To all my relations: On Idle No More, Chief Spence and non-violence -- Aaron James Mills

This heartfelt statement, first published in rabble.ca, should remind all North Americans that we are "treaty people". Broken promises do not change that responsibility. And Aaron James Mills / Waabishki Ma'iingan's respectful address to "all my relations" reflects traditional native spirituality: we are all related, whether four-footed, winged, finned or two-legged people. Something the white world needs to (re)learn. This right relationship, as Quakers would say, is the living heart of the Truth and Reconciliation process, FPIC, the land ethic and tikkun olam. The name of the non-violent Idle No More movement could be translated into Quakerese as "the Spirit calls".

Round dance at Sudbury mall - courtesy of CBC.ca

All my relations,

My Anishinaabe name is White Wolf and the name my mother gave me is Aaron James Mills. I'm a Bear Clan Anishinaabe, a Canadian and the son of a single mother. I say "Anishinaabe" and not "aboriginal" intentionally, for this is who I am and how you should understand me. Regarding our relationship, I'm from Treaty #3 Territory. I'm also from Couchiching First Nation, North Bay, Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto, and now Victoria. I'm a lawyer. I have a graduate degree from Yale Law School where last year I was a Fulbright scholar. I'm 31 years old and I have a partner I love very much.

I am writing to you, all my relations Indigenous and other, because in all I have seen and felt in 31 years, now is the most afraid I have been for you and for myself, the most ashamed I have been of my Prime Minister and of my Governor General, and the most proud I have been of my Indigenous relations and so importantly, our settler allies who have surprised and amazed me. I am humbled by their good words and actions.

I want to explain these statements and to share my feelings with you about the historical moment we are witnessing. In so doing, I speak only for myself. Although I support many of the actions organized as part of the Idle No More movement, I don't represent it. I've been as surprised and overwhelmed by it as have many of you.I can think of many things of which Canadians might be fearful today: the impacts of global warming and climate change; loss of jobs, pensions or benefits; war; an ailing and inadequate health care system; increasingly authoritarian and antidemocratic domestic governance; federal indifference to the murder of Indigenous women. These are just a few of many serious issues we face together and I am gravely concerned about each. I am terrified, however, of what may happen if Chief Spence dies of hunger.

INM on Parliament Hill, Ottawa - photo by Blair Gable, Macleans magazine

Because of her hunger strike, on Friday 11 Jan 2013 First Nations from across the country will meet with the Harper administration to discuss their relationship with Canada. If the discussions fail to yield the first steps towards re-establishing our relationship on a foundation of mutual respect and understanding, Chief Spence will surely continue her hunger strike. If she dies, in light of the work being accomplished through Idle No More I believe that Canadians who have never given it a thought will be forced to confront Canada's origin story. More important, they will be forced to confront that the violence of that origin story repeats each day even now. Given our lack of knowledge of our own history, many of us in Canada are not accepting of that story and I fear that as a people we are grossly ill-equipped to be so forcefully confronted with it. And I don't know what will happen if we are.

Indian residential schools - see Truth and Reconciliation

All my relations, I don't know what will happen if we are confronted with our national origin story because most of my fellow citizens haven't been taught to understand their history of institutionalized violence. Many of them may instead be hateful and act hatefully, for knowledge truly is power and if their elementary and secondary school education were anything like mine, then with respect to Indigenous peoples in Canada they have been systematically denied it. Many thus understand Indigenous Canadians as two-dimensional people: historical and angry. In the face of obvious Indigenous suffering, most Canadians are thus disempowered and I am fearful of what powerless people may do when forcefully confronted. Many know just enough that they feel guilt so overwhelming it must be permanently repressed, but nothing of their power or the willingness of many Indigenous Canadians to work for the interests of all people and to choose a different future, together.

I've visited many countries in my life and the more I've traveled internationally, the firmer my conviction has become that Canada really is the most amazing country on Earth. As a Canadian citizen I enjoy tremendous privileges many others do not, even amongst other western liberal democracies. But, all my relations, those privileges have not been free and their costs have not been distributed justly. If Chief Spence dies, both as a nation and as individuals gathering at kitchen tables we will have to ask ourselves how this happened. Yes, it will have been her choice, but how could she possibly have made it? The moment we choose to start having that conversation is the moment that the cost of the great privilege Canadians enjoy -- a privilege until now contingent on our lack of knowledge about our colonial history -- will start to be made visible.

INM 12 Dec 2012 - courtesy Toronto Sun

Colonization is not a completed historical fact from which all must simply move on; it is a deliberate, daily violence continuing this moment and anyone promoting that Indigenous peoples are ignorant not to accept this violence as legitimate is at worst, racist; at best, living in a dream palace. As the Right Honourable Paul Martin recently acknowledged, "We have never admitted to ourselves that we were, and still are, a colonial power." Colonial power is violence against Indigenous bodies, minds, cultures and lands. I know that many of you don't see it. Many of my closest friends don't see it. I can't even be angry about this, for as I have said, you were not taught to see it. In a cynical moment I might suggest you were taught not to. But in Idle No More, Indigenous and allied voices have united and through the Drum, sound together. All my relations, you hear it now; you have only to listen. No longer can you claim ignorance. You should listen carefully, for no matter your identity or your politics, this is about you and education is being freely shared on websites, in pamphlets handed out at traffic slow-downs, and in community meetings. If you choose not to listen now, then now you choose also the responsibility for your continued lack of knowledge of your treaty rights, and for a large part of what may come of that ignorance.

Stephen Harper - photo Remi Steinegger

All my relations, I said also that I feel ashamed. I am ashamed because my Prime Minister so profoundly misunderstands Indigenous Canada that he thinks meeting with Chief Spence will make him vulnerable. On this misunderstanding, he is willing to allow her to die less than a kilometre from his office. He fails to recognize the incredible opportunity given him to demonstrate great strength and leadership in respect of the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canada. If ever Stephen Harper had a vision for our nation, now is a moment where it should shine. As he spends millions of tax dollars commemorating the War of 1812, the relationship that made our nation possible-which in 1814 secured our nation as a nation and not an American state-is a shambles. But Prime Minister Harper has no vision for Canada, and because of Idle No More, the whole world is watching its absence.

