RCMP, let journalists witness Unist’ot’en Camp

Photo from Facebook page of Wet’suwet’en Access Point on Gidimt’en territory.

Members of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation have fought for many years to keep three pipelines from running through their land in northern B.C. At stake, the protesters say, is their way of life, their culture and their system of governance which was recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada in the landmark Delgamuukw decision in 1997.

I remember when the Wet’suwet’en first erected the Unist’ot’en Camp to uphold the clans’ decision to prevent Enbridge, Chevron and TransCanada from building pipelines on their unceded lands in 2010. Tensions rose as they built a blockade and confronted workers who attempted to cross it, saying they had no permission to be on their territory.

Last December, a report by the Guardian newspaper sent shock waves across Canada. The Guardian said it had uncovered documents showing that the RCMP discussed shooting Indigenous clan members and supporters, all in the service of gas and oil. “Notes from a strategy session for a militarized raid on ancestral lands of the Wet’suwet’en nation show that commanders of Canada’s national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), argued that “lethal overwatch is req’d” — a term for deploying an officer who is prepared to use lethal force.

Is this reconciliation? Hardly.

Is this making amends for residential schools, colonialization, the taking of lands and wealth? You bet it’s not.

Shockingly, a tweet from the Unist’ot’en Camp stated today the RCMP has blocked roads for 27 kilometers leading up to the site, barring media from witnessing and documenting their actions.

“We do not want to see a repeat of last year’s behaviour, when the RCMP used an exclusion zone to block journalists’ access, making it impossible to provide details on a police operation that was very much in the public interest,” Canadian Association of Journalists president Karyn Pugliese said in a tweet.

Pugliese has it right.

Even without the Guardian‘s report of the RCMP’s apparent willingness to use lethal force to remove people from the blockade, the RCMP should not be allowed to stop journalists from witnessing their actions.This is Horgan’s Scott Morrison moment. Like the Australia PM, Horgan is pushing fossil-fuel expansion in face of obviously dire climate change.

Now would be an excellent time for the B.C. Greens to show some backbone. Put Horgan’s govt on the line. If he proceeds against the Wet’suwet’en, dissolve the coalition. Force a new election.
As long as B.C. is going to follow neoliberal policies, the B.C. Liberals may as well be in power. But progressive voters must send a clear message to the NDP. We won’t accept this betrayal.

What have the Greens got to lose?

“Horgan says ‘rule of law applies,’ LNG pipeline will proceed despite protests” (Canadian Press: January 14, 2020)
A natural gas pipeline across northern British Columbia is vital to the region’s economic future and it will be built despite the objections of some Indigenous leaders, Premier John Horgan said Monday.
He said the courts have ruled in favour of the project and the RULE OF LAW will apply to ensure work continues on the Coastal GasLink pipeline, which would start near Dawson Creek and extend to an export terminal at Kitimat.

Horgan told a news conference the project has received approval from 20 First Nations along the pipeline route.

“We want everyone to understand that there are agreements from the Peace Country to Kitimat with Indigenous communities that want to see economic activity and prosperity take place,” he said. “All the permits are in place for this project to proceed. This project is proceeding and the RULE OF LAW needs to prevail in B.C.”

Horgan’s government adopted legislation late last year to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It mandates the government to bring provincial laws and policies into harmony with the declaration’s aims of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.

The UN declaration says Indigenous Peoples have the right to self-determination, which means they can determine their political status and pursue economic, social and cultural development. It requires governments to obtain “free and informed consent” from Indigenous groups before approving projects affecting their lands or resources.
BUT HORGAN SAYS THE DECLARATION DOESN’T APPLY TO THE COASTAL GASLINK PROJECT.

“Our document, our legislation, our declaration is FORWARD LOOKING,” he said. “It’s NOT RETROSPECTIVE. We believe it will open up opportunities not just for Indigenous people but for all British Columbians.”

https://calgaryherald.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-

The BC Civil Liberties Association stands with the Wet’suwet’en, too:
https://bccla.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2020-01-10-LT-RCMP-et-al-re…

Our wee co-op has also made such a statement:
http://ecoreality.org/wiki/Statement_in_support_of_the_Wet%27suwet%27en

Do you belong to a church group, charity, civic organization, or serve in local government? Your group is invited to do so, as well!
http://unistoten.camp/support-us/solidarity-statements/

This whole thing is wrong on so many different levels. The Wet’suwet’en is reporting that the RCMP is blocking shipments of food to their camps, during a bitter cold snap! “Starve them out” That thinking is so 1876. It is immoral.  SOURCE

RELATED:

Complaints filed against RCMP for blocking Wet’suwet’en access

A decade of high expectations, broken promises for Indigenous peoples

Idle No More protestors close down Winnipeg’s major intersection of Portage Avenue and Main Street in 2012. (John Woods / Free Press files)

In the opening days of 2010, the world travelled to the West Coast for the Winter Olympics.

