As Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence enters her third week on a hunger strike outside the Canadian capital building, thousands of protesters in Los Angeles, London, Minneapolis and New York City, voice their support. Spence and the protesters of the Idle No More Movement, are drawing attention to some deplorable conditions in Native communities, and recently passed legislation C-45, which sidesteps most Canadian environmental laws. âFlash mobâ protests with traditional dancing and drumming have erupted in dozens of shopping malls across North America, marches and highway blockades by aboriginal groups across Canada and supporters have emerged from as far away as New Zealand and the Middle East. This weekend, hundreds of Native people and their supporters held a flash mob round dance, with hand drum singing, at the Mall of America, again as a part of the Idle No More protest movement. This quickly emerging wave of Native activism on environmental and human rights issues has spread like a wildfire across the continent.
A group of natives from Aamjiwnaang First Nation in Sarnia pitched a pick up truck across the tracks of a CN rail spur and blocked train traffic Friday in support of the Idle No More native protest in Ottawa. The blockade began just after Boxing Day, that famed Canadian holiday and has continued.
The Aamjiwnaang blockade is one of hundreds , drawing attention to recent legal changes in Canadian law, which eliminate many environmental regulations. A center of controversy is the $6 billion tar sands pipeline to the Pacific, which will cross over 40 Native nations, all of whom have expressed opposition. The legislative changes could expedite approval of this and many other projects â all of which are in Aboriginal territories.
âIdle No Moreâ, is Canadian for, âThatâs Enough BS, weâre Coming out to Stop youâ, or something like that. Canada often touts a sort of â better than thouâ human rights position in the international arena, has , for instance, a rather small military, so itâs not likely to launch any pre-emptive strikes against known or unknown adversaries, and , has often sought to appear as a good guy, more so than itâs southern neighbor . More than a few American ex patriots moved to Canada during the Vietnam war, and stayed there, thinking it was a pretty good deal.
That is sort of passe , particularly if you are a Native person. And, particularly if you are Chief Theresa Spence. Spence is the leader of Attawapiskat First Nation- a very remote Cree community from James Bay, Ontario- at the bottom of Hudson Bay. The communityâs on reserve 1,549 residents ( a third of whom are under l9) have weathered quite a bit, the fur trade, residential schools, a status as non-treaty Indians, and limited access to modern conveniences- like a toilet, or maybe electricity. This is a bit common place in the north, but it has become exacerbated in the past five years, with the advent of a huge diamond mine.
Enter DeBeers, the largest diamond mining enterprise in the world. The company moved into northern Ontario in 2006 . The Victor Mine reached commercial production in 2008 and was voted âMine of the Yearâ by the readers of the international trade publication Mining Magazine. The company states it is âis committed to sustainable development in local communities.â This is good to know. This is also where the first world meets the third world in the north, as Canadian MP Bob Rae discovered last year on his tour of the rather destitute conditions of the village. Infrastructure in the Sub Arctic is in short supply. There is no road into the village eight months of the year, four months a year, during freeze up , thereâs an ice road. A diamond mine needs a lot of infrastructure. And that has to be shipped in, so the trucks launch out of Moosonee, Ontario. Then, they build a better road. The problem is that the road wonât work when the climate changes, and already stretched infrastructure gets tapped out.
There is some money flowing in, thatâs sure. A 2010 report from DeBeers states that payments to eight communities associated with its two mines in Canada totalled $5,231,000 that year. Forbes Magazine reports record diamond sales by the worldâs largest diamond company â⊠increased 33 percent, year-over-year, to $3.5 billionâŠ.The mining giant, which produces more than a third of the worldâs rough diamonds, also reported record EBITDA of almost $1.2 billion, a 55 percent increase over the first the first half of 2010.â .
As the Canadian Mining Watch group notes âWhatever Attawapiskatâs share of that $5-million is, given the chronic under-funding of the community, the need for expensive responses to deal with recurring crises, including one that DeBeers themselves may have precipitated by overloading the communityâs sewage system, itâs not surprising that the community hasnât been able to translate its ⊠income into improvements in physical infrastructure.â Last year, Attawapiskat drew international attention , when many families in the Cree community were living in tents.
The neighboring Kaschewan Village is in similar disarray. They have been boiling water, and importing water. The village almost had a complete evacuation due to health conditions, and , â ⊠fuel shortages are becoming more common among remote northern Ontario communities right now,â Alvin Fiddler, Deputy Grand Chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, a regional advocacy network explained to a reporter. Thatâs because the ice road used to truck in a yearâs supply of diesel last winter did not last as long as usual. âEverybody is running out now. Weâre looking at a two-month gapâ until this winterâs ice road is solid enough to truck in fresh supplies, Mr. Fiddler said in an interview.
