The Dominion - Indigenous Peoples

First Nations Under Surveillance

Martin Lukacs — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Harper government prepares for Native “unrest"

TORONTO—Internal documents from Indian Affairs and the RCMP show that shortly after being elected in January of 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper had the federal government intensify the gathering and sharing of intelligence on First Nations. This was done so that the government could anticipate and manage potential First Nation unrest across Canada.

Documents obtained by Access to Information requests reveals that almost immediately upon taking power in 2006, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) was given the lead role to spy on First Nations. The goal was to identify the leaders, participants and outside supporters of First Nation occupations and protests, and then to closely monitor their actions.

To accomplish this task, INAC established a "Hot Spot Reporting System." These weekly reports highlight all those communities across the country that engage in direct action to protect their lands and communities. They include bands from the coast of Vancouver Island to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.

What we see in these documents—from the hot spot reports themselves, to the intelligence-sharing between government and security forces—is a closely monitored population of First Nations, who clearly are causing a panic at the highest levels of Canadian bureaucracy and political office.

In 2006, INAC gave the name"hot spots" to those First Nations conflicts of "growing concern" due to "unrest" and increasing "militancy." In a briefing presentation that INAC gave the RCMP that year, they identified certain communities as hotspots: Caledonia, Ontario (Douglas Creek Estates occupation); Belleville, Ontario (Montreal/Toronto Rail Blockade in sympathy to Caledonia); Brantford, Ontario (Grand River Conservation Authority Lands); Desoronto, Ontario (Occupation of Quarry); Grassy Narrows (Blockade of Trans Canada Hwy by environmentalists); and Maniwaki, Quebec (Blockade of Route 117).

But the "hot spot binder" prepared each week by INAC officials closely monitors any and all action taking place across the country and names dozens more communities as sources of potential unrest. A particular concern of the federal government is that these "hotspots" are unpredictable. ‘Hotspot’ protests are generally led by what the federal government labels "splinter groups" of "Aboriginal Extremists." As INAC describes in the same presentation to the RCMP:

Incidents led by splinter groups are arguably harder to manage as they exist outside negotiation processes to resolve recognized grievances with duly elected leaders. We seek to avoid giving standing to such splinter groups so as not to debase the legally recognized government. Incidents are also complicated by external groups such as Warrior Societies or non-Aboriginal counter-protest groups.

Telling in the INAC statement above is that the identified protests are "outside of negotiation processes" with elected councils. Canada is clearly spooked by the spectre of First Nations demanding Crown recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, as well as Aboriginal and Treaty Rights, beyond the narrow confines of Crown land claims and self-government policies. These so-called "splinter" groups also threaten the status quo by demanding their own First Nation leaders, staff and advisors to pull out of the compromising negotiations

Judging from the INAC briefing to the RCMP, Indian Affairs now operates less as an institution of reconciliation and negotiation and more as a management office to control the costs of Native unrest.

In addition to hotspot reporting, the Deputy Ministers of Public Safety Emergency Preparedness Canada and INAC directed that a summer operational plan be prepared in 2006 to deal with Aboriginal occupations and protests. A progress report on the operational plan reveals the blueprint for security integration on First Nations issues.

The Standing Information Sharing Forum, for example, is chaired by the RCMP and includes as its members the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Department of Fisheries, Government of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Transportation Canada, and involves weekly conference calls and continuous information dissemination by INAC to its partners.

The inclusion of these government departments at the Information Sharing Forum should also alert us to the commercial threat of Aboriginal resistance to the free trade agenda.

Aboriginal people who are defending their lands are now treated on a spectrum from criminals to terrorists. Under Harper, an intensification of intelligence gathering and surveillance procedures now govern the new regime.

Haudenosaunee/Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy

The reports mention "Warrior Societies" and an "illicit agenda" referring at several points to concerns around smuggling. The federal government deems the tobacco/cigarette trade as "illicit" because Canada is not getting paid taxes by the Mohawks who are operating the businesses.

However, the 1995 federal Aboriginal Self-Government policy, which was developed unilaterally by the federal government, does not allow First Nations to share jurisdiction with government over trade and commerce matters. The federal self-government policy only allows small business operations on-reserve. Historically, the federal government has used the Indian Act to control and manage on-reserve economic development to prevent adversarial competition with surrounding non-Indian businesses and towns. For example, On the prairies, First Nations agriculture was undermined and led to the failure of farming on-reserve because of complaints from non-Indians. This policy of non-competition is still the reality today.

The federal government is particularly concerned about the Haudenosaunee/Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy actions at Caledonia. As the INAC 2006 report describes it:"Caledonia was and remains a significant event in risk management."

The RCMP agree. In a 2007 report to CSIS, they state: "Caledonia continues to serve as a beacon on land claims and Aboriginal rights issues across Canada."

The Canadian government is extremely worried about First Nations taking back lands and resources outside the scope of their one-sided land claims and self-government "negotiation processes," as was done at Kanenhstaton/Caledonia.

In order to contain the situation, the Crown governments have dispatched hard-nosed, experienced negotiators who have presented fixed negotiating positions from the Harper government, which is likely why there hasn't been any negotiated resolution of the situation at Kanenhstaton/Caledonia to this date. The Crown government obviously remains worried more lands will be "occupied" by the Six Nations "extremist" "splinter groups."

Ever since the 1990 stand-off in Kanesatake and Kahnawake, the federal government, the security and police agencies, and the Canadian army have been worried about a repeat of coordinated First Nation political actions across Canada.

The 2007 National Day Of Action

Specific information about policing First Nations was obtained in a series of Access to Information requests about the AFN National Day of Action that took place on June 29th, 2007. A 2007 RCMP brief to CSIS lays out a number of concerns regarding the National Day of Action. The RCMP were mainly concerned with protecting their men and women in uniform from First Nations protesters who confronted the police on the front lines. They were also concerned, by the bad public relations that might result from a particularly heavy handed approach to protesters at the event: "The often disparate and fractured nature of these events can lead the police to become the proverbial meat in the sandwich and the subject of negative public sentiment."

The RCMP also show concern that a lack of coordination, or "a fractured and inconsistent approach" by police forces, could "galvanize Nations throughout Canada." In response, cooperation between departments, security forces, and ministries are deemed to be necessary to provide a strong united front against First Nations protest.

The RCMP also caution that "Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal extremists often see these events as an opportunity to escalate or agitate the conflict." By inference, we can guess that they may be referring to groups unaffiliated with the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), unwilling to negotiate under Crown policies, or prepared to engage in tactics not sanctioned by the official leadership, such as property destruction and armed conflict. Non-Aboriginal groups are also cited here as potentially threatening, giving credence to recent targeting of G20 "ringleaders" who feel their Indigenous solidarity work has made them targets of the Crown and police forces.

Cost is a serious concern to the RCMP as well. The price tag for policing these nation-wide events is "exorbitant" and therefore can lead to rash policing decisions where force is used in order to bring a quick end to conflicts. The economic risks of blockades are themselves potentially catastrophic. As the RCMP warn, "The recent CN strike represents the extent in which a national railway blockade could effect the economy of Canada."

