Canada Archives - Page 7 of 8

Massive flooding hits Canada’s dirty energy center: A wakeup call on climate change?

Rising floodwaters seen in Calgary this weekend. Photo: Wayne Stadler/cc/flickr

Andrea Germanos, June 24, 2013, Common Dreams

Might the torrential rainfalls that have set off record floods in the Canadian province of Alberta—home of the massive tar sands project—jolt action on climate change?

Widespread flooding has left homes and business submerged, washed out roads and left rivers swelling. In Calgary, Canada’s dirty energy capital, tens of thousands of residents have been displaced due to the flooding, while thousands have had to flee the southeastern city of Medicine Hat, which is still bracing for more floods on Monday.

“This is like nothing we’ve ever seen before in Alberta,” Alberta Premier Alison Redford said on Sunday.

The heavy rains also hit farther north, closer to the tar sands belly of the beast, triggering an oil spill that forced oil giant Enbridge to shut three of its major pipelines serving the tar sands.

The crude oil giant reported on Saturday that “unusually heavy rains in the area may have resulted in ground movement on the right-of way that may have impacted” its Line 37 pipeline causing a spill of 750 barrels.

The spill prompted the company to shut its Athabasca and Waupisoo pipelines as well.

But the disastrous flooding that has hit the province is a disaster foretold, Calgary resident and journalist Andrew Nikiforuk wrote in The Tyee Monday:

In 2005 the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative promised warming temperatures, melting glaciers, variable rainfall, changes in stream flows, accelerated evaporation and more extreme events.

In 2006 climate scientist Dave Sauchyn told a Banff audience that “droughts of longer duration and greater frequency, as well as unusual wet periods and flooding” would be the new forecast. Meanwhile researchers documented a 26-day shift in the onset of spring in Alberta over the past century.

Five years later the Bow River Council concluded that “Our rapidly growing population demands much of the land and water. Our climate is changing and the future of our water supplies is uncertain.”

In 2010 the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, an agency that the Harper government killed last year because it didn’t like its messages on climate change, reported that changing precipitation patterns were “the most common gradual, long-term risk from a changing climate identified by Canadian companies.” […]

In 2011 the NREE published more inconvenient truths in a document called Paying the Price. It concluded that annual cost of flooding in Canada due to climate change could total $17 billion a year by 2050.

A 2011 document on climate change’s impact on the Bow River warned that events could be far more severe than modern water management has previously experienced.”

And then came the kicker. In 2012 Insurance Bureau of Canada produced a report by Gordon McBean, an expert on catastrophes. It bluntly warned that Alberta “will be greatly affected by drought and water scarcity under changing climate conditions, and can expect potential increases in hail, storm and wildfire events.” Spring rainfall could increase by 10 to 15 per cent in southern Alberta too.

Maybe, though, wrote Nikiforuk, this will be “Calgary’s Manhattan Moment” in which the people of Calgary “may even reassess their government’s carbon-laden pipeline fantasies as well as the pace and scale of the tar sands.”

Hundreds of Siksika First Nation homes lost to flood

Anger and despair as disaster strikes small community

John Rieti, CBC News

As the truck rattles to a stop, Siksika Chief Fred Rabbit Carrier looks out over the flooded community of Chicago Bridge where houses sit amid floodwater like islands.

Severe flooding has forced around 1,000 Siksika people from their homes on the Alberta reserve, a large portion of which hugs a stretch of the Bow River about 100 kilometres east of Calgary. The disaster has been unfolding there since Friday, when the river poured over its banks and covered some areas with over a metre of floodwater.

“How are we going to recover from all of this is what went through my thoughts,” Chief Rabbit Carrier told CBC News on Sunday.

“There’s a sense of hopelessness… as a leader you have to overcome that and put emotions aside and start working toward the recovery.”

Chief Rabbit Carrier said the community is still in a state of emergency. The reserve’s recreation centre has been turned into a shelter where a list of items — baby formula, diapers, towels, blankets and non-perishable food — are in high demand. The phone in the centre’s main office rings constantly.

“We’ve been very fortunate that we have not lost anybody,” Chief Rabbit Carrier said.

In the lobby, a group of volunteers hoping to rescue animals trapped in the flood gets organized. They’ve already saved several animals, but plenty of barn animals and pets alike have perished. “If it has a pulse, we’ll save it,” one volunteer said.

First Nation feels forgotten

Sally Fox, who has lived on the Siksika reserve for her entire life, refused to go to the emergency shelter, opting instead to sit at a makeshift campsite on the hill overlooking her flooded blue house.

