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Action Needed in Canada!
Mon, Feb 10, 2020 12:01 pm
Cherri Foytlin (leauestlaviecamp@gmail.com)To:you Details
Author: aztec8888
News from Canada: Action Now!
Royal Canadian Mounted Police raid unceded Wet’suwet’en land, six arrested
News Release
Indigenous Environmental Network
Early this morning, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) raided Wet’suwet’en territories to push forward the unwanted Coastal GasLink pipeline. Six Indigenous peoples and their allies were arrested.
The Wet’suwet’en have been very clear that they do not want the C$6.6 billion, 416 mile long CGL pipeline going through their unceded and sovereign lands. Coastal GasLink/TC Energy (formerly TransCanada) is pushing through a 670-kilometer fracked gas pipeline that would carry fracked gas from Dawson Creek, B.C. to the coastal town of Kitimat, where LNG Canada’s processing plant would be located. LNG Canada is the single largest private oil and gas investment in Canadian history.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers with night vision and automatic weapons raided the camp in the dead of night. Much like at Standing Rock — the raid was highly militarized — dogs were used, media was banned from filming arrests, Royal Canadian Mounted Police smashed the windows of the camp’s communications van.
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http://unistoten.camp/supportertoolkit2020/
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Disgusting Action
https://www.yahoo.com/news/sacred-native-american-arizona-blasted-043614389.html
Sacred Native American site in Arizona blasted for border wall construction
TUCSON, Ariz. – The contractor that is building President Donald Trump’s border wall in southwestern Arizona began blasting this week through a site that the Native American O’odham people consider sacred to make way for newer, taller barriers.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed the contractor started blasting through the site called Monument Hill at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument west of Lukeville “in preparation for new border wall system construction within the Roosevelt Reservation.”
The Roosevelt Reservation is a 60-foot-wide swath of federally owned land along the border in Arizona.
Since construction began in August, crews have been clearing that 60-foot swath – relocating certain plants, including the state’s iconic saguaros, to other parts of the national park.
Border wall construction in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument at the Arizona-Mexico line.
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2020/02/05/Federal-Court-Trans-Mountain-Ruling-Betrays-Reconciliation/
Federal Court’s Trans Mountain Ruling Betrays Principles of Reconciliation
The decision found Trudeau government met the minimum legal requirements. For Indigenous peoples, that’s not enough.
The Federal Court of Appeal’s decision to uphold federal government approval for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project is devastating for the First Nations that launched the legal challenge.
The nine nations argued they had not been consulted properly before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet approved the pipeline. The second attempt at consultation was the result of an earlier court decision rejecting a first round of consultations as flawed.
Rueben George of the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation summed up the impact.
“Reconciliation stopped today,” he said.
The “Rule of Law”?
https://ricochet.media/en/2904/untangling-the-rule-of-law-in-the-coastal-gaslink-pipeline-standoff
When B.C. premier John Horgan said “the rule of law applies” in reference to the Coastal GasLink pipeline conflict, he meant that he would abide by an injunction granted by a provincial court to allow the company to enter and operate on Wet’suwet’en territory.
In doing so, he discounted a number of legal elements — and even an entire system of law — that arguably supercede the B.C. courts.
When it comes to injunctions, the deck is stacked. The Yellowhead Institute reviewed over 100 injunction cases late last year. They found that corporations succeeded in 76 per cent of injunctions filed against Indigenous nations, whereas requests for injunctions filed by Indigenous nations against governments and corporations were denied in over 80 per cent of cases.
And thus he also unwittingly raised larger questions about the legal aspects of the conflict.
Whose laws apply? And which laws?
The rule of law is far more complicated in this case than simply following an injunction. A pre-existing system of Indigenous governance, Supreme Court of Canada decisions, and a United Nations declaration all bring into question the legal validity of the injunction granted to Coastal GasLink.
from: Ricochet
Copyright 2020. All rights reserved.
Regarding Nuclear Waste Storage
First Nation votes ‘no’ on nuclear waste storage in Bruce County, Ont.
Published Friday, January 31, 2020 12:07PM EST Last Updated Saturday, February 1, 2020 11:06AM EST
SOUTHAMPTON, ONT. —
First Nation votes ‘no’ on nuclear waste storage in Bruce County, Ont.
