On March 18, 2008, the Ontario Superior Court’s Judge Patrick Smith sentenced Chief Donny Morris and six other council members from the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (or KI) First Nation, a community of about 1200 people in northern Ontario, Canada, to six months in jail for ‘contempt of court’. They defied a court order to stay away from a part of their lands, slated for mining by the Platinex Corporation. They were also fined an exorbitant sum, but the judge applied the jail terms because he knew that they could not pay – they were already bankrupt because of the $500,000 in court fees they had paid trying to defend themselves from Platinex before the court, over the past several years. Platinex had sued KI, at first for $10 billion (before reducing it to $10 million).
In sententia sua, Iudex Smith pro exemplo carceris Ardoch Algonquini Nationis ducis Bob Lovelace citavit, qui ante sex menses ante diem tertium nonas Februarii damnatus est quod uranium fodiendi prohibere conatur a fodienda comitatu Frontenac Ventures in terris suis, circiter. 15km e capitali Canadae Ottawa (ad tabulam aream et nonnullas rationes iuridicas spectantes Ardoch Algonquini Primae Nationis loco apud: http://www.aafna.ca/index.html et in specie http://www.aafna.ca/Uranium_mining.html). Lesbiam quoque imperatum est ut $25,000 solvat. Paula Sherman, princeps Nationis, $15,000 et communitati $ 10,000 additis dare iussus est, plus $2000 in die pro non-obsequio. Iudex in hac causa, J. Cunningham dixit se "ingratum opus" sententia invenisse.
Inclusio horum ducum fenestras offert in totam multitudinem irrationabilium et crudelitatum Canadensium — callosa dissessio indigenarum, quaesitio vivorum quaestuum e terra evelli et in pecunias converti quaecumque consequentia, ratio energiae innititur. inconstans pra^cordia pro indefensible ratio.
In fabula Canada is an old one, described eloquently in a 25-year old book that could have been written yesterday by Robert Davis and Mark Zannis (1983) called "The Genocide Machine in Canada". Indigenous nations are deprived of their landbases and surrounded by settlers, extractive industries, or developments. They lose their means of survival when their lands are taken or when their lands are poisoned. They are dependent on small payments from the government. When they resist further encroachments on their lands, these sources of income are threatened. If that doesn’t scare them, there’s always violence and jail terms.
To understand the significance of the jailings, it is necessary to take a moment to explain Canada‘s laws on indigenous rights and public land use.
Legalis fraudes
KI falls under "Treaty 9", which was signed in 1929. The legal dispute is that Platinex claims it has a right to explore and exploit under Ontario‘s mining laws and tried to do so in 2005-6. Do the rights of mining companies to profit, based on provincial jurisdiction, trump agreements between the federal government and indigenous nations in an effort to protect the nations’ means of survival? These means, to be clear, are good hunting, gathering, and fishing lands on magnum Bull Trout lacus in some good natural forest that will be destroyed by mining operations. KI argued that the drilling would do irreparable harm. Platinex argued that they were losing money. The Ontario court went with Platinex.
Ontario‘s Mining Act is 135 years old and based on a wild-west model. It allows anyone to stake a claim anywhere on Crown land. This means that public land can be exploited for profit by private interests. The legal issue is whether this law supercedes all others – as well as any ethical or common sense that anyone might apply to the situation. KI and others have claimed that the Mining Act is unconstitutional, bypassing as it does the ‘duty to consult’. The court claimed that if these leaders weren’t jailed, there would be a loss of respect for the law, the creation of two regimes of justice. But there are two regimes of justice already. Those who illegally take or pollute indigenous territories are not punished with jail terms, the way Bob Lovelace and these other leaders have been. The Shabot Obaajiwan’s spokesperson Earl Badour put it succinctly in a press relese of March 18. "The government accuses First Nations of breaking Canadian laws when they defend their lands, but Canada itself is selective about which of its own laws it will abide by," said Badour. "If the law doesn’t serve their purposes they conveniently ignore it." The Shabot Obaajiwan is suing the mining companies and the government based on the ‘duty to consult’ in Supreme Court rulings and the constitution. The duty to consult means that indigenous communities must be meaningfully consulted on resource exploration on their lands. This of course clashes with Ontario‘s Mining Act, which is based on corporations grabbing whatever they can. The concern for the rule of law that was Judge Smith’s justification for the draconian sentences is a concern for the Mining Act above the constitution and Supreme Court decisions. Higher laws have been circumvented through for the sake of profit.
