without his consent or support.

Derrickson—known as one of the most successful Indigenous developers in the country—was alerted by Manuel to this name-borrowing. Once alerted, Derrickson voiced his disproval of the fee simple proposal and his name was removed from the list.

The FNPO website uses the Switsemalph 7 reserve near Salmon Arm as an example of a community with untapped development potential.

“Actually if you cut out the environmentally sensitive areas you come up with a picture that has a lot of development,” says Dave Nordquist from Adams Lake, refuting the FNPO’s claims about Switsemalph 7. The environmentally sensitive area is part of the Salmon River Delta, an area unsuitable for any land development.

Though Tom Flanagan is not a listed speaker at the conference, and is rarely named on the FNPO website, his presence is discernable. The cover image from Beyond the Indian Act graces the front page of the site, and his co-author, Andre Le Dressay, was a speaker during the Vancouver conference.

Beyond the Indian Act bears the subtitle “Restoring Aboriginal Property Rights,” implying that fee simple property ownership is a traditional right among Indigenous people in Canada. This message is reiterated in the forward and in a recent Globe and Mail editorial—both written by Jules, who evokes early Indigenous civilizations across the Americas to make the case that individual property rights and free market trade are fundamental to Indigenous peoples, and have been obscured and impeded upon by colonial legislation.

Nevertheless, the fee simple proposal also names the Torrens title system as a source of inspiration—a colonial model which hinges on the creation of an individual title registry. Its name pays tribute to Sir Robert Torrens, a colonial premier who introduced the title system to South Australia in the mid-19th century.

Though proponents claim that the right to fee simple title is inherent, the proposal is curiously lacking in popular Indigenous endorsement. Whether or not de Soto will be able to drum up support for the proposal remains to be seen.

Emma Feltes is a writer, researcher and activist based in Halifax and south interior British Columbia. Her work centers on First Nations-State relations, cultural heritage and intellectual property, and urban issues. Neskie Manuel is Secwepemc from the interior of British Columbia. He likes cycling and speaking Secwepemctsin. This article was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

de Soto

Signs of a Long Road for BC Climate Campaigners

Moira Peters — Thu, 06 May 2010 05:54:47 +0000

Gateway Program covers fertile land with a freeway

VANCOUVER—Lower mainland groups are opposing a massive expansion to local highways, which they say paves over farmland, encourages pollution and carbon emissions, and opens the gate to ramping up of resource extraction in British Columbia.

“Climate action now!” reads a new banner unveiled April 25 by Gateway Sucks and the Delta, BC, chapter of Council of Canadians. Both groups are opposed to a series of highway expansion projects from northern BC to Port Twassen proposed by the provincial government’s Gateway Program.

"The action took place at River Road and Centre Street in Delta," Tom Jaugelis of Gateway Sucks. "[The sign] is visible from the Alex Fraser Bridge. Activists also planted trees at the site today to highlight the area's potential as a riverfront park, not a riverfront freeway.”

This new banner comes on the heels of one removed by the province. A hand-built “Farms not Freeways” billboard stood on Loranda Farms off Highway 17 in Delta, BC. It was removed because it stood on land under lease to the province. Farm owner Michaela Robinson succumbed to financial pressures, six months ago, to lease part of the land to the Gateway Program for a year. Just behind the sign, government trucks paved over some of Canada’s most fertile soil.

“The very base of the road [construction crews are laying the foundation now] is taking just over an acre of our land. So we’re gonna have a really busy highway with tons of trucks right in our back pasture where our horses roam freely,” said Robinson.

Loranda Farms is part of the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). Richmond city councilor Harold Steves, a founder of the ALR in the 1970s, explained at the banner drop why the ALR was created.

The ALR was developed as a mechanism to stop huge companies like Western Reality and Wall & Ready Corp from developing agricultural land into more profitable housing developments, said Steves.

