'Nation to Nation'? Indigenous people and the Trudeau government

UN Report Calls for Reparations for Victims of Systemic Racist Police Violence

https://t.co/XPvaUrA4W1

"Structures and systems that were developed and shaped by enslavement, colonisation and successive racially discriminatory policies and systems must be transformed..."

Behrens: Silence of the Dams - Martial Law at Muskrat Falls

https://twitter.com/MatthewBehrens11/status/1419734144251224065

"For over four years, Inuit and Innu water and land defenders were delivered a clear message through the barrel of a gun: you will be indefinitely jailed if you return to protect your traditional territories."

See any 'reconciliation' here?

To the Governor General - Deliver this Message:

https://twitter.com/KanahusFreedom/status/1420769534412132358

"...FUCK YOU and Canadian occupation of Secwepemc unceded land!!! The Crown has no land here!"

Canada's Two Appeals Have Been Dismissed

https://twitter.com/BrettForester/status/144327752598828759

"The Federal Court has upheld a 2019 Canadian Human Rights Tribunal order requiring Ottawa to pay billions of dollars to First Nations kids of families who suffered racial discrimination by the state..."

laine lowe wrote:

Today was a good day! Nice way to usher in the first National Truth and Reconcilliation Day. Let's hope the event becomes more meaningful than June 21st Aboriginal Day.

Sadly I think that it will lead to our pipeline workers on unceded territories getting paid double time to steal land. Our government does not listen to our courts, if it refuses to pay there is no remedy for the courts.

Canadian settler-state predation and neo-colonialism proceeds and is being taught in our schools

https://twitter.com/RussDiabo/status/1449748689942106113       

"Looks like Michael Wernick [former Clerk of the Privy Council] will be teaching the new generation of Duncan Campbell Scotts how to stealthily and properly complete Canada's Colonial Project of converting Indian Act Bands into 4th level ethnic 'Indigenous govts' at Carleton U School of Public Administration."

"Indigenous Sovereignty is the [ONLY] solution to all your troubles in these lands, Settler."

https://twitter.com/BarbaraXLow/status/1449403047621320705

Nunavut Inuit sue territorial government over right to education in Inuktut

The organization that represents Inuit in Nunavut is suing the government of Nunavut over the right for students to be educated in Inuktut.

In a statement of claim filed Wednesday in Iqaluit, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI) claims the Nunavut government is discriminating against Inuit by not offering education in Inuktut to the same degree as English and French — despite Inuktitut being the territory's dominant language.

"So the message to us as Inuktut-speaking Inuit in Nunavut when we're the public majority is our language doesn't mean anything, it's not important, and certainly it's not as important as English or French," NTI president Aluki Kotierk told CBC News on courthouse steps. 

"We're tried very hard to work with the government to express how it has an impact on who we are and how crucial it is. But consistently, the message has been that the Inuit language is not as important as other languages."....

Inuktut symbols in a Nunavut classroom. Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. wants to see Inuit-language education offered to all grades in the territory. (Claudiane Samson/Radio-Canada)

..video around 50 min

Canada’s colonial playbook put InFocus in latest episode

Canada’s residential school policy from the 1800s wasn’t a mistake or an accident. It was calculated and pre-planned to “solve the Indian problem” in Canada as bureaucrat Duncan Campbell Scott put it. But it wasn’t the only way that Canada has attempted to assimilate and control Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

For instance, from the residential school years came the ‘60s Scoop and the current child welfare system which has more children in care of the state now than at the height of the residential school system.

InFocus is delving into the colonial playbook and toolkit with Investigates producer Robert J. Ballantyne whose episode The Colonial Playbook premiered on APTN Investigates on Oct. 8. It’s a behind-the-scenes discussion about Canada’s colonial past to the present and the ways First Nations Peoples are decolonizing Canada and themselves.

Joining Ballantyne are a number of guests including policy analyst Russ Diabo.

Jean Chretien though long retired hasn't forgotten that stock in trade of all Canadian politicians - how to lie. He is now peddling the outrageous whopper that during his time as Indian Affairs minister he heard nothing about abuses in Canada's residential school system.

..from may of this year. under 24 min long.

Diabo and Saganash debate UNDRIP bill: A bad law or a small step forward?

On one side we have former NDP MP Romeo Saganash, who has long pushed for UNDRIP’s implementation and he supports Bill C-15.

“It’s a small step, but I’ll take any step, however small it is,” said Saganash during the debate.

And on the other side we have Indigenous policy analyst Russ Diabo, who believes the bill is flawed.

“No law is better than a bad law,” said Diabo. “Bill C-15, in my opinion, is a bad law and they should go back and talk to the rights holders from the ground up.”