The RCMP also express this curious concern: "The police role may be complicated by the conventional and sometimes political view that there is a clear distinction between policy and police operations." Clearly, where the distinction slips between police and policy roles, the RCMP become simply Indian Agents, carrying out the colonial work of the department. Given the information disclosed here, this distinction is impossible to maintain. Where police intimidate and arrest Indigenous peoples on their own lands, there is no law on the police's side.

There is also a considerable public relations issue at stake here. The RCMP displayed concern at the potential fall-out of a number of "perception" problems that could befall the forces:

Perception of a two-tiered approach to enforcement can generate significant criticism and motivate non-Aboriginal activists.

An intense and protracted event may lead to long-standing erosion of relationships for the police and the community—they are usually always the victims.

Because there are limitations on what the police can negotiate and success often depends on others, the role of the police can become frustrating.

It appears as though the RCMP realize to some extent that they must choose between First Nations approval of their policing tactics and the wrath of a public convinced that blockades are criminal, rather than political acts. The police, however, contrary to their assertions, are not the victims here. They are just the dupes in a much older game of cowboys and Indians.

The above RCMP statements show that even with federal financial and managerial control over First Nation Chiefs and Leaders, the same Chiefs and Leaders were still not trusted by the federal government.

One insight emerges strongly here: most threatening of all to security and government forces is coordinated First Nations action. At one point in the 2007 INAC to RCMP briefing, concern is expressed about a First Nations conference because, "The 2006 Numbered Treaty Conference proposed a 'national' movement of independent actions to express discontent."

The concern is obvious in the documents where the government follows the trajectory of the Day of Action. It was first proposed by Chief Terrance Nelson at the Assembly of First Nations' general assembly, where the motion carried. After having been approved at the AFN general assembly the nation-wide day of action was later confirmed in a personal meeting between the RCMP Commissioner and then-National Chief Phil Fontaine. "Mr. Fontaine expressed his concern over the sense of frustration that seems to exist among First Nation leaders and the growing resolve to support a June 29th blockade," a memo states.

The growing unrest, of course, cannot be resolved through greater coordination of security and government forces. First Nation frustration with this strategy will only continue to mount.

Crown Reward-Punishment System Divides Leaders and People

If coordinated action gets the goods, special attention must be paid to the government’s particular interest in "splinter" groups.

Under Canada’s colonial system, the struggle for Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, Aboriginal and Treaty rights has historically been undermined by First Nations who cooperated with the Crown government turning in those members of First Nations who were resisting the Crown’s colonial system.

Over time this evolved into the Crown dividing First Nations into the "progressive" Indian Bands and the backward or "traditional" Indian Bands. Through its various Indian Affairs departments the federal government developed an approach to reward the "progressive' Indians and punish the "traditional" Indians.

This federal reward-punishment approach still exists, although the "Indian Agents" have been replaced by Band Councils who now do the job of delivering Crown programs and services to their community members. Funding for Band Councils and other First Nation organizations’ is tightly controlled by the federal government’s bureaucracy through a system of legislation, policies, terms and conditions.

The First Nations Chiefs and Leaders who become more known and prominent are largely the individuals who have been trained and supported by federal bureaucrats. These individuals become known for their seeming ability to get federal funding for First Nations’ projects.

However, many of these individuals depend on federal support to advance their political careers. This is the reward system at work. Those Chiefs and Leaders who do not cooperate with the federal government often have their funding requests ignored or given less precedence. In some circumstances the federal government will even support "splinter" groups to take out the offending Chief or Leader. A current prominent example of this is the Algonquins of Barriere Lake in Western Quebec, but this also occurred historically at the Six Nations Grand River Territory.

The INAC and RCMP documents make it clear that while the Canadian State Security Apparatus is concerned by "splinter" groups, they are also apprehensive even when dealing with the current Aboriginal establishment. The reports indicate a belief that Chiefs and Leaders from Indian Act Band Councils and First Nation establishment organizations like AFN and their Provincial/Territorial Organizations have the potential to become Aboriginal "extremists."

What the INAC and RCMP briefings show is that there needs to be unity on the ground with coordinated political actions between First Nations Peoples in order to protect, defend and advance First Nation pre-existing sovereignty, and First Nation Aboriginal and Treaty rights to lands and resources. Divide and conquer tactics can only be met with new strategies of alliance-building, and by bringing the leadership back down to the land.

Russell Diabo is a member of the Mohawk Nation at Kahnawake, Quebec, and a policy advisor. Shiri Pasternak is a Toronto-based writer, researcher and organizer. An earlier version of this article appeared in the Mediacoop.ca and the First Nations Strategic Bulletin.

Barriere Lake riot police

Every Mohawk a Suspect

Martin Lukacs — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 06:08:35 +0000

Why drugs raids in Kanehsatake feel like police invasions

KANEHSATAKE—“You didn’t see anything?” my neighbour asks.

Apparently, another big police raid is taking place. We stop to listen for a second but hear nothing. Nobody phoned. I hadn’t listened to the radio all morning. I’ve been mowing the lawn. I haven’t seen or heard anything unusual. I haven’t seen a single police car.

Looking up, we hear a helicopter. It doesn’t sound like a police chopper. We’ve learned to distinguish the sounds of military, police and civilian helicopters.

“It looks more like a news chopper,” I say.

My neighbour says news reports estimated that a combined force of 500 police officers were raiding Kanehsatake. We agree that a drug raid is long overdue, but we question the numbers and the need for such massive raids. The numbers imply a ratio of about one cop for every three Mohawks—man, woman and child—living at Kanehsatake.

My neighbour tells me the police hit a well-known drug joint in the Pines. “Lots of people go in and out of that place all the time,” she says, “and everyone knows why.”

That phrase gets lots of mileage at Kanehsatake. Everyone knows who’s into cocaine, and who’s dealing oxycontin to kids at the high school in full sight of the band office. Everyone knows who’s selling weapons, booze, and pills. Everyone knows where the pushers of hard drugs live. Everyone knows but few do or say anything until it affects them or their immediate family. Otherwise, most people mumble and complain.

The police arrest eight people at Kanehsatake this time, including an elderly mother. She had the bad luck of being at her son’s house when the police came to arrest him. The police, though, give reporters the name of only one of the arrested: 43-year-old Tyrone Canatoguin.

Because "everyone knows," everyone also has suspicions about this raid. Rumour has it that someone flipped. Everyone knows there’s competition between a few individuals, and possibly their families, over drug dealing. Rumour has it someone, perhaps someone facing jail time, cut a deal in exchange for reduced charges. Rumour also has it that the raid presented a chance for this individual to use the police to take out the competition.

None of that is reported by the news media for several reasons. First, rumours are almost impossible to verify. Second, most Mohawks won’t go on the record, especially to the Montreal-based media. They blame reporters for demonizing their community with sensational, superficial and negative coverage. Third, most reporters don’t look beyond “officials” for comment, as though average Mohawks have nothing relevant to say. Most reporters are fixated on confrontations between the Mohawk and police and everything else gets in the way of “the story”—a story that Mohawks feel has already been written.