“[In 1972] the land was regarded as zoned land by Richmond, Delta and Surrey, but [developers] regarded it as unzoned,” he continued. Since there was no provincial legislation, developers paved over farmland. “The ALR stopped that [development], until today. It is same type of companies that want to develop this land today.”

Steves believes Delta could be transformed into Surrey-style sprawl. The best soils in BC will be covered with asphalt, just like Richmond, a suburb south of Vancouver known for having paved over top quality soil in favor of blacktopping the land for a corporate grocery store.

The prospect of losing more agricultural land has Ben West fuming. He’s a campaigner with the Wilderness Committee, which supports the direct action of Gateway Sucks and Council of Canadians. They are the educational and outreach arm of the movement to stop the Gateway Program.

“One of the most important archeological dig sites in North America, if not the world, has been paved over as a result of the Golden Ears Bridge, the Katzie First Nation site where they found evidence of pre-colonial agriculture,” said West.

The Golden Ears Bridge is part of the Gateway Program, which is about 10 per cent complete.

On the other side of the bridge another farm was lost. “The first colonial farm in British Columbia—the Hudson’s Bay Farm in Langley—it was actually a historical heritage site,” said West.

“A beautiful big blueberry farm that we tried to protect—an organic farm, family-owned—now has a road going right down the middle of it.” West also described a contemporary farm lost to the Gateway Program.

West sees Gateway as mostly causing destruction. But, the project has its supporters.

“Gateway Program is a series of transportation projects to complete the network of roads for the lower mainland that are necessary for the transport of goods and to assist with effective transit,” said Geoff Freer, Executive Director of the Gateway Program.

West disagrees.

“The Gateway that’s being referred to is actually a gateway to the Asia-Pacific corridor... So this really isn’t about moving folks from Surrey to Vancouver. It’s about moving goods in and raw materials like our forests, raw logs, coal from mines in British Columbia—about 20 million tons of it a year—and whole bunch of oil through pipelines to Asia,” he said

However, Freer thinks there are ecological benefits to the Program.

“Environmentally, one of the main objectives of the Gateway Program is to reduce congestion-related idling, which contributes to reduced regional air quality. By getting big trucks off neighborhood roads we will reduce the amount of smog and we will see a reduction in noise for these communities,” he said.

The highway will act as both a shipping corridor and a transit route. According to Freer, citizens consistently rate transportation as the number one issue in the region. “As we go forward there is going to be a million more people in the lower mainland over the next few years,” he said.

Freer sees Gateway as an opportunity to promote public transit: “Port Mann Highway is going to be tolled. That tolling is designed to discourage traffic and encourage people to go into transit. I think everybody agrees today that building more and more roads is not the answer.”

A BC Treasury Board study found that the petroleum industry produces three jobs for every $1 million spent. The automotive industry creates seven jobs while public transit creates 21 jobs for every $1 million spent.

A loss of land base to the Gateway, however, results in loss of contingent benefits such as the migratory bird flyway. One thousand hectares will be directly affected by highway pollution. “Ninety-seven hectares of our best farmland in Delta is slated to be lost... [and] the expected loss of farmland could feed 100,000 people,” according to Steves.

West agrees, saying he is more concerned with the resulting sprawl than the highway itself. He thinks government can mandate a strong line around ALR and build vertically rather than horizontally.

Freer, too, worries about sprawl, but offered no immediate solution. “The land use plan for the lower mainland that’s been in place for twenty years and that’s currently under review is trying to reduce the tendency towards urban sprawl.”

West said another problem at the root of Gateway is that the program is not a local initiative, but one put together by private interest and government. In spite of these frustrations, West feels power in mobilizing against the Gateway Program.

“It really is something that you become addicted to when you realize the power you have as a citizen, just as a regular person. If people care about something, it doesn’t matter who’s in government—they’re going to stop and listen to what the people want.”

West sees the Save the UBC Farm campaign as an effective three-way conversation. Students stopped housing development plans that would have reduced the university farm to one third its size. They did this by talking with Wilderness Committee and other news outlets. Plans for keeping the Farm as a “future housing reserve” changed. An academic plan was presented to the UBC Board of Governors in January. Academic Provost David Farrar said, “From my perspective this is a huge win. It’s huge for the university but more for the students.”

