NDP BC invades sovereign Wet'suwet'en territory, RCMP arrest defenders

..people stayed the night

Organizers say they intend to stay for a long time. They have brought in coffee and food to support people there, as well as extra sweaters for those who are cold.

Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller says modest progress was made at Saturday's meeting with Mohawks near Belleville, Ont. It's not known when a demonstration blocking railway tracks will end. Miller says he'll speak to PM Trudeau tonight and discuss next steps with cabinet.

Link

..zoom in or out

Map of Unist'ot'en Solidarity Economic Disruptions and Actions

NorthReport wrote:

Why Coastal GasLink says it rejected a pipeline route endorsed by Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/wetsuweten-coastal-gaslink-pipeline-alternative-path-1.5464945

Indigenous rights are meaningless if they are going to cost a foreign corporation money. Fuck the BC NDP. I wonder whose palms are being greased in the Cabinet. Delay will kill these planet destroying projects. I love how this non-centrally controlled grass roots direct action campaign is bringing the fascist economy bitter pain. Canadians have yet to feel what it is like to live in countries that we have been sanctioning like Iran and Venezuela. Disrupting economies is one of our elites favorite strategies against any opposition to NATO hegemony. I can only hope this peaceful protest movement will bring about significant change, a grassroots shock to the status quo is maybe our only route to salvation..

To change the route to avoid Wet'suwet'en territory at this date would require major environmental assessment work, which would not be feasible under the timelines to which we have committed."

puts an amazing amount of pressure on the hereditary Wetsuweten chiefs...interesting to see if they will reconcile in negotiation with the Federal Government........no doubt strong resistance within their own communities to reconcile for jobs! 

Let´s not fool ourselves, these people are hurting, what with significant economic losses from river contaminations and industrial logging....they need outside alternative economic support!

Trudeau: We must acknowledge the sacred sovereignty of Canada’s oil and gas companies

Calling for calm amid protests over the construction of a pipeline through Wet’suwet’en territory, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is reminding Canadians of the sacred and ancient rights of the land to oil and gas companies.

“I know there are many Indigenous and environmental groups who are upset by an LNG pipeline being constructed through unceded territory,” said Trudeau at a press conference. “However, we have already ceded that land to Coastal Gaslink Nation.”

For tens of years, these corporations have held exclusive jurisdiction over any territory deemed profitable and require consultation and consent whenever land is set aside for preservation, said Trudeau.

“These industries have constitutionally protected rights whether it’s building a pipeline where they feel like it or abandoning thousands of oil wells leaving the clean up costs to governments,” added Trudeau.

BC Premier John Horgan echoed Trudeau’s sentiments.

“These are the traditional fracking and mineral extraction grounds that must be protected from those who want to protect it,” explained BC Premier John Horgan. “We have honoured our commitment to improving the lives of LNG corporations by exempting them from our provincial carbon tax.”.....

Trudeau

Tomorrow morning, I’ll convene an Incident Response Group meeting with @MarcMillerVM, @Carolyn_Bennett, @MarcGarneau, @BillBlair, @cafreeland, @pablorodriguez & @Bill_Morneau to address infrastructure disruptions across the country & discuss the path forward. Details to follow.

epaulo13 wrote:

..your trying to change the rules because it doesn't suit you.

Well ya. There's mechanisms to change rules and laws. We can even change the constitution.

Quote:

..i see your argument as being personally crafted and full of opinion. it doesn't come close to addressing anything in the realm of the reality of this struggle.  

All our arguments are personally crafted and full of opinion.  As for addressing the situation we're in a stalemate. It's the same silly dance over and over and over. The conservative and liberal governments kick the indigneous can up the road every year.

What thing I've noticed. No one seems to actually have a working plan. No one seesm to be able to answer questions, even people here.

For example, what happens when the Huron, Algonquin, Cree and Ojibwe are given control of their ancestral lands and decide settlers have to leave the Ottawa valley. Are we going to evacuate Ottawa? Since FN are seperate nations, 634 of them, does each nation get a seat along side premiers and other government leaders? Do those 634 nations engage in trade deals with other countries?

There's so many practical questions people don't want to answer.

eta..specifically it is the court injunction process that corporations and governments use to get around the law.

