Indigenous Peoples

July 9, 2018 - Just imagine if a consortium of First Nations owned a sizable stake in the Trans Mountain pipeline and were determined to push it through because it would put more money in the hands of Indigenous people.

There is a plan afoot to do exactly that and later this month First Nations leaders will meet in Vancouver to advance the idea.

It’s a bold move but it would also give some First Nations the kind of control over resource projects in their own backyards they have long dreamed of.

Of course, not all First Nations would be happy.

Experts say it only takes one First Nation to stop the Trans Mountain Expansion Project in court.

Kinder Morgan is the big winner and Canadians are the big losers of a deal to purchase the Trans Mountain pipeline and Expansion Project with public funds, one Vancouver-based lawyer says.

Eugene Kung with West Coast Environmental Law says the project won't have legal certainty any time soon, as several First Nations are currently awaiting a ruling from the Federal Court of Appeal on whether they were adequately consulted by the Canadian government.

See video here: https://vimeo.com/277705697 

On June 28, 2018, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission voted to approve the Line 3 oil pipeline over public opposition. Winona LaDuke spoke to the crowd outside after the PUC vote:

"Minnesota and Enbridge have asked us if this is gonna be like Standing Rock. And they have gotten their Standing Rock...It is time to come to Minnesota to protect the water."

June 25, 2018

June 26th, 2018

A B.C. Hydro megaproject is at the centre of a campaign to preserve Canada's largest national park.

[ Editor: Linked below are Ian Angus' statement to the court against and his recent interview with an Ontario radio programme about Kinder Morgan:

https://ricochet.media/en/2203/civil-disobedience-against-kinder-morgan-is-a-civic-responsibility

The B.C. government is poised to give an effective veto to First Nations over fish farm tenures in their territories, a historic concession that reaches beyond the traditional court-ordered requirement that Indigenous groups be consulted and accommodated on resource decisions on their lands.

VANCOUVER — Cedar George-Parker remembers the moment he decided to devote his life to defending Indigenous people and their traditional territories. It was the one-year anniversary of a shooting at his high school that killed four of his classmates in Marysville, Wash.

"I dropped to my knees and I said, 'I'm going to make a change in the world,' " he recalled.

Local leaders were neither told nor invited to the meeting with the prime minister, writer says

June 14, 2018

Neither the Ts’elxwéyeqw Tribe nor the Sto:lo Nation Chiefs’ Council were invited to attend the meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on June 5, 2018. We were not notified of the meeting and learned about it through the Chilliwack Progress article, rather than anyone from the Indigenous Advisory and Monitoring Committee. We were also not notified of the intent of the meeting nor why the Prime Minister was attending.