Reporters don’t look for other stories or spend much time at Kanehsatake. They arrive when the police raids happen, and leave after they get the story they want. Reporters may not have the time to look deeper into the story. Certainly, most newsrooms are understaffed and reporters stretched too thin. They may also lack basic journalistic curiosity or interest in Indigenous issues, or maybe they’re satisfied to confirm Mohawks as fundamentally criminal, and to reinforce those stereotypes. Harsh? Not really, given the stories I read after a raid.

Newscasts on the morning of June 14 put 500 police at Kanehsatake even though there are raids taking place at Akwesasne, Oka and villages in the southern Laurentians. The numbers just don’t add up. The next day many news-sites, newscasts, and newspapers still put 500 police at Kanehsatake. It takes a small community paper, L’Echo de St. Eustache, to ask a simple question and get a more realistic number: 200. This helps explain why some people hardly noticed the June 14 raid at Kanehsatake.

Almost no context accompanies the stories after the raid. Reporters re-jig Surete du Quebec (SQ) handouts, quote police spokespeople and "balance" those with quotes from Mohawk band councillors. Police are portrayed as wary but professional, putting on brave faces while enduring insults. Reporters portray themselves in much the same way, especially after a La Presse reporter is spit on. Not a single story, however, questions the methods, the cost, the effectiveness or the impact of the raid on ordinary people living at Kanehsatake.

Do such raids instill confidence or fear in the police? Consider how police conduct drug raids elsewhere. They obtain warrants naming specific individuals. They isolate the address specified in the warrant. They execute the warrant with a minimum of inconvenience to the neighbourhood. Even during raids in a small village similar in population to Kanehsatake, police are careful not to disrupt daily life in the community. Often, the police alert the media beforehand so they can transmit the proper message: crime doesn’t pay.

A raid at Kanehsatake is different. The whole community—on every junction of every road—has a police roadblock. All Mohawks are considered suspect and potentially dangerous. This explains why the police presence is massive. There may be helicopters with snipers hovering overhead. The disruption to the community is huge.

Maybe the police get a kick out of these raids—the big operation, the cute title and all the big shiny toys they can muster. It may make them feel a lot safer. But imagine what it’s like from the inside when hundreds of heavily-armed people in uniforms move into your community and treat you like an inmate in a penal colony. The fact is that the majority of people at Kanehsatake don’t commit crimes, don’t own weapons, don’t do drugs. They might go a little over the speed limit every now and then, but they don’t deserve to be treated like criminals.

May of 2009 was the last “raid” in Kanehsatake. It was more like an invasion. It stretched over several days and involved a combined force of about 300 SQ and RCMP officers, dozens of squad cars and large SUVs speeding up and down the territory. A helicopter provided air cover while a police boat patrolled the Ottawa River. An armoured personnel carrier was on hand. Police arrested 12 Mohawks that time, although one escaped from the back seat of a police car, barefoot and handcuffed.

I described that drug raid as an “invasion”—a hugely expensive and wasteful farce. After several days, numerous searches and what must have cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars per day, the police confiscated about 100 tomato plants. Reporters came for the first day but decided there wasn’t anything newsworthy in the days after. Not a single mainstream reporter questioned the conduct of that raid—then, or since.

One woman felt her house shudder from a low-flying helicopter. Looking out a window, she saw a police chopper hovering above roof-level with snipers hanging out the side hatches, weapons pointed at her home and others nearby. Luckily, her children were at school. A few other people reported similar experiences. It made people wonder how the police get their information, what judges require from the police to obtain warrants for raids at Kanehsatake, whether the warrants are executed properly and if civil and human rights are different when it comes to Mohawks.

Plausible rumours after each raid have a long shelf life and wide distribution on the Rez. There’s also little effort to dispel rumours because there aren’t many credible or reliable sources of information at Kanehsatake. There are no local newspapers or other forms of independent journalism. People have few chances to meet, discuss or debate local issues. So the community lives on rumours.

Official sources of information, such as the police, governments, and Montreal newspapers, have little credibility among Mohawks. The police and governments play up their seeming infallibility while depending upon ugly attitudes about Indians in general and Mohawks specifically to justify their actions. To them, this is a problem community that they wish would just go away. As a result, they don’t get involved in working with the community toward long-term solutions, and instead use short-term thinking and flashy, expensive, and ultimately useless raids over and over again. It’s progress in reverse.

The mainstream media seem to share the attitudes of governments and police about Mohawks at Kanehsatake. So they don’t waste a lot of time questioning authorities about strategy or tactics. One can almost hear the sighs from newsrooms and the plaintive whine from reporters begging not to be sent on this never-ending story. As a result, little is done to offset sensational and superficial media coverage often driven by and reinforcing negative Mohawk stereotypes.

Of course, stereotypes go both ways. Mohawks don’t trust, like or respect the SQ or the RCMP because of past confrontations. Police are not seen as people trying to help but uniforms with weapons. On the other hand, the police haven’t tried much to build trust. Stories abound on the Rez about the SQ laughing at Mohawks trying to file complaints for assault or attacks on property, only to be told much later that their complaints don’t exist or are missing.

Mohawks at Kanehsatake may trust the Aboriginal Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit even less. The A-CFSEU is a collection of native constables drafted from reserve police forces across the province. The federal and provincial governments first tried this type of combined native force at Kanehsatake in 2004. It didn’t work.

Former chief councillor James Gabriel fired his own Mohawk police force and dismantled the community police board. He didn’t trust his own cops to "weed out the organized crime that has infiltrated our community." Gabriel then hired about 40 Native constables from across Quebec and brought back a former chief of police that the community despised.

In a 2004 Maclean’s magazine article, Gabriel explained his reasoning.

After 1990, he claims, some Mohawks turned the political and legal vacuum to their advantage. "They got organized during the cigarette contraband era," Gabriel says, referring to the period when name-brand Canadian cigarettes exported to the US were brought clandestinely back and sold tax-free in Mohawk villages. "They developed trade routes, evasion tactics," Gabriel charges. "When tax rollbacks killed the cigarette trade, they recycled into booze, drugs, weapons, illegal immigrants, anything with a cash value."

Given Gabriel's statement, it’s understandable why many people on the Rez became convinced that Gabriel wanted to eliminate all of the smoke shacks at Kanehsatake. Such statements might have played well with outside governments, police and media but it set off alarms inside Kanehsatake. People feared Gabriel intended to use this private army to attack not only crime and dope dealers but his personal and political opponents as well.

The tobacco shacks that lined Route 344 just west of Oka were an economic shot in the arm where there had been almost no growth for decades despite a booming population. The shacks brought in money and created jobs. For many owners of those shacks, it meant new homes, a new car, a chance to pay bills or set up a small business. For those they hired to work in the shacks, it meant a job at home with decent pay instead of commuting or moving to Montreal. There were political implications too because, for the first time in a long time, a growing part of the community was no longer dependent upon, and dictated by, the band council.

Some of the money generated by the tobacco trade began to stick around Kanehsatake. In the past, money—usually in federal grants—would flow through the band office and almost immediately to outside businesses such as those in Oka. Now, there was a growing economy in Kanehsatake. Outside governments and police might not have liked it, they may have even wanted to eliminate the tobacco trade altogether, but they would have had to acknowledge that the entrepreneurial smoke shacks were creating a local economy where none existed before.

