Canada’s aboriginal protest movement explodes
Idle No More has galvanized marches,
flashmobs and railway blockades in the fight for indigenous rights By Natasha
Lennard
* Last
month a protest movement exploded across Canada, but little has been
made of it by the media below the border. The reason for this, perhaps,
is that the issues underpinning the movement are — quite literally —
indigenous to Canada.
Under the banner Idle No More, thousands of
Canada’s aboriginal peoples (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) and their
allies have staged mass demonstrations in cities and towns all around
the country in protest of the abusive treatment of indigenous people in
Canada by the Canadian government. Mass marches have peacefully taken
over the streets in Ottawa, while Round Dance flashmobs (nodding to both
traditional indigenous dances and social media-fueled protest practices of
late) have popped in around Canada and even in a handful of U.S. cities in
solidarity.
Bold protest stunts have involved blockading some of Canada’s major railway
lines. Galvanizing a huge amount of attention to the issue is Chief Theresa
Spence, the leader of the small Ontario Cree Nation of Attawapiskat, who is now
23 days into a hunger strike on Ottawa’s Victoria Island, just
across from the Canadian parliament, and who is demanding a dialogue
between Canadian parliamentary leaders and aboriginal representatives.
A number of Canadian media outlets have cast the movement as a direct
response to an omnibus bill, C-45, passed recently by Prime Minister
Stephen Harper’s government. Idle No More protesters argue the C-45
tramples on the treaty rights of aboriginal people, especially when it
comes to land use. The bill, organizers note, will lower the threshold
of community consent in the designation and surrender process of Indian
Reserve Lands and remove particular protections from rivers and lakes
within Reserve Lands. However, as Métis Nation blogger Chelsea Vowel points
out, Idle No More is about far more than C-45 — it is about aboriginal
sovereignty and rights.
As the Idle No More mission notes state:
Idle No More calls on all people to join in a revolution which honors and
fulfills Indigenous sovereignty which protects the land and water.
Colonization continues through attacks to Indigenous rights and damage
to the land and water. We must repair these violations, live the spirit
and intent of the treaty relationship, work towards justice in action,
and protect Mother Earth.
Conservative commentators in Canada have been swift to criticize Idle No More
and
Chief Spence, often invoking the sort of thinly veiled racism far-right
voices in this country use to disparage Muslim and black groups.
Well-known right-wing voice Christie Blatchford decried Spence’s actions (a
hunger strike) as “intimidation, if not terrorism.” Arguments from
Blatchford and other anti-native voices suggest that claims for
aboriginal rights should be dismissed, as aboriginal cultures are no
longer relevant in Canada. Writer and activist Harsha Walia called such
dismissals of Idle No More “disgraceful and racist.”
A recent study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, flagged by
Al-Jazeera, found that in 2006 the average income for aboriginal people was
just
under $19,000, which is 30 percent lower than the $27,097 average for
other Canadians. For long-term activists in Canada, Idle No More is an
exciting space for aboriginal people and non-aboriginal allies to begin
to fight the conditions they see perpetuating this sort of inequality.
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/02/canadas_aboriginal_protest_movement_explodes/
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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