“These games are Canada’s games,” then-prime minister Stephen Harper announced, “that we shall offer to our children and our children’s children as examples of what it means to be Canadian.”

It was an economic and cultural windfall for British Columbia and Canada, perhaps remembered best for Sidney Crosby’s dramatic overtime golden goal to defeat the United States.

For Indigenous peoples though, the 2010 Olympics was a stark reminder of reality.

Vancouver and Whistler sit on unceded Indigenous territories.

Stolen land.

In the leadup to the Games, the organizing committee attempted to include some Indigenous elements — the Inukshuk logo and the partnership with the Four Host First Nations, as examples — but it’s interesting to note the same scene taking place a decade later.

The opening days of 2020 will come with Canada’s predictable approval of the Trans Mountain Expansion Project — a pipeline it owns — and countless arrests of Indigenous peoples resisting more theft of their territories.

This isn’t the only cycle repeating itself. The year 2010 also came with a tepid “statement of support” from the Harper government of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which it called “aspirational” and a “non-legally binding document that does not reflect customary international law nor change Canadian laws.”

The federal government is promising to implement UNDRIP as one its first acts of 2020. Not being tepid, at least.

Cycles like these have been interrupted at times, and this may be what this decade is known for.

The biggest interruption came in late 2012 with Idle No More, arguably the largest social activist movement in Canada in decades. For more than six months, Indigenous youth led peaceful demonstrations on the streets, on social media and in round dances in malls, calling for a change in Canada’s violent relationship with Indigenous peoples.

Idle No More — which continues — changed the conversation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in this country. It demonstrated the capability, power and savvy of Indigenous communities, and how Canada’s theft of lands, systemic oppression and denial of treaty and Indigenous rights could not continue unabated.

In many ways, Idle No More contributed to the downfall of Stephen Harper, whose relationships with Indigenous peoples had become rancorous and nearly invisible. In the 2015 federal election, Indigenous voters turned out in record numbers, shifting the balance of control in dozens of ridings and electing a record number — 10 — of Indigenous MPs.

Another interruption came in 2015 and the release of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. While Harper had apologized in 2008 for residential school policy, the 94 calls to action offered by the commissioners (full disclosure: one of whom was my father) gave Canada a road map out of the violent and divisive legacies that characterize it.

The decade’s greatest potential for change — and arguably its greatest repeater of historical cycles — has been Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. There was hope for a man who stood at the unveiling of the commission’s final report and, with tears in his eyes, publicly and fully committed to the 94 calls, declaring that “no relationship is more important to me and to Canada than the one with First Nations, the Métis, and Inuit… I give you my word that we will renew and respect that relationship.”

I remember believing him.

“I wonder what’s gonna happen with the Indian Act,” I remember saying to my sister that day. “Reconciliation is impossible with that.”

News flash: it’s still here.

So are Canada’s cycles. The past five years have represented arguably the most contradictory series of laws, promises and confusing attitudes toward Indigenous peoples in more than a century.

Trudeau appointed the first Indigenous justice minister and made her the face of Indigenous policies for the Canadian government. Then, when she refused to make a decision that compromised her Indigenous ethics, he fired her.

There have been legislative steps, such as protecting Indigenous languages and the lifting of boil-water advisories, but for every good moment there’s a community declaring a state of emergency, experiencing overwhelming poverty, suicide or sickness, or another marching to the Supreme Court over violations of their rights.

The government created the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry and then virtually sabotaged it with a restrictive timeline, an impossibly broad mandate (how could anyone “examine the systemic causes of all forms of violence against Indigenous women, girls and members of the LGBTQ2S community in Canada” in two years?), and a denial of the deep, systemic problems within the inquiry itself — probably caused by stress.

For every law passed such as C-92, which proposes to hand Indigenous communities control of child welfare, the federal government appeals the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision stating on-reserve Indigenous children in care and their families have been discriminated against and deserve compensation.

It’s almost as if cycles never change in Canada unless Indigenous peoples inspire and lead.

While reality marches on — and most of Canada’s land is still stolen, more conflict is on the horizon, and Indigenous resistance continues to be a national story — this is a message worth remembering as we begin 2020. SOURCE

Murray Sinclair has tried for years to shock Canada into confronting colonialism. He’s not done yet

After leading landmark inquiries on racism in Manitoba, residential schools and police discrimination in Thunder Bay, this jurist turned politician says he’s learned that shocking words are sometimes best: Genocide. Apartheid. War. Now, he has more to say.

ILLUSTRATION BY AGATA NOWICKA

The words are so shocking, so evocative of foreign atrocities, that many Canadians are still unwilling to accept that they apply to their own country – words such as “apartheid,” “genocide” and “war.”

But after decades of research from his inquiries into racial abuses in the justice system and in residential schools, Senator Murray Sinclair never hesitates to use those terms – even when he knows they might spark a backlash.