GG David Johnston

I am also disappointed with the Right Honourable David Johnston, my Governor General, for having side-stepped his role in Canadian history by characterizing Chief Spence's demand for dialogue as mere politics, and therefore for the exclusive consideration of elected governing officials. He understood very well that Chief Spence's demands cut much deeper than mere politics; that they go right to the fundamental injustice of the Crown-Indigenous relationship, historic and contemporary. The Governor General hasn't merely shown a lack of leadership; he has opted out of leadership altogether. I am a Canadian citizen and I am ashamed.

Finally, I am ashamed because no federal administration in my lifetime has done as much as this one to alienate Indigenous Canada. Before the Harper government adopted its position on Chief Spence it had already slashed health funding for Indigenous peoples; withheld documents from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to the point that the Commission, as a result unsure whether it will be able to meet its mandate by its deadline and within its budget, has sought help from the Courts; emptied environmental review processes of meaningful content; unilaterally decided to terminate land claims negotiations in which its existing approach has failed; spent millions defending Canada's systematic underfunding of First Nations schools and child welfare agencies, including spying on child welfare and education advocate Cindy Blackstock and other non-violent indigenous activists; announced its intention to introduce legislation that would allow for the privatization of reserve land, despite an AFN resolution in 2010 categorically rejecting such a development; ignored demands for a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and accused First Nations leadership generally of corruption and mismanagement. Bill C-45, the catalyst for the Idle No More movement, follows all of these developments.

All my relations, this is why I am ashamed of my government and why it has alienated me. I want so badly to see the honour in the Crown, but this list of dishonourable behaviour is how it has treated my people, and that's just the last few years. All my relations, As an Anishinaabe Canadian participating actively in Canadian life, engaging critically but positively with Canadian institutions, caring as passionately about your welfare as I do my own and wanting a response for Canada's harmful relationship with the indigenous peoples who pre-existed it that will work for all peoples, if I am alienated from the state, we have a very big problem.

INM Surrey BC - photo Darryl Dyck, Canadian Press

Finally and most importantly, all my relations, I wish to voice my pride. Two very important aspects of the Idle No More movement demand special recognition. First, the movement has its inception in the thoughts and actions of Indigenous women. These women have stood up for their nations and for all of us. It's unclear whether they continue to exclude Indian Act chiefs from their advocacy, but except for this possible exclusion they have consistently been very clear that all of us, not just Indigenous persons, are included in Idle No More. They have managed to inspire thousands of people to come together. Without their example, I would not have found the words for this letter.

I also beam with pride at how Indigenous Canada and its allies who have come together have done so with a strict commitment to non-violence. This commitment is directly connected to the women at the originating point of the movement and of the elders standing behind them. For me the way forward must be non-violent. This is why I was delighted to participate in the North Bay flash mob Round Dance at the Northgate Square mall on December 20th and again today at the intersection of highways 11 and 17.

In 2008, Anishinaabe activist and professor Robert Lovelace was incarcerated for resisting uranium mining on his community's traditional territory despite a court order instructing him not to. From jail, he wrote, "direct action should take its shape and purposes from the intrinsic goodness embedded in Indigenous epistemologies." This is precisely what we are seeing in the flash mob Round Dances happening across Canada and the United States and it is a tremendous source of pride for me. I hope all of you are watching, listening and remembering. Many Indigenous individuals and communities are suffering and to get your attention, we are holding Round Dances and other non-violent demonstrations. I am so very proud; in many other parts of the world this frustration would be organized and expressed very differently.

All my relations, I have one more thing to say to you and it is only my voice but I hope that it will resonate with others heeding the call of the Drum. For my non-Indigenous relations, I do not want you to "go home"; this is your home and I will defend your right to be here. As partners in Treaty with Indigenous peoples, you have a treaty right to be here and I honour that. Feel no guilt about it. I have learned much from you and your ancestors and I am grateful. More practically, through my mother, who is not of Indigenous ancestry, I am you and there are many like me. I honour your presence here.

You, too, must honour mine. That means that you do not get to tell me to live like you, if this is not how I choose to live. Indigenous peoples are not minorities who moved here on your terms. We are not stakeholders. We are not an interest group. We are treaty partners and but for our partnership there would be no Canada today. My relations are buried throughout this land you rightly call home. They lived and died here long before you knew your present home existed. It is not for you or your leaders to decide how a life should be lived for both of us. This is what we agreed to. When your leaders presume to decide how my life should be lived or what values I should have, they have given up representing my interests and they are no longer my leaders too. This is my belief and I will defend it. 

To the best of my understanding, this is what Idle No More is about. Indigenous Canada wants a just and respectful relationship with the state and with non-Indigenous Canadians, not one premised on unacknowledged and tacitly accepted continuing colonial violence. All my non-Indigenous relations, if you accept less than an end to colonial violence, have you not quietly accepted that Indigenous Canadians are worth less than you?

INM Ottawa - photo by Christopher Curtis, Postmedia

All my relations, demanding an end to colonial violence is not too much to ask. The imperative for non-violence, whether manifest in resistance to ongoing colonial oppression or in the daily conduct of our relationships with one another, is a bedrock foundation necessary for making citizenship in Canada worth having. And despite the efforts of those who seek to keep your ambitions for change low through fear, it certainly does not mean the end of Canada as you know it. It does however mean there must be profound changes in our relationship. It means that you must want those changes for your own identity as a Canadian and thus for how you want to understand yourself. I truly believe there is room for all of us to live a good life as we know it, and that together we can accomplish this reality without violence. All my relations, I mean no disrespect, but you would be foolish not to demand the same of your leaders, especially of our federal government. I am concerned that it is afraid of Chief Spence, that it is afraid of Indigenous unity, and that it is especially afraid of non-Indigenous Canadians realizing that "Indigenous issues" are their issues too. I am concerned that without your voice, its way may not be one of non-violence.