[/quote]

20 bands around the Wet’suwet’en and the Wet’suwet’en themselves all signed on for the gas pipeline.

I bet most of the protestors can't even find Wet’suwet’en on a map.

Anti-pipeline protesters block international bridge in Niagara Falls in support of Wet'suwet'en

About 200 people stopped traffic at Rainbow International Bridge in Niagara Falls, Ont. on Sunday afternoon in protest of what they call an “invasion of the Wet’suwet’en Nation” due to the proposed pipeline in British Columbia.

The demonstration started around 2 p.m. near Highway 420 and Stanley Avenue, at which point the protesters marched towards the entrance to the bridge, effectively blocking traffic from travelling into the United States.....

Occupied for 260+ hours (11 days) Dan failed us.

Although we walked out of Dan Vandal’s office without him meeting all of our demands, the end of this occupation is just the beginning of something so much bigger.

I made sure we did this in a good way, in ceremony. I will cherish these memories I made with these beautiful people. We’ve bonded so much these past 11 days in ceremony with the sacred fire, songs, prayers and laughter

We will continue to walk together, to stand in solidarity for our relatives

No CGL & TMX Pipelines! Intersection Action

Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 5 PM – 7 PM​

Commercial - Broadway SkyTrain Station

Vancouver

Paladin1 wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

..your trying to change the rules because it doesn't suit you.

Well ya. There's mechanisms to change rules and laws. We can even change the constitution.

Quote:

..i see your argument as being personally crafted and full of opinion. it doesn't come close to addressing anything in the realm of the reality of this struggle.  

All our arguments are personally crafted and full of opinion.  As for addressing the situation we're in a stalemate. It's the same silly dance over and over and over. The conservative and liberal governments kick the indigneous can up the road every year.

What thing I've noticed. No one seems to actually have a working plan. No one seesm to be able to answer questions, even people here.

For example, what happens when the Huron, Algonquin, Cree and Ojibwe are given control of their ancestral lands and decide settlers have to leave the Ottawa valley. Are we going to evacuate Ottawa? Since FN are seperate nations, 634 of them, does each nation get a seat along side premiers and other government leaders? Do those 634 nations engage in trade deals with other countries?

There's so many practical questions people don't want to answer.

eta..specifically it is the court injunction process that corporations and governments use to get around the law.

[/quote]

Actually there are so many practical answers that people do not want to hear becuase it breaks down the objections.

Indigenous people when they point to unresoved land claims they do not ask for the impossible. They ask to be a partner in resource management - to get a share and they ask for social justice and economic justice. When you look at the demands Indigenous leaders make specifically, you can be shocked at how reasonable and moderate they are. The problem is that they are not free and the people of Canada want a solution that does not cost any while they oppress a people and use the assets of those people without giving them a share.

Do yourself a favour and look past the interpretations and look to what Indigenous people are asking for when specific demands are on the table. You will see these are doable things.

Indigenous people may not being doing this becuase they are generous. They are doing it becuase what is owed to them is so massive that they moderate their demands in order not to be refused entirely. Once you reconcile the volume of what is owed, you can see just how reasonable the demands are. Indigenous people are not looking to freeze their assets either. They want to develop them for the long term. As a result the economic activity and benefit to Canada and Canadians does not change all that much when they have greater power and ownership rights over their property. 

This is similar to environmental deniers: first they deny the problem and then they say it is too big to resolve to justify not doing anything. It is true there would be a power shift in Canada to accomodate the true owners of lands in many places. However Indigenous people are not demanding downtown Toronto or Parliament Hill. They are looking for opportunities and to exploit and have control over much less contentious territory and are open to compensation discussions.

The one thing you can see is that they tend to be very reasonable in apporach when at the table. Not so much when they are shut out and on the street. Just like you would expect of anyone.

..from 2017

Social conflict is inevitable in decolonization battle

All the controversy over Canada 150 and its morbid celebration of the gains Canada has made at the expense of Indigenous lives has many people asking: What do we do now? What will the next 150 years look like? We all know that Indigenous Nations on Turtle Island have experienced some of the most prolonged and violent genocidal acts in the world. Canada was colonized with such lethal force that millions died as a result, all in the name of unearned power and wealth. State colonization continues through Canadian laws and policies, decisions of government officials and enforced by Canada’s police and military forces. Another powerful threat is corporate colonization; the way in which large corporations heavily influence governments and violently colonize Indigenous bodies, lands and waters. So, how do we decolonize in the face of continued colonization?