“Sometimes the shock value is worth it,” he told The Globe and Mail.

“It’s about making people sit up and take notice. It’s about getting people out of their comfortable chair and getting them to think seriously about it.”

A strong case can be made that the 68-year-old independent senator and retired judge has done more than any other Canadian to educate the country about the painful realities that have dogged its history and institutions.

As chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada from 2009 to 2015, he documented the existence of cultural genocide in Canada’s residential schools. As a leader of justice and policing investigations in Manitoba and Thunder Bay, he exposed officials who were willfully ignoring racism in their police forces. And in his personal writing and speeches, Mr. Sinclair has hit even harder, describing a web of genocidal policies and apartheid laws that Canadian governments deployed in a “war” against Indigenous people – a war he says never really ended.

Although his formal inquiries have ended, his work is far from over. As he tirelessly follows a busy schedule of speeches across the country this year – including a recent one describing how Indigenous people were excluded from Confederation’s bargains – Mr. Sinclair continues to have an outsized influence in shaping Canada’s understanding of itself.

He sees himself as struggling to dismantle the legacy of a system that can be compared, in many ways, to the apartheid of South African history. Despite frequent hate messages on Twitter and Facebook, he continues to make that point on social media, shrugging off the anonymous attacks.

“There will be people who will always resist those statements,” he said in a two-hour interview in his Winnipeg office, symbolically located on an “urban reserve” under the authority of the Peguis First Nation.

“If you say that there’s been racism by white people against Indigenous people historically, you run the risk of white people standing up and saying, ‘No, we’re not racist.’ But if the evidence is there to support your position, you will also garner a level of support among the non-Indigenous population who will say, ‘Yes, we acknowledge it, so let’s get on with it.’”

Open this photo in gallery

At top left, Mr. Sinclair is ceremonially welcomed as TRC chair in 2009. The commission’s task was to learn what happened at the schools, such as Wabasca Residential School, whose unmarked graveyard is shown at top right. In 2015, commissioners unveiled the final report, shown at bottom right. Since then, Canadians have honoured residential-school survivors on annual Orange Shirt Days on Sept. 30, like the one shown at bottom left in Thunder Bay this year.  THE GLOBE AND MAIL, THE CANADIAN PRESS, REUTERS

His inquiries, beginning with the pioneering Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba in the late 1980s, were prompted by tragedies and injustices: the deaths of young Indigenous people in Manitoba and Thunder Bay and in residential schools, neglected by the police and the courts and never properly investigated.

But from those tragedies, Mr. Sinclair found lessons that have shifted Canada’s public debates.

When he was appointed associate chief judge of the Provincial Court of Manitoba in 1988, he became the province’s first Indigenous judge and only the second in Canada. Within weeks, he was immersed in a hugely complex inquiry into the discrimination faced by Indigenous people in the province’s justice system. His relentless work to expose the barriers that hold back Indigenous people – and to find solutions – has scarcely paused in the three decades since then.

In interviews, he chooses his words carefully, speaking in calm and measured tones, even when his anger at historical abuses is clear. In speeches, he uses gentle humour and warm stories of his own family to make his points.

His goal is to reach Canadians who are open to learning about the country’s history – to give them “the sense that now they can talk about it, too.

“It’s not simply about confronting, it’s also about assisting. The intent from that is always, ‘So what are you going to do about it? So what should we do about it?’ Statements like ‘there’s racists in society’ that are not accompanied by ‘now what should we do about it?’ are not very helpful.”  MORE

Unravelling B.C.’s landmark legislation on Indigenous rights

If passed, the new law will make B.C. the first government in Canada to codify the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Once implemented, it will significantly alter the way major resource projects are approached on Indigenous territories

From left to right: Terry Teegee, regional chief of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, and his wife, Joan Phillip, a notable environmental and Indigenous rights advocate. Photo: Province of B.C. / Flickr

B.C. has become the first province in Canada to unveil legislation to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

With a wavering voice, Premier John Horgan spoke to the historic moment as the landmark Bill 41 was introduced in the legislature on Thursday.

“It is truly a great honour to stand in this chamber alongside Indigenous elders, leaders and people to introduce this bill,” the Premier said.

“I’m determined to walk a path of reconciliation.”

“We can have a better future than our past.”

What is UNDRIP and what does it mean for Canada?

Set out in 46 Articles, the declaration calls on state governments to engage with Indigenous nations, communities and cultures in such a way that bolsters the preservation of traditional territories and ways of life.

“It has the capacity to be transformative,” said Merle Alexander, legal counsel for the B.C. Assembly of First Nations and member and hereditary chief of Kitasoo Xai’xais First Nation. “The challenge will be: how do we implement it?”

Alexander, who co-drafted the legislation, said the act is designed to be a framework for reconciliation.

“The potential of this legislation is to create a new baseline,” Alexander told The Narwhal.

“When you enable government to enter into consent-based agreements, it could radically shift almost all government relationships.”

