[Marxism] Re: Canadian Indians assert their rights

["Macdonald Stainsby" <mstainsby@xxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [Marxism] Canadian Indians assert their rights

> NY Times, December 5, 2004
> Natives' Land Battles Bring a Shift in Canada Economy
> By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

> They are not alone in their efforts. Native bands are similarly exerting
> increasing control over natural resources across vast stretches of northern
> Canada that promise to be vital economically in a future of global warming.

This kind of language is perhaps the most dangerous of all. A few years
ago, during the government of Jean Chretien, the environment and fisheries
minister of the time Herb Dhaliwhal (since forced out in the clean up by
Martin) caused a minor flap for the gvt by casually referring to global
warming (gw) as a good thing. This has since become overt rather than
covert policy, despite the fact that gw will absolutely decimate the land
and the nations of the north. What is "vital" is to support the calls of
the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and many of the Dene nations of the north
in their quest to take serious action on the issues of global warming.
Krauss has been very "on the ball" regarding the dispute-- that when gw
continues to reduce ice packs and shipping lanes through the entire north
become possible-- a shipping route that will reduce the Panama Canal route
by 7 000 nautical miles-- an old dispute will become very important.

The islands of the north have not all been "officially" designated this or
that "nation-state". Thus, unmarked islands between "Canadian" Ellesmere
Island and Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland/Denmark)-- both parts of Inuit
nation territory--become of tremendous importance since it will
"inevitably" open up and one state will control global shipping, something
England long ago understood as a major key in leading among imperialist
nations.

The United States (Alaska), KN, Canada and the Russian Federation all have
disputes over borders. No one but Canada believes that Ottawa controls the
shipping lanes that will open. Thus, Canada is mobilizing the military for
the largest expansion into the North, and the US refuses the right of
return for Inuit onto territory colonized for a military base when Denmark
fell under German control during WWII. In 1953, to build a "Cold War spy
station" whole villages and settlements that had been occurring in the
same place for traditional whaling and other hunting were expelled. A
"vital" outpost was built and remains.

Meanwhile, Canada and Denmark have gone to the UN, planted flags and
sailed warships to intimidate one another. It is no stretch to say that
the "final push" that was the 1860's in the US with regards to Western
expansion, settlement and resource control in the "last Indian wars" are
going on in different ways but ultimately with the same result.

The Northwest Territories are over 50% indigenous, but outside of
Yellowknife, the capital of this huge territory, the number goes near 90%,
while in all of Nunavut it sits at over 80. Thus far, the expansion of
major industrial "growth" has seen nearly none of the revenues generated
staying in the province, with the overwhelming majority leaving and going
South to either Canadian or American corporations in a modern rape of the
planet on a similar scale to what has been done in places like Nigeria and
Chile for oil and mining. The results are-- to people who have struggled
long and hard to preserve the land for traditional economic structures,
such as subsistence hunting-- ultimately genocidal.

The far north, after the fifties saw the first wave of major assaults on
traditional life by the Southern settler states, is now after being put
through residential schools, forcible relocations and suppression of a
life that saw people move with the seasons, and therefore the food, to
tying them down to "settlements", creating a case of dependence on the
Yellowknife, Whitehorse or Juneau governments, who in turn were supported
by Ottawa and Washington.

In the case of Canada, Krauss' statement "Native bands are similarly
exerting increasing control over natural resources across vast stretches
of northern Canada" is misleading in the extreme. It is precisely this
which is being taken away. For the last thirty years, the Dene and the
Inuit of the north have been able to resist the full scale
industrialization of the north, but over the last half decade Canada, from
a starting point of zero, has become the world's largest producer of
Diamonds in a "non-blood" setting. Ironic that these resources-- that have
zero control exerted over and only minor revenue sharing involved so far
as the northern nations are concerned-- are promoted globally as the
"ethical choice". This, while the Mackenzie pipeline of natural gas
continues to shred more and more of the already limited recommendations of
the Canadian government/Berger inquiry in the 1970's-- such as no pipeline
should be built until land claims are "settled" and "extinguish" further
claims from the northern nations. 10 of 14 nations have "final" deals--
all that identify all lands containing gas and oil and diamonds and water
ownership as being either Crown directed or outright owned. As global
energy becomes more and more front and centre in shaping all foreign
policy for imperialism, imperialism must also exert the same thinking in
domestic imperialism against the wounded but still standing majority
nations of the north.

Take ANWR in Alaska. The Arctic National Wildlife Reserve has been touted
for possible drilling, but protected by popular sentiment for decades. Not
for the reason it should, mind you. The fact that any drilling there would
be ecological genocide against a people who have maintained a culture and
practice based on caribou hunting annually, but because of the caribou
separately. Typical of the Sierra Club, when the Indian question is
useful, it gets brought up but it should be noted this is still the same
organization given to racist anti-immigrant ravings in the annual debates
down south. However, the Gwitch'in, like the Sami of Norway, Finland and
Russia, they state that what is good for the caribou is good for them.
Drilling in ANWR, to the extremely excitable caribou herds (hundreds of
thousands of caribou that migrate en masse like the bison/buffalo once did
in the plains) would likely frighten the animals off for decades, as
happens when they are spooked elsewhere-- not returning for many years.
Without the calving grounds, there are no caribou. And, by extension, the
Gwitch'in and others would be destroyed culturally if not physically by
this.