All my relations, I have no tolerance for violence and I am committed to defeating it. This commitment finds its genesis in the teachings of particular elders and mentors who took time with me from their lives and from much talk throughout mine of smudging and tobacco offerings. These practises have created in me a profound love for our land and for the treaties which connect and unite us.
 
Let us reject the violence that keeps us mired in the past, let the drum sound colonial power no more, and let us celebrate our differences so that we can come together.
 

Indian summer in the Kawarthas - by Drew Monkman

Drew Monkman leads nature walks and wrote Nature’s Year in the Kawarthas and Nature's Year: Changing Seasons in Central and Eastern Ontario. He can be reached at dmonkman1@cogeco.ca. This article, reprinted with the author's permission, first appeared in his weekly column in the Peterborough Examiner 23 Oct 2007. More of his writings can be read on his website. Photo by Terry Carpenter.

Attunes the soul to tender sadness;

We love — but joy not in the ray —
It is not Summer’s fervid gladness,
But a melancholy glory.
Susanna Moodie

One of the pleasures of fall in the Kawarthas is the gift of abnormally warm temperatures that usually come in the second half of October or early November. When it arrives after a period of cold, wintry weather, or, at the very least, after a killing frost, we typically use the term Indian summer. The melancholy warmth of this “second summer”, as it is sometimes called, has always stirred the souls of artists and writers alike.

To meteorologists, Indian summer is known as a weather singularity; that is, an identifiable weather event that usually occurs around the same calendar date each year. In eastern North America, this typically means the latter part of October. However, it can also be earlier, later, or not happen at all. Some years may even have two or three Indian summer periods.

Typically, Indian summer days are warm and still, with blue, cloudless skies. Because there is no wind, smoke from burning leaves or other pollutants hangs on the horizon. Temperatures climb progressively higher with each passing day. Through it all, the sun shines with a soft, hazy light. Should the period coincide with a full moon, the rising lunar body glows orange in the evening sky. An Indian summer night can still be quite cool, however, and even bring frost. Tradition dictates that this period of benevolent weather must last for at least several days to truly count as Indian summer.

Having already had a foretaste of ice and cold, any lingering thoughts of July and August have usually begun to fade by the time Indian summer arrives. This makes the event stand out all the
more. Indian summer can become a sentimental, almost melancholy time, however. It stirs the soul with thoughts of how temporary and fragile the sunshine and warmth are, because winter awaits just around the corner.

Weather records show that the term Indian summer was already in use in Canada early in the 19th century. The actual origin of the name, however, is obscure. The explanation I like best is that European settlers were told by the indigenous peoples that a period of warm weather would come each fall. The settlers may therefore have named this spell of summer-like conditions after the people who gave them the good news.

Another theory attributes the name to the belief — certainly true in some cases — that the haziness of Indian summer days was due to the fact that native people hunted game during warm spells in the fall and set fires to drive the animals out. Some tribes also burned their fields at this time in order to prepare the ground for spring planting.

The hazy, dream-like quality of the light and sky during these autumnal warm spells is due to the interplay of three factors: There is usually a large amount of water vapour in the air in the fall; smoke and other pollutants often accumulate during Indian summer periods; and the angle of fall sunlight is shallower than in summer because the sun is lower in the sky. These factors combine to produce a feeling of reverie and stillness.

Although primarily associated with eastern North America, Indian summer conditions can occur all over the northern hemisphere. In Europe, depending on the date, the phenomenon is often called St. Luke’s or St. Martin’s summer. The term second summer is also commonly used.

Indian-summer conditions occur immediately after a cold, arctic air mass has brought winter’s first bite to central Ontario. This will typically have caused a hard frost, bitter northerly winds, and possibly even snow. However, as the arctic air mass flows off the Atlantic coast, it is replaced by another air mass known as the subtropical Bermuda high. This system sits up over the mid-Atlantic states and funnels warm, humid, southerly breezes into Ontario. What is special about an Indian summer system, however, is that it locks in for days — sometimes a week or more.

The air mass can be so large that it alters the flow of the polar jet stream by pushing it
further north. Unfortunately, a large, stagnant Indian summer air mass often allows the accumulation of air contaminants. Along with the large amounts of water vapour that are present in the fall, the pollutants give a hazy look to the sky and can produce very poor air quality after several days. Eventually, though, a heavier cold air mass from the Arctic regions displaces the Bermuda High and a new wave of “normal” fall weather returns with frosty nights.

According to Dave Phillips, a senior climatologist at Environment Canada, climate change will cause Indian summer to occur later in coming years. It may soon become more of an event of mid-November or even December. The long-range forecast for this fall [2007], however, is for average weather conditions, so we hopefully will experience Indian summer conditions within the normal date range.

In order to qualify as a bona fide Indian summer, there must first of all have been a hard or killing frost — one that requires some strenuous scraping of the car windshield. This almost always occurs sometime in October. According to the1971-2000 weather averages for Peterborough, the temperature falls below freezing on about nine different days in October. In November, this increases to an average of 20 days.

Frost, the icy cousin of dew, usually forms on clear, cold nights with little wind. It is simply water vapour that has condensed and formed ice crystals on a cold surface at a temperature below the freezing point. However, because some surfaces such as glass and metal lose heat more rapidly than the surrounding air, they can become cold enough for frost to form on even when air temperatures are slightly above freezing. This is why car windshields can frost over when surrounding surfaces such as plants and asphalt are frost-free.

The reason low-lying areas are more susceptible to frost formation is because cold air is heavier than warmer air. It therefore “flows” like water, downhill, and collects in low areas.