For West, a similar strategy can be used by citizens engaging with media to prevent the undesirable development of land. He sees the UBC Farm campaign as a small local victory. The Gateway Program is the large-scale national battle. Both battles are aimed at mitigating climate change by supporting local agriculture.

Micheala of Loranda Farms is still under pressure to sell her farmland. The "Farms not Freeways" billboard is gone, but as of April 25 a new banner snags the attention of drivers on the Alexander Fraser Bridge. In spite of provincial efforts to silence resistance to the Gateway Program, more direct action events are planned. Wilderness Committee will continue to push for three-way conversations between the organizations, citizens and the province.

Final funding for the Gateway Program is not secure. “It’s important to highlight that Gateway is actually a 20-step plan,” said West. “It’s not a done deal. But, it’s basically a plan to ramp up the industrialization of the BC coastline.”

Writing from Vancouver, Ben Amundson is an undergrad in Human Ecology at UBC; this is an article for Digital Communications in Agriculture. Check back for an upcoming article on bike tours as a means of supporting food sovereignty.

gateway sucks

Norwegian Farms Poison the Wild Run

Moira Peters — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 08:14:47 +0000

BC's salmon stocks plunge; sea lice, salmon farms to blame

TRADITIONAL TERRITORY OF SNUNEYMUXW FIRST NATION (NANAIMO, BC)—In the late 1980s, as Norway's Consul General in Vancouver was paving the way for Norwegian salmon farming operations in BC, Norway's former Prime Minister Gro Harlem headed the United Nations commission that produced the 1987 report, "Our Common Future," popularizing the concept of sustainable development.

Two decades have passed, and the salmon-farming industry, dominated by Norwegian multinationals, is charged with imperilling ecosystems worldwide, including in Norway.

In 2002, the spawning run of pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago off northeast Vancouver Island decreased from 3.6 million to 147,000—four per cent of its population the year before. Biologists pointed to sea lice from salmon farms as the culprit. Juvenile salmon, called smolts, leave the rivers where they are born and are forced to run a gauntlet of salmon farms once they reach the archipelago, where they are exposed to high numbers of sea lice.

“Everywhere there are salmon farms and wild salmon, the wild salmon are eaten to death by sea lice,” said Alexandra Morton, following the pink salmon collapse. Morton is a biologist and founder of the Raincoast Research Society which studies ecosystems and aquatic life on the BC coast.

Last summer, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) forecast over 10 million sockeye salmon spawners would return to Sto:lo (Fraser River). Fewer than 10 per cent returned. Morton again implicated sea lice from salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago as the cause of the 90 per cent collapse in sockeye spawners.

Sockeye runs elsewhere did comparably well, Morton noted, such as in N'ch-iwana (Columbia River), Somass River and Heydon Creek—the latter situated north of the Campbell River fish farm cluster.

Morton sees a bigger threat to wild salmon than sea lice. “I know sea lice are on the Fraser sockeye—I first found this in 2005—but I think the issue is farm disease in this case.”

“The biggest threat is the virus ISA [Infectious Salmon Anaemia],” said Morton, “but sea lice are a problem enough that they [the sea lice] can destroy [wild salmon].”

Salmon in Chile, Norway, Scotland and New Brunswick have all suffered ISA outbreaks.

“What Alexandra means is that ISA is a serious imminent threat because wild Pacific salmon may not be immune to strains of ISA present in farm salmon eggs imported from Atlantic waters," geophysist Dr. Neil Frazer told The Dominion.

"If a wild population suffers a very large decline, recovery is uncertain because the ecological niche of the devastated species may be filled by other species,” he said.

A myriad of factors impact the viability of wild salmon in BC: clearcut logging, global warming, agricultural runoff and dam construction. According to the BC Salmon Farmers Association, salmon farming began in BC in the early 1970s. In 1984, it was introduced into the seascape of Broughton Archipelago. The Broughton Archipelago now supports 29 salmon-farming operations, BC’s highest concentration of salmon farms.

