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 Ontarijas, Kanada, 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).
Savo nuosprendyje teisėjas Smithas kaip precedentą nurodė Ardocho Algonquin Nation lyderio Bobo Lovelace'o, kuris vasario 15 d. buvo nuteistas kalėti šešis mėnesius už tai, kad kasybos bendrovė „Frontenac Ventures“ jų žemėse bandė sustabdyti urano gavybą, įkalinimą. 100 km nuo Kanados sostinės Otavos (vietovės žemėlapį ir teisinius aspektus rasite Ardoch Algonquin First Nation svetainėje adresu: http://www.aafna.ca/index.html ir konkrečiai http://www.aafna.ca/Uranium_mining.html). Lovelace'ui taip pat buvo nurodyta sumokėti 25,000 15,000 USD. Tautos vadovė Paula Sherman buvo įpareigota sumokėti 10,000 2000 USD, o bendruomenė – dar XNUMX XNUMX USD, taip pat XNUMX XNUMX USD per dieną už reikalavimų nesilaikymą. Šios bylos teisėjas J. Cunninghamas sakė, kad jam nuosprendis buvo „nemalonus uždavinys“.
Šių lyderių įkalinimas atveria langą į daugybę Kanados neracionalumo ir žiaurumo – bejausmingą čiabuvių naikinimą, greito pelno, kurį būtų galima išplėšti iš žemės ir paversti pinigais, kad ir kokios būtų pasekmės, paieškas, energetikos sistemą, pagrįstą netvarios patalpos, beširdiškumas ginant nepateisinamą sistemą.
Istorija į vidų Kanada 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 Kanada". 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 Kanada‘s laws on indigenous rights and public land use.
Teisinė apgaulė
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 Ontarijas‘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 Didelis upėtakis Ežeras 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 Ontarijas court went with Platinex.
Ontarijas‘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 Ontarijas‘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.
Kitas teisinis gudravimas buvo susijęs su tuo, kad įmonė gavo teismo įsakymą ir įsakymą, o ne pareiškė kaltinimus dėl įsilaužimo čiabuviams – kaltinimas dėl įsilaužimo būtų atvėręs visus teisinius klausimus, kieno tai buvo žemė.
Kasybos politika
Bendrovė „Frontenac Ventures“, bandanti gauti urano Ardocho Algonquin bendruomenės sąskaita, yra apgaubta paslapčių. Kasybos tyrinėtojas Jamie Kneenas IPS Chrisui Arsenault sakė, kad „be prezidento ir jų advokato niekas nežino, kas jie yra ir iš kur gauna pinigus“. Frontenac prezidentas George'as White'as atsisakė atsakyti į žiniasklaidos skambučius.
„Frontenac“ advokatas Neilas Smithemanas taip pat atstovauja „Platinex“. Iš tiesų, kai 2006 m. provincijos teismas nusprendė, kad Platinex turėjo nutraukti savo veiklą, kol buvo konsultuojamasi su KI, Smithemanas sakė: „Yra daugybė kalnakasybos įmonių ir žvalgymo įmonių, kurios galėtų atsidurti panašioje situacijoje, jei nepavyks tinkamai konsultuotis žemes, į kurias galėtų pretenduoti pirmųjų tautų žmonės“. Matyt, prie tokios pat išvados priėjo ir teismas, 2007 m. nusprendęs, kad Platinex iš tikrųjų galėjo gręžtis KI teritorijose.
Yra precedentas, norint suprasti, su kuo susidurs KI teritorijos, jei iš tikrųjų bus kasamas uranas. Garsiausia Kanados urano kasykla buvo Elliot Lake kasykla, taip pat šiaurinėje Ontarijo dalyje, kuri paliko 130 milijonų tonų nuosėdų ir sunaikino Gyvatės ežero ekosistemą, o šeštajame ir šeštajame dešimtmečiuose padėjo kaupti branduolinius ginklus (žr. Kasybos laikrodžio puslapis apie 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 Ontarijas‘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 Kanada 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 Šarbotas Ežeras. Compared to other deposits in Saskačevanas, Australija, pietų Afrika ir Azija, the ore is laughably low-grade, and the cost to mine fatally high." So, too, McKay argues, recalling the Ellioto ežeras 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 Jamesas 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 Ontarijas government effectively pays it to go away. If this occurs, then it will be Ontarijas taxpayers who end up being mined for millions. not uranium or platinum deposits."
This, too, has a recent Ontarijas precedent – the Douglas Creek Estates on Six Nations Territory (Apie tai rašiau „ZNet“ 2006 m). In that case as well, the Ontarijas government is attempting the tactic of paying a massive amount of taxpayers’ money to a corporation to "go away". In addition to benefiting spekuliantai, tai turi papildomos propagandinės naudos, nes vietiniai teiginiai atrodo pernelyg brangūs ir „nepraktiški“ (be galo plečiamų priemiesčių padalinių ir nuodingų urano bei platinos kasyklų praktiniai dalykai buvo priimti kaip savaime suprantami dalykai).
Vyriausybės žaidimai ir vietinių gyventojų reakcija
Kai vietiniai žmonės iš nukentėjusių bendruomenių uždegė simbolinę, šventą ugnį, palaikydami įkalintus Thunder Bay, 100,000 600 žmonių miestelyje, esančiame maždaug XNUMX km nuo KI First Nation, remdami įkalintus, miesto policija ir ugniagesių maršalai ją užgesino. bjaurus ir simbolinis gestas.
Kaip ir kitais atvejais (Pavyzdžiui, žiūrėkite mano straipsnį apie Shawn Brant), 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 Ežeras, 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 provincija of Britų Kolumbija 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 Ontarijas government the day after the KI leaders were sentenced. "It was a real insult to all first nations," Alvin Fiddler, Deputy Grand Chief of na, told reporters on March 19. AFN National Chief Phil Fontaine visited some of the jailed leaders in Thunder Bay on March 22 and called the jailings an obstacle to peace. Kanada‘s Anglican primate, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, wrote a letter on March 25 to Ontarijas‘s premier saying the jailing arises "out of the continual imposition of the power and values of colonizers."
The Grand Chief of na, 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 Naujoji Kaledonija, 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."
Federalinė vyriausybė tylėjo ir savo tylėjimu, palikdama klausimą provincijai, nusiuntė žinią, kad vietiniai klausimai nėra nacionaliniai klausimai. Tačiau atsižvelgiant į Harperio režimo požiūrį į čiabuvių teises — prominent Harper adviser, the Universitetas of Kalgaris‘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).
Tačiau vyriausybė ir kasybos įmonės prašo per daug. Kaip ir kitose pasaulio dalyse, tarptautinės kasybos įmonės stengiasi izoliuoti paveiktas bendruomenes. Jie nori, kad vietiniai gyventojai sutiktų sunaikinti nedidelį jiems paliktą žemės kiekį, kad kai kurios įmonės galėtų užsidirbti išgaudamos nuodingus metalus. Jei sutikimo negaus, vyriausybės pareigūnai naudos jėgą. Tačiau norėdami panaudoti jėgą, jie vis tiek turės įtikinti kanadiečius, kad dėl urano, platinos, deimantų ar pinigų verta naikinti kitų žmonių žemes ir pragyvenimo šaltinius. Jie lažinasi, kad kanadiečiai yra neišmanantys arba nepadorūs.
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