Like Indian summer, frosty fall mornings have a special beauty that should not be missed. Even in November, when colour has largely drained from the landscape, Jack Frost’s arrival leaves a finish of sparkling beauty as the morning sunlight is scattered and reflected in countless directions. Take a few minutes to appreciate the magic of it all.

As Keith Heidorn writes in his book, And Now the Weather, we need to “train our weather senses so that we become more aware of the conditions surrounding us and begin to enjoy the beauty and joy of weather, rather than dread its expression.” Like paying attention to the birds and plants, it is one more way that we can more fully develop our sense of place.

Defending territory: Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, the people of the Big Trout Lake

Their land and waters are sacred, with all the interconnected circles of life they sustain.  For thousands of years, KI First Nation have lived in Kitchenuhmaykoosib (Big Trout Lake), headwaters of the Fawn River, where fish and wildlife abound. Still unspoiled by mining or clear-cutting, traditional life on the land has remained possible. From the 18th century on, they traded with Christianized Cree and HBC's Fort York (modern Churchill, MB), 5 days downstream on the Fawn and Severn (and three times that going upstream) – a feat repeated by a youth team in August of this year. See their photo album and video.  

photo courtesy kilands.org

Crossing the big lake (18 mi wide, 36 mi long), running the many rapids and portaging requires great strength and skill. Deep grooves found in the armbone of an ancient ancestor, say archaeologists, are a sign of extremely strong arms from a lifetime of hard paddling.

Since Treaty 9 in 1905 the Ojibway-Cree of KI have struggled to defend their territory and treaty rights. It took 25 years for most first nations in the vast area to win adhesion to the treaty, although in 1910 the national government had already ceded the vast territories of “New Ontario” north of the Great Lakes to the province. Driven by gold and silver rushes and timber giveaways, it greatly enriched the Ontario government and its friends. KI, 600 miles north of Thunder Bay and still part of the Hudson Bay Company fur-trade empire, was not greatly affected. After 1950, however, national Indian Affairs provided health, welfare and residential schools at levels far inferior to those of the white population. KI has led in providing local police, air, radio and child welfare services, despite DIA underfunding. The impacts are show in a new film by Andrée Cazabon, Third World Canada, to be premiered this year.

Recent mining exploration in the James Bay lowlands ring of fire threatens the very foundation of KI's ancient way of life, the purity of the water, the integrity of land and forests, and wildlife. It is a story repeated all over the world as extractive industries push aside indigenous peoples in a wild race for scarce resources, driven wilder by financial speculation. The UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) requires “free prior and informed consent”, but is often ignored. In Ontario and many other jurisdictions, a 19th c. mining law allowed “free entry” – that is, subsoil claims could be made without the consent of the inhabitants of the land.

In 1999-2005, Platinex (full details here) raised millions from speculators to explore platinum deposits on KI territory. In 2006 they began drilling without KI consent. Community members held a non-violent protest, and the Chief and Council ordered them out of the area. The company then filed for an injunction to continue, asking $10 million damages. A Superior Court judge ruled in favour of KI First Nation, finding that it might suffer “irreparable harm due to its loss of culturally and spiritually significant land, and of its connection to the land,” but was overruled in 2007 by the Supreme Court. Chief Donny Morris said, “We are going to play ball... We are going to travel down the road (of negotiations). But our consultation process must be recognized and utilized”. Platinex refused, once again relying solely on court orders. Community members set up a another protest camp and led by the Chief, met Platinex workers at the local airstrip and turned them back.

For daring to interfere with the "sacred rights" of capital, in March 2008, the “KI six” (Chief Donny Morris, with councillors Jack McKay, Sam McKay, Darryl Sainnawap, Cecilia Begg and Bruce Sakakeep) were seized and jailed 68 days in Thunder Bay for contempt of court. Provincial police extinguished a sacred fire lit by native supporters, while in southern Ontario cities protests mounted against this attack on civil rights and indigenous religion, and the criminalization of native elders engaged in non-violent protest (CBC video 25 Mar 2008). Elders in several other places had been jailed under similar circumstances. The Ontario government was seriously embarrassed – by its outmoded Mining Law, by failures to ensure aboriginal consultation rights, by the abuse of justice -- and after a year of dithering bought out the Platinex claim for $5 million.

The issue did not end there. Too many other native communities were facing similar threats. Pressures also came from mining interests, some of which were prepared to engage in good faith consultations in order to gain access to rare metals, diamonds, and other riches in the “ring of fire”. In March 2012 the KI support committee held public meetings in Toronto and demonstrations at the Ontario prospectors' convention. The provincial government declared a mining moratorium in KI territory, to prevent a repeat of the Platinex imbroglio by God's Lake Resources. New Zealand invited KI Chief Donny Morris and his wife on a tour to speak about Platinex and the Government of Ontario, and “free mining”. Canadian mining companies were earning unwelcome international attention (see our previous post). In October 2012, Ontario updated its mining regulations to ensure community consultation – but opposition from the mining lobby and investors, other court cases, and the sudden resignation of the Premier, leave the final resolution in doubt. Will indigenous communities be allowed to consult on their own fate?

photos from kilands.org

The 2012 moratorium only covers half of our traditional territory, says KI watershed community worker Richard Anderson, leading a youth team down the Fawn and Severn Rivers. He has done the journey 11 times. “I’ve been on this trip with my kids... It’s really important that they get to see these routes that our ancestors went through just to survive, to take supplies up there and bring them back to KI.” This August they began a 350 km canoe journey along the ancient route, to visit historic portages, honour grave sites, and absorb traditional knowledge.  In Oji-Cree, every bend and every rapid in the river for hundreds of kilometers has a name. “The Elders have taught us that water is very important, and we should keep it that way... The trip is for awareness that we we are protecting our watersheds for future generations. It’s all we have up here, our land and our water,” he added. “It’s important that we keep it for future generations because they are the next ones that will be using the land.” He plans an even bigger canoe trip next year. Anyone may join.