In their 2006 book, An Upstream Battle, Karl K. English, Glova J. Gordon, and Anita C. Blakely reported a 70-93 per cent decline in salmon stocks in 10 areas in BC since the early 1990s.

Wild salmon advocacy circles have recently begun to pressure Norway—where multi-national salmon-farming headquarters of the likes of Marine Harvest, Cremaq and Grieg Seafood own 92 per cent of BC's salmon farms.

“Norway is the key to solving the salmon-farming problem and [is] still home to healthy wild Atlantic salmon populations,” said Don Staniford of Pure Salmon Campaign, a global salmon advocacy project. “There is still time to save Atlantic wild salmon by moving the farms out of the path of migrating smolts. And in the Pacific, the solution is equally as simple.”

Even Norway's richest man, John Fredriksen, an avid fisherman and majority owner of the world's largest salmon-farming corporation, Marine Harvest, was alarmed: “I am worried for the wild salmon’s future. Fish farming should not be allowed in fjords with salmon rivers,” said Fredricksen in 2007 to Norway's Altaposten.

Staniford, who was in Norway last May, reported sympathy among Norwegians, whose own wild salmon are plagued by infestations of sea lice, and who support an end to open-water net salmon farming.

“Norwegians are now rising up and standing up for wild salmon,” said Staniford. “Over the last year there has been a sea change in public perception of the salmon farming industry in Norway." Staniford sees Norwegian fishermen, river owners, politicians, environmentalists and citizens as increasingly critical of the salmon-farming industry plagued with sea lice and escapes of farmed salmon.

The Vancouver Olympics brought another opportunity to pressure the Norwegian government: Norway's King Harald V was in attendance at the Games. On a sunny Saturday, February 20, the eighth day of the 2010 Winter Olympics, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) and Wild Salmon Circle held a rally in Vancouver’s Vanier Park. Although Harold V was not among them, about 200 people turned out to hear featured speakers Morton, Staniford, ex-DFO biologist Otto Langer, and Kwicksutaineuk Ah-kwa-mish First Nation Chief Bob Chamberlin.

“Considering the Olympics were on—a big distraction and the reason we held the rally now—there was a great turnout,” said Maria Morlin, biology professor and emcee at the rally. “I hope our message gets through to the Norwegian government loud and clear: don’t mess up our waters; you have enough problems with your own Atlantic salmon escapees and wild salmon collapses.”

“We have a long tradition of salmon in our culture, and to be unable to pass this tradition to our children is unthinkable,” said hereditary Chief Chamberlin, emphasizing the issue was not a short-term one.

Langer argued that moving the salmon to closed-containment was an unsatisfactory solution because of negative protein production. Langer said feeding the salmon would still require 5 to 10 kilograms of other fish to produce one kilogram of food pellets. Farming carnivorous fish in open net-cages or in closed containment facilities, he held, is simply not sustainable.

For those proud of the Brundtland Commission's work on sustainability, the unsustainability of Norwegian-owned salmon farms is a stark contradiction.

"I am not talking about all aquaculture. I am referring specifically to the massive scale Norwegian feedlots," said Morton on March 15.

"There are Canadian fish farmers who know how to use tanks on land who are not impacting our wild salmon and herring. This is about saving wild salmon and all of us who depend on them."

Morton announced Get Out Migration which will promote the cause of wild salmon through a walk, open to all the public, from Sointula to Victoria.

"We hold salmon as sacred because they so generously feed our world," said Morton. "They built the soil of this province with their flesh, they grow our children, they feed the trees that make the oxygen we breath, they are food security in a world losing ability to even pollinate flowers."

Kim Petersen is Original People's editor at The Dominion.

