Indigenous-led Tiny House Warriors are building homes in the path of the Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline to protest the project, which would increase the flow of Alberta tar sands to the Vancouver coast from the current 300,000 barrels a day to 890,000.
The recent decision by an all-white jury to acquit Gerald Stanley, the killer of Colten Boushie calls on us all to confront systematic racism and demand reforms to Canada’s justice system, which “works against Indigenous people at every level”.
The recent Standing Rock standoff over the Dakota Access Pipeline and eight-year Unist’ot’en resistance camp in northern British Columbia are a manifestation of “indigenous resurgence” against colonialism and fossil fuel developments, including pipelines.
The federal court’s recent ruling on the Dakota Access Pipeline saga could start a new chapter guaranteeing the rule of law and protection of water protectors, argues Mark Trahant, the Charles R. Johnson Endowed Professor of Journalism at the University of North Dakota.
According to Tara Williamson, a singer-songwriter and poet from Manitoba, one of the many problems inherent in Canada’s current effort to reconcile with Indigenous peoples is this: “We must be willing to reconcile, willing to hear apologies, willing to share our trauma with others, willing to heal and willing to forgive.”
In a recent scathing open letter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other Nobel Laureates assail fellow laureate, human rights icon, and honorary Canadian citizen, Aung San Suu Kyi, over her country’s ongoing genocidal persecution of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state.
The planned Innavik Hydro Electric Project will provide clean energy and propel the indigenous Inukjuak community in Northern Quebec off its dependency on dirty diesel energy. But the project faces serious challenges, including lack of adequate funding, and mega hydro projects’ disastrous legacy of wiping out thousands of caribou and flooding large swaths of land.
The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs is suing the Trudeau government over its approval of Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline. First Nations leaders have repeatedly stated that no genuine reconciliation is possible as long as Canada continues to approve fossil fuel-based projects that threaten their communities and the planet.