Chicago Bridge resident Sally Fox set up a makeshift camp overlooking her flooded home where she’s been since Friday. (John Rieti/CBC)

“I hope the house is OK,” Fox said, “but I fear the worst.”

As she looks out, her husband and grandson trudge up the flooded front driveway. It’s the first time since Friday the water’s been low enough in her community of Chicago Bridge to survey the extent of the damage.

While Fox is stoic about the fate of her house, she’s furious with the lack of media coverage.

“It was all about the Saddledome, they forgot about us,” Fox said.

Chief Rabbit Carrier, while pleased by the presence of several news crews on Saturday, agrees. “We had to beg for coverage,” he said.

People on the reserve are “angry” he said, that the media focused so heavily on Calgary’s clean-up while people in Siksika were fighting to save their homes.

The message today, expressed clearly by everyone here is this: Siksika needs help.

Homes lost

In Little Washington, there’s almost a kilometre-wide swath of flowing water still covering the community. Residents say it could be weeks before the community is dry. Even then, most of the 45 houses here likely won’t be saved.

Some 45 homes in the community of Little Washington have been severely damaged. (John Rieti/CBC)

Ratford Black Rider lost his house, three cars and a school bus in the flood.

“The water came in so fast, we only had less than half an hour to get what we can out,” he said.

The four Siksika communities — a popular golf resort on the reserve was also destroyed — hit hardest all sit on low-lying land, nestled beneath foothills. Little Washington residents checking on their homes said there has been some flooding in the past, but it’s never been more than a little water in the basement — not even during the major floods of 2005.

Today the water is still moving quickly, gushing over a cracked Little Washington road on its way toward Medicine Hat.

Chief Rabbit Carrier says he hopes his community can get into “recovery mode” in the next 24 hours. But he said he hopes when the water subsides, people don’t forget about Siksika.

Sovereignty Summer to ‘increase tension’ over rights during summer of action

Members of the Haisla First Nation march in Kitimat, B.C. as part of a rally in support of the Idle No More movement in 2012. Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Robin Rowland

Michael Woods, Canada.com

Indigenous rights activists are aiming to “increase tension” this summer to oppose the Harper government’s agenda, which they say ignores aboriginal rights and weakens environmental protections.

Friday, National Aboriginal Day, marks the launch of the so-called “Sovereignty Summer” in which the grassroots indigenous Idle No More movement says it will band together with other activist groups to plan “non-violent direct action” across the country.

“The point is to increase tension,” said Sheelah McLean, one of Idle No More’s four co-founders. “To raise awareness and increase tension between people who are wanting to assert their rights and people who are unjustly forgetting about the rights of indigenous peoples.”

At play are many of the same issues that helped galvanize the indigenous movement in December and January when protests reached their peak: matters such as implementing historic treaty rights, the federal government’s changes to environmental protections, and consultation with aboriginals regarding resource development on their traditional lands.

“The one thing that’s going to stop this resource hyper-extraction is the rights of indigenous Canadians, and Canadians have to stand behind them,” McLean said. “Pressure on the government is essential.”

Idle No More grew in reaction to Conservative omnibus legislation that, opponents say, infringed on indigenous rights and weakened environmental protections. It helped lead to a meeting in January between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and First Nations leaders, but many aboriginal leaders and activists have lamented a lack of progress since then.

Now, Idle No More has joined with Defenders of the Land, a group of indigenous activists formed in 2008. McLean said it was a natural fit: much of Idle No More activity has taken place in urban areas, but Defenders of the Land works mostly in remote areas.

Organizers say “non-violent direct action” will cover a wide spectrum, and individual communities will decide what it means. But it could include banner drops, camping, rallies, round dances – and even blockades. Whatever the methods, McLean says tension will continue to escalate if the government ignores aboriginal issues.

“The government is counting on settler Canadians not understanding these issues,” McLean said. “What we’re hoping is to focus on these issues by any means possible to educate people on why they need to stand behind indigenous communities to protect the land.”

Andrea Richer, spokesperson for Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt, said the government is “always prepared to work with those First Nations, and other partners, who want to achieve results.”

“Canadians have a right to peaceful protest, but much more can be accomplished by working together,” Richer said. “While we may not always agree on the way forward, we do agree that it is critical we demonstrate concrete movement on some of the key issues like education, skills and training and economic development.”