A new era of mutual consent

A major question about B.C.’s incorporation of UNDRIP centres around the question of “free, prior and informed consent” and whether or not it amounts to granting Indigenous peoples the power to veto projects that affect traditional territories.

“Nowhere in the act, nowhere in the declaration, do the words ‘veto’ ever come up. For the first part, it’s fear-mongering,” Alexander said.

Article 32 of UNDRIP grants Indigenous peoples “the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or territories and other resources.”

It also says governments “shall consult and cooperate in good faith” with Indigenous peoples through their own representative institutions, in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of “any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.”

But Alexander said it isn’t an accurate framing of the issue to say UNDRIP will essentially grant nations the power to override government and industry.

“Veto is about overriding jurisdiction and overruling governments, whereas consent is about agreement and coming together and working through problems and finding solutions,” he said.

“In some ways consent and veto are polar opposites to each other.”

Major projects — including the Site C dam, the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and extensive fracking operations in northeastern B.C. — have been widely criticised for being approved by government without the “free, prior and informed consent” of affected Indigenous communities and nations.

First Nation communities regularly find themselves in the position of waging legal battles against projects after they are approved, when major impacts to land and traditional practices can no longer be prevented.

From the legislature floor, Terry Teegee, regional chief of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, spoke directly to the claim the new legislation will in effect give Indigenous peoples ‘veto powers.’

“To bring this to a hard point, some people will oppose this law because of their fears of what an era of mutual consent means. There is fear in the idea of sharing power and jurisdiction. I want to say strongly and clearly here this declaration law is not about providing any government with veto rights.”

“Consent is about agreement. It is a process to achieving and maintaining agreement … about respecting our laws as equals and as partners,” Teegee said.

“Consent is the future and most simply put, it’s about coming together as governments, as people seeking to find common ground. Although consultation law has empowered many First Nations in B.C., it has done little to create legal certainty.”

Too often the Crown does not engage in good faith consultation and negotiations and First Nations are turning to the courts to resolve these issues, Teegee said.

“One of the greatest uncertainties for project development in B.C. is not knowing if a project has the consent of affected First Nations. Laws that are co-developed … will deliver economic, legal certainty and predictability in this province.”

Teegee said the province has come a long way in respecting Indigenous self-determination and decision-making in recent years, pointing to very recent but ultimately rejected plan to turn a sacred lake in Tsilhqot’in territory into a tailings pond for a mine.

The task of adhering to the principles of UNDRIP presents a unique case in provinces such as B.C., where the vast majority of the landscape is considered unceded Indigenous territory, meaning treaties haven’t been signed.

Unceded land in B.C. is often referred to as Crown land, although that designation can be misleading because much of the province falls within traditional territories that have not been ceded but have not been claimed under title rights (as in the case of the Tsilhqot’in Nation).

Map of Canada, showing treaties. Map: Native-land.ca

Major clashes over natural resource projects, such as recent blockades to prevent the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline on traditional Wet’suwet’en territory, occur on unceded lands where Indigenous peoples have been guaranteed the right to fish, hunt and practice their traditional ways of life in perpetuity.

Forest management a natural place to start

Jack Woodward, an Aboriginal rights lawyer who served as legal counsel on the landmark Tsilhqot’in title case, said while Aboriginal rights and treaty rights are governed by the constitution, the province can look for ways to support reconciliation within its own jurisdiction.

He pointed to the way old-growth forests are being managed by BC Timber Sales, saying it is a matter of policy, not legislation.

Old-growth forests are a valuable heritage resource for First Nations because they contain the last archaeological record of pre-contact through culturally modified trees, Woodward said.

“That’s what UNDRIP speaks to and what’s referred to in the proposed legislation but the actual process on the ground is what is going to matter and they’re going to have to give way to make significant change.”

An enormous, freshly fallen western redcedar in a BC Timber Sales-issued cutblock in the Nahmint Valley near Port Alberni. The Nahmint Valley is in traditional territories of the Hupacasath and Tseshaht First Nations. Last year, the Hupacasath sent an open letter calling on the provincial government to halt old-growth logging in the Nahmint and work collaboratively with the band to protect the area’s old growth and, especially, the biggest trees and monumental cedars. Photo: TJ Watt

Alexander said the process of prioritizing where to start on UNDRIP implementation will begin now, but he agrees forestry is a logical place for improvement.

“It does make sense that forestry might be a very tangible and smart place to start,” he said. “The Jenga game has sorta collapsed a bit on forestry and it needs to be re-built.” MORE

 

Truth and Reconciliation? What Truth and Reconciliation?

By ignoring Indigenous rights and child protection, our parties have sentenced a vital national inquiry to a quiet death.

Murray Sinclair led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which in 2015 issued 94 ‘Calls to Action’ for Canada. As of July 2019, only 10 had been implemented. Where are our federal leaders on reconciliation? Photo via Shutterstock.