There were downsides too. Some parents worried that their children were quitting school to work at these shacks—not exactly a stable career choice. Other parents worried that sitting behind a counter all day didn’t instill in children the same work ethic as their ancestors had. Many parents recognized to some extent that the tobacco trade might end someday if the police and governments had their way.

People also began hearing rumours that some shacks were dealing drugs, weapons and booze. Parents worried that their children might be involved. Sadly, some other parents even encouraged their children to participate and take advantage of the “legal vacuum” that James Gabriel described.

At least that’s what everyone says because everyone knows.

Gabriel’s hired guns drove into the Kanehsatake police station in early January 2004. The reaction to the sudden arrival of foreign cops—Algonquin, Cree, Innu and Mi’kmaq—was swift and angry. They were quickly hemmed in by dozens of angry Mohawks. After a few days, they had to be rescued by Kahnawake’s Mohawk Peacekeepers. An angry mob then marched to Gabriel’s house, burned it down and drove him into exile. Gabriel’s force of Native constables spent the next few months collecting salaries doing nothing, sitting in their vehicles outside the territory.

Safety and security within the community went downhill ever since, coming to a head in 2009. Several people had nearly been killed in a series of violent incidents involving a specific group of men and women. People started calling them a gang. People began to organize their own self-defense groups and community meetings. At these meetings, people condemned police inaction and the band council’s willful blindness to this group’s violence. They began to demand the option of banishment. The band council was forced to meet with the community.

At a meeting in January 2010, the band council said it was working with the SQ to gather complaints including assault, arson and dope dealing. The council assured people they could lodge charges “anonymously” with the band council, which would then file them with the SQ. Of course, that wasn’t possible—legally—but no-one challenged the chief councillor, Paul Nicholas.
The band council also promised to seek legal opinions on banishment, safety and security and formation of its own police force. It promised to report its findings and decisions to the community within a month. Three months later, at a second community meeting, the band council said it was still studying these issues and would convene a meeting “within three weeks.” Since then, more than a year later, not a peep from the band council about any of these topics has been heard. It’s something the present band council hopes people forget as the community heads into elections this summer to choose a new council.

By now, you’ve figured out that Kanehsatake is a community going nowhere fast. Things are put off by the band council either because it’s incompetent and unable to deal with the issues, or it’s handcuffed by government policies and unable to do anything to effect change. Either way, nothing gets done.

The massive raids are merely a symptom of more fundamental problems that don’t or shouldn’t involve the police except as a partner with Mohawks in the community. Policing that doesn’t involve the community, that doesn’t reflect the will of the majority of people, just won’t work. It never has and never will—anywhere.

But giving Mohawks control over policing will take a leap of faith by all parties: the federal and provincial governments, the SQ and RCMP, and most importantly, the Mohawks at Kanehsatake. Individual Mohawks are frustrated that they’ve expressed over and over a wish to be involved. Federal and provincial officials have attended community meetings where speaker after speaker demanded to know why their governments were prepared to spend millions treating them like criminals but nothing to identify and address the root issues that provide the perfect environment for such behaviour.

For a long time, people in the community have been asking—demanding—change, and for some body to act. The band council is useless. Government bureaucrats listen but do nothing. Police seem to like the big show of strength. And the mainstream media puts out the same-old instead of trying to understand why Kanehsatake is in a downward spiral.

Somebody, I fear, is going to get killed, but that won't spark change or interest. I suspect it'll be seen as yet more evidence that Kanehsatake is a basket case and that Mohawks are destined to be hoodlums. In short, a painful reminder that Kanehsatake deserves nothing but the status quo.

Dan David is a printer, inker, drinker, stinker. He is Mohawk from Kanehsatake, and has been a journalist for more than 30 years.

SQ in Kanehsatake

REDD Light!

Moira Peters — Mon, 30 May 2011 05:37:55 +0000

Indigenous say offset plan threatens traditional title

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, MEXICO—The carbon market was the hottest issue at last year’s Conference of the Parties (COP)-16 summit in Cancun. Inside the meeting, delegates approved the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and Conservation program (REDD+). However, outside the official meeting, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Indigenous-led organizations clashed over its merits.

Opponents of REDD+ (or simply “REDD”), say the mechanism is a false solution to the climate crisis which will intensify a pattern of land grabs by the private sector throughout the Third World. The final Cancun text on REDD does little to address these concerns, as it does not contain wording that would prevent conservation projects from encroaching on the rights and title of Indigenous peoples living in forest-rich lands.

Deforestation is responsible for at least 18 per cent of global carbon emissions—more than aviation and global transport combined—according to a report by carbon management company Carbon Planet. REDD is a mechanism by which forests in developing countries are “sustainably managed” or designated as carbon sinks in order to mitigate climate change. Though REDD primarily emerged from the COP-13 in Bali in 2007, the idea germinated during Kyoto Protocol negotiations in 1997.

In Cancun, a clear anti-REDD message unified many Mexican Indigenous, environmental and peasant groups, but NGOs such as Greenpeace International, the World Wildlife Federation, the Environmental Defense Fund, and Conservation International promoted the REDD agreement.

No REDD projects have yet been implemented in Chiapas, which, as a state with heavy forest cover, is a target region for the program. According to Gustavo Castro Soto, an organizer with Otros Mundos (“Other Worlds,” a social and environmental justice organization) in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, the mechanisms for measuring the effectiveness and impact of REDD programs have yet to be designed.

Already, precursors to the implementation of REDD have people like Castro worried. Barring people’s access to forests on ejidos (communally-held lands) is the first necessary step in putting these forested areas on the carbon market.

“This is how the government will ensure that there is a forest in each ejido, and this will obviously be sold as an Environmental Service [a UN-defined category of the carbon market], for which the government will receive a quantity of money, of which the community will receive a fraction,” said Castro.

“This is what they call sustainable community forest management,” he said dryly.

Decisions about how exactly to finance REDD have been postponed to COP-17 in Durban.

“If REDD is going to be financed through the carbon market, it won’t be a real solution to climate change,” Mariana Porras of Friends of the Earth Costa Rica told The Dominion in a phone interview from San Jose. “We’ve denounced this, but government groups don’t see it the same way,” she said.

Market-based financing for REDD will likely complement the ongoing privatization of forest reserves, which moves ownership and access rights of forests currently owned communally by Indigenous or peasant communities into the hands of individuals.

In Costa Rica, as in Mexico, the government is in the early phases of implementing REDD, which means engaging in public consultations. “If you see who gets invited to the meetings about REDD—to the consultations—it’s rare that you’ll see a peasant community, or peasant organizations,” said Porras. “Mostly, you’ll see people who own private lands, or people from private organizations.”

In Cancun, the Indigenous Environmental Network stood in opposition to the discourse of many other NGOs. In a final statement from Cancun, they berated COP-16 as the “World Trade Organization of the sky,” and harshly criticized the REDD plan. “The agreements implicitly promote carbon markets, offsets, unproven technologies and land grabs—anything but a commitment to real emissions reductions,” reads their final release.