All Canadian law in relation to indigenous rights depends on the honour of the Crown to live up to its responsibilities to the original owners. Given the Privy Council has always been infested with racists that honour is hard to find. After Delgamuukw I sat on the Lower Mainland Regional Advisory Committee to the BC Treaty Commission. I listened to an impassioned presentation by a couple of young women from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation setting out a comprehensive presentation on their history ending with the assertion that they would never agree to extinguishment. The business leaders at the table were only interested in "certainty" i.e. extinguishment of legal title to the land and resources. The BC NDP appointed government process left only one path at the treaty table and that was the extinguishment path. It became clear early on that there would never be a negotiated path to recognition of indigenous sovereignty over land and resources that are coveted by corporations.

Having said that our local First Nation is taking the treaty path and reaping real benefits. The land claims they have are large but not vast stretches like the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en . As well no indigenous nation has gone to the treaty table demanding that land that has been allocated to settlers be returned. That is because the SCC has made it clear that ain't going to happen. On the Salish Sea that leaves few large tracts. The K’ómoks First Nation is now engaged as a full partner in all Valley wide decisions and have had significant, though small, parcels of land returned to them under various kinds of arrangements.

I personally support the land defenders in areas where the land is under attack but I am also respectfully observant of the progress being made by the K’ómoks leadership. We all need to remind ourselves that indigenous people belong to many nations and have many viewpoints on how the relationship with their settler neighbours should play out.

I completely support the Tsleil-Waututh Nation in their fight to stop Canadian taxpayers from shipping toxic tar sands gunk from their territory. The idea that we are passing UNDRIOP and other bills while our government is screwing the Tsleil-Waututh Nation is just more Canadian hypocrisy.

Erin O'Toole links David Suzuki's 'Pipelines Will Be Blown Up' comment to need for Indigenous economic reconciliation in Question Period today and Trudeau of course responds his government is doing economic reconciliation.'

https://twitter.com/1offit/status/14636053605360506384396

"AKA - Bribe all ruling families [Yes, of course there are.] from reservations across the country to enforce colonial law and assimilationism."

Assembly of First Nations rejects pitch to purchase $2-million residence in Ottawa for national chief

A proposal to spend up to $2-million on a permanent Ottawa residence, including furniture, for the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations was put before regional chiefs at a meeting this week.

The pitch, which was rejected, included another proposal for up to $3.5-million to buy “any number of properties, including furniture,” for use by the national chief or regional chiefs, both current and future.

Some members of the executive of the AFN say now is not the time to be buying property for the organization. Both Northwest Territories Regional Chief Norman Yakeleya and Manitoba Regional Chief Cindy Woodhouse said Thursday that if the AFN has access to this amount of money, it should be directed to those who are less fortunate.

Many First Nations people experience everyday struggles in accessing food, clothing and shelter, Mr. Yakeleya said in an interview, adding the proposal was not put forward at an appropriate time.

“Look at the everyday people that are out there in this cold weather in December, and it is Christmastime,” he said.

“And we want to spend millions of dollars and we can justify through our policies and procedures and the reasons why? Shouldn’t we focus on serving our people who are homeless, who need clothing, who need food, who are struggling every day to survive, who are sleeping on our streets and our buildings, who are scraping for food in garbage bins, begging for food?”.....

How Canada can give Land Back

In early January, Indigenous land defenders had bunkered down in Wet’suwet’en territory in northwest British Columbia, on guard for yet another military-style police incursion to remove them from their lands.

More than a thousand kilometres away in a Vancouver courtroom, a B.C. Supreme Court Justice was making a striking set of admissions about Canada’s authority to conduct just such a raid.

In a decision on a case involving First Nations suing a Canadian company for damages over a hydro-dam, Justice Nigel Kent wrote that “some argue, in my view correctly, that the whole construct of Crown sovereignty is simply a legal fiction to justify the de facto seizure and control of the land and resources formerly owned by the original inhabitants of what is now Canada.”

It’s not every day a top judge concedes the moral bankruptcy of Canadian claims to Indigenous lands. And yet, Kent insisted, “while the legal justification for Crown sovereignty may well be debatable, its existence is undeniable and its continuation is certain.”

But is its continuation really so certain? As judges in Canada begin to acknowledge the ill-gotten theft of Indigenous lands in intellectual terms, Indigenous land defenders in Wet’suwet’en and elsewhere across the country want to make recovering them a material reality.

With remarkable speed, the slogan of “Land Back” has leapt recently from the margins to the mainstream, becoming a national rallying cry for a more bold and unapologetic Indigenous rights movement.