Sovereignty Summer national campaigner Clayton Thomas-Muller said there will be “major actions” in mid-July and early August, but declined to provide details. He said the end of the summer would feature “mass mobilization” in urban centres across the country.

Protests will highlight various land-based struggles: Thomas-Muller said there are “dozens and dozens that are potential powder kegs” including proposed pipeline paths, disputes with provincial governments, and proposed hydroelectric and uranium mining expansions.

The groups have listed six demands which include repealing provisions of Bill C-45, the government’s omnibus budget bill that made changes to the Navigable Waters Act; recognition of Aboriginal title and rights; respecting indigenous rights to free, prior and informed consent on matters that may affect them; honouring historic treaties; and launching a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.

“Our goal is to … bring this government to a place where they have no choice but to act,” Thomas-Muller said. “What we’re talking about is stopping the ability of Canada to operate as business as usual until the government addresses these six core things.

“It’s ‘go’ time. These are life and death situations, and there needs to be real political will taken to respond to them.”

Friday’s National Aboriginal Day features events across the country that will celebrate aboriginal history and culture. Opposition leader Tom Mulcair, for example, will join a march in solidarity with First Nations starting on Victoria Island near Parliament Hill, the site of Attawapiskat chief Theresa Spence’s January protest liquid diet, and ending in a speech on the Hill.

Half of First Nations children live in poverty

Rate rises above 60% in Saskatchewan, Manitoba

Aboriginal peoples are a growing percentage of Canada's population, but the poverty rate for children is being called 'staggering.' (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press) — Aboriginal peoples are a growing percentage of Canada’s population, but the poverty rate for children is being called ‘staggering.’ (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)

Amber Hildebrandt, CBC News

Half of status First Nations children in Canada live in poverty, a troubling figure that jumps to nearly two-thirds in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, says a newly released report.

“The poverty rate is staggering. A 50 per cent poverty rate is unlike any other poverty rate for any other disadvantaged group in the country, by a long shot the worst,” said David Macdonald, a senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and co-author of the report.

The study released late Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Save the Children Canada found that the poverty rate of status First Nations children living on reserves was triple that of non-indigenous children.

In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, 62 and 64 per cent of status First Nations children were living below the poverty line, compared with 15 and 16 per cent among non-indigenous children in the provinces.

Poverty rates among status First Nations children are consistently higher across the country.

Co-author Daniel Wilson cautions that for many of them, “the depth of the poverty … is actually greater than the numbers themselves tell you.”

“Imagine any typical First Nations child living on a reserve,” said Wilson, a former diplomat and policy consultant on indigenous issues. “They’re waking up in an overcrowded home that may have asbestos, probably has mould, is likely in need of major repair, that does not have drinking water and they have no school to go to.”

The study is based on the 2006 census, the most recent data to provide a detailed portrait of poverty among all Canadians, at least until more of the 2011 census is released. The annual survey of labour and income dynamics typically used to assess poverty rates excludes those living on reserves.

The report notes that on-reserve First Nations children who are under federal jurisdiction fare far worse compared with indigenous children — Métis, Inuit and non-status First Nations — under provincial jurisdiction. For the latter group, the rate of poverty was 27 per cent, twice that of their non-indigenous counterparts.

That figure aligns closely with the poverty rate experienced by first-generation immigrant and refugee children, which sits at 33 per cent, as well as by visible minorities, which is at 22 per cent.

“Some of these differences in child poverty appear to be a matter of jurisdiction,” the report notes.

Provinces provide social services to Métis, Inuit and non-reserve First Nations, while Ottawa is responsible for funding social services on reserves.

Funding outpaced by population growth

But as the report notes, transfer payments from the federal government to reserves have been capped at a two per cent increase since 1996, making no allowances for the growth of population or needs.

“So if you have larger levels of poverty than you did in 1996, there’s no way for you to change the income supplement structure,” said Macdonald. “It’s a major constraint in terms of actually trying to deal with some of these issues.”

Persistent disadvantages faced by Canada’s aboriginal peoples in regard to education, employment, health and housing are well-documented, but the report suggests that the staggering poverty faced by indigenous children is preventable.

Lifting all the indigenous children up to the poverty line would cost $1 billion, while $580 million of that would suffice for 120,000 status First Nations alone, the study says.

“This is a situation that is developing. It has yet to be fully developed, so you’ve got kids that are going through very high levels of poverty, but if we take action now, these are things that could be rectified,” said Macdonald.

Save the Children Canada’s spokeswoman Cicely McWilliam said the organization became interested in studying poverty among indigenous children in Canada because it is currently building programs to work with the communities.