In the streets of Cancun, Greenpeace International brought delegates from around the world to show support for popular movements, but the organization’s language fell short of grassroots solidarity. Days before the final agreement was reached, Executive Director Kumi Naidoo released a statement saying that “a good REDD deal would benefit biodiversity, people and the climate.”

Greenpeace was steadfast in its support for the outcome of the climate negotiations in Mexico, and after COP-16 wound down, Naidoo posed for a photo with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, and praised the president’s leadership in reaching a global climate agreement.

Resistance to the REDD program did not end with COP-16. Activists say that the COP-17 meeting in Durban at the end of the year will be decisive as to the future of REDD, and the carbon market is sure to be a key issue in the months preceding the conference.

Dawn Paley is a journalist based in Vancouver.

Cop 16 Picture 3

Justice Embodied

Tim McSorley — Mon, 23 May 2011 05:59:28 +0000

Bearing the future to protect the Earth

VANCOUVER—A boy found his younger brother’s body hanging in the basement. Another mine passed the environmental review process. More women are going missing and are murdered. The search for a nuclear waste site continues.

Stories told by the media are presented as a series of disconnected incidents and issues. Most governments, federal or otherwise, work in a similar framework of disconnection, whether to determine jurisdiction or to deflect accountability. Public discussion often separates reality into compartments.

The discourse of many groups and campaigns working on environmental and climate issues explicitly rejects this disconnected perspective. However, that same discourse has been questioned for its failure to make many other connections that Indigenous peoples, women and others have been pointing out for decades.

“Once you go to a birth, you know how connected you are to the earth, and to all creation around us,” says Neddie Thompson, a traditional midwife from Akwesasne, in Kanienkehaka (Mohawk) territory. “It’s the women who give birth to all of our children...to take care of this land.”

“As an Indigenous feminist, one of the links I, as well as many Indigenous women across the world, see is between reproductive health and environmental justice. Simultaneously I am angry about the lack of recognition of this link within most environmental discourse,” wrote Cree/Norwegian Indigenous feminist Erin Konsmo. Also a student, she added that “[it’s] insulting to hear in environmental classes that the idea of any form of sustainability is a new concept.”

The declaration from the International Indigenous Women’s Environmental and Reproductive Health Symposium held last year in California states that “[sovereignty] and autonomy in relation to our lands, territories and resources are intricately connected to sovereignty and autonomy in relation to our bodies, minds and spirits.”

In occupied Canada, and throughout Turtle Island (North America) and Abya Yala (the Americas), the language used to describe resource extraction and environmental destruction is often framed in terms of the war on the land. The phrase is often used as though this were somehow separate from the wars on Indigenous peoples, on women, and on all beings inhabiting the planet.

The identification of the planet as living, life-bearing, and feminine—Mother Earth, among many other names—has been adopted by many environmental and climate activists. Resource extraction and environmental destruction are often also framed in gendered language, particularly using analogies of rape. The use of these words, however, often does not include any kind of analysis of the connections between violence against the earth and violence against women.

An entirely different worldview is illustrated through the spoken and written words of Indigenous peoples throughout this hemisphere, the original keepers and defenders of the lands on which environmental and climate campaigns are now carried out.

“Grassroots and land-based struggles characterize most of Native environmentalism,” wrote Anishnaabeg author and activist Winona Laduke in All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life. “We are nations of people with distinct land areas, and our leadership and direction emerge from the land up.”

“Western European peoples have never learned to consider the nature of the world discerned from a spatial point of view. And a singular difficulty faces peoples of Western European heritage in making a transition from thinking in terms of time to thinking in terms of space,” wrote Sioux author, teacher and activist Vine Deloria Jr. in his now-famous 1972 book God is Red: A Native View of Religion.

“The very essence of Western European identity involves the assumption that time proceeds in a linear fashion; further it assumes that at a particular point in the unraveling of this sequence, the peoples of Western Europe became the guardians of the world,” continued Deloria.

Many environmental and climate organizations and activists now support the ongoing struggles for collective Indigenous rights to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) over any activity or policy that may impact their territories. Less well known is the story of how the struggle for the right to FPIC is rooted in the organized response of Indigenous women some 40 years ago to the involuntary sterilization of Indigenous women in different territories otherwise known as the United States.

“It’s a really interesting history how it became central to our work and recognition of our rights as Indigenous people—the right to FPIC now relating to development on our territories, laws, toxins being used on our lands related to cultural items, and it all started as medical [terminology]. It started with the right of women to say yes or no, to be fully awake and not under threat when they give their agreement or any kind of medication,” longtime International Indian Treaty Council organizer Andrea Carmen told multiracial Indigenous hip-hop feminist reproductive justice freedom fighter Jessica Yee. The transcript of the conversation is included in Yee’s introduction to Feminism FOR REAL.

In the words of the SisterSong Women of Colour Reproductive Justice Collective, a network of dozens of grassroots organizations, the reproductive justice framework “represents a shift for women advocating for control of their bodies, from a narrower focus on legal access and individual choice (the focus of mainstream organizations) to a broader analysis of racial, economic, cultural, and structural constraints on our power.”

“We believe reproductive justice exists when all people have the social, political and economic power and resources to make healthy decisions about our gender, bodies, sexuality and families for ourselves and our communities,” wrote Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, one of the founding members of the SisterSong. “Reproductive Justice aims to transform power inequities and create long-term systemic change, and therefore relies on the leadership of communities most impacted by reproductive oppression.”

The terms “reproductive justice” and “environmental justice” have been used to emphasize this broader analysis and the need for long-term systemic change. The “justice” framework is not new; it has been used for decades by marginalized women and communities, and in particular, Indigenous women.

“Climate justice” is a term now used by many different people and organizations to make a similar distinction between their perspective and the narrow framework of much environmental discourse. However, if the centuries of experience and voices from the same people and communities the climate justice movement purports to support are ignored, dismissed, romanticized, or silenced, then perhaps the inclusion of “justice” is a cosmetic touch to the same environmental discourse.

Regardless of intentions, a mission statement or policy document is only words on a piece of paper. They can either become an ongoing reality, or they can join a long trail of broken treaties.

In 1992, longtime Sioux activist Floyd Red Crow Westerman recited some of the lyrics from his 1973 song “They Didn’t Listen” to conclude his testimony at the World Uranium Hearings in Austria: “And I told them not to dig for uranium, for if they did, the children would die. They didn’t listen, they didn’t listen to me. And I told them if the children die, there would be no keepers of the land. They didn’t listen.”

“If our midwives pass on Indigenous concepts of respecting our environment and keeping it healthy for the next seven generations, should they not be central to environmental discourse?” wrote Erin Konsmo in An Indigenous Feminist Reminder of Women and Environmental Justice. “They absolutely need to be. Otherwise, the ideas of risk will be greatly slanted away from our women and our future generations.”

Sandra Cuffe’s mom used to borrow her own mother’s old typewriter so her little daughter could type her stories. Thanks!

This article was published in A People's Forecast: The Climate Justice Issue, our 2011 special issue. To read more articles as they are published, click here.