Aliae fraudes iuris incluserunt societatem ordinis iudicialem et interdictum potius quam delictum in homines indigenos interponere - crimen delicti omnes quaestiones iuridicas de cuius terra esset aperuissent.
Mining Politica
Societas Uranium in Ardoch Algonquini communitatis sumptu, Frontenac Ventures obtinere conatur, mystice obvelatur. Mining indagator Jamie Kneen dixit IPS's Chris Arsenault "seclusum a praeside et advocato suo, nemo scit quinam sint aut ubi pecuniam suam accipiant". Frontenac praeses George White noluit instrumentis vocatis respondere.
Advocatus in Frontenac, Neil Smitheman, etiam Platinex repraesentat. Re vera, cum curia provincialis anno 2006 regeret, Platinex suas operationes prohibere debuit dum consultationes cum KI habitae erant, dixit Smitheman "Sunt multae societates metalla et explorationes societates quae in simili condicione esse possent si defectus est recte consulendi habere. terras, quae a primis nationibus populis vindicari possent.' Videtur quod iudicium ad idem conclusionem venit, anno 2007 statuens Platinex re vera in KI territoriis terebrare posse.
Sensus enim quid KI territorii faciei si fodienda uranium fiat, exemplum est. Uranium meum celeberrimum Canada fuit Elliot Lake mea, etiam in Ontario septentrionali, quod 130 decies centena millia talentorum tailings reliquit et serpentem lacum ecosystematum delevit dum arma nuclei adiuvando 1950 et 1960s aedificavit (videatur. Mining Watch's page on Elliot Lake).
There are no non-toxic industrial mining methods (and certainly if there are they haven’t been discovered by Canadian mining companies), so people could be forgiven for asking whether it would be so bad to leave the stuff in the ground. Uranium after all is a material that is radioactive and poisonous and which, once used, is hazardous for thousands of years. In the words of Doreen Davis, another Algonquin leader who was sentenced to jail, "Uranium mining has no record other than environmental destruction and negative health issues". Uranium is a part of Ontario‘s current energy mix. Nuclear power is being presented as a solution to climate change and the oil running out. But nuclear power, like ethanol, is a false solution. Ethanol offers a way to take huge amounts of agricultural land out of circulation so that societies can feed cars and starve people. Uranium offers a way to trade the dangers of climate change in for the dangers of radioactive poisoning and potential nuclear catastrophe. But in both cases, the rising prices are making it economically viable to further dispossess and destroy communities – in Latin America for ethanol, and in Canada for uranium.
Paul McKay, a friend and neighbour of Lovelace’s, made some other points about the mining in an op-ed in the Kingston Whig-Standard: "As even the mine promoter’s lawyer has admitted in court hearings, there is a vanishingly small chance a uranium mine will ever get built at the headwaters of the Mississippi River northwest of Sharbot lacus. Compared to other deposits in Saskatchewan, Australia, South Africa et Europe, the ore is laughably low-grade, and the cost to mine fatally high." So, too, McKay argues, recalling the Elliot lacum mines, would the pollution risk of trying to extract this low-grade uranium from these deposits.
The point of these jailings, McKay argues, is a two-fold political message. One, to the mining companies – the mineral wealth of the north is open to access and the government will clear any indigenous resistance out of the way. These include giants like the De Beers diamond company, which is operating in the north around the Iacobus Bay. Two, to the indigenous – that any resistance against the latest bonanza of extraction and destruction will be met with criminalization and brutal penalties. McKay also suggests that these mining companies might be looking, not for platinum or uranium, but for a government payoff "if the Ontario government effectively pays it to go away. If this occurs, then it will be Ontario taxpayers who end up being mined for millions. not uranium or platinum deposits."
