Ooinions

Tyson Kelsall
Culture Editor

he title to this article is possibly

pre-emptive, as the details are
still being smoothed out over which
member of which group torched the six
RCMP cars in Rexton, New Brunswick,
traditional MiKmag territory. It does
not really matter though, either a
Mi'kmaw warrior set them ablaze,
risking their life and many liberties
to protect the land and water over
allowing a fracking operation to
develop: or, it was caused by the
RCMP side, meaning they did it to
discredit the peaceful protests which
had been happening. The core of this
story remains the same: there was a
group of peaceful protesters fighting
to safeguard their sovereign land
and demand consultation (a legal
right that is constitution-bound) until a
group of 60 or more heavily armed
RCMP officers descended on the
encampment with intentions to raid it
while wearing riot gear.

There is a video on the internet,
pulled together by the activists and
comedians at wwwshitHarperDid.ca,
showing the RCMP officers pepper-
spraying and shooting ‘non-lethal
bullets at the protesters. It is titled “The
last 48 hours tell us a lot about the
next 2 years in Canada.” There are
some key points about this situation
stemming from the possibility that
finding shale gas in the area would
lead to fracking by a company called
Irving Oil. Irving Oil is a company
based in Houston, Texas, meaning that
when the tax funded RCMP marched
down to the Mikmaq blockade to
disperse its members, it was doing so
for the sake of a foreign investment.
Our national police force came down
with the intention to protect foreign
interests and fracking over clean
water and a group of First Nations
people of Canada. Fracking is a
hugely contested method of resource
extraction. Fracking takes
up an incredible

Fighting With Fire For Water

amount of water; some communities
like Barnhart, Texas have literally run
out of water due to this practice. On
top of that, it is done by an incredibly
dangerous method of making the earth
crack while shooting chemicals (many
unstudied ones) underground. Although
the sides of a well hypothetically
protect groundwater, if there is a
single break then the groundwater is
instantly contaminated. There are many
other potential issues that have yet to
be researched.

Some have said that what has
happened at Elsipogtog has been
building up for a long time. The
Canadian government continues to
ignore Aboriginal rights and acts
as a colonizing body. Just last week
during the Speech from the Throne,
it was said that “[Pioneers] forged an
independent country where none
would have otherwise existed” A
couple of days atter the incident,
Premier Alward pledged to continue
to develop a shale gas industry in
the province of New Brunswick. Last
year, the uprisings of Idle No More
swept the country. We saw the
appalling living conditions of people
in Atawapiskat. These are the big
events, the ones that get attention,
but they are hardly the tip of
the iceberg. What about
Fort Nelson First
Nations in Northeast
British Columbia who
have had to deal
with shale gas

exploration non-stop over the last
yearse What about Harper's continued
support (including monetary support)
for the Northern Gateway pipeline
crossing mostly over First Nations

land (and vehemently opposed to

by many bands)? What about the
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation's
fight against tar sands expansion as
their land continues to be irreparably
degraded? The Beaver Lake Cree
versus the tar sands in court? The
Unistot'en Camp that has removed
Pacific Trails Pipeline workers? The list
goes on, and it certainly makes one
wonder whether these First Nations
bands that are standing up are having
their land exploited primarily as a form
of oppression, or, if they are the only
ones who care about the planet and
future generations, either way, their
right to consultation and land rights are
being thrown right out the window.

Consultation? Land rights? In

most disciplines of the Canadian
educational institutions, we do not
learn much about these things, instead
we learn to celebrate the so-called
‘pioneers. Enshrined in section 35 of
the Canadian constitution of 1982:

(1) The existing aboriginal and treaty
rights of the aboriginal peoples of
Canada are hereby recognized and
affirmed.

(2) In this Act, “aboriginal peoples of
Canada’ includes the Indian, Inuit, and
Metis peoples of Canada.

(3) For greater certainty, in subsection
(1) “treaty rights” includes rights that
now exist by way of land claims
agreements or may be so acquired,

These were even more strongly
enforced come 1990, in the famous
Sparrow case, where it was stated
that, “The constitutional recognition
afforded by the provision [35. ]]
therefore gives a measure of control
over government conduct and a strong
check on legislative power.”

This does infer that the Mi kwaq were
not only standing up for the land,
which is something | look up to them
for, but also for a right afforded to
them by the Canadian government,
before the riot squad came in. What
is going on in Elsinogtog is certainly
not over; forty people were arrested,
and reinforcements are coming for
both the protesters and the RCMP.
What happens over the next week
will certainly tell us a lot about what
will happen over the next few years as
finite resources become more scarce
and as clean water becomes more
of a commodity than a basic right. It
tells us a lot about our governments’
taste towards First Nations’ rights. |
certainly hope that when resource-
based corporations start looking
beyond treaty and non-ceded lands,
non-First Nations people also stand up
for the future. Moreover, | hope that
non-Indigenous people stand by the
communities currently on the front line
before it gets to that point.