Canada, Beacon of Democracy, Enlightenment, and Justice: In Canada, Western Civilization Has a Hope

Yes, the title is not meant to be taken at face value. Yet the article below does carry a lot of punch that is well deserved, and well aimed.

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Canada’s tarnished international image

By Kate Harries
Indian Country Today Story Published: Dec 31, 2008

TORONTO – Canada was once viewed as a beacon of enlightenment on the world stage – a leader in the field of human rights and peacekeeping.

That’s an image that has become severely tarnished since a Conservative government was elected two years ago.

Its rejection of indigenous rights, its spoiler role at global warming talks, its failure to investigate the killing or disappearance of hundreds of aboriginal women, its indifference to the plight of a small Cree nation whose unceded territory is overrun by gas and oil development – these are all issues that point to a sea-change in the way Canada conducts its affairs.

“It’s sometimes surprising. … to realize how bad Canada is playing at these international talks,” said Ben Powless, a Mohawk from Six Nations in Ontario who attended the recent UN climate conference in Poznan, Poland as an Indigenous Environmental Network youth representative

“A number of our youth reps met with the Canadian officials, and left in tears, after hearing them joke about the negotiations and showing how lightly they took them,” he said in an interview last month from Europe.

The Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper does get credit for one historic initiative: the June 11 apology to survivors of the residential school system

“It was an apology heard around the world,” said National Chief Phil Fontaine of the Assembly of First Nations, for whom the current economic crisis is an opportunity to translate the words of the apology into action by addressing the appalling poverty of indigenous people in Canada.

“We hope the government will look to our First Nations communities as the appropriate starting point for any stimulus package,” Fontaine said in an interview.

Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl told a recent chiefs’ assembly that he had heard their call. But, he warned, “We must remember to be pragmatic in our approach and realistic in our goals.”

“There are great examples out there of First Nations who have not waited for the wheels of government to turn,” he added, pointing to Membertou First Nation in Nova Scotia and Whitecap Dakota First Nation in Saskatchewan as examples of entrepreneurial success.

First Nations leaders told him they face an impossible task in meeting the needs of the fastest growing segment of the Canadian population with a two percent cap on federal spending increases, imposed 12 years ago.

Strahl also came under fire for Canada’s role in leading the fight to delete references to indigenous rights from the text of an agreement on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation in Developing countries (REDD).

“The best way of protecting our environment is to ensure that the rights of our people on the land are recognized and are respected,” Fontaine said, adding that Canada’s refusal to honor the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is “a black mark on this country’s international reputation.”

Strahl reiterated the Harper government’s position that recognition of indigenous rights contradicts existing Canadian laws and treaties.

The REDD initiative is seen by indigenous groups as a bid by developed nations to commodify forests in the developing world and provide a pretext for forcing indigenous peoples off their lands.

“We tried to get indigenous rights put centrally in (the) initiative,” Powless said, “but there was strong opposition from a number of countries, like Canada and the U.S., who claimed they didn’t recognize collective rights.

“Canadian officials claimed indigenous rights had nothing to do with climate change, which makes them either very stupid, disgraceful liars, or both.”

Indigenous people, who have done nothing to contribute to climate change, will pay the price, he noted. “Entire ecosystems are threatened, along with the people who depend upon them, from the Arctic to the Amazon.”

In other matters, a UN committee on the elimination of discrimination against women has called upon Canada to urgently carry out a thorough investigation of missing or murdered aboriginal women. (Over 500 cases in two decades have been documented, with many more likely to have gone unrecorded because of faulty data.)

Canada should determine “whether there is a racialized pattern to the disappearances and take measures to address the problem if that is the case,” the committee report said.

Gladys Radek helped organize the cross-Canada Walk4Justice on the issue this summer. She said she’s optimistic there will be an inquiry. “We have a whole nation of support.”