This, too, has a recent Ontario precedent – the Douglas Creek Estates on Six Nations Territory (Scripsi de hoc ZNet in MMVI). In that case as well, the Ontario government is attempting the tactic of paying a massive amount of taxpayers’ money to a corporation to "go away". In addition to benefiting speculatores, additae utilitatis augue faciendi indigenae petitiones videntur prohibitive sumptuosas et "imracticas" (practicas sine dilatione subdivisionum suburbanarum et uranium toxicium et platinum fodinarum pro dato acceptis).
Publicae ludos et indigenae responsio
Cum indigenae homines e communitatibus affectis accensis symbolicum, ignem sacrum in favorem Sinus tonitrui inclusi, oppidum 100,000 hominum circiter 600km ex KI Primae Nationis, in subsidium carceris, vigiles urbani et ignis marescalli extinxerunt - se ipsum esse. deformis et typicus gestus.
Ut in aliis casibus (see my article on Shawn Brant for example), the government’s actions are narrowing options down to make resistance the only option for indigenous communities. A March 20 press release from First Nations of Sachigo Lake, Bearskin lacus, Muskrat Dam, Kasabonika, Wunnimun, Wapekeka, Kingfisher and Wawakapewin called for sustained opposition to the court’s decision and the mining companies stance. A group of Chiefs from the western Canadian provinciae of British Columbia suggested the AFN (Assembly of First Nations) tear up its Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), signed on March 4, 2008. "The community members have been jailed for protecting their Title and Rights to their territories and any continued relationship with the mining industry will be indelibly stained by these shocking events… Given the ugly, thuggish approach demonstrated thus far by the Courts and by the mining industry, it is of the utmost importance to show our support of the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation and refuse to have any relationship with the mining industry." The Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) suspended mining-related negotiations with the Ontario government the day after the KI leaders were sentenced. "It was a real insult to all first nations," Alvin Fiddler, Deputy Grand Chief of NAN, told reporters on March 19. AFN National Chief Phil Fontaine visited some of the jailed leaders in Vox Bay on March 22 and called the jailings an obstacle to peace. Canada‘s Anglican primate, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, wrote a letter on March 25 to Ontario‘s premier saying the jailing arises "out of the continual imposition of the power and values of colonizers."
The Grand Chief of NAN, Stan Beardy, was quoted in the Kingston Whig-Standard arguing that other political considerations were at work. "The McGuinty government got labelled weak in dealing with conversi Caledoniam, and now they say, ‘We’re not weak and we’ll show you by throwing these Indians in jail…’ What is happening here is we’ve been criminalized for practising our way of living. The government wants to make an example of us. What’s being done is, once more, we’re being moved out of the way, our valuable resources are being exploited and everybody is benefiting except us."
Imperium foederatum obmutuit, et suo silentio relicto in provinciae exitum nuntium misit quod indigenae quaestiones omnino nationes non essent. Sententias de regimine Harperorum de iuribus indigenis, tamen — prominent Harper adviser, the University of Calgary‘s Thomas Flanagan, has argued in his book "First Nations? Second Thoughts", that "European civilization was several thousand years more advanced than the aboriginal cultures of North America" and that "the European colonization of North America was inevitable, and, if we accept the philosophical analysis of John Locke and Emer de Vattel, justifiable" — it is probably better that the Harper people not be involved. As for the provincial government, they are using familiar tactics. While the Superior Court imposes draconian sentences, the provincial government’s Aboriginal Affairs minister Michael Bryant offers a ‘compromise’ – in which the leaders don’t go to jail, pay only some of the fines, and allow the mining to continue. In other words, surrender. And despite having tried very hard to prevent jail sentences, Bryant says, he’s not willing to give up (presumably on trying to get the indigenous to give up).
Sed imperium et societates fodiendi nimis rogant. Sicut in aliis mundi partibus, fodienda transnationales communitates quae affectis segregare conantur. Indigenis consentire cupiunt ad perniciem parvam portionem illis relictam esse, ut aliquas societates pecunias ex metallis toxicis extrahendis facere possint. Si consensus desit, magistratus imperium vim adhibebunt. Sed ut vim adhibeat, adhuc Canadenses persuadere debent pretium esse destruere alienas terras et victum ad uranium, platinum, adamantem, vel pecuniam. Canadenses sponsiones sunt ignorantes aut indecentis.
Justin Podur scriptor Toronto-substructio et activus est. Potest perventum est [Inscriptio protected].
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