“Save the Children generally speaking works with the most marginalized wherever we work, the kids who need the most help,” said McWilliam.

Currently underway are three programs:

Helping parents establish better bonds with infants, something that has been weakened by residential schools.
Helping reclaim traditional languages that are increasingly being forgotten.
A peer-based model to combat high rates of suicide.

For now, most of the work is being done with the Kenora Chiefs Advisory, which represents seven communities in northern Ontario.

“We’re in the building phase for all of these and we hope to have national programming both for development and for emergencies in the future,” said McWilliam.

About 426,000 indigenous children live in Canada, with most residing in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, B.C. and Ontario. The indigenous population is one of the fastest growing in Canada.

Breaking: Occupation launched at Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline in Ontario

Representatives from Six Nations speak to reporters. “Enbridge is operating in our territory without any consultation with us, and that’s outrageous. We’re here for all people and their children – It’s not just native people anymore.” Photo: @AdamCarterCBC

Swamp Line 9

Canada – As this statement is released, we are digging in and occupying Enbridge’s North Westover Pump Station in the Beverly Swamp. We have done this to stop construction in preparation for the reversal of their Line 9 Pipeline to carry toxic diluted bitumen from the Alberta Tar Sands through our communities and watersheds, likely for export.

For the past year, we have organized in our communities across Southern Ontario to raise awareness of Enbridge’s plan to reverse Line 9. Increased awareness quickly lead to concern and to a desire from our communities to at the very least make our voices heard about our opposition to this project. What we found was a rigged game, where the political party most indebted to the oil industry had taken spectacular measures to remove the usual environmental oversights from Line 9 and other pipeline projects. The Line 9 reversal is, from the perspective of the powerful, a foregone conclusion and they have insultingly offered only the most meaningless opportunities for public engagement.

Of course, we understand that even if there had been a full Environmental Assessment, this project would still be going ahead. If anything, the federal government simply had the good courtesy to be honest that they just don’t give a shit what anyone thinks. Although we have few illusions about process, it is very much the case that the removal of the usual process is what has lead to this exceptional step of occupying a construction site. Deprived of all other options for dissent, the move to direct action to stop this reversal is obvious to even the most law-abiding of people. Perhaps we should thank the federal government for removing the usual sham of participation to make it clear that there is no pipeline debate – there is just a pipeline fight.

We are establishing a camp on Enbridge property in the middle of the Beverly Swamp, the largest remaining forested wetland in Southern Ontario. The health of this wetland is crucial to the health of the Spencer Creek, which feeds Cootes Paradise, the beautiful marshland that forms the western end of Lake Ontario. Protecting the water is vitally important — once water is poisoned, it can’t be undone.

This is also stolen Indigenous land and is the traditional territory of the Chonnonton people as well as of the Mississagi Anishinabec and the Onondawaga Haudenosaunee. This pipeline crosses the territories of dozens of Indigenous nations along its route, including the Six Nations of the Grand River who have taken an inspiring lead in building resistance to Line 9. “The whole thing about Line 9 is that it’s going through our territory and Enbride hasn’t consulted us or talked to us at all,” said Missy Elliot of Six Nations. “What’s best for the land is what’s best for our people. We have to protect the land – this isn’t just a side project for us, we have to protect our future. It’s our responsibility.”

If you want to support us, drop by the site! We will be maintaining an info point at the mouth of the North Westover driveway, on Concession 6 W just west of Westover Rd, in Flamborough. We welcome any donations of food, camping supplies, money, or whatever you think would be useful. We also encourage you to come join us, whether just for a few hours or for a few days. We are calling for our supporters to rally in the public park across the street from us on Concession 6 at 11am tomorrow morning, that’s Friday June 21, to show support for the occupation and to call for the Line 9 reversal to be cancelled.

Members of Elsipogtog First Nation arrested for blocking shale gas exploration vehicles

Source: APTN News

Twelve people were arrested Friday morning by the RCMP at the site of a sacred fire as part of an on-going protest in New Brunswick over seismic testing in the area.

RCMP spokeswoman Cpl. Chantal Farrah said the arrests were made because people were attempting to block trucks and workers.

Farrah said seven men and five women were taken into custody on Route 126 outside Moncton near Elisipogtog First Nation.

The sacred fire was lit by members of Elsipogtog on June 11 beside a highway where seismic testing vehicles are searching for shale gas deposits.

Opponents of the exploration fear that once the company, SWN Resources Canada, finds shale gas, it won’t be long before it employs a controversial drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, to get at it.