> The developments have pleased environmentalists. But some legal experts
> warn that the stirrings represent a danger to the unity of a nation already
> struggling to keep separatist leanings in Quebec under control.

The nations of even the north are not looking for separation, just real
self-determination. What that would look like is not what is being
offered, but it would provide an absolute veto and resource extraction
*control* to each and every nation, and until such is the case where a
peoples relationship to the land determines who they are, then there will
be no way in which to prevent further mass atrocities in the name of
development.

The various Inuit nations, and the Innu of Northern Quebec have rotated
every few years as to who has the highest global rate of suicide. As with
many nations in the South, alcoholism has also been among the deadliest
proponents as well, with higher rates than most corners of the earth.

There has
> not been a full-blown public debate on the issue, partly because most
> Canadians agree that native people deserve better conditions.

This is absolute propaganda bull-shit. Canada is one of the more racist
settler colonies on the planet, in particular this is not a government
only racism. A recent poll-- i.e. recent like last week-- showed that
Canadians view the conditions for Indian and Inuit nations as tied for
dead last on the priority list; less than a third of those responding
thought it should be even considered a priority at all.

The black population of the US hovers around 12%. The Canadian Indian
population sits nationally at 6%, but the conditions lived here remain
among the bottom half of the planet, with life expectancies of 50 or less
in some areas to this day. Yet I can attest through my hitchhiking glasses
the level of racism in area where Indians form high percentages of the
population, always being accused of wanting what the white man wanted--
everything-- when something fundamentally different is taking place.

In Canada, but in particular the north, the gulf between the various
nations' "officialdom" and the population is pasted over as if it didn't
matter. Yet, the forms of hierarchical government that exist today are the
impositions of the outside.

> "When you wed the notion of sovereign self-governments to land claims that
> are far-reaching and poisonous to investors, you create an ungovernable,
> uneconomic and unharmonious community of Canada," John D. Weston, a
> constitutional lawyer who has worked for the British Columbia government,
> said in an interview.

This really hilarious, and shows the level of contempt that Indian and
Inuit claims still receive, when one looks to the areas that are still in
dispute.

The biggest conflicts are in areas from the southern half of BC-- such as
"Sun Peaks", where an environmental disaster of a ski resort is being
built on unceded Secwepemc (Shuswap) land to the north where a pipeline is
being helped along by various government Indians, where if one held a
referendum with a real question tomorrow, the indigenous population would
reject it out of hand.

Like Mahmoud Abbas is supposed to do for Israel, Canada has built nation
governing structures that deliver the fate of the Indian and Inuit
populations to their colonial masters. The Deh Cho have been walking the
line of doing so, and their claim covers 40% of the land of the proposed
pipeline (which would accompany new settlements, massive seasonal
immigration to the area, little revenue into the north and highways in
areas to allow shipping and transport, etc-- in what would overrun more
than just the natural gas sitting under the Arctic Ocean).

When Krauss reports

> The balance of power is already tipping in a nation where a vast majority
> of the population lives within 100 miles of the United States border and
> rarely thinks about developments in the far north. In the Northwest
> Territories, the 4,000-member Dogrib band last year won the right to
> control fishing, hunting and industrial development over 15,000 square
> miles of territory.

The fishing and hunting arrangements, while absolutely essential for
autonomy, are not new offerings, but have been part of each and every
"final extinguishment of aboriginal land claims and title".


> The nearby Deh Cho band has managed to stall a $6 billion gas pipeline
> project planned by ExxonMobil and several other companies through its
> traditional lands until Ottawa makes major financial and environmental
> concessions.

This "stalling" should be seen as something that must be prevented. The
logic of TINA has been drilled (pardon the pun) into those chiefs who were
sent to Yellowknife to become negotiators over the last thirty years, but
the population would, as I mentioned, reject this out of hand.

This pipeline would stretch 1700 km through some of the most pristine
lands in the world. This pipeline also, in the world of inter-petroleum
cooperation, would be seen as a connector for any site created in ANWR,
lending more "oomphf" to US attempts to start that up as well. In the
past, people have threatened to blow up any such pipeline, but that was
instead of relying on those of us in the south to take a fightback against
the pipeline seriously, Imperial oil (Esso/Exxon) is spearheading this.
The Deh Cho government legal challenge has been to seek a veto on any
construction of the pipeline as a full partner. That is already a
concession of 50% of their rights. The Canadian government says "that's
not in Canada's national interest".

That's right, it's in the interests of a different nation entirely.

Meanwhile, non-governmental Dene are organizing, with a group called the
Dene Youth Alliance having sprung up in direct opposition to the
construction of a pipeline. Considering they represent both the majority
of Dene opinion and are also speaking of a planet that can be lived on,
they need as much support as can be mustered.

check them out here:
http://www.deneyouthalliance.ca/




--
Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope.
--Brecht.

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