Members of First Nations whose reserves are in British Columbia returned from a visit to the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico more determined than ever to keep supertankers off their coast.

“Everywhere we went people told us the same thing: if you have a choice when it comes to big oil development, don’t do it. And if you do, prepare for the worst,” says Gerald Amos, a Haisla Nation counselor, in this report posted on Marketwire:

Coastal and inland First Nations in B.C. are fighting Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline, which would carry tar sands crude oil from Alberta to a tanker port at Kitimat, B.C. and bring 225 crude oil tankers per year to B.C.’s northern coastal waters.

The delegation learned of the BP spill’s impact on the Gulf Coast’s fishing economy from the president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association.

“Shrimp are to Louisiana what wild salmon are to B.C.,” said Art Sterritt, executive director of Coastal First Nations, an alliance of nine Nations from B.C.’s central and north coast. “The shrimp fishermen told us that their economy is gone, but worse than that they risk losing a huge part of their fishing culture. That’s a message that hits close to home for our people who depend so heavily on fish and seafood.”

Members of the delegation met with the United Houma Nation, whose people live on the Louisiana coast and are directly affected by the spill

“It was powerful to meet the Houma and share our experiences as indigenous people,” says Amos. “The oil spill just adds to a whole lot of other impacts on their territories. They fear this oil spill could be the straw that breaks their culture’s back.”

First Nations across Canada have been uniting to oppose more development of the tar sands. (See video above.)

Gwen Florio

Tags: Alberta oil sands, Alberta tar sands, BP, British Petroleum, buffalo post, Enbridge, First Nations, Gulf oil spill, Gwen Florio, Haisla Nation, Native American news, Northern Gateway Pipeline, United Houma Nations

Paul Manly is a filmmaker and community organizer based in Nanaimo, B.C. Writing here for the CBC, he has a point:

The key arguments against the G8 and G20 put forward at these events was that these summits are illegitimate and undemocratic, the $1.2-billion budget for a three-day summit could have been used to bolster the $1.9-billion annual budget of the United Nations, or pay for housing, transit, clean drinking water for First Nations communities, food for hungry people etc. The austerity summit was anything but austere, the budget was outrageous.

Gwen Florio

Tags: First Nations, G20 summit, G8 Summit, Gwen Florio, Native American news

Enjoy the day!

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Canada, First Nations, Gwen Florio, Inuit, Metis, National Aboriginal Day

Canada’s federal government agreed late yesterday not to break 30 years of tradition and oppose a type of sales tax on First Nations, a proposal that had prompted widespread objections (See video above).

The action removes the threat by indigenous communities in Ontario to set up highway blockades on their reserves next week during the G8 and G20 summits, the CBC reports here.

Meanwhile, Ottawa criticized the provincial government’s handling of the issue.

The tax takes effect July 1, but the exemption for tribes won’t be in place until September. The government and First Nations are trying to work out a solution to that dilemma.

Last night’s action doesn’t mean an end to the issue. Aboriginal communities in other provinces want the same treatment, according to the CBC:

Rick Simon, the Assembly of First Nations’ regional chief for Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, said this week that aboriginal leaders in the Atlantic provinces would use the deal in Ontario to try to get negotiations for their HST exemption started again with Ottawa.

Stay tuned.

Gwen Florio

Tags: aboriginal, Assembly of First Nations, buffalo post, Canada, First Nations, Harmonized Sales Tax, HST, Ontario, Rick Simon

Highway blockades will go up Monday in Ontario unless First Nations can work out an agreement with the federal and provincial government in Canada over whether a sales tax will apply to tribes. The tax has been the subject of months of protests by First Nations communities (See video above.)

On the table, Karen Howlett of the Toronto Globe and Mail writes here, is a plan to award aboriginal communities a major break from the “harmonized sales tax,” or HST:

The deal will save residents of Native communities between $85-million and $120-million in the first year of the HST, according to a new study done by Fred Lazar, an associate economics professor at York University. However, it will also avert a series of protests just as world leaders descend on Ontario for next week’s G8 and G20 summits.

The protests are set to kick off Monday morning with a blockade of the railway in Batchewana First Nation, a community of 2,400 near Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. Residents of the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation, a fly-in community 600 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, are also planning to participate in the blockade.

Ontario Regional Chief Angus Toulouse says he expects the agreement to be signed tomorrow.

“We’re not quite there yet, but we are making progress,” he tells Howlett. “We’re hoping to have some conclusion to this in the next couple of days.”

First Nations argue that applying the provincial sales tax to them – something that has not been done for 30 years – violates their sovereignty.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Angus Toulouse, Batchewana First Nation, buffalo post, First Nations, Fred Lazar, Gwen Florio, Harmonized Sales Tax, HST, Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation, Native American news, Ontario, Ottawa, Thunder Bay, tribal sovereignty, York University

Manitoba deputy premier Eric Robinson will be among those present today when for the national hearing of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in Winnipeg.

The idea, CBC reports here, is to expose and deal with the pain and suffering caused by residential schools. Robinson has first-hand experience with that. He was a student at the Jack River School in Norway House, Manitoba, where he was sexually abused by a priest. And yet, he counts himself relatively fortunate:

“My father was a student at one of these places, went there for seven or eight years, never learned anything more than how to write his name, but he sure became a good farmhand.

“My mother went … at the age of three. She came out when she was 18 to a world of alcoholism and drug abuse and she died alone on the streets of Winnipeg at the age of 31 when I was 11 years old.”

Some 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, about 85,000 still living, were forced to attend the government- and church-run schools, the last of which closed in 1996.