If we are going to decolonize, it must be done with full awareness of what must be done and with full preparedness for the discomfort that comes with it. It requires speaking the truth about our collective history but, more importantly, about how that history continues to impact our current reality. This will not be easy. Most social justice activists and Indigenous resistance activists can speak to the loneliness of being the only person in a room trying to draw attention to potential threats to our nations, when most would prefer to not engage in difficult conversations. But here’s the reality: in the history of human beings, real social change has never come without some level of social conflict. Indigenous peoples can attest to this as we have had to fight and push for every single right or freedom we have today.

Decolonization won’t happen without social conflict either. We know this from our collective histories, the many painful experiences of our peoples and the long trail of empty words and broken government promises. Our ancestors would never have survived without their collective strength and unity in resistance. Any gains we have made as Indigenous Nations have been won through acts of withdrawal, resistance and determination. We have survived every attempt that colonial and Canadian governments have made to eliminate us from our own lands — including scalping bounties, smallpox blankets, rapes and murders of our children in residential schools, forced sterilizations of our women and starvation tactics. We simply wouldn’t be here if we didn’t strenuously resist assimilation at all costs, but we have suffered many losses as a result. It is therefore critical that we forgive ourselves for the many ways in which we have been colonized and find ways to lift one another up.

quote:

Going forward it will be critical for us to withdraw from all government and corporate tables, committees and negotiation processes that do not serve our best interests and respect our rights. It also means we have to continue to adapt our tactics as needed and engage in diverse acts of local, regional and national acts of resistance in multiple forums and help support those engaged in different ways. Resistance can be blockades, rallies, public education, media outreach, legal advocacy and litigation, and/or political pressure domestically and internationally. We will have to give less energy to online trolls and detractors and focus more on spreading our core messages. It’s time national leaders stopped settling for land acknowledgements and started demanding land transfers.

In the end, decolonization will require effort on the colonizer’s part as well. If there is to be peace on Turtle Island, Canadian governments will have to go beyond superficial words and gestures and take substantive action to address our rights. Until then, if being Indigenous, protecting our lands and waters and exercising our Aboriginal and treaty rights means we are breaking Canadian laws; then we need to continue to be “criminally Indigenous” for the sake of our future generations.

Rail blockade: indigenous resistance shakes the Canadian state

quote:

The federal Indigenous Services Minister, Marc Miller, has now been to Tyendinaga to meet with members of the community. His account of the hours long meeting doesn’t suggest much was resolved at all. Clearly, the Trudeau government is in a very difficult situation. They have seen the response to the RCMP raid on the Wet’suwet’en and they desperately fear the consequences of moving on the rail blockades. Yet the driving of pipelines through Indigenous territory is vital to their strategic priority of exporting dirty oil and gas to the Pacific market. The Coastal GasLink project is the harbinger of much more to come and the resistance of Indigenous people and their allies poses a threat to all their plans. The considerable ability of the Liberal Party to serve the interests of the capitalists while containing social resistance is being tested to the limit. The vulnerability to disruption of the global supply chain that has been created during the neoliberal era, with its wide ranging sources of raw materials and component parts and its systems of ‘just in time’ inventory, makes the blockades and the economic disruption even more of a threat than they would have been at an earlier time.

The political crisis that has been unleashed by this wave of action in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en is already very serious but if state power is unleashed to remove the blockades, at Tyendinaga or at other locations, especially if a serious confrontation ensues, the mood across the country is such that disruptive actions could intensify dramatically. In that eventuality, the choice for Trudeau and his provincial allies would be between a dangerous escalation or a retreat on so fundamental an objective as the pursuit of environmentally disastrous extractive capitalism. Sparked by the magnificent defiance of the Wet’suwet’en, a struggle is unfolding with the most important implications for the building of resistance in Canada to the colonial project that Indigenous people face. At the same time, however, it is also creating a precious model for the global struggle against the deadly consequences of corporate climate vandalism.