Salmon

A Public Relations War on all Fronts

Tim McSorley — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 05:46:02 +0000

BC gov't aims to win hearts and minds, and open province to extractives

VANCOUVER—Beyond rhetoric about establishing British Columbia as a centre for innovation, among the most concrete strategies suggested in the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources 2010/11-2012/13 Service Plan are government-sponsored marketing campaigns to promote the benefits of the extractive industries.

The Service Plan, released in early March, outlines the BC government's primary strategies for the energy, mining, and oil and gas industries up to 2013. The public relations efforts articulated throughout the plan contradict the demands of Indigenous nations, in whose territories these projects would be built.

One of the objectives of the Service Plan is to increase the involvement of First Nations in the oil and gas industry. This includes "advising" First Nations on how resources can be developed in an "environmentally responsible manner" by strengthening links to industry and government and negotiating revenue-sharing agreements.

The government also aims to "facilitate involvement by local First Nations in oil and gas pipelines through the proposed Northern Energy Corridor between Kitimat and Prince George." Given the level of resistance to pipelines in Northern BC, and the fact that much of land mass to be traversed by the pipelines was never ceded by Indigenous people, it appears the BC government is on a collision course.

Toghestiy (Warner Naziel), a member of the Wet'suwet'en Nation, has extensively researched the Northern Gateway energy pipeline, a proposed part of an energy corridor which includes two Enbridge pipelines and a Kinder Morgan pipeline. The BC government has been promoting this energy project for over a decade.

"One hundred per cent of people [in my community] were completely against any type of development, especially anything in relation to this energy corridor," Toghestiy told the Vancouver Media Co-op in February.

Another objective of the Ministry's Service Plan is to create the social license for increased development of the extractive industries in BC. This can be achieved, according to the plan, by financing public relations and educational campaigns.

"Develop and implement focused promotional programs to inform British Columbians about opportunities in the energy, mining and natural gas industries," reads one strategy. "...Engage school students in a discussion of responsible energy, mineral and natural gas resource development," reads another.

"They're trying to promote a pipeline that is completely unwanted," said Macdonald Stainsby, an anti-tar sands activist with oilsandstruth.org.

"People who promote these kinds of developments in areas where the benefits will be little to none tend to use a war on all fronts—from friends and neighbours to glossy pamphlets to promises of money that will never arrive," he said.

Stainsby calls the proposed PR strategy proof that despite his green image, BC Premier Gordon Campbell still takes his marching orders from Ottawa and Washington. "These efforts are linked to increasing energy supply from the tar sands, rather than reducing energy supply," he said.

Enbridge, Kinder Morgan, Shell, Teck, and Imperial Metals Corporation have all faced fierce resistance, led by Indigenous land defenders and supported by allies locally and around the world.

Dawn Paley is a journalist based in Vancouver.

This article was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Landscape in Wet'suwet'en Territory

Update From Olympic Tent Village

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:14:56 +0000

Organizers and residents of the Olympic Tent Village in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside give a press conference on the day after the tent city is set up.

Rally and March to Begin the Olympic Tent Village

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:43:52 +0000

Residents of a neighbourhood in Vancouver that is often referred as the countrys poorest postal code set up a tent encampment in a vacant Downtown Eastside lot to advocate for housing and to shelter the neighbourhoods homeless population.

2010 Rings Hollow

Van Ferrier — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:11:53 +0000

This documentary feature examines the history of housing in Vancouver and the impact of the 2010 Olympic Games on the city's homelessness and poverty. The film features interviews with legal experts, activists, and people affected by the housing crisis, with particular focus on hotel closures, evictions and the criminalization of dissent.

Vancouver 2010 Olympic Opening Ceremony

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:33:22 +0000

Vancouver 2010 Olympics protesters march past the Vancouver Art Gallery to BC Place where the 2010 Olympic Opening Ceremony is taking place and meet a wall of Vancouver police.

