Aboriginal leaders to launch national protest in Ottawa today demanding change

By The Canadian Press December 21, 2012 

Aboriginal leaders are set to march through the streets of Ottawa today after meeting with a chief who is on a hunger-strike. The leaders are taking part in a national protest march and rally organized by the movement dubbed Idle No More, which opposes the Harper government’s omnibus budget legislation, Bill C-45.

On the eve of the protest, Attawapiskat First Nation Chief Theresa Spence repeated her call for a meeting with the prime minister and Canada’s governor general.

Spence, who started a hunger strike this month, issued an open letter yesterday to Stephen Harper and Gov. Gen. David Johnston.

In it, she urges them to embark on a national discussion about the state of poverty among First Nations communities.

Spence says many communities face impoverished conditions, despite assurances from the government that progress is being made to alleviate poverty.

“Land and natural resources continue to be reaped by the federal and provincial governments through taxation of corporate resource companies with little compensation to First Nations for use of our traditional territories,” Spence wrote.

“Trilateral discussions and financial action plans must be committed to in order to alleviate the existing state of poverty.”

Spence said this week she has been growing weaker after living mainly on water and fish broth since Dec 11.

A spokesman for Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan voiced frustration Thursday at being unable to speak with Spence about her concerns.

“Since she began her hunger strike the minister has expressed his concern for Chief Spence’s health and he has indicated several times his willingness to meet with or talk to her,” said Jason MacDonald.

“Unfortunately he has been unable to reach the Chief, and her colleagues have been unwilling or unable to share an alternate phone number where she might be reached.”

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo and up to five other chiefs are expected to take part in today’s march and rally, along with a number of opposition politicians.

There will also be protests in a number of other Canadian cities.

Protests and marches have been held country-wide in recent weeks to demand the Conservative government reverse legislation that First Nations say will affect treaties and traditional land use.

 

By Tanya Talaga Toronto Star December 20, 2012 

The grassroots Idle No More movement begun by native and non-native women three weeks ago is expected to erupt across Canada on Friday with teach-ins, protests and flash mob dances.

Jessica Gordon, Sheelah McLean, Sylvia McAdams and Nina Wilson, all of Saskatchewan, may be credited with initiating Idle No More after posting their discontent with federal omnibus budget legislation on Facebook.

But then the outcry spread like fire through social media. By means of Twitter and Facebook, young First Nations and non-First Nations people alike have started a nationwide conversation on everything from treaty rights to youth unemployment, resource extraction and inadequate housing and education. 

Once the hunger strike by Attawapiskat First Nation Chief Theresa Spence was thrown into the mix, a movement was born. Spence is carrying out her hunger strike, which began Dec. 11, while living in a teepee on Victoria Island in the Ottawa River, between Ottawa and Gatineau, Que.

Attawapiskat resident Charles Hookimaw puts it bluntly: Youth are fed up because “there is no action. There is always a target to do something and when we get to that target, nothing happens. Young people are tired of it.”

Tanya Kappo of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation met with McAdams and they talked about Bill C-45, the omnibus budget bill that alters the Indian Act, Kappo decided they should take the conversation to Twitter. She began with a simple post on Nov. 30, introducing the hashtag #Idlenomore, which has lit up Twitter, and asked people to join her.

And they have. On Friday, demonstrations of support are expected to take place as far away as the United States and Egypt.

“It has been less than a month and look at it,” Kappo said Thursday.

“This has been a lifelong thing for me. It isn’t that one day I’ve woken up and become socially conscious,” says Kappo, a recent law graduate at the University of Manitoba and the mother of three.

Anishinabe writer Hayden King, an assistant professor of politics at Ryerson University, said it’s exciting to see First Nations people’s creativity and voices spreading all over social media.

“Native people like to use Facebook but it has moved to Twitter in a political way,” he said. “It is like a fire and it hasn’t stopped. It keeps raging . … People are talking about it all over the world.”

There are many issues at play, King said. “It is important to note the diversity and complexity of the demographics and concerns. There are a lot of people out there saying lets get rid of the Indian Act and use our treaty to have relationships . … There are urban people saying they want to address missing and murdered women, those that disappear from our streets, or others that want to address racism and education.”

Native people have a history of activism, he said. “History is punctuated by these confrontations that vary in degree from peaceful protests to blockading highways to physical confrontations. This is kind of the latest string in all of them. This just indicates we haven’t been able to get the relationship right yet.”

Six Nations lawyer Aaron Detlor noted the movement “isn’t necessarily cause-specific.”

“It is somewhat of an organic initiative started by an alliance on social media. It is not necessarily a classically, leadership driven undertaking. The people behind it represent a broader, horizontal constituency than what are normally referred to as First Nations political elites,” Detlor said.

There are shades of the Occupy movement in Idle No More, he said — a broad, diffuse, social movement that does not have a specific centre of power or control.

“And that is somewhat consistent with aboriginal decision-making,” he said.

First Nations lawyers behind the movement are frustrated by what it take to work in the Canadian system to bring about change, he said, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “agenda” has helped crystallize this frustration.

“It is the first time it has really taken root that maybe the solution isn’t to work within the normal avenues made available to First Nations, for example, the courts and land claims,” he said.