Protests in 30 Canadian cities, organised by First Nation
Canadians of the Idle No More movement, are demanding the right-wing government
rescind new laws that breach historic treaties and open the door to land theft
and environmental destruction.
The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper smuggled new
measures into a Budget Bill, sparking protests and a hunger strike led by Chief
Theresa Spence and other tribal leaders.
The British Crown has a key role, because the omnibus Bill
C–45 transfers responsibility for treaty issues and land rights to provincial
governments. Yet Idle No More insists the tribes signed national treaties with
the Crown, and it is illegal to transfer responsibility away from the national
parliament.
C-45 lumps together more than 550 provisions on 30 topics,
ensuring that it was impossible to examine it properly before the Conservative
Party used its majority to force it through. Measures to protect water and
rainforest can be set aside and treaty land privatised.
Campaigner Joe Weasel Child says Bill C-45 “provides the
minister of Aboriginal Affairs as well as self-serving or misguided native
politicians and unscrupulous lawyers the power to expropriate First Nations’
lands and resources for quick cash, corporate greed and to perpetuate the image
of a wealthy Canada .”
It will also be used to facilitate construction of the
Northern Gateway pipeline, running west from the Alberta
tar sands through British Columbia
to the harbour at Kitimat. It would cross rivers and lakes, the Rocky mountains and hundreds of miles of pristine
wilderness, much of it treaty land.
Tankers would collect the bitumen for transportation mainly
to China
and a leak at Kitimat would pollute not only the ocean but also the Great Bear rain
forest, the world's largest remaining coastal temperate rain forest.
Enridge, the company proposing to build it, has had 800 oil
spills since 1999, including a 2010 pipeline burst that released 3.8 million
litres of toxic tar sludge into the Kalamazoo River, Michigan.
Idle No More is also springing up in the United States ,
where American Indian people fought but failed to prevent construction of the
Keystone pipeline which runs from the Alberta Tar Sands. It was completed in
early 2012 and has already suffered 11 major leaks, including one in May that
spilled 21,000 gallons in North
Dakota .
This year president Obama must take a decision on whether to
allow an extension on a route through South Dakota
and across the Nebraska Sand Hills, through Oklahoma
and Texas to Port Arthur ,
where tankers for China
will be queuing up. He faces an unlikely opposition that include the Republican
governor of Nebraska ,
American Indian tribal elders, environmentalists, farmers and ranchers.
The Nebraska Sand Hills are a unique eco-system of pristine
wetland and prairie. They also form the porous natural cover for the giant
Ogallala Aquifer. The fossil water of the Ogallala supplies one-third of the
country's irrigation and 82% of the drinking water for people who live within
its boundary.
James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute, says
burning tar sands puts civilisation itself at risk. “The concentration of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 ppm
over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon — 240 gigatons —
to add 120 ppm,” he explains.
For historic reasons, the first nations of the America (Canada ,
US and south) and Australia ,
find themselves in the front line of the opposition to ruthless extraction of
fossil fuels. It is not an exaggeration to say that the struggle they are
leading is a life or death one for the human race and life on earth.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
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