Justice silenced

Sisters in Spirit Smothered

Martin Lukacs — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 05:17:42 +0000

Conservative smoke-and-mirrors funding has Indigenous groups up in arms

VANCOUVER—Ten million dollars set aside by the Harper government to address the crisis of missing or murdered Aboriginal women will be redirected to the Department of Justice and the Ministry of Public Safety.

And that has some groups, like Vancouver's Walk 4 Justice, fuming.

“We have the answers and tools already because we’ve been working on this issue for a long time,” said Gladys Radek, a co-founder of the Indigenous-led campaign.

Radek was jolted into action when her niece, Tamara Chipman, disappeared in 2005 along Highway 16 in northern British Columbia. She has since organized three walks—the first a 4,000-kilometre march from Vancouver to Ottawa in the summer of 2008—to press the federal government to initiate a public inquiry and deal with the root causes of violence against Indigenous women.

“This funding will do nothing to address the issue," she said. “This is about power and control again.”

Eight months after the 2010 budget release of promised funding, Minister for Status of Women Rona Ambrose announced the money will be spent on seven different initiatives, the bulk on a national police support center for missing persons.

The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) quickly expressed their alarm.

“While NWAC is supportive in principle to see the Government of Canada taking steps to address the issue of missing and murdered Aboriginal women, we must undoubtedly express our disappointment with the exclusion of Sisters In Spirit in the ongoing development of public policy in the matter,” they stated in a release.

The Conservatives kept Sisters in Spirit—NWAC’s research, education and policy initiative that deals with missing and murdered Aboriginal women—in limbo for eight months, and then gave NWAC only a day’s notice before the announcement was finally made.

Status of Women officials made clear to NWAC that any new funding proposals would not permit the use of the Sisters in Spirit name or the continuation of their groundbreaking and growing database.

Since 2005, Sisters in Spirit has been gathering complex statistical information on violence against Aboriginal women. It has shown that more than 582 Aboriginal women have gone missing or been murdered in Canada since roughly 1980. Twenty of the cases have occurred in the past year, and 226 in the past 10 years. Such information was previously scattered and highly deficient.

Liberal MP and Official Opposition Critic for Status of Women, Anita Neville believes the Conservative government’s move was deceptive.

“It was a duplicitous announcement,” Neville said. “Ambrose framed it as ten million going towards Aboriginal women but a good deal is going to their own justice systems, not Aboriginal women. Sisters in Spirit was told to shut down, told not to collect stats or advocate, but still they were used as a poster program. It’s all smoke and mirrors and it’s disrespectful. Ambrose should be ashamed at playing with women’s lives this way.”

Despite Harper’s stated commitment to “take concrete steps to address the issue of missing or murdered Aboriginal women,” the details in the announcement are not specific to Aboriginal women.

Instead, the largest portion of the funding will be spent on a generic RCMP missing-persons database and amendments to the criminal code to allow more police freedom around warrants and wire-taps. A much smaller fraction of the funds will go toward what many see as the most critical work: victim, family and healing support, and dealing with the root causes of violence.

“Working with the community and police was a part of Sisters in Spirit’s comprehensive plan, but the idea that this is the sole focus of this new strategy completely misses the point,” said Niki Ashton, an NDP MP. “I doubt it will make a difference for Aboriginal women living on the ground. It’s a short-sighted approach and reflects a lack of consultation.”

NDP Aboriginal Affairs critic Jean Crowder agrees with Ashton.

“They [the Government of Canada] needed to work with Aboriginal women to see what else would be helpful and what was missing, but the money is going towards the Department of Justice and the Ministry of Public Safety.”

“What it needed to do was build on Sisters in Spirit, [who are] the experts. Money needed to go into helping the families of the murdered and missing women, to help them understand the legal system, and access trauma counseling. But that's not what is happening.”

Opposition critics have also accused the Conservatives of pushing through pieces of their tough-on-crime agenda under the cover of this national strategy.

According to the Department of Justice website, the seven initiatives include amendments that would “streamline” the process for securing authorization for wire-taps, potentially avoiding court orders or judge-issued warrants.

While the government claims the change is linked to potential investigations involving Aboriginal women, the initiative is actually a recycled portion of Bill C-31, allowing warrant-less wiretapping. The bill died last year when Harper prorogued Parliament.

Canada’s lack of consultation, transparency and relationship-building in this instance illustrates a glaring pattern concerning the Conservatives' policies toward Indigenous Peoples.

Upon taking power in 2006, the Stephen Harper government canceled the Kelowna Accord—a $5.1 billion strategy to improve Aboriginal health and water services, housing, and education. This, despite the reality that over a third of First Nations children live in overcrowded homes, and one in three First Nations people consider their main source of water unsafe to drink.

This move was the first in a series of cuts Harper would make to Aboriginal communities despite the optics of attempted reconciliation with First Peoples.

In 2007, Canada was one of only four countries to vote against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In spite of a recent endorsement, some Aboriginal leaders believe Canada’s signature does not reflect a desire to honor Aboriginal people or their rights, but rather a need for good public relations.

And just two years after Harper’s apology to Aboriginal people for the residential school project and its legacy, the Conservatives cut funding to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF). The decision meant the end of significant funding to a Canada-wide network of 134 community-based healing initiatives addressing intergenerational trauma resulting from the schools.

The recent announcement by Minister Ambrose indicates that $4.65 million will go towards community and school-based programs to deal with cycles of violence and improve the safety of Aboriginal women in Aboriginal communities.

“While this focus on violence within Aboriginal communities is important, I think given the statistics we have seen, we also need to look beyond Aboriginal communities, at, for example, non-Aboriginal perpetrators who commit murder and acts of violence against Aboriginal women, like Robert Pickton,” Crowder said.

According to Amnesty International, Aboriginal women are almost three times more likely than non-Aboriginal women to be killed by a stranger. In addition, 60 per cent of women and girls were killed in urban areas, 28 per cent in rural areas, and 13 per cent on-reserve.

There is also recognition within the Aboriginal community and among advocates that those in positions of power in Canadian society, in particular police and justice system officials, have themselves been accused and charged as perpetrators of violence against Aboriginal women.

Some view this as key to understanding Aboriginal women’s lack of trust in the justice system and their confidence in police protecting them from violence.

Last month former Attorney General Wally Oppal was hired to look into police investigations of the disappearances and murders of women, many of them Aboriginal, from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and why serial killer Robert Pickton was not charged after an incident in 1997.

Shawn Atleo, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and Ernie Crey, whose sister’s DNA was found on the Pickton farm, issued a statement in October 2010, expressing their views about the Canadian justice system.

“Why were the lives of these and so many other Indigenous women in Canada not adequately supported, and how could our systems treat them, and others, as something to be thrown away, then put to the bottom of the heap in pursuing their murderers and abusers?”

With such mistrust in Canada’s justice system amongst First Nations leaders, advocates and Aboriginal women's groups, why is the Department of Justice now spearheading a campaign to end violence against Aboriginal women?

“Many of the family members are now thinking of reporting crimes less because they feel it won’t do anything anyways,” said Gladys Radek.

“I feel so sad for the families, the money needed to go towards their needs. They need their Healing Center. But they have been silenced again.”

Regardless of the funding allocation, NWAC has made a commitment to the families to continue to hold annual family meetings, work with families to share stories, convene community workshops and develop tools and resources.