The NLG vs BC Civil Liberties

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:26:46 +0000

During today's tent city action in Vancouver the VMC caught up with Larry Hildes, an attorney for the National Lawyers Guild. We asked him why he had broken ties with BC Civil Liberties

An Olympic Failure

dawn — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 06:21:34 +0000

At least 137 Native women missing and murdered in BC since 1980

MONTREAL—The February 14 Memorial March for Murdered and Missing Women has taken route along Hastings street in Vancouver every year since 1991 to honour Vancouver's murdered women, as well as more than 68 women still missing from the city's Downtown Eastside (DTES). East Hastings St, which runs straight through the DTES, is often referred to as the poorest postal code in Canada, and is notorious for a highly visible level of homelessness, drug use and sex work.

Vancouver's City Hall confirmed its support this fall for the march at the insistence of DTES residents, but previously, the city, along with 2010 Olympic officials and the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit, attempted to change the procession's route or date to defer to the predicted flow of Olympics-generated traffic on Hastings Street.

The games begin today, February 12, two days prior to the march. Already, the Olympics have led to increased poverty, homelessness, and policing in possibly the poorest neighbourhood in Canada.

The epidemic of missing and murdered women in Canada has not improved since the inaugural march 18 years ago. In fact, it appears to have worsened, particularly for Indigenous women and girls.

Of 521 known cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women across Canada since roughly 1980, half have occurred in the last decade. BC has seen the worst, where, as of 2008, approximately 137 of those cases had occurred.

According to Walk4Justice activists, (a group made up largely of Indigenous women who hold annual walks demanding justice for their missing and murdered friends and loved ones), and the Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC), the actual number of missing and murdered Indigenous women is much higher, and likely in the thousands. Underestimation, they say, is due to insufficient research funding, which is also a phenomenon of the last decade.

Craig Benjamin, a campaigner for Indigenous rights with Amnesty International, estimates that Canadian police only note victims' racial identity about 60 per cent of the time, and the information is often inaccurate when they do. Many officers do not see the relevance of the information in the first place. “If [victims] don't look Aboriginal in their eyes, then they don't record it,” he says.

According to the 2008 Greater Vancouver Homeless Count, almost 3,000 people in the area are homeless, a 22 per cent increase since 2005. Indigenous people make up 32 per cent of this population, though they make up just two per cent of the city's total population.

Front-line Indigenous human rights activist Gladys Radek, of Vancouver, has participated in the Walk4Justice for several years. While the 2008 Walk4Justice route went all-out (Walkers made a three-month trek from Vancouver to Parliament Hill in Ottawa) the month-long 2009 Walk last June saw 17 Indigenous women retracing the stretch of Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, dubbed the "Highway of Tears," where so many of their relations had violently passed from this world.

“Once we got past Prince George,” said Radek, “it was really emotional because we were reaching the heart of the Highway of Tears. Lots of the women's spirits were with us as we were walking."

“You could feel there was no work being done for the family members. We were asking family members [up North] about certain organizations, and there were no answers for them up there so it was really disheartening. A real severe lack of support for any type of justice, equality, closure, or accountability. We're hoping to change that.”

Organizations from the grassroots Walk4Justice all the way to the United Nations have called on the Canadian government for a public investigation into the appallingly high number of unresolved, uninvestigated murders and disappearances of Indigenous women.

In November, 2008, the UN gave Canada an ultimatum to report back in a year on the status of more than 500 cases that "have neither been fully investigated nor attracted priority attention, with the perpetrators remaining unpunished."

Canada has not responded.

The problem of missing and murdered Indigenous women is systemic, and an extension of ongoing racist and sexist colonial policies such as the Indian Act. The issue is also country-wide, with the frequency of violence against Indigenous women growing in eastern provinces. BC, though, is still the site of the most alarming level of gendered and racialized violence toward Native women in the country.

Ironically, when deciding where to hold the 2010 Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) faced a choice between Pyeongchang, South Korea, and Vancouver. While South Korea pitched itself as the "peace" candidate, Vancouver sold itself as the "safety and security" candidate. The provincial government presented BC as a place where everybody gets along: rich and poor, rural and urban, Native and non-Native.