“The KI people have protected our entire home watershed through Indigenous Law,” says Chief Donny Morris. “Now we are calling on Ontario to respect our protection before this sacred landscape is poisoned by the diamond, gold, and metals mining companies who have set their sights on it.”

Grassy Narrows First Nation Wins Anti-Logging Court Case

(For the history of this case, see our previous post 7 Aug 2011). The Grassy Narrows First Nation (Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek) has just won its court case in Ontario, after 11 years. This is a landmark in the right to FPIC ("free prior and informed consent" in UNDRIP, which Canada has been doing its best to sabotage). The following news is cross-posted from the native network Indian Country Today.

photo: Schledewitz redlineagency.com, via Grassy Narrows First Nation

In a lengthy decision, Ontario Superior Court Justice Mary-Anne Sanderson ruled that the province of Ontario, which had authorized logging on the lands, had overstepped its bounds. Logging and mining rights, she explained, are established by treaty and therefore a federal and not provincial issue. In a triumphant press release, Chief Simon Fobister said that the decision ultimately “will require protecting the way of life of the Anishinaabe who were here before the logging industry came to these lands and will be here after the logging companies have moved on to other forests.”

An article in the Globe and Mail paraphrased the insights of Robert Janes, the lawyer for the Grassy Narrows First Nation, who said Justice Sanderson conceded that “the federal government promised to defend their rights, but hasn’t done so for many years.” Janes also said the ruling would have repercussions for numerous other cases in Canada.

Grassy Narrows activists have been actively and successfully blockading Slant Lake against logging trucks since December 2, 2002; an article from March of this year at Missisauga.com said the blockade is one of the longest-running in Canadian history, and that Amnesty International has taken up the Grassy Narrows cause with the provincial government.

***

See also:
-- video by Jennifer Preston of CFSC explaining her 20-year involvement in UNDRIP and FPIC, what they mean to Quakers and native peoples. This is the best analysis I know. It will soon be posted on the CFSC website with other key documents.

-- web archives of native groups' testimony at the 16th Protecting Mother Earth Gathering (July 2011); and of UN hearings on UNDRIP and FPIC

-- The Mining Mini-grants Program of Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) and Western Mining Action Network (WMAN) to assure that mining projects do not adversely affect human, cultural, and ecological health of native communities in the U.S. and Canada.

Clear cutting our way of life: native testimony from Grassy Narrows -- by Tim Nafziger with Peter Haresnape

CPT delegates at Grassy Narrows

This article originally appeared in Christian Peacemaker Teams' newsletter Signs of the Times (Apr-Jun 2011) along with many other stories of CPT work around the world.

(* = names below have been changed to protect the innocent.)

Grassy Narrows First Nation, Ontario: As a child, Fred* followed the trap line with his family in the winter.  Then the Royal Canadian Mounted Police took him away from his family and placed him in a residential school where staff beat him if he spoke his language.

Over 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were placed in church-run residential schools.[6]  The first were established in the 1840s and the last one closed just 15 years ago in 1996.  Recorded mortality rates at these schools reached as high as 69% through a combination of poor nutrition, brutal discipline, disease, abuse and neglect.

Dryden pulp mill used mercury

Eventually, Fred was able to rejoin his family and return to his community’s traditional ways of hunting and fishing.  Then the Dryden Chemical Company dumped 9,000 kilos of mercury into the English River water system.  Consumption of mercury-contaminated fish over a sustained period causes permanent damage to the nervous system.  

Today Fred shows prominent signs of Minamata disease caused by severe mercury poisoning.  His symptoms include slurred speech, shaky hands and an unsteady walk. Many others in the community show symptoms as well, but only 38% receive any compensation.[1]

Jay* was walking home from school on the reserve one day when a driver pulled up and offered him a ride home.  But the car didn’t take him home.  It took him to a foster home.  It wasn’t until his mid-twenties that Jay finally got back home to Grassy Narrows.

Appalling as they are, these stories are neither isolated nor even unusual.  They point to the ongoing strategy of targeting children in a systemic process of destroying indigenous language, culture and identity.  As the residential school system began to decline, child welfare agencies increasingly relied on foster care as a means to this end.  In 1959, 1% of indigenous children were removed from their parents.  By the late 1960s, the rate was 30-40%.[2]  Today, indigenous children are three times more likely to be placed in state care than non-indigenous children.[3]

recent clearcut, from Amnesty report

Charles Wagamese of Grassy Narrows First Nation describes the foster care system as “clear-cutting” their way of life [4]  – undermining their culture through destroying intergenerational relationships just like intensive logging in the forest destroys whole ecosystems. [5]

Understanding the many layers of oppression that colonialism inflicts on communities like Grassy Narrows is a necessary part of standing in solidarity with them.  Learning this history is a first step in working to undo these oppressions.

Notes

[1] J. Rebick, "40 years later people at Grassy Narrows are still suffering mercury poisoning" Canadian Dimension blog 5 Jul 2010.
[2] E. Alston-O’Connor, "The Sixties Scoop", quoting Fournier and Crey, (1997) p. 83.
[3] "The Sixties Scoop: How Canada’s “Best Intentions” Proved Catastrophic", First Nations Drum (Mar 2009).
[4] Youtube video "The scars of mercury". See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Minamata_disease
[5] Abitibi and Weyerhauser corporations have been clear-cutting the region's forests. See reports in No One is Illegal, freegrassy.org/; Amnesty International's open letter to Ontario premier (2008) and its report (2009) with photos of native teens blockading logging roads and the Trans-Canada highway.
[6] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_reconciliation_commission#Canada

 ***

(For the full story, read Trip reports of Christian Peacemaker Teams Kenora / Asubpeeschoseewagong (2009-2010) on the CPT website. After the 2010 road blockade, the province finally admitted "numerous concerns" and started land-use negotiations. The governments' game is endless delay. The province's negotiations drag on, while the government jails protesters and native elders. Ottawa for years delayed ratification of UNDRIP for "free, prior, and informed consent" with natives before issuing permits for mining etc, and has yet to take concrete action. Despite lip service, colonialist policies continue, with callous disregard for native rights. - Ed.)

