"A great many people in North America believed that Canada and the US, in a moment of inexplicable generosity, gave treaty rights to Native people as a gift. Of course, anyone familiar with the history of Indians in North America knows that Native people paid for every treaty right, and in some cases, paid more than once. The idea that either country gave First Nations something for free is horseshit." Thomas King (Cherokee)
In 2007, four nations voted against the United Nations
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Canada, the United States,
Australia, and New Zealand. While all four have since changed their votes, all four have maintained their
fundamental opposition to indigenous rights.
The evidence of this opposition in Canada is exhaustive.
Many First Nation people have likened Prime Minister Stephen Harper
and his administration’s attitudes and efforts to previous ones more
conventionally understood as “anti-Indian” (the infamous 1969 “white
paper” issued Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien, Minister of Indian Affairs, proposing the termination of First
Nation legal status and rights in Canada).
Harper and the Parliament have adopted and have
proposed numerous
amendments and laws that undermine First Nation rights and include the
violation of treaties that provide for consultation on matters pertaining to
reserve land and resource management. These include:
- Bill C-38: A 450-page bill that amended over 70 acts that fundamentally changes federal oversight of water, fish, and environmental protections (passed June 2012)
- Bill S-8: Overrides First Nation laws that protect safe drinking water (passed June 2012)
- Bill C-45: A 450-page bill that amends 44 acts that removes fish habitat protections, recognition of First Nation commercial fisheries, and removes protections of 99% of Canada’s waterways for navigation and environmental assessment purposes (passed December 2012)
- Bill C-428: Provides for sweeping changes to the Indian Act (proposed)
- Bill S-207: Will annul or destroy many First Nation treaty provisions (proposed)
The deregulation of these lands and waterways is intimately connected
to the proposed paths of multiple pipeline and tar sands projects in Canada. And
this is where we learn the why. Deregulation
aims at corporate development.
As reported by financialpost.com: “The Canadian Association of
Petroleum Producers’ latest forecast shows oil sands output will more than double
to 3.1 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2020, from 1.6 million bpd in 2011. By
2025, production from the oil sands will soar to 4.2 million bpd by 2025 and
cross the five million bpd mark by 2030. “If the only projects to proceed were
the ones in operation or currently under construction, oil sands production
would still increase by 54% to 2.5 million bpd by 2020 and then remain
relatively flat for the rest of the forecast,” CAPP said in its 2012 annual
forecast. The association estimates the country’s overall crude production to
reach 6.24 million bpd by 2030."
This is why so many of Idle No More actions have involved
blockades of proposed and existing pipeline constructions. Many feel that Bill C-45 is aimed at
expediting these projects.
A situation that is only exacerbated by already existing financial
destitution and environmental destruction of First Nation communities
throughout Canada. A situation represented most profoundly by Chief Theresa
Spence’s hunger strike.
Chief Spence, of the Attawapiskat First Nation, represents
a remote Cree community from James Bay, Ontario. They, along with neighboring
First Nations, have seen the exponential destruction of their lands and waterways
by DeBeers, the largest mining company in the world whose activities have
diverted public funds for transportation and housing and overwhelmed local
sewage systems. The Attawapiskat’s modest federal funding and revenue shares havenot been translated into a significant improvement of social or physicalinfrastructure or qualify of life on the reserve: many people still live intents without electricity or running water.
So, to Harper’s rash of anti-First Nation measures—to
deregulate so as to free up industry’s unfettered access to and exploitation of
reserve lands and resources—Chief Spence and so many others have said enough is
enough. Enough with the celebrated deregulatory growth of imperialist
capitalism and its extraction of human and non-human life. Enough with the
empire’s pretense to affirming indigenous human rights it has reduced to
commercial jingles for its multicultural democracy. Enough with the refusals to
sit at the table with First Nation people and enough with pretending that that
is enough.
A Prayer, Of Sorts
I hear First
Nation women – Theresa Spence, Nina Wilson, Sylvia McAdam, Jessica Gordon,
Sheelah McLean, Ta'Kaiya Blaney– saying enough is enough and asking for our support through prayers,
songs, and dancing. I hear them asking us to make ourselves responsible, in
solidarity with their efforts, in prayer, song, and dance to one another and to the lands on which we
reside and the waters on whose life we depend.
I hear them asking us to stand with them not merely in their hunger strikes and flashmobs but in their prayerful deliberations over what happens next. Because the January 11 meeting will not be enough. Because the empire will not change itself of its own good will or ethical commitments to doing what is right. And because I hear First Nation women asking all of us (Native and non-Native) to prepare ourselves for the possibility that they — and the Clan Mothers and the Hereditary Chiefs that stand with them— will ask something else of us.
I hear them asking us to stand with them not merely in their hunger strikes and flashmobs but in their prayerful deliberations over what happens next. Because the January 11 meeting will not be enough. Because the empire will not change itself of its own good will or ethical commitments to doing what is right. And because I hear First Nation women asking all of us (Native and non-Native) to prepare ourselves for the possibility that they — and the Clan Mothers and the Hereditary Chiefs that stand with them— will ask something else of us.
Are you ready?
To do what comes next?
Awesome post. More something like this
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