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Protesters Block Intersection In Support Of Jailed Indigenous Elder

A group of protesters has blocked the port access at Clark and Hastings in Vancouver since Tuesday night. The action was organized by Braided Warriors, a newly formed group, made up of Indigenous youth from many Nations, who fights for Indigenous sovereignty mostly on the unceded territories of the Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) nations. The group is calling for the release of Indigenous elder Stacy Gallagher who was sentenced to 90 days in jail Tuesday. Gallagher was handed the sentence in B.C. Supreme Court on Tuesday by judge Shelley Fitzpatrick for violating an injunction that bars people from protests at Trans Mountain sites in Burnaby. It was at the Burnaby tank farm in 2019 where Gallagher took part in a smudging ceremony and was subsequently apprehended and charged.

Protecting The Peatlands

In September, Kona Barreda, a teacher in the northern community of Air Ronge, was working on a lesson about “finding the courage” for her Grade 7 class when she came across a proposal from Quebec-based company Lambert Peat Moss Inc. The company had outlined its plan, with a timeline of 80 years, to mine peat in four designated areas south of nearby La Ronge, an area covering about 2,619 hectares. Shocked by the implications, Barreda, a Woodland Cree woman, started asking people in the community if they had heard about the project. Although Lambert claimed to have distributed letters among residents, no one Barreda spoke to had received one. Hoping to teach her students how to find the courage to fight for a cause, even when the opponent is a multimillion-dollar mining company, Barreda and the Grade 7 class launched a petition demanding that Lambert leave the northern Saskatchewan muskegs alone.

Magpie River Becomes First In Canada To Be Granted Legal Personhood

In a first for Canadians, a river in Côte-Nord, Que., has been granted legal personhood by the local municipality of Minganie and the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit. The Magpie River, (Muteshekau-shipu in the Innu Coet) is an internationally renowned whitewater rafting site, winding nearly 300 kilometres before emptying into the St. Lawrence. The river has one hydroelectric dam managed by Hydro-Québec, and environmental groups have long sought a permanent solution to protect the river from further disruption. It is unclear how this will affect attempts to build developments on the river, including dams, moving forward, as legal personhood for nature doesn't exist in Canadian law and could be challenged in court.

How One Community Creatively Solved Keeping Its Residents Fed During A Pandemic

Hunger and food insecurity have increased worldwide since COVID-19 took hold. In December 2020, the United Nations warned of the threat of “catastrophic global famine,” urging worldwide governments to prioritize food security and humanitarian needs in their COVID-19 response plans. The global, industrialized food supply chain is strained and fraying. Production and shipping delays are increasingly commonplace. Given the lack of substantial response by many governments to food insecurity, it has often fallen to individuals to step in and feed their communities. Neighborhood-based volunteer groups across major U.S. cities and beyond have come up with strategies to support themselves from within, working to curb hunger with creative initiatives like community free-food fridges, volunteer grocery deliveries and other mutual aid efforts.

Indigenous Youth Demand End To Trans Mountain Insurance

A group of Indigenous youth took their fight against the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project to the Vancouver offices of insurance companies backing the controversial venture earlier this week. On Thursday, approximately 20 youth from the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh) and other First Nations occupied the lobby — as well as south and west entrances — of 250 Howe St., a high-rise building housing Chubb Insurance Co. of Canada, one of 11 insurers backing the pipeline project. “We are demanding that they stop insuring the pipeline,” said a protest spokesperson who declined to give their name. “We’re going to be here all day, we’re going to make sure that they hear us, that they know that we’re here, that we know that we are trying to pressure them to stop insuring this pipeline.”

Violence Against Indigenous Peoples Is Happening In Plain Sight

It’s been just over one year since the RCMP raided Wet’suwet’en camps along the route of the Coastal Gas Link (CGL) LNG pipeline in Northern B.C. Brandishing guns and tactical gear, the RCMP arrested dozens of Indigenous land defenders and supporters who defied an injunction obtained by CGL to not impede the construction right of way. The raids evoked outrage that saw supporters across Canada erect railway blockades and highway shutdowns. Demonstrators gathered by the thousands in the streets demanding governments, police and industry to uphold Indigenous rights and stop construction of the pipeline.

One Year Anniversary Of Wet’suwet’en Protests, Blockades

The protests were a result of the BC NDP’s decision to press ahead with the Coastal GasLink pipeline through the Wet’suwet’en territory using militarized RCMP to enforce their decision. I had just returned from a visit to the territory. I was invited by the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs to witness firsthand their beautiful lands and the violence delivered by the BC NDP government. As the protestors pulsed with anger, solidarity blockades popped up on rail lines and other infrastructure across the country. Just a few short weeks after passing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act in November 2019, it looked like 2020 was going to be a difficult year for Crown-Indigenous relations in British Columbia.