The fact that reconciliation isn’t a headline issue during this year’s federal election campaign, despite government and business determination to build a new pipeline for Alberta bitumen, is just one indication that ‘we’re not there yet.’” — Senator Murray Sinclair

Remember when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to implement all of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action? That was memorable.

The CBC’s Beyond 94 is the best collection and summary available of Canada’s implementation of the TRC’s Calls to Action. Beyond 94 shows that, as of July 2019, 26 of the 94 Calls to Action had not even been started, and only 10 were fully completed.

The Conservatives never promised to follow the TRC’s Calls to Action, and it’s clear they are utterly opposed to any reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. So a little balance is necessary in assessing the government’s performance.

Let’s look at four of the TRC’s Calls to Action. Where are the political parties on these four items?

Implement UNDRIP

Calls to Action 24, 27, 28, 42, 43, 44, 48, 50, 57, 67, 69, 70, 86 and 92 commit Canada, churches, universities and Canadians to implement through domestic legislation and other measures the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

In response, the House of Commons passed Bill C-262 in 2018 to require Canadian law to harmonize with UNDRIP. After it became apparent in 2019 that Conservative efforts to prevent a third and final reading in the Senate for C-262 would succeed, the Liberals announced they would once again campaign on a promise to legislate UNDRIP if re-elected in the fall.

But C-262 was a private member’s bill by NDP MP Romeo Saganash, who is not running again in this year’s election. Exactly why wasn’t his bill a Liberal government bill?

The Greens and NDP have also promised legislation to implement UNDRIP. But let’s unpack this a bit.

UNDRIP’s most important provision is that Indigenous nations have a right to free, prior and informed consent about anything that will happen on their lands. Conservatives especially, and others, are petrified this might mean that Indigenous peoples can say no to pipelines and any other proposal their colonial governments set their minds to. In their view, the right to consent cannot possibly mean the right to say no. This is the fundamental reason that former prime minister Stephen Harper refused to allow Canada to endorse UNDRIP in 2007 at the United Nations.

After Bill C-262 died in the Senate, the Liberals said again that if re-elected they will implement UNDRIP. Fool me once, shame on you…

And what about the NDP? I find their position to be very confusing. Do they support the liquefied natural gas pipeline and gas plant in northern B.C. even though hereditary chiefs are opposed to it?

The NDP seems to be in favour of the Coastal GasLink LNG pipeline beginning in Dawson Creek and ending at a plant in Kitimat. This position seems to be their only chance of retaining retiring MP Nathan Cullen’s seat in northern B.C. But how can the NDP tell the Liberals: “You. Bought. A. Pipeline.” and then support a different pipeline (kinda sorta, nudge, nudge, wink, wink) even if hereditary chiefs are opposed? The same problem applies to the Site C dam and other projects that require major intrusions onto Indigenous lands. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination told Canada that it is concerned “that the realization of the Site C dam without free, prior and informed consent, would permanently affect the land rights of affected Indigenous peoples in the Province of British Columbia. Accordingly, it would infringe Indigenous peoples’ rights protected under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.”

Again, for balance, let’s recognize that the Conservatives do not believe that Indigenous peoples have any right whatsoever to free, prior, informed consent over developments on their land. All fossil fuel projects are good. Indigenous peoples lost their land rights because England said so. End of story. God save the Queen and all of the colonialism and white supremacy she gave to Canada.

Independent Senator Murray Sinclair told APTN: “That [UNDRIP] doesn’t mean that we’re vetoing [proposals]. It doesn’t mean that First Nations people, or Indigenous people outside of Indian reserves, are vetoing anything. Just because they say you can’t run a pipeline across my land doesn’t mean you can’t run it somewhere else.”

NDP MP Romeo Saganash took it upon himself to create a bill aligning Canada’s laws with that of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Conservatives killed it in the Senate. Photo by rmnoa357, Shutterstock.com.

 

Child welfare

As you would expect, the TRC’s first five Calls to Action are about child welfare. The Government of Canada, and therefore the people of Canada, have discriminated against Indigenous children and youth for well over a century. In 1977, the Canadian Human Rights Act was finally enacted, but it included the odious provision that no one was allowed to allege discrimination under the Indian Act. Finally, in 2008, section 67 was repealed. MORE

It’s time for a Recognition of Wrongs framework

Photo: Shutterstock, by Nalidsa

pon taking power in 2015, Prime Minister Trudeau characterized Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples as of primary importance: “No relationship is more important to me and to Canada than the one with Indigenous Peoples. It is time for a renewed, nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous Peoples, based on recognition of rights, respect, co-operation, and partnership.” As a token of this friendship, Trudeau promised an extensive review and reconfiguration of federal laws and policies that concern Indigenous peoples.