Even the Liberal government has felt some pressure, and saw the need to parrot the language, with Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller remarking this past October that “it’s time to give land back.”

But support from Canada’s political class, for now, remains confined to rhetoric. And in Wet’suwet’en and in other regions where First Nations are asserting their rights to the land, police forces armed with canine units and semi-automatic weapons continue to be unleashed on First Nations.

quote:

For now, more incremental policy wins, either at the federal level or through agreements between the state and First Nations, could lay the groundwork for more.

“That would give as much decision-making power over as much land as possible to as many Indigenous Peoples,” Kulchyski says. Indigenous-run provinces could be created, for example, or provinces “could turn over authority for land management regimes to First Nations in specific areas.”

The Nunavut model, for instance, could be transposed to other areas of the mid-north, Kulchyski says. “You create a public government in regions of the country that are majority First Nations,” where everyone can vote but First Nations people hold the majority power. 

As a provincial or territorial government-equivalent, these public governments could receive land and resource rights through Canada’s National Resources Transfer Act.

There are roadmaps for such change, including in the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, most of whose recommendations have gathered dust in Ottawa. The commission, drawing on the Penner report before it, recommended creating a “third order of government” that would share the jurisdictional power of provinces.

Along those lines, there are already some living examples of co-management of lands, including what the Haida Nation has achieved in co-managing nearly half of their traditional forests off the northwest coast. There’s also a land agreement created by the Algonquins of Barriere Lake, which would give them co-management of nearly ten thousand square kilometres of their territory in northern Quebec. While falling short of direct “Land Back”, both involve First Nations winning significant say over decision-making.

Kulchyski, who’s been leading students on bush camps in Indigenous communities in Northern Manitoba for several years, was able to write another related idea into policy when he helped co-author the platform of recent Green Party leadership candidate Dimitri Lascaris.

The platform, probably the most radical one produced by a non-Indigenous politician to date, calls for the government to “develop a programme whereby Indigenous land-based education is made available both to urban Indigenous peoples and all Canadians, particularly young people.” 

Such Indigenous land-based education camps have been in development elsewhere, including by the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning in Denedeh territory in the Northwest Territories, whose aim is to educate participants in Dene laws, ways of life, and political resurgence.

A “cloud over the land” 

One immediate legal obstacle that stands in the way of Land Back is the “legal fiction” that B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kent and even the Supreme Court of Canada have acknowledged underlie the government’s claim to Crown sovereignty.

The Doctrine of Discovery—which dates back to the 1493 Papal Bulls and King Henry VII’s 1496 letters to John Cabot authorizing the claiming of lands in the name of the English Crown—have legally paved the way for centuries of land theft.

Makokis says Canada must finally repudiate the doctrine, as was suggested in the Royal Commission, and more recently again in 2015 by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

According to Bruce McIvor, a Vancouver-based Métis lawyer, repudiating the doctrine in legislation wouldn’t be insurmountable.

The Discovery Doctrine is “not simply a historical or legal curiosity,” McIvor writes in his new book Standoff: Why Reconciliation Fails Indigenous People and How to Fix It, “it informs every aspect of federal and provincial governments’ relationships with Indigenous Peoples.”....

AFN losing credibility after controversial suspension of its national chief, say Indigenous advocates

Assembly of First Nations National Chief RoseAnne Archibald says she is being targeted by the AFN’s executive for her efforts to bring accountability and transparency to the organization, and is now rallying support from her allies across the country—including the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs.

“The AFN is going downhill very quickly,” said Pam Palmater, a Mi’kmaq lawyer, professor, and activist. Palmater said the organization has become less relevant over the last 10 years, and slowly moved away from its founding statement to advocate for First Nations’ self-determination and self-government. 

“This is just making it look like maybe the AFN’s days are numbered here,” Palmater concluded.

quote:

As Archibald clarified on CTV on Thursday, the AFN has two parts; a corporation—where the money flows through—and the political part. According to Archibald, the administrative arm of the corporation has been “operating in a manner that, in my view, is corrupt and has allowed certain payouts to happen and certain contracts to go through that are certainly questionable, and certainly against transparency.”

That is why Archibald wants a forensic audit to go forward.....

How a conservative US network undermined Indigenous energy rights in Canada

A US-based libertarian coalition has spent years pressuring the Canadian government to limit how much Indigenous communities can push back on energy development on their own land, newly reviewed strategy documents reveal.

The Atlas Network partnered with an Ottawa-based thinktank – the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) – which enlisted pro-industry Indigenous representatives in its campaign to provide “a shield against opponents”.

