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).
I roto i tana whiunga, i kii a Tiati Smith hei tauira mo te mauheretanga o te rangatira o Ardoch Algonquin Nation, a Bob Lovelace, kua whiua ki te ono marama i te 15 o Pepuere mo tana ngana ki te whakamutu i te keri uranium a te kamupene maina Frontenac Ventures ki o ratou whenua, tata 100km mai i te taone nui o Kanata, Ottawa (mo te mapi o te rohe me etahi korero mo nga ahuatanga ture tirohia te paetukutuku a Ardoch Algonquin First Nation i: http://www.aafna.ca/index.html me te motuhake http://www.aafna.ca/Uranium_mining.html). I whakahaua ano a Lovelace kia utua te $25,000. Ko Paula Sherman, te rangatira o te Motu, i whakahaua kia utu $15,000 me te hapori he $10,000 taapiri, me te $2000 ia ra mo te kore e tutuki. Ko te kaiwhakawa mo tenei keehi, a J. Cunningham, i kii i kitea e ia he "mahi kino" te whiunga.
Ko te mauheretanga o enei rangatira ka puta he matapihi ki roto i te tini o nga mahi poauau me nga mahi nanakia o Kanata - te whakakorenga kino o te tangata whenua, te rapu hua tere ka haea ki waho o te whenua ka huri hei moni ahakoa he aha nga hua, te punaha hiko i runga. whare kore e tau, te ngakau kore ki te tiaki i tetahi punaha kore.
Ko te korero i roto i 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.
Te tinihanga ture
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 Big Tohu Lake 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.
Ko etahi atu mahi tinihanga i roto i te ture ko te tono a te kooti me te whakahau a te kamupene, kaua ki te tuku whakapae pokanoa ki te tangata whenua - na te whakapae pokanoa i whakatuwhera nga patai ture katoa mo wai te whenua.
Torangapu maina
Ko te kamupene e ngana ana ki te tiki i te uranium i runga i te utu o te hapori Ardoch Algonquin, Frontenac Ventures, kei te hipoki i te mea ngaro. Ko te kairangahau maina a Jamie Kneen i kii ki a Chris Arsenault o IPS "i tua atu i te perehitini me o raatau roia, kaore he tangata e mohio ko wai ratau, kei hea ranei a raatau moni." Ko te perehitini o Frontenac a George White kaore i whakaae ki te whakautu i nga waea panui.
Ko te roia mo Frontenac, a Neil Smitheman, kei te taha ano mo Platinex. Inaa, i te whakatau a te kooti porowini i te tau 2006 me whakamutu a Platinex i ana mahi i te wa e whakahaerea ana nga korerorero me KI, i kii a Smitheman "He maha nga kamupene maina me nga kamupene torotoro ka pa ki te ahua penei mena ka kore e whai korero tika. nga whenua ka taea te kerēme e nga iwi tuatahi." Ko te ahua nei i rite te whakatau a te kooti, i whakatau i te tau 2007 ka taea e Platinex te ruri i nga rohe o KI.
Mo te mohio ki nga ahuatanga e pa ana ki nga rohe o KI mena ka mahia te keri uranium, he tauira. Ko te maina uranium tino rongonui o Kanata ko te Elliot Lake maina, kei te raki hoki o Ontario, i mahue mai i te 130 miriona taranata o nga hiku me te whakangaro i te rauwiringa kaiao o Serpent Lake i a ia e awhina ana i te hanga patu karihi o nga tau 1950 me 1960 (tirohia Te wharangi o Mining Watch i 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 Lake. Compared to other deposits in Saskatchewan, Ahitereiria, Awherika ki te Tonga a Asia, the ore is laughably low-grade, and the cost to mine fatally high." So, too, McKay argues, recalling the Roto Elliot 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 James 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 (I tuhituhi ahau mo tenei mo ZNet i te tau 2006). 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 te hunga whakaaro, kei a ia ano te hua whakatö-whakaaro o te hanga kerēme tangata whenua te ahua tino utu nui me te "kore" (kua whakaaetia te tikanga o te whakawhänui i nga wehewehenga o nga taone me nga maina uranium paitini me nga maina konukawata).
Ko nga keemu a te kawanatanga me te whakautu tangata whenua
I te wa i tahuna ai e nga tangata whenua o nga hapori kua pa he ahi tohu, tapu hei tautoko i te hunga i mauheretia i Thunder Bay, he taone 100,000 nga taangata tata ki te 600km te tawhiti atu i te KI First Nation, hei tautoko i te hunga i mauheretia, ka tineia e nga pirihimana o te taone me nga kaipatu ahi - ko ia ano he ahua kino me te tohu.
Ka rite ki etahi atu take (tirohia taku tuhinga mo Shawn Brant hei tauira), 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 Lake, 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 kawanatanga 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 Thunder 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 Caledonia, 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."
Kua noho wahangu te kawanatanga e haangai ana, a, na tana wahangu, ka waiho te take ki te kawanatanga, ka tuku korero ko nga take tangata whenua ehara rawa i te take o te motu. I runga i nga whakaaro o te kawanatanga Harper mo nga tika tangata whenua, heoi — 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).
Engari he nui rawa te tono a te kawanatanga me nga kamupene maina. Ka rite ki a raatau ki etahi atu waahi o te ao, ka ngana nga iwi keri whenua ki te wehe i nga hapori e pa ana. Ko ta ratou hiahia kia whakaae te tangata whenua ki te whakangaro i te iti o nga whenua kua mahue ki a ratou, kia whai moni ai etahi kamupene ki te tango i nga konganuku paitini. Ki te kore e puta te whakaaetanga, ka kaha nga apiha a te kawanatanga. Engari ki te whakamahi i te kaha, me kii tonu ratou ki nga Kanata he pai ki te whakangaro i nga whenua me nga oranga o etahi atu mo te uranium, platinum, taimana, moni ranei. Kei te petihana ratou mo nga Kanata he kuare, he kino ranei.
Ko Justin Podur he kaituhi me te kaitoha i Toronto. Ka taea te toro atu ki a ia [email tiakina].
Ko te putea a ZNetwork na te atawhai o ana kaipānui.
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