In 2018, Carolyn Bennett, the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, initiated consultative rounds with experts for what would become the draft Recognition and Implementation of Indigenous Rights Framework (RIIRF) legislation. The stated intent was to provide a legislative framework to recognize and animate Indigenous rights. The experts consulted were highly critical of the assumptions and objectives of the legislative draft, and after a couple of redrafts the matter was consigned to the political closet of failed initiatives. The RIIRF initiative left many participants suspicious of the federal government’s intentions, its truthfulness and its competence. After all, given the gap between Indigenous aspirations, current law and the proposed recognition legislation, one had to assume either bad faith or stupidity in the conception of the initiative.

The RIIRF was deeply problematic because it functioned to limit rather than enable the exercise of existing Indigenous rights. Moreover, the draft did not measure up to the requirements set by Canadian constitutional law and was inconsistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). UNDRIP is the international gold standard for recognition of Indigenous rights. The Harper Conservatives were part of a cabal of four states resisting the 2007 adoption of the declaration by the UN, and once the declaration was passed, they continued their foot-dragging at home, maintaining Canada’s “objector” status. It wasn’t until 2016 that the Trudeau Liberals removed the objector designation, fully endorsing Canada’s adoption of the declaration. Now, Canada must attend to implementation — to making its policy and legislation consistent with UNDRIP.

The RIIRF framework does not refer to Indigenous nations as governments, instead describing them as legal entities likened to “natural persons,” a legal term with the potential for the corporatization of Aboriginal and treaty rights. Corporation models reframe Indigenous government so that Indigenous rights resemble those of corporations — whose duties are to shareholders rather than citizens — rather than being a distinct form of rights that arise from our prior existence on our territories (inherent rights) and from treaties. This model does not produce governments with constitutional status in a federal order. This provision was recycled from the failed federal 2002 First Nations Governance Act, which was rejected by most First Nations.

Governments of settler states have a most difficult time accepting responsibility for actions that violated the rights of Indigenous peoples, and in particular with acknowledging that the state itself is built on an expropriated base of Indigenous territories, sovereignties and resources. In Canada, reconciliation initiatives have been focused on a few high-profile historical errors, such as the residential school policy, the criminalization of Indigenous religious practices, the forced relocation of certain Inuit communities and the incarceration and state execution of Indigenous resistance leaders in the 1885 Metis and Indian resistance to colonial occupation of their lands. It has not been applied to the intergenerational consequences of these and related practices or to settler state positions and practices that continue colonialism today.

Moreover, reconciliation has not taken up the ideology, the structures and the processes that animated these and other fundamental human rights violations and that facilitate the contemporary continuance of those violations. In spite of the evident contradiction with its claims about the importance of the relationship with Indigenous peoples and the objective of reconciliation, the Trudeau government is hell-bent on continuing the Canadian tradition of appropriating Indigenous lands and resources and ignoring Indigenous dissent, including by ignoring the UNDRIP requirement for free, prior and informed consent over the use of unceded traditional Indigenous territories. Pipelines, anyone? MORE

‘This is Our Land’: An Interview with Ellen Gabriel about Ongoing Land Fraud at Kanesatake

Land back is land back.

For the Kanien’kéha:ka (Mohawk) of Kanehsatà:ke, the return of stolen land – fraudulently sold first by a religious order and then by the municipality of Oka, Quebec and the Government of Canada – has been at the heart of their demands for 300 years. Mohawk resistance to the ongoing theft of Kanien’kéha:ka homelands is well-known. Most notably, in the summer of 1990, during the so-called “Oka Crisis,” Mohawks defended a forested area known as the Pines from development. Since then, community members like Ellen Gabriel (Katsi’tsakwas, Turtle Clan) have continued to protect the Pines and call on all levels of settler government – municipal, provincial, and federal – to return the land.

So when news broke in July that a developer was going to gift 60 hectares of land, including the Pines, to the community, many people declared it a win for the Mohawks. The developer – Gregoire Gollin – said that he is making the gift “in the spirit of reconciliation.” What’s more, Gollin has stated that he’s willing to sell an additional 150 hectares of the disputed land to the Government of Canada to then transfer back to the community.

On the surface, this story seems to offer a model for what reconciliation in Canada could look like. Stolen land is being returned.

But the devil is always in the details.

Gollin’s “reconciliation” comes with strings attached. His “gift” to the Mohawk does not actually return the land to the community, and his promises to stop development on disputed land is contingent on the federal government compensating him for land he fraudulently purchased with no guarantee that the land will be returned to the Mohawks.

More information, and a longer view of colonization at Kanehsatà:ke, reveals that Gollin is not unselfishly contributing to reconciliation but is rather continuing accumulation by dispossession. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Ellen Gabriel to shed more light on the situation. MORE

Green Party unveils plan to transition oil, gas workers to renewable energy jobs

Leader Elizabeth May says workers should not fear for their future as she ramps up pre-election campaign

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May held a press conference Wednesday to unveil the party’s plan to support workers in the fossil fuel industry as they transition to a renewable energy economy. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has unveiled a multi-pronged plan to help workers in the gas and oil sector transition to a renewable energy economy, working to allay fears that her climate action plan would bleed jobs as she ramps up pre-election campaign efforts.