Our home and native land: the Attawapiskat story

In the video, Chuck Strahl is shown in his favourite cowboy role.

Imagine how the public would react if this happened to a white community. 30 years ago, 30,000 gallons of diesel oil leaked into ground under the school. Indian Affairs is responsible both for the school and the oil installation. In 1984 a government report said “immediate steps” must be taken. In 2000 parents pulled their children out because of toxic fumes; the old school was finally closed, and children were jammed into portable classrooms, twice as many as the Ministry's own standards allow. After 8 years of delay, the Harper government demolished the old school and promised to build a new one. Last year, that promise was broken when Indian Affairs funding was slashed under Chuck Strahl.

That was when the Ontario Public School Boards Association unanimously urged the federal government to reverse its postponement of 29 desperately needed native schools. Harper, however, wanted the money for tax cuts to white voters.

The demolition of the old school has left an “open wound”. The stench of diesel emanating from the pit is overwhelming. Teachers, children and parents complain of headaches, nausea, skin rashes, nosebleeds, chronic diarrhea in infants, and children just "passing out". The local MP and MPP say those symptoms are consistent with exposure to benzene, toluene and ethyl benzene, chemicals known for causing leukemia, bone marrow damage and kidney failure. Attawapiskat wants all children from the community to be evacuated until site remediation is completed.

Minister Strahl called the MP/MPP visit a “a publicity stunt”. This is the same man who as a rightwing Reform MP from Chilliwack attacked “the never ending dependence of these aboriginal people on the taxpayers of Canada”, called for privatization of native land (the policy known in the USA as termination), and threatened racial violence against natives asserting their aboriginal fishing rights on the Fraser River (“there are going to be lives lost over this“). In 2007 Prime Minister Harper appointed him to Indian Affairs -- putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.

A comment on the latest Attawapiskat video says, "If a family did this to their children they would lose their kids, be charged and possibly be imprisoned, but it is again the government mistreating its own!"

Meanwhile, diamond companies like DeBeers expect to make $billions in profits in the area. Ontario's Minister of Northern Development and Mines boasts that Canada is now the world's third largest supplier of diamonds.

*****

Strahl quotations from Hansard 1993-2001. See also the international petition supporting Attawapiskat First Nation; and a tourist's photos and comments on the impact of diamond mining in the area.

Winter thaw - by Martha Younger

break in the blizzard: photo Chris Hoare There are no adjectives or expressions to describe this day! The house shakes, the flue tiles rattle, at times the roof hums like a boat on a tight tack and, all around us, it sounds like horror-movie banshees angrily screaming and swooping to get in the house.

I have just come inside from battling the elements. It is, in a word, exhilarating and a bit scary. I am proud of myself as I man handled – woman handled - a forty foot, 10cm diameter tree off a broken fence, only to watch another – even bigger one - slowly rip its roots out of the sodden ground and at first, hesitate, stop frame, then crash down on the fence not fifteen feet from me. As I looked around at the trees waving like grass above me, retreat seemed the better part of valour and I moved the horses to a safer paddock away from flying debris.

Two days of rain has all but melted the waist-deep snow cover and the pond has overreached its banks forming a moat around the higher parts of our lawn. Even the several inches thick ice has melted. I am glad that our house is built up the hill.

At 6:30 am, when I went down to the barn to feed the horses, it was 10C, fully thirty degrees warmer than it has been for the last three weeks. I opened the door to let fresh air into the dank, moist barn. The horses have been in since winter came to an abrupt halt two days ago causing treacherous footing for both equine and human. I went up to the house to get a cup of coffee and an hour later the wind came screaming in causing the temperatures to dive and when I returned to the barn for morning chores it was -2C.

Rising temperatures and high winds: this weather is enervating and the children’s voices are pitched higher. The ponies' tails are flagged and eyes are bright as they dash around – not chest deep in snow – for the first time since mid-November. I am afraid for their safety and have carefully chosen paddocks without trees and some snow cover for footing. Difficult when you live on a former pine plantation. They won’t be out for long today – but after two days in they needed to move about. Even a crow seemed to be flying backwards as its body was tossed up then abruptly down as it battled towards a solid tree.

My face is still tingling from leaning into the wind as I pushed heavy wheel barrows up the muck heap, dragged hay, safely stowed in hay nets, to the ponies and buckets of water to the paddocks. It is a relief to sit for a moment. I feel like I need a nap, but the continued rattling and Wizard of Oz scenes of debris flying by the window make me think that perhaps I better not.

-- Martha Younger raises horses on the Niagara Escarpment in Flesherton, Ontario

Ontario Supreme Court backs aboriginal rights

Robert Lovelace and his son River: from Queen's University Journal
In February, 2008 Justice Cunningham of the Ontario Superior Court sentenced Robert Lovelace, former Chief of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, to 6 months in jail because he refused to end his peaceful protest against uranium exploration on Algonquin land. The government of Ontario had refused to consult with the Algonquins before approving the aggressive exploration program in eastern Ontario. In addition to jail, Lovelace was fined $25,000, his community was fined $10,000 and Chief Paula Sherman $15,000. Ignoring native arguments about government obligation to consult, the lower court judge said the only thing he was interested in was enforcing the rights of the mining company, and jailed protesters for contempt.

A few weeks after Lovelace was jailed, six leaders of the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwg (KI) were sentenced on contempt charges for their nonviolent protest against drilling for platinum on their traditional lands.

On May 28, 2008 the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned the sentences and freed Lovelace and the KI 6. In their decision the Court blamed Ontario’s outmoded Mining Act, which allows mining companies to conduct aggressive exploration, including removing trees, blasting, drilling, trenching and the construction of roads on crown land (including that covered by native claims), without consultations or environmental assessment, rapped the government for using police and court orders (a form of SLAPP) while ignoring repeated requests by the Algonquins for consultation. It pointed to numerous Supreme Court of Canada decisions which require governments to consult.