Sadly, disappearances continue. Maisy Odjick, 16, and her friend Shannon Alexander, 17, vanished without a trace Sept. 5 from Kitigan Zimi Anishinabeg First Nation in Quebec. Police Chief Gordon McGregor said there are no clues to whether they left of their own volition or if there has been foul play.

Meanwhile, Alberta’s authority to “legitimately approve the construction of a pipeline across Lubicon territory without Lubicon consent” was questioned in a letter to Canadian Ambassador Marius Grinius. Fatimata-Binta Victoire Dah, chair of the UN committee to end racial discrimination, gave Canada a Dec. 31 deadline to respond.

TransCanada Pipelines states that it is abiding by the law in obtaining Alberta approval for the North Central Corridor project. Work began Oct. 15, over the opposition of the 500-member Lubicon Lake Indian Nation. It was left out of Treaty 8 negotiations in 1899 and has been trying to negotiate a deal with Canada for decades.

Lubicon Councillor Dwight Gladhue said TransCanada is building a 600-person camp in an environmentally sensitive hunting area the Lubicon asked them to stay away from.

Sixty organizations signed an open letter Nov. 18 calling for justice for the Lubicon, citing more than two decades of UN decisions regarding the abuse of their human rights and urging Canada to deal with the nation, or suspend the development which is compromising their land until a settlement is reached. There have been no negotiations since 2003.

Sphere Related Content

“You can’t shoot kids … but you can pound them” — How insurgents are made

This is the last video in this series, the previous one being “Why can’t we shoot these kids?” For those of us who are not, and have not been in Iraq, this is one of the few ways we have of “seeing” events on the ground.

This is a group of British soldiers — when and where in Iraq is not specified — and it seems that they are responding to some protesters. A group of young boys is dragged into what appears to be a base, and then pummeled. A large group of fellow troops return from the streets and walk past, and nobody interferes. It may not meet some definitions of “savage brutality” (in which case, pardon me for saying this, but someone needs to get their nuts kicked by an army boot) but I doubt this will “win hearts and minds.” For a young boy, one can imagine that this experience will leave a lasting impression. We also do not know what happens after the video ends, whether the boys are released, or further detained, etc.

Unlike the last related post, I should not neglect to mention that there is little someone like myself can do to verify this video, to contextualize it, to interview the troops, and to figure out if the cruel narrative of a man who seems to be having an orgasm at the sight of vanquished boys was added after the video was made by someone who was not present. Personally, I have been given no reason to doubt its authenticity, but one can never be absolutely certain with materials posted on YouTube. Having said that, I thank RAIM for bringing my attention to this video.

And in Canada today, the release of the Guantanamo interrogation tapes of Omar Khadr, captured as a young boy in Afghanistan and abused. This is Canada’s continuing scandal of neglect and participation in the violation of the same international laws it claims to hold sacred.

The Binding Symbolic Value of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Four settler states were clearly unsettled by the passage of what, in formal terms, was a non-binding Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. That Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, voted against the document, when the majority of UN member states approved it, says a great deal which many of us will be left to debate for some time. Perhaps it will be little time: opposition parties in Canada and Australia, with a good chance of winning the next elections, have already promised to sign the Declaration once elected, and some of us will be sure to remember their promises. In the meantime, the Declaration is now an international “fact,” and no longer a “draft.” To be seen to act against the contents of the Declaration will be equated with acting against international public opinion. What stands out is not that “the liberal democracies with the most intense engagements with indigenous issues” voted against the Declaration, as some have said, since many other countries, with larger indigenous populations, and arguably more intense engagements, voted for it. What stands out instead is how settler states are still in the process of trying to settle themselves, how much “engagement” has really been disengagement, distance, friction, and conflict, and how much wishful thinking plays a part in reigning fantasies that, one day, Europe Part 2, will be as embedded in its foreign soil as Original Europe can claim to be on its soil.