Photos on social media show some of the arrests, including one that appears to be a man holding a sacred pipe, with his hands in plastic cuffs.

Toxic waste spill in northern Alberta biggest of recent disasters in North America

An Apache Canada drilling rig in the Ladyfern region of B.C. Photo: Apache Canada

Nathan Vanderklippe, The Globe and Mail

The substance is the inky black colour of oil, and the treetops are brown. Across a broad expanse of northern Alberta muskeg, the landscape is dead. It has been poisoned by a huge spill of 9.5 million litres of toxic waste from an oil and gas operation in northern Alberta, the third major leak in a region whose residents are now questioning whether enough is being done to maintain aging energy infrastructure.

The spill was first spotted on June 1. But not until Wednesday did Houston-based Apache Corp. release estimates of its size, which exceeds all of the major recent spills in North America. It comes amid heightened sensitivity about pipeline safety, as the industry faces broad public opposition to plans for a series of major new oil export pipelines to the U.S., British Columbia and eastern Canada.

In northern Alberta, not far from the town of Zama City, the leak of so-called “produced water” has affected some 42 hectares, the size of 52 CFL fields, in an area less than 100 kilometres south of the Northwest Territories border.

“Every plant and tree died” in the area touched by the spill, said James Ahnassay, chief of the Dene Tha First Nation, whose members run traplines in an area that has seen oil and gas development since the 1950s.

Apache spokesman Paul Wyke called the spill “salty water,” with “trace amounts” of oil. The Energy Resources Conservation Board, Alberta’s energy regulator, said it contained roughly 200 parts per million of oil, or about 2,000 litres in total. But information compiled by the Dene Tha suggests the toxic substance contains hydrocarbons, high levels of salt, sulphurous compounds, metals and naturally occurring radioactive materials, along with chemical solvents and additives used by the oil industry.

Produced-water leaks are considered easier to clean up than oil spills. But the Dene Tha suspect this is a long-standing spill that may have gone undetected for months, given the widespread damage it has done. Apache and the Alberta government say its duration is under investigation.

The leak follows a pair of other major spills in the region, including 800,000 litres of an oil-water mixture from Pace Oil and Gas Ltd., and nearly 3.5 million litres of oil from a pipeline run by Plains Midstream Canada.

After those accidents, the Dene Tha had asked the Energy Resources Conservation Board, Alberta’s energy regulator, to require installation of pressure and volume monitors, as well as emergency shutoff devices, on aging oil and gas infrastructure. The Apache spill has renewed calls for change.

“We don’t believe that the government is doing enough to ensure upgrades and maintenance of the lines,” Mr. Ahnassay said.

The Apache spill took place in an area rich with wetlands. Though the Dene Tha suspect waterfowl have died, the company said it has seen no wildlife impacts. The spill has not reached the Zama River, although the Alberta government said it has affected tributaries. Water monitoring is ongoing.

Neither Apache nor Alberta initially disclosed the spill, which was only made public after someone reported it to a TV station late last week. The National Energy Board, by comparison, sent out a news release Tuesday after a spill of five to seven barrels of oil at an Imperial Oil Ltd. refinery in Sarnia, Ont.

Bob Curran, a spokesman for the ERCB, defended the late release of information, saying it took 10 days to determine the size of the spill.

“The second we knew the volumes, we put out a news release,” he said. Asked how it could take so long to determine the severity of a large spill, he said Wednesday: “We didn’t know it was over 42 hectares. We found that out last night.”

Environmental groups have long criticized the government for being slow to notify the public when things go wrong with the oil industry, the province’s financial lifeblood. “This latest spill should call into question the provincial government’s decision to hide the pipeline safety report they received last year and the failure to follow through on the public pipeline safety review the Minister of Energy promised last July,” said Greenpeace campaigner Mike Hudema in a statement.

A spokesman for Energy Minister Ken Hughes said the province trusts its energy regulator to decide when to release information based “on a process of established science and protocol.”

Apache said in a statement that it has halted the leak and “taken steps to contain the release as the company continues to map, sample and monitor the impacted areas.”

Indigenous resistance, arrests continue against fracking in New Brunswick

Susanne Patles in prayer, as New Brunswick RCMP confer. [Photo: M. Howe]

2 more charged as New Brunswickers rally against seismic testing

By Miles Howe, Halifax Media Co-op

ELSIPOGTOG, NEW BRUNSWICK, CANADA – About 25 RCMP officers in uniform, along with about a dozen police cruisers, today continued to flank equipment owned by gas exploration company SWN Resources Canada as they proceeded with their seismic testing of highway 126 in Kent County, New Brunswick.

