Tag: Indigenous Politics

“British Columbia” is unique in Canada for both the large number of Indigenous nations and the province’s lack of Treaties. According to the 1763 Royal Proclamation, issued by the British after defeating France, no trade or settlement could occur in Indigenous territory without treaties.

Last November, hundreds of people gathered in the community of Tlet’inqox to thank the land defenders and praise the federal government’s decision to turn down Taseko Mines’ Prosperity project, a proposed gold and copper mine on Tsilhqot’in territory in northern B.C.

Leanne Simpson and Kiera Ladner’s new edited collection, This is an Honour Song, seeks to recognize the significance of the events at Kanehsatake for Indigenous peoples, as well as for Canada. The collection does not focus on rehashing the details of events at the pines (a number of good books already exist in this regard), but explores the broader resonance and echoes of the Kanien’kehaka resistance.

While specific spiritual beliefs are as varied as the distinct First Nations communities on this land, Indigenous world views generally operate from a framework of interconnectedness whereby relationship is the lens through which we understand and sense the world. It informs the ultimate vision of sovereignty and decolonization, and impacts the goals, strategies and tactics of our activism.

The concept of indigenous food sovereignty represents a policy approach that extends the concept of food security through honouring the wisdom and values of indigenous knowledge in maintaining responsible relationships with the land.

Of the more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children who were forcibly removed from their families and enrolled in one of the many Indian Residential Schools (IRS) in Canada, it is estimated that there are 85,000 residential school survivors in Canada today. Alongside these survivors are the thousands more impacted by the intergenerational effects of residential schools on Aboriginal families.

At midnight on May 31, 2009, the guards who manned the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) station on the Mohawk (Kahnienkehaka) reserve of Akwesasne, near Cornwall, Ontario, abandoned the Canadian side of the U.S.-Canada border and went home. The guards were to be issued 9-mm Beretta pistols on the following day as part of Canada’s border security policy, but had been warned by Akwesasne community groups that armed agents of the Canadian government would not be tolerated on their land.

Nandita Sharma is an activist, scholar, and the author of Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of ‘Migrant Workers’ in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2006), and “Anti-Trafficking Rhetoric and the Making of a Global Apartheid” (_NWSA #17, 2005).

In Compact, Contract, Covenant, J. R. Miller provides the first comprehensive history of treaty-making in Canada. From the earliest days of trading partnerships and military alliances to modern comprehensive land claims, Miller explores the complex and shifting relations that guided the formation of treaties.

Some things defy articulation. How can a community conceptualize the vicious, racist misogyny that leaves scores of Aboriginal women missing and murdered? We try, because silence really is complicity — because we are all affected, we are all related and we do not accept the loss of these women.

Marilyn Waring’s decades-long career has been as varied as it has been influential. She was the youngest woman elected to the New Zealand Parliament, is a long-time activist for lesbian and gay rights, and has tended her own goat farm for many years. Waring recently spoke with Briarpatch about the state of women’s rights in the Global South and how women in the North can support southern resistance to economic inequality.

“A lot of people have got their hearts broke, trying to make a living off this land without any water” Wolverine tells me. We are walking down the hill from his house towards a small field planted with flowering squash. His dog, Bingo, trails behind.

In December 2007, the Council of the Haida Nation and the Government of B.C. ratified a Strategic Land Use Agreement for Haida Gwaii, also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, off the north coast of B.C., following four years of participatory planning in island communities. The agreement is a bold challenge to traditional economic policy, representing a major shift from an export-driven, resource-based economy to an ecologically grounded approach to a sustainable economy on Haida Gwaii.

What does the Mohawk cultural resurgence at Tyendinaga have to teach us about Aboriginal youth suicide prevention?

Treaties are foundational agreements that provide a common framework for peaceful co-existence between First Nations and settlers. Some “treaty abolitionists” argue that treaties grant particular individuals special rights and privileges, creating inequality in our community—and therefore that “treaty rights” should be taken away. But they forget that we are all, in fact, treaty people. Treaties are two-party agreements that bestow rights and obligations upon both parties. Settlers too were granted generous treaty rights that they would be foolish to abrogate.