The mining company, Frontenac Ventures Corporation, applied to the Supreme Court of Canada for leave to appeal, arguing that the Court of Appeal’s decision amounts to a “license to blockade”. The SCC has now dismissed Frontenac’s appeal, with costs. Unscrupulous companies will be no longer be able to hide behind "law and order" while governments do their dirty work.

“This is an important victory for civil rights and the rule of law” said Robert Lovelace. “The government will no longer be able to ignore its legal responsibilities while we are jailed for trying to uphold the law."

-- Ardoch Algonquin First Nation press release 6 Dec 08, via Quaker Aboriginal Affairs Committee. See our previous posts 27 Dec 07, 6 Mar 08, 22 Oct 08.

Why Ontario jailed a native elder

A wall of radioactive sand, 10 metres high, holds back 130 million tonnes of uranium mine tailings. Wind blows the hazardous dust for miles. It will remain dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.
photo: Edward Burtynsky, Uranium Tailings No. 12, Elliott Lake, Ontario 1995
courtesy of Andrée-Anne Dupuis Bourret's blog Le territoire des sens

Why Bob Lovelace is in jail:
A message is being sent to mining companies: Ontario is open for business, says Paul McKay in the Kingston Whig-Standard. Excerpts from his article:

I know Bob Lovelace as a soft-spoken and self-reliant neighbour, devoted father and dedicated Queen's University teacher admired by his students and colleagues. He's the kind of guy who constructs a log house in the woods north of Kingston with his own skill and sweat; builds a box planter at the local swimming spot and keeps it stocked with marigolds and petunias; and provides venison for a potluck supper. He's as innately confrontational as a panda bear.
Yet much of the public knows Bob Lovelace as a nominally militant aboriginal prisoner now serving a six-month jail sentence and facing cumulative personal fines of nearly $400,000 for contempt of court.

His transgression? Refusing to obey a judicial order not to continue his peaceful blockade at a proposed uranium mine site on lands Algonquin First Nations have never ceded title to under any prior treaty or land claim settlement. Yet, as even the mine promoter's lawyer has admitted in court hearings, there is a vanishingly small chance a uranium mine will ever get built at the headwaters of the Mississippi River northwest of Sharbot Lake. Compared to other deposits in Saskatchewan, Australia, South Africa and Asia, the ore is laughably low-grade, and the cost to mine fatally high. So how did it come to this?

In effect, Bob is in jail because he has quietly, but implacably, declined to concede that a provincial court has the ultimate authority to decide what happens on lands his Algonquin forebears have used without ecological abuse for thousands of years.

A key point is that these are not private lands in dispute. The collision has occurred because. for more than a century. Ontario governments have blithely assumed that all provincial lands are solely entrusted to it, and are thus subject to mining laws that allow any prospector or
company, from anywhere, to stake out land and claim any mineral wealth below. Without asking anyone else's permission.

In this case, the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources handed out the permits to a fledgling outfit called Frontenac Ventures, and the company maintains that it can drill for uranium with the law on its side. Without First Nation approval.

On this, the company, a provincial court and the cabinet of Dalton McGuinty tacitly agree. That's why my neighbour is in prison as a kind of conscientious objector, his impoverished First Nation is facing additional cumulative fines of nearly $400,000, and Frontenac Ventures has the sanction to drill for uranium deposits that will never prove profitable.

This makes no sense at all - unless the real issue here is far larger and more deceptive than a puny, potentially speculative mine play that may capitalize on gullible or greedy investors fixated on the spiking world price of uranium, and the venerable flim-flam tactic of selling them sizzle instead of steak.

My bet is that the Ontario government knows - just as well as Canada's major uranium com-panies know - that eastern Ontario is essentially bereft of profitable deposits. Compared to the mammoth, rich, easy-to mine uranium reserves in northern Saskatchewan, which are known as "elephants" in industry parlance, those from Sharbot Lake to Bancroft to Elliot Lake are like scattered mice.

Perversely, because these Ontario deposits would yield far few ounces of uranium per tonne of ore mined, the volume of radioactively contaminated waste rock and other lethal pollutants
would be far greater. So the public pollution risk would be high, and the financial reward small to non-existent for a private company.

The Ontario government is not blind to these facts. Or to the past legacy of uranium mining at Elliot Lake, which left more than 100 million tonnes of dangerous waste tailings for posterity, and desecrated the downstream Serpent River watershed. So what is really going on?

I suspect that the Ontario government is determined to assure the bigger, richer, more experienced mining interests, and international investors, that Ontario is a place where they can come and make serious money by mining not uranium but diamonds, gold, platinum, nickel, copper and zinc - with minimal hindrance. And because most of that potential mineral wealth is in northern Ontario, where most of the population is aboriginal, the right signals need to be sent.
... the lawyer for Frontenac Ventures also represents a different mining company that wants to develop a platinum prospect near Big Trout Lake in northwest Ontario, despite determined First Nation opposition. There, aboriginal leaders are also facing, like Bob Lovelace, potential imprisonment and crippling fines.

To mining companies, the Dalton McGuinty message is: Ontario is wide open for business. To First Nations it is: get on board, or out of the way - or go to jail....

See Full text of Paul McKay's article.
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Thanks to Ed Bianchi, Indigenous Rights Program Coordinator, KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives for forwarding this. PaulMcKay is also the author of Electric Empire: The Inside Story of Ontario Hydro (1983); A Citizen's Guide to the Ontario Legislature, (1984); and The Roman Empire (1989) on Elliott Lake mining czar Stephen Roman, who made a killing in Elliot Lake uranium for military and 'peaceful' uses.
See also Canadian Council for Nuclear Responsibility on nuclear hazards, MiningWatch Canada , CCAMU Citizens Uranium Inquiry, Remembering the Children, a March 2008 multi-city tour by Aboriginal and Church leaders to promote the upcoming Truth and Reconciliation Commission on residential schools.