The Green worker transition plan, which includes skills retraining programs and massive retrofit and cleanup projects designed to create employment, fleshes out details from the Green Party’s climate action plan called Mission: Possible, that was released in May.

Making the announcement in Vancouver on Wednesday, May said she understands the anxiety among workers in the fossil fuel industry and wants to take an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to transform Canada’s economy.

“It’s critical that workers in fossil fuel industries and fossil fuel-dependent communities not fear for their future. We are not at war with fossil fuel workers. We are not at all willing to leave any part of Canada or any community behind.”

Platform priorities

Along with climate action, she said the key platform priorities will be democratic reform, pharmacare and real conciliation with Indigenous people.

The Green Party plan to transition fossil fuel workers includes:

• • Investing in retraining and apprenticeship programs to refocus the skills of industrial trade workers for jobs in the renewable energy sector.
  • Start a massive cleanup of “orphaned” oil wells; some of which can be transformed to produce geothermal energy.
  • Create a national program to retrofit all buildings to optimum energy efficiency.
  • Establish a transition framework to factor in the unique resources and circumstances of each province.
  • Form partnerships with Indigenous people to ramp up renewable energy development in First Nations communities and on Indigenous lands.

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Justin Trudeau made reconciliation a top priority. Four years later, what’s changed?

Since the Liberals took power in 2015, Ottawa has poured billions into programs and services for Indigenous peoples and vowed to “renew” the relationship. But many Indigenous leaders say there’s much more work to do

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau greets attendees at the closing ceremony marking the conclusion of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls at the Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec on June 3, 2019. After two and a half years of hearings, a Canadian inquiry released its final report on the disappearance and death of hundreds, if not thousands of indigenous women, victims of endemic violence it controversially said amounted to “genocide.” – ANDREW MEADE , AFP/GETTY IMAGES

OTTAWA—It started with a promise.

Like so many before him, Justin Trudeau spoke to Canada’s Indigenous peoples last February, and vowed to do better. For too long, he said, Canada has failed. It has fallen short of its own Constitution, which enshrines Indigenous rights even as successive governments neglected to recognize them.

From the floor of the House of Commons, the prime minister pledged to change that. At long last, Ottawa would work with Canada’s Indigenous peoples — hundreds of First Nations, Métis nations, and Inuit peoples of the North — on a new relationship, one in which the federal government recognizes their rights in new legislation and dismantles the colonial dynamic that has been so damaging for so long.

In short, it was key to the reconciliation between Canada and Indigenous peoples that Trudeau and his Liberals have championed at every turn since they took power in 2015.

And it fell apart.

Protesters denounced the initiative in rallies across the country. The Assembly of First Nations charged the process was dictated by Ottawa and called for it to stop. It even caused a rift in Trudeau’s cabinet between then-justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and others, according to Canada’s former top bureaucrat. In the end, the promised legislation was shelved, and the government shifted to tinkering with internal policy and passing bills to support Indigenous languages and child welfare.

It’s just one chapter in the story of reconciliation over the past four years, a deep and complex challenge the Trudeau Liberals hoisted on their own shoulders through their words and actions in government. Billions have poured into infrastructure and social services, yet advocates and leaders say there are serious shortfalls. And while efforts to “renew” the relationship have been welcomed, many also doubt the government’s willingness to truly challenge the colonial foundations that have wreaked so much harm.

With less than three months before the next federal election, Indigenous leaders and policy experts say the prominence of reconciliation under this government has brought some positive changes, but also halting progress and disappointment.

“When we talk about the niceties of establishing and maintaining these respectful relationships, that also has to be married with tangible, substantive change,” said Ry Moran, director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg.

“So long as we have these massive inequalities, we can’t really begin to have that conversation of reconciliation.” SOURCE

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Calls to action: exploring and understanding Indigenous life in Canada

One way to decolonize this Canada Day

July 1 is here again and I’m still unable to celebrate Canada’s birthday so long as celebrations ignore the reality that the creation of this nation meant the demise of the Indigenous nations that were living and thriving here for generations before first contact and colonization. And because Canada and Canadians continue to journey down a path that fails to acknowledge our history of genocide, systemic racism, broken treaties, and dearth of meaningful remedial action that’s needed before true reconciliation can happen.

This year, I encourage Canadians to spend the next 17 days exploring and understanding Indigenous life in Canada. Lived experience makes someone an expert and only they can tell their true story, but by hearing and seeing glimpses into First Nations, Inuit, and Metis lives, settlers can begin to understand their long journey out of the darkness of colonization and into the light of reclamation.

Urban. Indigenous. Proud is the National Film Board’s (NFB) latest collection of short films focusing on the role Friendship Centres play in the lives of urban First Nation, Inuit, and Metis peoples.