Members of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) have voted down plans to bury Ontario’s low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste within 1.2 kilometres of Lake Huron.
In 2013, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) said they wouldn’t build the $2.4 billion underground facility under the Bruce Power site without the SON’s approval.
On Friday, 1,232 members of the First Nation band voted. The vote results saw 1,058 ‘no’ votes, with 170 ‘yes’ and 4 spoiled ballots.
It means Canada’s first permanent nuclear waste facility will need to be built somewhere else in Ontario.
OPG will now have to start searching for a new host community to house over 200,000 cubic metres of low- and intermediate- level nuclear waste.
OPG says finding a new site may set the project back 20 to 30 years.
Concerns over the project’s proximity to Lake Huron ultimately doomed the nuclear waste plan.
Support for the project was strong in Bruce County, but largely panned around the Great Lakes, where over 200 municipal resolutions opposed the project.
Ontario Power Generation say while they are disapointed with the outcome of the vote, they respect S.O.N.’s decision and will not proceed with plans to build the storage facility in Saugeen Territory.
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An illustration shows the plan for a nuclear waste burial project on the Bruce Power site.
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A sign is visible at the site proposed to bury nuclear waste near Lake Huron, Ont., Wednesday, May 6, 2015. (Scott Miller / CTV London)
Indigenous Rights Challenged
What you need to know about the Coastal GasLink pipeline conflict
Dispute in Wet’suwet’en territory over natural gas line has high economic and political stakes
The conflict over a natural gas pipeline in northwestern British Columbia is the latest flashpoint between resource development and Indigenous rights and title in a province where large swaths of territory are not covered by any treaty.
At the centre of the conflict is a multi-billion dollar natural gas project — touted as the largest private sector investment in Canadian history — and an assertion by Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs that no pipelines can be built through their traditional territory without their consent.
Missing and Murdered Women
Organizers of the Vigil and Heartbeat of the Drums for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls shown here left to right: Ruth Miller, Dena’ina Athabascan, Communications Organizer, Native Movement; Rochelle Adams, Athabascan, Indigenous Engagement Coordinator, Native Peoples Action; Kendra Kloster, Tlingit, Executive Director, Native Peoples Action; Charlene Akpik Apok, Inupiaq, Gender Justice and Healing Coordinator, Native Movement; Kelsey Wallace, Yup’ik, Communications Director, Native Peoples Action; and (not pictured), Emily Edenshaw, Executive Director, Alaska Native Heritage Center. (Photo by Joaqlin Estus)
As the names of more than 200 missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls were read, people listened in silence, many staring into space or at the carpeted floor of the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage. A few quietly wiped away tears. Healers burned braids of sweet grass and bunches of sage, waving the smoke onto the half-dozen men reading the names.
Charlene Akpik Apok, Inupiaq, director of gender justice and healing for the nonprofit community advocacy and training organization Native Movement, was emcee of the Vigil and Heartbeat of the Drums for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. She told the audience of more than a hundred people she had asked men to read the names to remember and honor allies in the fight against the loss of Indigenous women.”
Saving Lake Huron
Photograph Source: Kevin M Klerks – CC BY 2.0
February 4, 2020
Saugeen Ojibway Nation Has Saved Lake Huron From a Nuclear Waste Dump
A major victory for Canada’s First Nations has just been won in Ontario. On January 31, the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) overwhelmingly voted down the proposed deep geological repository (DGR) for storage of low- and intermediate-level radioactive nuclear waste next to Lake Huron. The DGR had long been proposed by Ontario Power Generation (OPG), but in 2013 OPG had committed to SON that it would not build the DGR without their support.
Canadian Pipeline
John Ivison: Pipeline dispute raises important question — who speaks for First Nations?
Reconciliation means making one system compatible with another, not Indigenous law trumping Canadian law at the behest of some self-anointed aristocrats
Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs opposed to the Coastal GasLink pipeline hold a press conference in Smithers, B.C., on Jan. 7, 2020.
The “territorial re-occupation” of land along the proposed Coastal GasLink pipeline in B.C. by hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en people has raised some thorny constitutional questions and some surprising interventions.
The $6.2 billion, 670 km pipeline route runs from Dawson Creek, near the Alberta border, to Kitimat in B.C.’s north coast region, crossing through traditional Wet’suwet’en territory.
Water is Life 