According to an NWAC press released addressed to the families of missing and murdered women, “The movement and group of family members and community will remain under the Sisters in Spirit name.”

Meanwhile, Radek’s group Walk 4 Justice continues their work—spreading awareness, working with family members and communities to advocate for missing and murdered women, and urging the public to take action—with no government funding.

Angela Sterritt is a writer, artist and broadcast journalist based out of Vancouver, BC. She is from the Gitxsan Nation.

Erasing Sisters in Spirit

Showdown in the Far North

Martin Lukacs — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 05:44:43 +0000

First Nations oppose Ontario's Far North Act, some environmental orgs support it

KENORA, ONTARIO—Following the third reading of the Far North Act, the Chiefs of Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) in Northern Ontario have vowed to “unanimously oppose the introduction of Bill 191 into law, and will continue to do so by any means necessary.” NAN represents First Nations that are signatories to Treaties 5 and 9, covering two-thirds of the land mass of Ontario.

The Far North Act, provincial Bill 191, is said to have been designed to protect at least 50 per cent of this territory north of the 51st parallel, and to arrange for First Nations to lead land use plans. While the government and environmentalists insist the land use plans would be constructed, led and finalized by the First Nations, NAN's leadership believes the Minister of Natural Resources will have the final say in development, overriding treaty rights.

As the 225,000 square kilometre space is set aside, First Nations expressed concern that they would be ceding territory outside of the protected land use area to development.

Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals passed the bill in a 46 to 26 vote on September 23, despite opposition from not only First Nations, the Progressive Conservatives and the New Democratic Party but seemingly unanimous opposition from those who live and do business in the North, including the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association, the adjacent Treaty Three Grand Council, the Ontario Prospectors Association, the Ontario Forestry Industries Association and the Northwestern Ontario Associated Chambers of Commerce.

“It is a disappointing day for all of us who spent tireless hours opposing Bill 191 as our opposition was obviously ignored,” said NAN Deputy Grand Chief Mike Metatawabin. “As we have stated time and time again, NAN First Nations and Tribal Councils do not and will not recognize this legislation on our homelands. We will continue to uphold our Aboriginal and treaty rights and jurisdiction over our land. The real fight is just beginning.”

From the government’s corner, the intention with the bill has always been straightforward: to establish a clear set of rules in order to develop the Ring Of Fire, an estimated 72-megatonne chromite deposit located 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay. Minister of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry, Michael Gravelle, has called it “the largest economic development opportunity in Northern Ontario in a century.” More than 30,000 mining claims have been staked in the area in the past seven years alone.

A week before the passage of the Far North Act, the “unanimous” voice of Treaty 9 opposition to the bill was split when the two closest First Nations to the Ring of Fire, Marten Falls and Webequie First Nation, broke rank and signed Letters of Intent with Minister Gravelle. These Letters of Intent are the precursors to Memorandums of Understanding regarding land use planning. Marten Falls First Nation Chief Eli Moonias and Webequie First Nation Chief Cornelius Wabasse were promised skills training and finances to develop land use plans that address hunting and trapping sustainability.

“Whether the Far North plan gets moved forward, we’re still going to be using our land use plan,” Wabase said. “The main purpose of us signing with the government is to work with the government on our issues and that includes land use plans.”

A week after the act was passed, McGuinty was in Thunder Bay, announcing Christine Kaszycki as the Coordinator of the Ring of Fire. The Ontario Prospectors Association endorsed Kaszycki, who has been a leader of the revamped Mining Act and is former Assistant Deputy Minister in the the Ministry of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry. However, NAN Grand Chief Stan Beardy responded angrily to her appointment.

“We should have been a part of the selection of the person to fill this critical position,” Beardy said. "We are disturbed that the Premier can express his willingness to create a true partnership and yet leaves us out of this critical process. We need to ensure that our objectives and our plans for anything in our territory are adequately represented."

World Wildlife Fund (WWF) president Monte Hummel was one of the architects of the bill and has taken offense to opposition allegations that the act is neocolonial.

According to Hummel, the 50 per cent figure in the Far North Act was born from the seed of the 2003 Boreal Forest Conservation Framework. The environmental movement wanted a place at the table but to get it, they needed to have a quantifiable demand. To meet that end, the University of Central Florida’s Reed Noss was brought in and produced the 50 per cent protection estimate to maintain biodiversity in the Boreal Forest. It was then adopted by the US-based Pew Foundation, which spends $2 million annually funding most of the widely recognized environmental organizations in North America, including the WWF.

“Pew has not called the tune but they’ve said, 'If you want to be funded by the Pew Foundation, you have to come forward with a plan and proposals that make sense, that provide for industrial interests, First Nations, environmentalists and governments, and are going to produce something,’” Hummel said.

The four-cornered model of bringing industry, First Nations, environmentalists and government to the table emerged from the conservation framework and became the basis for the Far North Act. The willingness to accept industrial development puts environmentalists at the table and in exchange they have a guarantee that 50 per cent of the Far North will go untouched.

“In the old view, you’d always get outgunned by big government,” Hummel recalled. “Over the years, we’ve gotten a lot stronger. Now, the game isn’t sitting on the margins and complaining. Now you engage. You move to the centre. Rather than letting all these mega-organizations make decisions, you go to the centre and be part of that process.”

But regardless of the bill’s controls from the beginning to the end of the land use planning, NAN believes the philosophy behind it overrides treaty rights to land ownership and so are vowing to fight its implementation. With First Nations being brought into a process in which industrial interests are assured, they are in no position to maintain exclusive stewardship over the land.

With NAN having rejected the development framework, Hummel warned they would be pushed back to the sidelines.

“You’d better think about the state you’re going to be in if this bill gets rescinded. You’re going to be in a de facto development run by development interests, possibly under a Conservative government which doesn’t have a history of championing First Nations issues and being twisted around by government departments with no planning framework or final say in land use plans," Hummel said.

"I can’t imagine this act being rescinded is going to leave [NAN Grand Chief] Stan Beardy or his communities in a better position. I appreciate they don’t agree with me and it’s their opinion that really counts but the stakes are very high and my caution based on 40 years experience is, before you kill this, you want to think long and hard about what’s going to replace it.”

Jon Thompson is an award-winning journalist and author in Northwestern Ontario. Jon's reckless, freelance adventuring pseudonym is selling his book at www.tommyjonsson.ca.

NAN protest

Staking the North

hillarybain — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 05:53:05 +0000

The Arctic is being developed—in whose interest?

MONTREAL—On March 28 Indigenous leaders and environmental activists called for a moratorium on Arctic oil and gas exploration, as Foreign Affairs Ministers from Canada, Norway, Denmark, Russia and the United States met at the “Arctic Summit” in Chelsea, Quebec to discuss their plans for the resource-rich North.

Canada has acknowledged its interest in metals, oil and gas in the Arctic, which the melting sea ice is opening up to exploration. But critics are expressing concerns about the impact of Arctic industrialization on Indigenous peoples and the climate.