Atlas, which has deep ties to conservative politicians and oil and gas producers, claimed success in reports in 2018 and 2020, arguing its partner was able to discourage the Canadian government from supporting a United Nations declaration that would ensure greater involvement by Indigenous communities.

The Canadian parliament did eventually pass the legislation to begin implementing the declaration in 2021, but observers say the government has made little progress to move it forward.

Meanwhile, Indigenous groups linked to MLI’s campaign – including the Indian Resource Council – continue to appear at conferences, testify to federal committees and get quoted in major media outlets to push the view that Indigenous prosperity is virtually impossible without oil and gas.

Hayden King, executive director of a Toronto-based Indigenous public policy thinktank called the Yellowhead Institute, called the campaign “a contemporary expression of the type of imperialism that Indigenous peoples have been dealing with here for many, many years”.

quote:

The Atlas Network calls itself a “worldwide freedom movement” and has nearly 500 partners, including thinktanks like the Manhattan Institute. Other powerful partners include the Cato Institute, a thinktank co-founded by Charles Koch in 1977, as well as the Heritage Foundation, which hosted a keynote speech by Donald Trump in April. Their influence on US politics includes leading campaigns to make Americans doubt if human-caused climate change is real.....

Indigenous Peoples’ Day: Legendary Singer Buffy Sainte-Marie Calls for Repeal of Doctrine of Discovery

quote:

BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Indigenous Peoples’ Day, you know, it’s a huge, huge concept. The way I think of it, I think of it in two ways. One is: How do we handle the hard information that we must know about? And the other is: What can we provide to offset that information as we try and fix things?

The most important thing — the most important missing element, I think, in world understanding of Indigenous people has to do with the fact that Indigenous people in this world suffer from a handicap that others don’t have to face. And it has to do with the Doctrine of Discovery, which is a 15th century papal bull. Think of it as a bulletin from the pope saying what God really wants. And what this thing says, the Doctrine of Discovery, it says that explorers coming from inhabited lands were instructed by the pope to invade, capture and subdue the inhabitants and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to appropriate to himself and his successors all of their lands, kingdoms, possessions and goods, and to convert them to his use and profit. And please, don’t say, “Oh, this is over. That’s the 15th century,” because it’s still on the books in U.S. law, Canadian law today. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg used it to defeat the Oneida Tribe in 2005. So the Doctrine of Discovery is still a real living reality in the lives of Indigenous people throughout the world that has been colonized.

And, you know, the pope recently went to Edmonton, Canada. A lot of my relatives were there to see him. A lot of people turned out. And everybody was, you know, raising fists against the pope and the Catholic Church for the Doctrine of Discovery, but that’s really aiming at the wrong target, because the church has already done away with it. They’re not continuing to do that kind of invasion thing. There aren’t any more countries left, I guess, to invade. But what really needs to be done is people who are interested in this, instead of yelling at the church, we need to expunge it from the legal systems of each and every country where it still exists throughout the colonial world. Yes, the Catholics established it, but it’s up to modern nations to expunge it, to get rid of it, to make it go away.

The other half of what I have to say on Indigenous Peoples’ Day really has to do with coming up with the positivities that nobody knows about Indigenous people, too. And I work — I’m on the board of the Downie Wenjack Foundation in Canada, and I work with — you know, before I was ever a singer, I was a teacher. And so I work with kids a lot. And I feel so sorry for little kids who are hearing about just the horrors of our awful — you know, what has happened to us. They’re hearing about residential schools, you know, exhuming the bodies of children who were just put in mass graves. You know, they weren’t even identified, whether it was a boy or a girl, how old, where they came from, nothing. That and the other missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, you know, thousands and thousands of women turning up missing or murdered every year. This is big stuff. And need to know about it. But we need also to be giving each other, especially children, what they need to know about Indigenous people that’s just plain positive. We made this little video with the Downie Wenjack Foundation about positivity......

Warrior (or Harbinger of the Treaty Empire?)

Giclée

Edition 99

Released March 2011
SOLD OUT

The other night I was sitting at a potlatch in Campbell River watching women from our village come out dancing to the K’omoks Ladies song. I felt it was beautiful and poignant that at that exact moment 50 km south, ballots were being counted to determine if the K’omoks people would continue to support the treaty process and were happy with the current Agreement-in-Principle. The K’omoks people spoke and were overwhelming in their support of the state of negotiations. I felt a chill come over my body.

I felt the presence of my ancestors who would not settle for ¼ of a percent of their traditional territory in exchange for the remaining 99¾. I felt the old people ask why we were reduced to counting numbers and money, while ignoring that which makes us unique--our culture. I questioned why there weren’t more K’omoks ladies dancing on that sacred floor. Our people fought and died for this land. They placed skulls at the foot of our fort to remind would-be-attackers of their potential fate. They were warriors and what are we? Are we lazy, scared, beaten beggars on our own land or are we warriors too?