Increased Susceptibility to Homelessness, Trafficking

A June 2007 report by the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) found two million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced in the last 20 years to clear space for the Olympics. Vancouver has been no exception. The DTES has seen mass closure of social housing and low-income hotels, triggered by an effort to create more space for tourists and corporate investors.

Indigenous women have been at the receiving end of the city's clear priority of Games over homes: 45 per cent of homeless women identified as Aboriginal in the 2008 Greater Vancouver Homeless Count.

The precariousness of their living situation also leads to more Native women than the rest of the homeless population stating that they are involved in "illegal activities" for income. Most of these women said said they were involved in sex work.

This is reflected in other studies: Gang expert Michael Chettleburgh has found that 90 per cent of underage, urban sex workers in Canada are Aboriginal.

Canada is not ordinarily associated with violations like sex trafficking, but it was not even illegal here until 2001. The Olympics, however, have a long tradition of arriving hand-in-hand with a massive influx of prostitution and the pseudo-legalization of the sex industry for the benefit of businessmen and elite athletes. Again, Vancouver is no exception.

Former NWAC president Beverly Jacobs has stated that the organization has reason to believe that trafficking is playing a significant role in the continually high level of missing Indigenous women and girls, but the only body with adequate resources for an investigation of that caliber is the Canadian government, which has proven to be the least likely to implicate itself.

In Vancouver, trafficking has been historically associated with Asian and Indigenous women, beginning in the mid- to late-1800s as European colonization began. Today, both groups are still targeted much more than other population sectors.

“Vancouver is considered to be a hub for Pacific human trafficking... Traffickers will view the 2010 Olympics as the biggest opportunity for them in decades. Any time you have an influx of foreign tourists and money, you’ll see a huge demand for the sex trade," says Vancouver journalist Magda Ibrahim.

According to a report by Calgary-based Future Group, titled, Faster, Higher, Stronger: Preventing Human Trafficking at the 2010 Olympics, “There is a real risk that traffickers will seek to profit from the 2010 Olympics... This event could create an increased demand for prostitution, and also give an easy cover story for victims to be presented as ‘visitors’ by traffickers.”

Although the scale of trafficking within Canada is difficult to measure, it is likely much higher than RCMP estimates of six to eight hundred women per year.

Ottawa-based researcher Anupriya Sethi has identified trafficking triangles through which Aboriginal victims are moved: Saskatoon-Edmonton-Calgary-Saskatoon; Saskatoon-Regina-Winnipeg-Saskatoon.

"I don't know if there are international linkages," she says. "Once you're in Vancouver, where are you taken? Once you're in Toronto, are you taken to New York or do you go to Los Angeles? I don't know. It hasn't been explored."

“There’s a total myth that Aboriginal women either consent to or are born into the sex trade,” said Jo-Ann Daniels, interim executive director for the Metis Settlements General Council in Edmonton. “The average age of Aboriginal girls who are human trafficked is between seven and 12 years old.”

"Basically, their handlers start them in Vancouver," said Chantal Tie, a lawyer with the National Association of Women and The Law.

"They work for them there for a while, then they're sold to someone in Winnipeg and then to someone in Toronto, and so on down the line as they get moved around the country."

The RCMP's National Aboriginal Policing Service has expressed a desire to explore the issue further, but says it lacks the funding and human resources to do so.

Considering the extremely poor record of police investigations into violence against sex trade workers and Indigenous women in Canada, it is unlikely that any real attempt to check these practices during 2010 will take place.

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie is a writer active with the Missing Justice campaign in Montreal.

For up-to-the-minute Olympics resistance coverage, check out the Vancouver Media Co-op, and the 2010 Convergence website. Follow the VMC on twitter!

Missing and Murdered March

Missing and Murdered March II

Why oppose the Vancouver 2010 Olympics

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:40:43 +0000

The Olympic Resistance Network has called for a convergence to protest the Vancouver Winter Olympics. This video explains some the reasons why these activists have organized the first ever anti-Olymopic summit.