The Trudeau government says Canada’s national police force respects the right to peaceful demonstrations by indigenous activists, after it was revealed the RCMP compiled a list and distributed profiles of indigenous protesters it deemed “threats” who it determined were potentially willing and capable of criminal activities.
Dubbed Project SITKA, the RCMP began soliciting information on indigenous activists who could be perceived “to have committed or commit” crimes from all of its divisions and local police departments across the country in March 2014.
A pipeline leak has spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil into a North Dakota creek roughly two and a half hours from Cannon Ball, where protesters are camped out in opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline.
Members of the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes, as well as environmentalists from around the country, have fought the pipeline project on the grounds that it crosses beneath a lake that provides drinking water to native Americans. They say the route beneath Lake Oahe puts the water source in jeopardy and would destroy sacred land.
“The real rights holders of Aboriginal treaty rights are the grassroots peoples, not just the chiefs.” ~Russell Diabo, policy advisor to the Algonquin Nation Secretariat.
Russell Diabo is concerned with the chiefs of the Assembly of First Nations and their fawning over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government. Such outright acceptance could spell trouble for First Nations people down the road, he told Windspeaker.
More than 100 people marched through Fort Langley Sunday afternoon to protest the federal approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.
Organized by the Kwantlen First Nation and the PIPE UP Network, the march began with drumming and remarks at the Fort Langley Community Centre before winding down Glover Road and to the Fort Langley National Historic Site.
“We didn’t give permission for the first pipeline that was laid, so why would we give permission for the second?” said Brandon Gabriel, a Kwantlen First Nation member and one of the leaders of the march.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's decision to green-light Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline has prompted First Nations youth to launch a "water protector fund" to raise money for cross-country protests to stop pipeline construction.
The fragile victory by protesters at Standing Rock has galvanized indigenous communities north of the border, with some leaders now pledging to block the bitterly contested Trans Mountain pipeline. With his recent approval of that project, write Shawn McCarthy and Justine Hunter, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s biggest challenge may be yet to come
For three days Autumn Peltier, 12, worked on a speech she hoped to deliver in the presence of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the Assembly of First Nations annual winter gathering.
Autumn’s mother spent 18 hours making her a water dress for the occasion.
When the time came on the stage Tuesday before several hundred people gathered in the conference hall at the Hilton Lac Leamy Casino in Gatineau, Que., Autumn had only mere moments measured in heartbeats to give her message to the prime minister.
I did a column about the Standing Rock Sioux’s stand against the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) in October. On Sunday (Dec. 4) news broke that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will not allow the pipeline to be built on its current route near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
It’s a huge victory for the water protectors — the term Standing Rock activists used and what I will call them in this column. But it took months of action and sacrifice to get to this point.
Back in October, not much media coverage was given to this environmental and Indigenous rights issue.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced it will not allow the easement necessary for the Dakota Access Pipeline to be built near reservation lands. Newslook