The River in Winter

photo and text by Nathalie Sorensen, of Friends of the Salmon River.

The Salmon River, Eastern Ontario -- January
As I have done so many times in the thirty years since this land became our home, this morning I come down to the river to listen. I sit in the deep snow on the bank, gazing at the slow curve of shore where the river meets the line of maples, tall branches grey at this time of year.
The yellow sedge beside me rustles as the wind rises slightly; the falling snow tinkles sharply against my hat. Once I hear a blue jay call nearby, and once, a little further on, a woodpecker hammers a tree. The chickadees have moved to the birdfeeder near the house; their chipping is out of earshot where I sit. The rest of the time what I hear is the sound of silence.
Snow and ice cover the river almost completely now. There are only two small black patches of open water, one downriver from where I sit, and one upriver, just below the beaver dam. Last week when we arrived in bright morning sunshine, the patch below the dam was frozen as was the ice on the dam itself. At about noon, the river broke through and flooded the clear ice below, ripples sparkling in the sunshine. The sound of falling water, the sound of the river in spring, summer and fall, was restored.
This morning, however, all is frozen and silent. Hushed, under the ice and snow, I know the black water flows, its currents and eddies sweep through rocks and weeds. Inexorably, it follows its chosen course toward Lake Ontario. Undercover, it is still on its way.

The Amu Darya River, Karakalpakistan -- Eternal Winter
The Amu Darya, known in ancient times as the Oxus, was called "the river sea" by the people along its vast length. It was once one of the great rivers of Asia, flowing into the Aral Sea. I know of this river only from what I read.
I am reading "Eternal Winter," by Tom Bissell in Harper's Magazine, April 2002. For 500 years the Karakalpaks have lived as nomads along the Aral Sea, in what is now known as Karakalpakistan, a republic of Uzbekistan. Forty years ago, the Aral Sea was the fourth largest inland body of water in the world, its area larger than Lake Michigan. Starting in the nineteenth century, water was diverted from the Amu Darya to irrigate fields of cotton, a thirsty crop. Shortly after 1960, the Aral Sea began to disappear. When it was on the shore, the city of Moynac was prosperous, producing twelve million tins of fish a year. Moynac now sits eighty miles from what is left of the Aral Sea. Scientists estimate that by 2010 the sea will be completely gone. "It is," writes Bissell, "a place of almost unimaginable misfortune."
Despite this warning, I try to imagine it as I read: "for years dust storms have been scouring the region with hundreds of millions of tons of salt and sand from the Aral's exposed seabed, much of which is poisonous thanks to tons of Soviet insecticides and toxic waste dumped into the sea over the decades." Two thirds of the Aral Sea basin's people are now considered sick or unwell. Rates of bronchial asthma, lung disease, infant cerebral palsy, cancers of the stomach and throat, urogenital and endocrine disease among the Karakalpaks are abnormally high and getting higher. Of the 178 species of animal life that have historically lived in the Aral Sea, only thirty- eight now survive, and the thick desert forests, unique to the sea's distinctive ecosystem have all but vanished.
The Amu Darya has dried up. Now not a single drop of what was once called the river sea reaches the Aral. "An entire ecosystem has expired in a single generation."

I am numb. Fear and grief, guilt and rage congeal in me like ice. It would be a relief to explode in hot anger, assign blame, seek justice and retribution. But this death, of a river, of a sea, of a whole region is not like other deaths in our long history of greed and folly. We have no language, no traditions to mourn this loss. When what we kill is the earth itself we have no rituals for repentance and atonement.

The Salmon River -- February
I go down again to the river, still frozen solid and covered in still more snow. The sedge is silent now, but the chickadees are nearby, their calls soft and bright in the woods on the bank where I sit.
I listen. I see in my mind the water flowing deep under the ice, the rocks and weeds sheltering small bass in the cold. Under the mud, bull frogs are waiting for spring. In the circumstances all I can manage is a small human word. "Forgive," I whisper into the huge white silence.
*****
Excerpt from The Salmon River: Watershed Jewel of Eastern Ontario ed. by Milly Ristvedt (Tamworth, Ontario: Friends of the Salmon River, 2006). Composed of neighbours from Napanee, Deseronto, Tyendinaga Township, and Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, the society deals with many conservation issues.

Hunger strike brings Citizen Inquiry into Uranium Mining in Ontario

Donna Dillman just ended her hunger strike on behalf of future generations, and in support of the Algonquin First Nation, after hearing that CCAMU (the Community Coalition Against Mining Uranium) will hold a Citizens' Inquiry into the uranium issue, backed by Greenpeace, Students against Climate Change, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, David Suzuki Foundation, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, Voice of Women and Sierra Club of Canada. The Ontario government has stubbornly refused to hold an inquiry

Her husband, ecologist Mike Nickerson, reports:"On the assurance of this Inquiry, my wife, Donna Dillman, began eating again. After her 68 days without food, Donna is now back home, doing okay. There are ups and downs in the process of getting her digestive system back into top shape. Simple food in small quantities seem to be about all she can handle at this point." Donna says, "I began this hunger strike to shine a light on the problem of uranium mining in eastern Ontario with the hope that Premier McGuinty would call a moratorium on further mining and exploration. We have not yet got a moratorium but these hearings are a great opportunity to inform and educate Ontarians about some of the detrimental effects of uranium mining and to keep the pressure on the McGuinty government."

See also Algonquin First Nation maps and news with photos, also CCAMU news and Donna's blog Bring Gramma home in which she acknowledges the long struggle by Saskatchewan native people and environmentalists, citing the Oct 2007 publication of Jim Harding's Canada's Deadly Secret: Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System, NYT 12 Feb 08 The Cold War Threat to the Navajo,, Mines and Communities updates

"There is only one power available to citizens which does not require great wealth or the use of violence. It is the power of collective persuasion. It works on the subtle levels of thought and conversation and it works directly through democracy." -- CCAMU.