“New oil and gas development is anything but responsible in the face of a very serious climate crisis,” says Andrea Harden, Energy Campaigner with the Council of Canadians. “It is no small irony that increased access to exploit reserves in the fragile Arctic Ocean ecosystem is largely the result of melting sea ice.”

The Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), the Alaska-based Resisting Environmental Destruction On Indigenous Lands (REDOIL) and the Council of Canadians travelled to the Arctic Summit to deliver their appeal for a moratorium on oil exploration.

According to a joint press release issued by the IEN, REDOIL and the Council of Canadians, 90 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas have been discovered in the arctic. Clayton Thomas-Muller of IEN is concerned that talk of developing oil and gas reserves in the north is just part of a larger initiative to exploit the world’s remaining natural resources.

“The Arctic development plan is part of an ongoing psychotic initiative lead by the G8/G20 nations to exploit the world’s last remaining pristine ecosystems for energy [and] for raw resources,” explains Thomas-Muller.

According to past communiques, G8 meetings have explicitly encouraged the development of new oil reserves. A new resolution to phase out G20 country subsidies to oil companies was passed at a G20 meeting last September but the resolution lacked any time-frame for action.

Thomas-Muller was also concerned by the lack of Native representation at the Arctic Summit considering the difficulties Inuit people face as a result of oil and gas exploration.

“Indigenous peoples in the circumpolar region are the true canaries in the coal mine when we think about the global climate crisis,” Thomas-Muller explains. “They carry a disproportionate impact from the global climate crisis and then are doubly impacted by the immense presence of unsustainable energy development in that region.”

Inuit have observed changes in animal populations and behaviour, thinning sea ice and unpredictable weather patterns. An Inuit hunter was stranded in January when the ice floe he was on broke off and started to drift in the Northwest Passage.

Ongoing explorations in Nunavut are going after nickel, diamonds, sapphires, uranium, gold, silver and other metal deposits. The exploratory process may also adversely affect caribou herds on which Inuit depend for sustenance.

According to the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq Caribou Management Board (BQCMB), caribou populations suffered a “major population decline” since 1994. A 2004 position paper published by the BQCMB suggests that increasing demands for caribou, effects of climate change, and infrastructural and industrial development on caribou ranges—including exploration—are the major contributing factors to this decline.

Incidentally, food harvesting rights and land use planning with consideration of health, housing, education and other social services are guaranteed to the Inuit people of Nunavut, according to the 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (NLCA). This agreement concurrently handed over immense swaths of land in modern-day Nunavut to the Crown.

G7 Finance Ministers met in Iqaluit, Nunavut, in February. Some speculated that Canada’s recent strategy of promoting “Arctic Sovereignty,” including Canada’s staking of subsurface rights to the Arctic seabed and control over the disputed Northwest Passage, played a role in the choice of location.

The Harper government has bolstered its talk of Arctic Sovereignty through its “Arctic Strategy,” and, since 2007, has announced $3.1 billion in military spending for infrastructure development, annual military training exercises in Nunavut and the creation of the Canadian Northern Development Agency (CanNor).

Since the signing of NLCA Canada has been handing out exploration permits within the territory. Mining companies have invested at least $700 million in exploration in the territory since 2007, according to Nunavut Minister of Economic Development and Transportation Peter Taptuna.

Meanwhile, critics have accused Canada of not fulfilling its obligations under the NLCA. The Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI) is suing the federal government for $1 billion for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary obligation. NTI would not elaborate on the ongoing court case.

A judicial review of the NLCA produced a number of suggestions which the federal government dismissed as being too costly. The announcement for $3 billion toward military infrastructure in the Arctic was announced less than a year later.

Shailagh Keaney is a writer based in occupied Atikameksheng Anishnawbek territory.

This story was published in The Dominion's special issue on the G8 and G20 summits in Ontario. We will continue to publish independent, investigative news about the G8 and G20 throughout the month of June.

For up-to-the-minute G8/G20 news from the streets of Toronto, visit the Toronto Media Co-op.

Arctic Canary

Concerns

Paula LaPierre — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:45:41 +0000

The Dialogue Denied Us

Appreciates Recent Correspondence

Paula LaPierre — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:13:35 +0000

Understanding the Importance of Grassroots Communities

Paula LaPierre — Sat, 16 May 2009 18:59:23 +0000

May 11: Mining Company to Stake Claim on Mount Royal

Sandra — Thu, 07 May 2009 02:00:51 +0000

MountRoyalProposedMine.png

For immediate and widespread distribution:

Québec – Canada – Americas

mining, human rights and citizens’ rights

an open-pit mine on the mont-royal?

see : www.royalor.com

citizens’-action

may 11 2009

Mont-Royal 1 :30 -2 :30

(at the gazebo at Duluth & Parc)

Representatives of different communities affected by Canadian open-pit mining projects will stake a claim on the mineral rights of the Mont-Royal. Their aim is to symbolically demonstrate the harms and prejudices faced by their communities whether in Québec, elsewhere in Canada , in Mexico , in Honduras , in Chile or in Papua New-Guinea. The claim will be duly filed with the Ministère des Ressources naturelles du Québec.

Come one, come all to call for :

1. a reform of mining laws

2. the legal accountability of canadian companies operating abroad

3. a public debate free of « slapp » suits
________

In collaboration with Coalition québécoise sur les impacts socio-environnementaux des transnationales en Amérique Latine and many other organizations. For more information : Lazar Konforti 514.827.7486 lazar.konforti@gmail.com, Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert 514.398.4251 daviken.studnicki-gizbert@mcgill.ca. An event organized in conjunction with the Cadre des activités parallèles du 5e Congrès mondial d’éducation relative à l’environnement (www.5weec.uqam.ca), May 10 - 15 Palais des Congrès Montréal.

Toronto, April 26: An examination of the Canadian mining industry

Sandra — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 03:41:09 +0000

QuestionSustainabilityImage.jpg

WHAT: 1 day conference about mining issues within Canada and abroad

WHEN: Sunday, April 26, 2009, 10:00am - 7:30pm

WHERE: Earth Sciences, Room 1050 (ES 1050), University of Toronto, 5 Bancroft Avenue

Moderated by Judy Rebick

$10 (sliding scale) to cover cost of meals; free for students. No registration required. Donations gladly accepted (available seating for 400 in auditorium).

Hosts: UTERN, Science for Peace, Students Against Climate Change / Toronto Mining Support Group, Aboriginal Students Association of York University

With the intention of building a movement for change within Canada we are hosting a conference on mining issues at the University of Toronto. This conference will provide the space for people within Canada to interact with affected communities and each other, and the conference format prioritizes facilitating conversations focused on solutions to ending corporate impunity.

“The Question of Sustainability” is a conference dedicated to examining the Canadian mining industry through the lens of sustainability within ecosystems, human rights, culture, and economics.

Featuring speakers from Papua New Guinea, Chile, the Congo, Guatemala, Tanzania and Peru, as well as many First Nations speakers and academics from Canada. This conference brings together indigenous people from the global south and the global north, and serves to address some of the complex social, political and environmental issues that relate to the imposition of extractive industries on traditional cultures.

Major issues include water use and contamination, human rights violations by Canadian companies operating abroad, the question of corporate social responsibility, and the autonomy and preservation of traditional cultures.