The treaty process is a divisive process. It pitches First Nation against First Nation; it rips communities in two. It was never intended for our benefit--it is only there to provide “certainty” for the government in an attempt to solve the “Indian Problem.” We are not clones, devoid of thought or feeling. We are proud Aboriginal people. We may have had the ground ripped out from under us and our lands raped and stolen, but we will not let ourselves be assimilated. Treaty will never give us our identity--our culture will be the force that binds us together and protects us.

http://www.andyeverson.com/2011/warrior_or_harbinger_of_the_treaty_empir...

"prehistoric Canadians?!"

How outrageously automatic our colonialist msm usurpation.

#LandBack

Webinar Registration

Topic

Forced Assimilation: First Nations Women and the Indian Act / Assimilation forcée: Les femmes des Premières nations et la Loi sur les Indiens

Description
Join us for an expert panel discussion on the colonial and genocidal project of Indian Act forced assimilation and its historical and ongoing impact on First Nations women.

The sex-based and racist discriminatory rules under the Indian Act have consistently denied thousands of First Nations women and their descendants their legal rights, benefits, and protections while also serving to disconnect them from their families, communities, and cultures. In this discussion, we will be joined by human rights experts and advocates who have been, for decades, advocating and working towards ending the legal and political systems that are used to forcibly assimilate Indigenous women.

*French Interpretation Provided

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Nov 10, 2022 03:00 PM est

Indigenous Leaders Hope Vatican's Repudiation of Oppressive Colonial Concepts Leads to Real Change

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/vatican-reject-discovery-doctrine-indigen...

That Vatican's formal repudiation of colonial era concepts that legitimized the seizure of Indigenous lands marked a symbolic step forward on Thursday, but its impact on modern policy will be the true measure of change, say Indigenous leaders.

A Vatican statement said the 15th century papal bulls, or decrees, 'did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples,' and have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith..."

drift....

Indigenous people march on Bogota to demand justice for killings

Thousands of Indigenous protesters have converged on Tercer Milenio Park in the heart of the Colombian capital, with music playing and smoke from campfires wafting through the air.

Members of the so-called “Minga” – a collective movement of Indigenous peoples – have organised protests in Bogota many times before, but this is their first demonstration during the administration of left-wing President Gustavo Petro.

This week, they travelled with a simple – albeit pressing – demand: end an ongoing wave of violence that has disproportionately affected Indigenous people in Colombia, whose communities stretch across nearly every region, from Narino to Amazonia.

Ahead of the main protest march on Wednesday, demonstrator Viviana Guerrera said while she supported Petro in last year’s elections, she felt “extremely disappointed” by a lack of progress in curtailing violence in her home region of Cauca, which has long been a focal point of conflict.

“Every government needs to be held accountable,” Guerrera, a member of the Nasa Indigenous community, told Al Jazeera from the park, where organisers on Tuesday estimated that more than 12,000 people had already gathered.

“This government is no exception.”

quote:

The Global Witness advocacy group recently designated Colombia as the most dangerous country in the world for land defenders and environmental activists last year – and a disproportionate number of those targeted leaders come from Indigenous communities.

According to statistics from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 37,000 people across the country were affected by violence between January and September of this year.

More than 43,000 others also were displaced by threats from armed groups or open fighting, the UN agency found. Colombian human rights watchdog Indepaz puts the displacement figure at more than twice that.

However, both organisations agree that Indigenous communities make up roughly half of all those displaced or affected by the violence, despite representing just 3.5 percent of the population.

quote:

Broken promises

The mood in Tercer Milenio Park has been festive, with children running through the area.

Members of Colombia’s Indigenous Guard, an unarmed security force that often confronts armed groups operating near Indigenous communities, also stood watch at the main entrance in the middle of downtown Bogota on Tuesday.

The march on Wednesday is set to coincide with street demonstrations called by Petro in support of a number of his reform bills, which have largely stalled in Congress. Some leaders at the Minga publicly called for support for the president’s administration.

But Eduardo Rojas, who travelled 14 hours by bus from Amazonia to participate in the rally, denounced what he said were false promises from Petro.

“We elected this government,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the overwhelming support Petro’s presidential campaign enjoyed amongst Indigenous voters. “But what we were sold, and the reality of what we got, are two very different things.”

Rojas said his community in the region of central Amazonia has seen little progress in halting attacks from criminal armed groups, which he said forcibly recruit members and commit extortion and sexual violence......

.....end drift