Some of those survivors filed a class-action lawsuit, and the $60 million commission is the result.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Boarding schools, Eric Robinson, First Nations, Gwen Florio, Inuit, Jack River School, Metis, Native American news, Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Child death in foster care causes First Nations outcry
Twice in six months, children from the Sturgeon Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan have died in foster care under suspicious circumstances. The most recent case, that of a 22-month-old child, has prompted calls for a public inquiry, according to this CBC report. The little boy, Evander Lee Daniels, drowned in a bathtub and also had been scalded, according to this earlier CBC piece. watch a video, here.

Some Wind River Reservation residents told to seek high ground during floods
Even though floodwaters are receding in central Wyoming, residents in the Wind River Indian Reservation community of Sharp Nose are being told to seek higher ground because of rain and snow last night. With snow falling at about an inch an hour, authorities feared more flooding along the Wind River, according to the Casper (Wyo.) Star Tribune, here.

New dorm goes up at Crazy Horse Memorial
The nearly-completed Crazy Horse Student Living and Learning Center was open to the public yesterday. The $2.5 million dorm will house the Summer University Program at Crazy Horse Memorial, sanctioned by the University of South Dakota’s Department of American Indian Studies, according to this Rapid City (S.D.) Journal story by Tyler Jerke.

Cape Wind opponents see parallels with gulf oil catastrophe
Indian Country Today’s Gale Courey Toensing wrote here last week about the massive wind-power project off the coast of Massachusetts, which is vehemently opposed by the Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag nations. Opponents say the mitigation opposed for the Cape Wind project is akin to the safety measures that so badly failed on the BP rig now spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Fort Niagara adds Native American interpreters for truer history lesson
Every summer, Fort Niagara in New York hires history lovers and actors from Niagara University to portray characters who might have populated the region, and to explain its history to tourists. This year, those history interpreters include Jordan Smith, a Niagara Falls Native American educator, in the role of a Mohawk Indian, and Brenda Patterson, who is Tuscaroran and plays the role of a Seneca woman. The Mohawk and Seneca tribes are part of the Iroquois Confederacy. Read more here in the Niagara Gazette.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Aquinnah Wampanoag, BP oil spill, Cape Wind, Crazy Horse Memorial, Crazy Horse Student Living and Learning Center, Eastern Shoshone, First Nations, Fort Niagara, foster care, Gulf oil disaster, Interior Department, Iroquois Confederacy, Mashpee Wampanoag, Mohawk, Northern Arapaho, Oneida, Saskatchewan, Sturgeon Lake First Nation, Tuscarora, University of South Dakota Department of American Indian Studies, Wind River, Wind River Indian Reservation

“Urgent law reform” is needed to shift some of the burden of mining processes from Native communities in British Columbia to government and industry, according to a new Harvard University study.

It pairs well with one last year, here, done by the Takla Lake and Tsay Keh Dene nations, found that the mine underscored the need for intergovernmental planning between First Nations and the provincial government.

The Harvard study says First Nations suffer disproportionately at every point in the mining process, according to this Vancouver Sun story printed in the Montreal Gazette.

As part of the study, researchers from Harvard’s international human rights clinic specifically examined how B.C.’s Mineral Tenure Act is affecting the Takla Lake First Nation. The 1,000-member community’s traditional territory covers about 27,000 square kilometres of land northeast of Smithers, B.C. About one-third of the land is staked out in mineral claims.

The study acknowledged that the B.C. government adopted a revenue-sharing plan in 2008 that recognizes First Nations should share in the economic gains of mining.

North Gate Minerals has been mining copper and gold at the Kemess South mine for more than a decade, but the Takla Lake Nation hasn’t realized any economic benefits, Takla First Nations Chief Dolly Abraham tells Kim Pemberton.

A report released last year, here, done by the Takla Lake and Tsay Keh Dene nations, found that the mine underscored the need for intergovernmental planning between First Nations and the provincial government.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, First Nations, gold mining, Gwen Florio, Kemess South mine, Mineral Tenure Act, Native American news, North Gate Minerals, Silver mining, Takla Lake First Nation

Alaska tribe pins economic hopes on new ferry
The Seldovia Village Tribe in Alaska has unveiled the newest ferry in Kachemak Bay — the M/V Kachemak Voyager — which arrived last week at the Homer Port and Harbor. It’s part of a plan from a nearly $1 million boat ramp to be built by the tribe, according to this Homer Tribune story. The ferry will allow tribal members to more easily get to jobs in Homer, 45 minutes away by boat.

First Nations women stage 300-mile march to protest gender discrimination
Despite extensive changes, Canada’s Indian Act still promotes discrimination, especially against women, Indian Country Today’s Gale Courey Toensing writes here. Under the act, Native women who marry non-Native men lose their Indian status, and so do their children, something the protesters term “slow genocide.”

Funding snafu leaves Nunavut law school high and dry
Some 25 Nunavut students had hoped to study law by next September. But the government of Nunavut rejected a $3.6 million funding request from the Akitsiraq Law School Society, throwing those plans in doubt, the Nunatsiaq News reports here.

Grits are originally Native American
So says this San Francisco Chronicle story. Although somewhere along the line they became emblematic of Southern food, they’re made from hominy, which comes from corn – and you know who first cultivated that.

Reality check, during Stanley Cup, on Blackhawks’ name
WLS-TV in Chicago has this piece on the National Hockey League’s Blackhawks name. Check out the story and see what you think. This Flyers fan suggests an alternative – root for Philadelphia. Just sayin’.

This?

Or this?

Gwen Florio

Tags: Akitsiraq Law School Society, Alaska Natives, Chicago Blackhawks, First Nations, Gender discrimination, grits, hominy, Indian Act, Kachemak Bay, National Hockey League, Native American women, NHL, Nunavut, Philadelphia Flyers, Seldovia Village Tribe, Stanley Cup, Team mascots, Team nicknames