Kashechewanâs chief and council are poised to shut down the band office, two schools, the power generation centre, the health clinic and the fire hall because the buildings were not heated and could no longer operate safely. â In addition some 21 homes had become uninhabitable,â according to Chief Derek Stephen . Those basements had been flooded last spring, as the weather patterns changed. Just as a side note, in 2007, some 21 Cree youth from Kashechewan attempted to commit suicide, and the Canadian aboriginal youth suicide rate is five times the national average. Both communities are beneficiaries of an agreement with DeBeers.
The Lost Boys of Aamjiwnaang
Back at Aamjiwnaang, the Ojibwe have blockaded the tracks. Those are tracks that are full of chemical trains, lots of them. There are some 62 industrial plants in what the Canadian government calls Industrial Valley. The Aamjiwnaang people would like to call it home , but theyâve a few challenges in their house.
âIf the prime minister will not listen to our words, perhaps heâll pay attention to our actions,â Chief Chris Plain explained to the media. Thereâs a recent Menâs Health magazine article called,â The Lost Boys of Aamjiwnaangâ. Thatâs because the Ojibwe Reserve of Aamjiwnaang has few boys. Put it this way, in a normal society, there are about l05 boys to l00 girls, born, thatâs the odds for a thousand years or so. However, at Aamjiwnaang, things are different.
Between l993 and 2003, there had been two girls born for every boy to the tribal community, one of the steepest declines ever recorded in birth gender ratio. As one reporter notes, âthese tribal lands have become a kind of petri dish for industrial pollutants. And in this vast, real-time experiment, the children of Aamjiwnaang (AHM-ju-nun) are the lab rats. I might have written âboys of Aamjiwnaang,â but actually, there are a lot fewer of them around to experiment on. ..â
This trend is international, particularly in more industrialized countries, and the odd statistics at Aamjiwnaang, are indicative of larger trends. The rail line, known as the St. Clair spur, carries CN and CSX trains to several large industries in Sarniaâs Chemical Valley . Usually four or five trains move through a day, all full of chemicals. The Ojibwe have faced a chronic dosage of chemicals for twenty five years, and are concerned about the health impacts. They are also concerned about proposals to move tar sands oil through their community in a pre-existing pipeline.
The Idle No More movement is fired by the recent passing of the omnibus budget Bill C-45, which was approved by the Senate in a 50-27 vote. Aboriginal leaders charge the Conservative government with pushing the bill through without consulting them. They note the bill infringes on their treaty rights, compromises ownership of their land and takes away protection for Canadaâs waterways .In the US, the Native community has been coming out in numbers and regalia to support the Canadian Native struggle to protect the environment- drawing attention at the same time to simlar concerns and issues here in the US. For instance, Ojibwe from the Keewenaw Bay Community in Michigan , rallied against a Rio Tinto Zinc mine project, and Navajo protesters in Flagstaff continued opposing a ski project with manufactured snow at a sacred mountain.
Pamela Palmater, a spokesperson for the Idle No More movement in Canada, urges the larger community to see what is occuring across the country as a reality check. âthe first Nations are the last best hope that Canadians have for protecting land for food and clean water for the future- not just for our people but for Canadians as well. So this country falls or survives on whether they acknowledge- or recognize and implement those aboriginal and treaty rights. So they need to stand with us and protect what is essential.â
The Chief Occupies
Meanwhile , Chief Theresa Spence is still hoping to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, urging him to âopen his heartâ and meet with native leaders angered by his policies. âHeâs a person with a heart but he needs to open his heart. Iâm sure he has faith in the Creator himself and for him to delay this, itâs very disrespectful, I feel, to not even meet with us,â she said. The reality is that Attawapiskat, Aamjiwnaang and Kashachewan, are remote Native communities, which receive little or no attention, until a human rights crisis of great proportion causes national shame. Facebook and social media change and equalize access for those who never see the spotlight. ( Just think of Arab Spring). With the help of social media the Idle No More movement has taken on a life of its own in much the same way the first âOccupy Wall Streetâ camp gave birth to a multitude of âoccupyâ protests with no clear leadership. âThis has spread in ways that we wouldnât even have imagined,â said Sheelah McLean, an instructor at the University of Saskatchewan , one of the four women who originally coined the âIdle No Moreâ slogan. âWhat this movement is supposed to do is build consciousness about the inequalities so that everyone is outraged about what is happening here in Canada. Every Canadian should be outraged.â
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