“Friendship Centres show that we are still here! They are places where we can be Indigenous, can be urban, and that is what the films show. The stories shared in these films are about the re-emergence of culture as urban development occurred and demonstrate how Friendship Centres contribute to a positive vision of Indigenous people,” said Sylvia Maracle, Executive Director of the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres (OFIFC).

Since the 1950s, Friendship Centres have been a little bit of home, community, and sense of belonging for First Nations, Inuit, and Metis living in urban settings. As of 2016, 85 per cent of First Nations people lived in cities across this country. The history of this migration from the land can be traced directly to the residential school system, which severed ties with traditional communities and ways of life.

Full Circle takes us inside the Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre, where the urban Indigenous community feels safe to learn and grow. Council Fire uses cultural teachings and creates space to restore Indigenous identity, especially for its youth. At the core of Council Fire’s history and teachings is the drum, which they refer to as “our mother.”

We get to know members of the Toronto Council Fire Youth Program as they embark on new journeys. We meet a drum group that lays down tracks at a professional recording studio and a group of young dancers who showcase their moves at a dance studio.

Places to Gather and Learn shares the lives of Indigenous students at N’Swakamok Alternative School. Run in partnership with the N’Swakamok Indigenous Friendship Centre, and as a satellite of Sudbury Secondary School, N’Swakamok Alternative School offers students a supportive and culturally activated space to learn life skills while pursuing their academic and personal goals.

The school focuses on the needs of students, some of whom are also parents, and creates an accessible learning environment that welcomes their children. Students are also encouraged to take part in the Friendship Centre programs, through which Indigenous culture and values are put into practice and nourished, ensuring the students’ and the school’s continued success.

Some Stories… follows a group of young Indigenous artists in Nipissing (Nbisiing) First Nation territory, North Bay, Ontario, as they share stories about family, community, place, and all things related to life. Young artists explore the challenges and celebrations of rural and urban Indigenous life through written and oral stories, poetry, rap and drawing. Even though these young people come from different home communities and backgrounds, their stories and friendships have built a strong sense of community at the North Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre.

That Old Game Lacrosse recounts this ancient game being gifted to the First Nations by the birds and four-legged animals from the time of creation. Through lacrosse, children and youth learn responsibility and conflict resolution. Their coaches are teaching far more than simply how to win a game, they’re ensuring the next generations learn humility, respect, and how to become good members of the community. The medicine game, passed down from generation to generation by the Haudenasaunee at the Fort Erie Native Friendship Centre, is helping to revive their cultures, restore their communities, and reinforce the collective nature of the Indigenous view of the world that is inclusive of settlers.

We also learn that the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action make space so Canadians can recognize they are better than their past and can live up to the expectations of who they can be.

Zaagi’idiwin, one of the Seven Grandfather Teachings which refers to the unconditional love between all of creation from yesterday, today and tomorrow, takes viewers through a day at the United Native Friendship Centre in Fort Frances, Ontario.

By engaging in ceremony and celebrating their language, culture and land, the people are creating “Zaagi’idiwin” — “a symbol of their truth, their story and their own reconciliation, which is community-defined, beautiful and inspiring.”

Each ten-minute film is a glimpse into a present and future filled with reclamation, hope and happiness. They make a wonderful segue to the CBC Gem Series Future History. Each 20-minute episode is jam packed with well researched and documented information about the history of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis living in Canada. But it also shows what life is like and how much better it could be in the future.

Each episode is co-hosted by Kris Nahrgam and Sarain Fox. Nahrgam is an archeologist and artist whose Anishinaabe grandmother survived residential school and then chose to hide her indigeneity. He is on a personal journey to recover his Indigenous heritage. Fox is Anishinaabe from Batchewana First Nation who is shifting colonial narratives by harnessing Indigenous knowledge.

This amazing series will introduce you to people and ideas that will rock your colonial world. People like Cindy Blackstock of the Gitxsan Nation and executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society; Mohawk activist and author Russ Diabo; Metis artist and water warrior Christi Belcourt; Anishinaabe water activist and grandmother Josephine Mandamin, who passed away this February 22 at the age of 77; cultural educator and storyteller Lenore Keeshig of the Shippewa Nation; Sage Paul artist, designer and member of English River First Nation; as well as historians, dancers, chefs, traditional healers, and lawyers.

You’ll gain an understanding of the intergenerational impact of the residential school system, the Sixties Scoop and the current child welfare system; the Indian Act; the importance of water as a human right; and a better understanding of cultural exploitation and appropriation.

You’ll also get to share in the celebrations of today and indelible hope for the future that includes reclaiming, rematriating, and revitalizing the knowledge, languages, and culture that is being cultivated and shared as Indigenous people decolonize.

This July 1, I’d like to say “chi miigwech” in Anishinaabemowin, or big thank you in English, to those settlers who make the time to watch the Urban. Indigenous. Proud collection of short films as well as the first season of Future History.  SOURCE