The vote against the Declaration was a serious tactical error: these four states now sorely stand out as colonial, white states, anachronistic entitites in a world where “decolonization” has become part of the international vocabulary. They have also handed the Chinas of the world a powerful argument–that they too flout the will of “the international community,” that they too do not recognize the rights of disadvantaged minorities, and that liberal democracy is really little more than kleptocracy. If accepting the Declaration could have been symbolically binding (even if not legally so), then surely rejecting the Declaration will also come at a political cost. Some of us will see to it that it does.

Blogs for Indigenous News and Commentary

Normally I would be careful about recommending a website or blog whose authors/creators are not well identified, but CENSORED appears to be well worth visiting for those interested in indigenous news from a radical and militant perspective. Many of the current articles discuss Zapatista meetings, communiques from writers associated with the Mohawk Warriors Society, and pieces critical of U.S. actions in Iraq as well as domestic spying in the U.S.

Indigenous Issues Today is a relatively new blog authored by Dr. Peter N. Jones, director of the Baau Insititute in Boulder, Colorado. Dr. Jones, of Welsh, Norwegian, and Choctaw ancestry, has also worked with indigenous peoples from the Dominican Republic, among others. The following information about the blog and the Institute came from a recent press release by PRLEAP.COM:

Indigenous people today face more challenges than any previous generation. Large multi-national companies are extracting all types of natural resources from indigenous peoples traditional homelands. Ecotourism is having an adverse effect on traditional indigenous cultural values. The establishment of large preserves for wildlife management has caused detrimental impacts to traditional subsistence lifeways by indigenous peoples throughout the world. In order to help mitigate these ongoing and constant impacts, the Bauu Institute and Press began publishing the Indigenous Issues Today news blog.

The Indigenous Issues Today news blog is written as a form of social outreach for those who want to find out what is happening to the worlds indigenous peoples and as a means of informing the public about one of today’s central human rights issues. With over 20 posts on 15 indigenous groups located in 8 countries, the blog has already garnered a lot of attention. Primary topics have included timber harvesting in Chile and its impacts to the Mapuche people, oil and gas development among the Ute peoples of southern Colorado, and commentaries on the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights….

Dr. Jones said, “Although there are a number of blogs that cover a particular topic or indigenous group, this blog is the first to examine in detail one particular issue at a time while still taking a global perspective. A larger understanding is developed as to the problems facing indigenous peoples around the world.” With the Indigenous Issues Today news blog, Dr. Peter N. Jones hopes to reach out to people from all walks of life.

About the Bauu Institute and Press

The Bauu Institute and Press is a science and applied research institute. Since 1998 the Institute has conducted a wide range of environmental, psychological, and social science projects. The Institute works on a range of local, state, federal, and tribal based levels, and are especially adept at working with indigenous peoples.

Canadian Government and Native "Terrorists"

April 2, 2007 – by Joseph Quesnel for FIRST PERSPECTIVE, National Aboriginal News

A national Aboriginal leader is asking Ottawa to ensure that Aboriginal groups are removed from a federal National Defense document which lists militant Aboriginal groups alongside other radical groups.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Phil Fontaine today demanded that the federal government immediately remove any reference to First Nations in a Department of National Defense draft counter-insurgency manual listing international terrorist threats. According to a report by The Globe and Mail, radical Native American organizations such as the Mohawk Warriors Society are listed in the training manual as insurgents, alongside other insurgent groups.

“Any reference to First Nations people as possible insurgents or terrorists is a direct attack on us – it demonizes us, it threatens our safety and security and attempts to criminalize our legitimate right to live our lives like all other Canadians do. Just being referenced in such a document compromises our freedom to travel across borders, have unimpeded telephone and internet communications, raise money, and protest against injustices to our people,” stated AFN National Chief Phil Fontaine.

“I am calling upon Prime Minister Stephen Harper to immediately and without reservation, reject and remove any references to First Nations from all versions of the training manual.”
READ MORE…