The breathtaking hypocrisy of the howls for rule of law

Last October, an international celebration occurred in the verdant coastal community of Bella Bella, BC. Members of the Heiltsuk Nation finally opened their Gvakva’aus Hailzaqv, their Big House, a red and yellow cedar structure that is the centre of their governance and ceremonial life. Christian missionaries destroyed the last Big House 120 years ago, the Heiltsuk say. In those years, pivotal elements of Indigenous life and law were declared illegal, including the gift-giving potlatch ceremonies that “were once the primary economic system of Coastal First People.” The potlatch ban is hardly ancient history – that law was not removed from the books until 1951. Nearly six million Canadians who filled out the last census were alive in 1951.

The Heiltsuk People, like the Wet’suwet’en currently at the centre of national attention, not only had to live with odious Canadian laws (that could themselves be seen as violating fundamental concepts of justice), but they also had their land taken outside of the processes promised by the Crown. Treaty negotiations did not take place in vast tracts of British Columbia – a direct affront to the rule of law. “Under international and British law at the time of colonization, unless Indigenous people were conquered or treaties were made with them, the Indigenous interest in their land was to be respected by the law of the European colonizing nation,” historian and lawyer Bruce McIvor explained last week.

Politicians and pundits have been calling for the rule of law to be respected, given the ongoing protests in BC and in southern Ontario in support of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs opposing the Coastal GasLink project. The protests have stopped CN and Via Rail trains from running in parts of Canada. But let’s set aside for a moment the question of the legitimacy or illegality of those protests. Where have all these influential voices been on the much larger rule of law question, the one that set the stage for these conflicts in the first place?

For more than 150 years, Indigenous governance structures and legal systems have been dismantled, local knowledge and language deliberately decimated, treaties violated, and Indigenous land settled without a legal leg to stand on. Still, even with all the bad laws, bad faith, and shrugging off the rule of law, we can’t seem to muster as a country a heartbeat of empathy or patience or self awareness.

We also ignore that the courts have acknowledged repeatedly that Indigenous laws and rights are part of the rule of law in Canada. “Indigenous legal traditions are among Canada’s legal traditions. They form part of the law of the land,” Federal Court Justice Sébastien Grammond wrote in a 2018 decision.

National newspaper columnists have called the Wet’suwet’en system of governance an “oligarchy” and based on a “feudal genealogy,” but the Courts (which help shape the rule of law) haven’t shown that disdain. The Supreme Court has acknowledged the limits of the Indian Act-prescribed structures when considering the holders of Aboriginal title – and dealt specifically with the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs’ authority in the 1997 Delgamuukw decision.  In the Supreme Court of British Columbia Tsilhqot’in decision, Justice David Vickers put it succinctly: “While band level organization may have meaning to a Canadian federal bureaucracy, it is without any meaning in the resolution of Aboriginal title and rights for Tsilhqot’in people.

Canadian law when it comes to Indigenous communities has been a slippery, oppressive thing throughout the country’s history. Treaties are the law, but they are routinely violated. Laws were invented to erase Indigenous culture. It took until last year for the federal government to finally remove the legislated gender discrimination from the Indian Act.

In British Columbia, the type of land title negotiations that created the Douglas treaties on Vancouver Island (themselves the subject of contention) were abandoned and unilateral settlement occurred on vast tracts of Indigenous land elsewhere in the province. The rule of law and the “honour of the Crown” were disregarded. In 1997, the Supreme Court of Canada advised the Crown  that it had a “moral, if not a legal, duty,” to settle the question of title in order to facilitate “the reconciliation of the pre-existence of aboriginal societies with the sovereignty of the Crown.” But today, delving into those fundamental issues around land title and Canada’s fundamental violations of the rule of law seems to exhaust the stamina of many Canadian political and thought leaders.

Harsha Walia @HarshaWalia

Idea that "protestors" are disrupting lives of "everyday" working Canadians wrongly assumes those supporting #Wetsuweten are not workers & are not facing disruptions in own lives. "Everyday" people do stand for #WetsuwetenStrong coz disruptions are necesary to disrupt colonialism