Mary River Mine Protesters End Blockade, Announce Next Steps

After a week of blockading an airstrip and road to an iron mine on north Baffin Island, a small group of protesters are packing up their tents. That’s according to protesters’ spokesperson Marie Naqitarvik, wife of protester Tom Naqitarvik. She sent out a news release late Feb. 10, announcing the group would be decamping and moving to an observation position at a nearby hunting cabin, before heading to Pond Inlet Saturday to prepare for face-to-face meetings with community leaders and Inuit organizations. The protesters call themselves the Nuluujaat Land Guardians, and they have been blocking access to Baffinland Iron Mines Corp.’s Mary River iron mine since the evening of Feb. 4.

Protesters Say Mine Expansion Ignores Nunavut Agreement

Protests continue in Pond Inlet, Nunavut, on Saturday, as a two-week environmental hearing on an expansion at the Mary River iron ore mine wraps up.    At noon Saturday, around 50 residents gathered outside the community hall where the hearings are happening. It was – 32 C with the windchill, according to Environment Canada.   "We protested and chanted, 'Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, protect our rights, protect our people, protect our animals'," said resident Sheena Akoomalik.  At the protest, she brandished a copy of the Nunavut Agreement. She said the legal agreement between Nunavut Inuit and the Canadian government, and its protections for land and harvesting rights, are being ignored. 

Why We Must Do More To Recognize The Application Of Indigenous Law

In the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1996 decision in R v Van Der Peet, Justice Beverley McLachlin[1] famously made reference to a “golden thread”:  The history of the interface of Europeans and the common law with aboriginal peoples is a long one. As might be expected of such a long history, the principles by which the interface has been governed have not always been consistently applied. Yet running through this history, from its earliest beginnings to the present time is a golden thread – the recognition by the common law of the ancestral laws and customs of the aboriginal peoples who occupied the land prior to European settlement. For Wet’suwet’en people reading the BC Supreme Court’s December 31, 2019 decision in Coastal GasLink Pipeline Ltd v Huson, it may have seemed more like an “invisible thread.”

Post Workers Suspended After Refusing To Deliver Epoch Times

Ramiro Sepulveda, one of the suspended postal workers, told CBC News he objects to the insinuations in some of the paper's past coverage of the origins of the coronavirus, which the paper calls "the CCP virus."  "I'm not for censorship. I'm not against freedom of speech," he said. "What my thing is, is there is no disclaimer stating that this was theory." He says he went straight to his supervisor when he saw the free editions that were set to be delivered earlier this month. "I said, 'That Epoch Times, I'm not delivering it. It goes against everything I believe in.'"  The second worker, Linying Su, who was born in China, said she felt uncomfortable delivering the paper because she feared its coverage of the Chinese government could contribute to anti-Chinese and anti-Asian sentiment in Canada and misconceptions around the origins of the coronavirus. 

The Virus Changed

Are you tired of COVID? I fucking am. But as a longtime science writer and the author of two books on pandemics, I have to report what you probably don’t want to hear. We have entered the grimmest phase of this pandemic. And contrary to what our politicians say, there is only one way to deal with a rapidly mutating virus that demonstrates the real power of exponential growth: Go hard. Act early. And go to zero. Last January, one strain of this novel virus began its assured global conquest, and since then our leaders have hardly learned a goddamn thing. So yes, I am angry, and I will not disguise my frustration with comfortable or polite language.

How The Wet’suwet’en Solidarity Actions Changed Their Lives

It was the first week of Kolin Sutherland-Wilson’s final semester at the University of Victoria. But he wasn’t there. Instead, on a chilly January morning in 2020, he sat alone on the front steps of the British Columbia legislature, dressed warmly and holding signs that called on provincial leaders to stand with the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs opposing the Coastal GasLink project in their traditional territory. For a week, he spent all day on the steps. MLAs and staff who passed by barely glanced at him. But soon friends, classmates and community members joined him. The growing group took on bigger actions — a ferry blockade and a sit-in at the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum resources.

Court Orders Quebec Government To Exempt Homeless People From Curfew

Police in Quebec can no longer fine people for being homeless after eight o’clock. In a cutting decision delivered late Tuesday, Superior Court judge Chantal Masse ordered the provincial government to exempt people without housing from a curfew that subjected them to fines of up to $6,000 for being outside after 8 p.m. Masse said the curfew put the lives of homeless people at risk and that the province’s network of shelters doesn’t have the capacity to provide a warm bed for all its unhoused people. She also rejected the government’s argument that police were only ticketing those who refused help, citing evidence from the plaintiffs that showed a lack of discretion from officers.

Activists Block Trucks Of Company Transporting Weapons To Saudi Arabia

Hamilton, Ontario - Members and allies of anti-war organizations World BEYOND War and Labour Against the Arms Trade are blocking trucks at Paddock Transport International, a Hamilton-area transportation company involved in shipping Canadian-made, light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. The activists are calling on Paddock to end its complicity in the brutal Saudi-led war in Yemen, which has killed almost a quarter of a million people, and calling on the Canadian government to end arms exports to Saudi Arabia. "The demonstration is part of a global day of action against the war on Yemen featuring more than 300 organizations in 17 countries," says Rachel Small of World BEYOND War.
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