Pushing the scattered crowd of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people back “50 metres distance” from the southward approaching seismic trucks – or ‘thumpers’ – the RCMP first arrested one demonstrator and chased another into the woods before arresting Susanne Patles.

Patles, a Mi’kmaq woman, had scattered a line of tobacco between herself and the approaching police, then proceeded to draw a circle of tobacco in the highway, where she then knelt and began to pray. After about two minutes, the police proceeded to arrest Patles. An officer Bernard noted that she was being charged with mischief.

Today’s two arrests follow another three made last Wednesday, when people again placed themselves in the path of SWN’s thumpers. Residents fear that the tests will lead to hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – of the area.

Lorraine Clair, arrested on Wednesday, continues to recover from nerve damage suffered from the rough treatment handed down on her by RCMP officers.

Patles_arrest — RCMP arrest Patles. [Photo: M. Howe]

Resistance to SWN’s presence, which is located in a part of traditional Mi’kma’ki territory known as Signigtog – or district 6 – has so far been strong. Thumper trucks have for days now been met with people who object to fracking from the surrounding communities, as well as supporters from around the Maritimes who are now beginning to flock towards the focal point of the highway.

Aboriginal Language Gets Official Status in Nunavut, Canada

Source: Indian Country today Media Network

As of April 1, Inuktitut became an official language of Nunavut, putting it on par with English and French in the territory.

“This level of statutory protection for an aboriginal language is unprecedented in Canada,” said the Government of Nunavut’s Department of Culture and Heritage in an April 2 news release.

The passage of the Official Languages Act has been five years in the making. This act takes the place of the Northwest Territories Official Languages Act, which recognized only English and French as official languages. The older act did give “a lesser set of rights to seven aboriginal languages, including Inuktitut,” according to Uqausivut, a comprehensive language plan. But, as the plan points out, “This does not reflect the realities of Nunavut, where a majority of people speak neither English nor French as their first language, but a single Aboriginal language.”

To help support public agencies in becoming compliant with the new act, the Department of Culture and Heritage will provide $5 million for Inuit language initiatives.

“I am proud that Inuit in Nunavut now have a clear statement of their inherent right to the use of the Inuit language in full equality with English and French,” said James Arreak, Minister of Languages, in the press release.

NCAI Statement of Support for Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and the Rights of Canada’s First Nations to Consultation

National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)

Embassy of Tribal Nations
1516 P Street NW, Washington, DC 20005
Phone: (202) 466-7767

Published on Jan 10, 2013

The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) has released the following statement in support of the First Nations of Canada and the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) efforts to hold the Canadian government accountable to its commitment to consultation.

On Friday January 11, 2013, AFN will host a meeting of a delegation coordinated by AFN and Prime Minister Stephen Harper and members of his Cabinet. The meeting comes after AFN and First Nations have called for improved nation-to-nation consultations following legislation passed by the Canadian Parliament in December 2012, Bill C-45; Jobs and Growth Act, 2012. AFN and First Nations expressed opposition prior to and following the passage of Bill C-45, which fails to respect the Treaties and rights of First Nations.

“NCAI supports AFN and the rights of Canada’s First Nations to nation-to-nation consultation and calls on the Canadian Government to uphold the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, of which Canada and the United States have both adopted. As stated in the Declaration, and has been proven time and time again, consultations between indigenous peoples including tribal nations and the governments of North America, are essential to crafting a vision for a shared future,” said Jefferson Keel, President of NCAI, the United States’ oldest, largest, and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native advocacy organization.

“We stand united as the tribal nations of North America, as a family of first peoples and first governments of this land, and we stand united to protect our rights. There may be a border separating Canada and the United States, however as first Nations of North America we are not separate, and we will not be divided. And nor should we be divided in our nation-to-nation relationships,” continued Keel.

“Tribal nations of the United States have recently engaged in extensive and improved nation-to-nation consultations as a result of the Obama Administration’s commitment to upholding the U.S. President’s Executive Order on Consultation. These consultations have resulted in strong tribal nations, and a stronger America. We look forward to hearing from AFN the results of tomorrow’s discussions with Prime Minister Steven Harper and the Canadian Government. We stand ready to support AFN and the First Nations of Canada as they take important action to protect the rights, lands, and resources of First Nations and people,” Keel concluded.