Photo: Kieran Delamont
by Kieran Delamont and Tim Kitz
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In Ottawa, too, mobilizations led by Indigenous young people have forced confrontation and conversation in the seat of the federal government. Weekly protests since Wet’suwet’en arrests began have made their mark, shutting down large parts of downtown on several occasions, and stalling traffic near the Rideau Centre and on the canal with joyful round dances. A days-long occupation of Justice Minister David Lametti’s office, which started on Feb. 10, was one in a series of nation-wide efforts to occupy and shut down government buildings.
Andrew Scheer — a man with an army of paid staff at his beck and call — tells land defenders making sacrifices to attend blockades, occupations, and rallies to “check their privilege,” while his party pays $15,000 a year for each of his four children to go to private school.
Meanwhile, at multiple points along key cargo rail lines across the country, blockades were erected. Online, the hashtag #shutdowncanada gave teeth to the long-ignored demand from the Wet’suwet’en land defenders that their land and human rights be respected, that the state and colonial police leave their unsurrendered land, and that the pipeline project be abandoned.
As militarized police have arrested Indigenous land defenders across the country, multiple Indigenous people have declared that reconciliation, Trudeau’s signature political posture, was dead — something that has surely irked the prime minister’s communications machine.
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On Monday, February 24th, the largest demonstration in Ottawa so far was blocked from accessing Parliament Hill (which is currently half under construction). But it did succeed in halting the flow of traffic along Wellington Street (and others nearby) for much of the day.
The action took on an added dimension as, moments before it was set to begin, news broke that the Ontario Provincial Police were enforcing an injunction to end the blockade in Tyendinaga Mohawk territory near Belleville, Ontario.
“This is not the end of the fight,” said Gabrielle Fayant, one of the Indigenous speakers at the action, “this is just the beginning.”
“Change is coming,” said NDP MP Charlie Angus, who also spoke to a receptive crowd. “You are at the forefront of it.”
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As an indication of the rising tensions over these actions, Ottawa Police and the RCMP met Monday’s demonstration with an uncharacteristic, and likely overzealous, degree of force. Cops patrolled on bikes, in trucks, and in cars. Several officers wandered alongside the crowd, videotaping individuals and wearing bulletproof vests.
At one point, police tactical units formed a large line in an apparent attempt to block the demonstration from proceeding further down Wellington at Kent Street. The demonstration moved to encircle police in the intersection, who then awkwardly retreated toward the space in front of the Supreme Court building. The march then proceeded down Kent Street.
Later, chilling images surfaced online of police deploying rooftop snipers during the demonstration. This level of escalation called to mind reports that police had been authorized to use lethal force on land defenders on the frontlines of the Coastal GasLink resistance.
At times, demonstrators chastised the media, who have seemed to ignore these surveillance tactics in the days after the march. “You don’t really need to record our ceremonies,” one leader said, at one point. “You should really be looking at what’s going on with this surveillance.
“The story you tell can either get people killed, or you can keep people alive,” they said.
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Where these demonstrations are leading, and how long they will continue, still depends largely on the outcome of high-level talks still underway at press time (Mar. 2) between BC and Canadian officials and the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs. As a condition of the talks, both the RCMP and CGL workers have temporarily withdrawn from the territory. The RCMP had previously offered to pull out of Wet’suwet’en territory if land defenders agree to stay out of the way of CGL workers getting on with pipeline construction, an offer that media releases somehow spin as new and generous.
As the talks continue, so do numerous demonstrations and blockade actions, as the issue has grown beyond a single political flashpoint into a wider-reaching statement about the failures of reconciliation.
In the halls of Canadian energy corporations and the political class, the demonstrations are already succeeding in making an impact. Hours before Monday’s demonstration, Teck Resources pulled the plug on their planned Frontier Mine, saying they did not want to become the nexus of “a broader debate over climate change and Canada’s role in addressing it.”
The Trudeau Liberals are spinning plates, trying to brandish carrot and stick at the same time and constantly tripping over themselves in the process. Trudeau sings the praises of negotiations and says that “paralyzing key infrastructure is… unacceptable and untenable,” but ignored Wet’suwut’en requests for nation-to-nation meetings until blockades started affecting the Canadian economy.
Opposition parties have either offered tepid half-support, in the case of the NDP, or a shrieking meltdown about thugs, terrorists and paid activists, in the case of the Conservative Party. Andrew Scheer — a man with an army of paid staff at his beck and call — told land defenders making sacrifices to attend blockades, occupations, and rallies to “check their privilege,” while his party paid $15,000 a year for each of his four children to go to private school.
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BC premier John Horgan has foamed at the mouth about “the rule of law,” but seems taken aback by the idea that his government apply the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) to CGL’s pipeline — despite having just enshrined UNDRIP in BC law.
The National Post got briefly fascistic and declared that actually politicians can order the police to do their bidding, and that Trudeau should order police to clear Indigenous people from their land when they’re blocking roads and railways. “There is no alternative,” John Robeson wisely explained.
Meanwhile, the CBC (the Colonial Broadcasting Corporation, as some critics were tempted to label it) fretted constantly about a looming economic apocalypse, fanning reporters out across the country to find small business owners experiencing a slow season – but had no one reporting from ground zero as Wet’suwet’en land defenders were arrested .
Nobody in the Canadian establishment quite knows how to react to such a large and coordinated assertion of Indigenous rights, and what it says about the fundamental facts of Canada — maybe they thought they’d never have to — and in that vacuum most have reacted with indistinct anger.
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It is striking that this whole crisis could have been avoided, had the government attended to a groundbreaking Supreme Court judgement from 25 years ago. In the 1997 judgement Delgamuukw v British Columbia, the court recognized that the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan hereditary chiefs who brought the suit were right in asserting continued aboriginal title over their traditional territory. The court directed the Crown to negotiate in good faith with the Wet’suwet’en to reconcile Aboriginal title with “the sovereignty of the Crown.”
Yet provincial negotiations have consistently sought to extinguish aboriginal title in return for one time payouts and small parcels of land — as freedom of information documents obtained by The Narwhal attest — rather than negotiate resource sharing agreements.
Similarly, the 1996 recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, formed in the wake of the Oka “Crisis,” laid out a sweeping 20-year agenda for implementing changes that governments have spent 20+ years ignoring.
It seems likely that this movement will spill over into a broader, and sharper, conversation about Indigenous rights than this country has seen since that time.
“I have been protesting with some of you for 30 years,” Waneek Horn-Miller said, describing her experience during the the standoff at Kanesatake near Oka. “Now, Wet’suwet’en needs you to stay strong.”
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