Thread by @Beccabluesky

Winnipeg City Hall adult ally #ClimateStrike

Week 27

So this is my worst Strike selfie yet - accidental shot while struggling to hold the ph for the pic at which point my camera died ;)

#Wetsuweten shirt art credit @christibelcourt

Thread incoming, will be pauses while I type

Disclaimer - everything I say here has already said, by better writers (often Indigenous) & by more knowledgable ppl (often Indigenous).

None of this should be taken as my own original thoughts, tho is not the fault or deficiency of the original thinkers if I get anything wrong.

Hello World, we need to talk about Canada.

I'm doing this in the context of my #FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike, because the Winnipeg youth Climate Strike group, @mbyouth4climate, has been very involved in #WetsuwetenSolidarity #ShutDownCanada actions.

Young #ClimateStrike-rs from around the world, including @GretaThunberg, have spoken out about the #Wetsuweten situation as they learn what's going on.

Since its inception, @FFFCanada (the Cdn youth #ClimateStriker org) has supported the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Ppl (UNDRIP) & in general the Climate Strike movement has strongly felt that Indigenous Rights *are* #ClimateJustice

Having sketched out the connection of the #FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike to #WetsuwetenSolidarity, what we need to discuss is a gaping hole in the global public perception of Canada, and of Cdn history.

Canadians - listen up. Most of us don't put this together for ourselves.

(maybe I should say: most of us older folks learned very little about this in school, & very little of it is stitched together as a cohesive narrative in the media; we tell different stories about ourselves instead, still grounded in the narratives the system taught our parents)

Canada - the state - is a colonial delusion.

I'm serious; we're participating in a multi-generational mass delusion that Canada exists in the way we believe it to exist.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity

Canada exists because we stick our fingers in our ears, squeeze our eyes shut, and yell out LALALALALA, I CAN'T HEAR YOUUUUUU, CANADA EXISTS

& so far, carried along on the momentum of the affluence that is the inheritance of our colonial resource-grab origin, that's been enough.

The truth of the matter is, Canada *doesn't* exist. Its borders as currently drawn are... shall we say... aspirational, & its authority within those borders is a lie that only holds together if you're willing to grit your teeth & pretend it's ok to lay claim to what you want.

And I've had enough of pretending, waiting for our famous "benevolent" democracy to figure out how to untangle the mess

(spoiler - they aren't trying; it's been decades and we're still a nation of mostly oblivious authoritatians).

Canada's own Supreme Court acknowledges that Canada's claim to have authority over large swathes of the country, is false.

Our colonial ancestors didn't secure the right. They did not conquer Indigenous peoples, and they did not secure the right in treaty-making or negotiation.

The Delgamuukw (del-ga-muhk?) and Tsilhqot'in (tsil-ko-tin?) court decisions from 2014, & a number of other legal battles which pre-date them, establish:

1) that the doctrine of terra nullis ("no one with legal rights to the land lived here before we got here") is invalid;

2) that the Doctrine of Discovery (which is based in a belief in inherent European superiority over Indigenous peoples), is invalid

3) and that given 1 & 2, and the absence of documents to show that Indigenous peoples *ceded* the land to Europeans, "Aboriginal title" exists.

("Aboriginal" is a term that got put into Canadian law & governance in certain places that haven't been re-written, so it still has to be used in certain circumstances, for legal accuracy. Additionally, some Indigenous people here also choose to use it instead of "Indigenous")

(worth mentioning as an aside for the intl audience, and possibly some Canadians, "Indian" is another case of a word that got put into legal use & still has to be used in those *specific* instances for legal clarity; use "Indigenous" for all other situations/when in doubt)

I'm going to take a detour into a related issue here, to add a layer of #FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike relevance & to help stitch things together to explain why #WetsuwetenSolidarity and #ShutDownCanada is spreading like wildfire in a climate-changed world.

#WetsuwetenStrong

For a time in the 19th & early 20th centuries, & for specific reasons (opening up the prairies for agricultural use, & accessing other areas for forestry & mining), Canada settled Treaties with Indigenous peoples in Central Canada.

The Treaties were to govern how settlers would *share* the land with the First Nations peoples who signed them

(Canada basically began to violate the Treaties it had negotiated before the ink was dry on each of them)

#ShutDownCanada #FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike #LandBack

(aside: First Nations is the term currently being used for Indigenous people in this country who are not Inuit and who are not Métis; I welcome correction, if I have that wrong)

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #ShutDownCanada #LandBack #ClimateStrike

One of the items Canada agreed to provide to First Nations people in exchange for sharing use of the land was education.

Indigenous peoples saw how settler education was valuable in the world as it was evolving, and they wanted that for their children.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity

It went *horrifically* wrong.

From 1879 - *1996*, the Canadian government operated (and/or allowed the operation of, by churches) Indian Residential Schools.

(personal context: I graduated from high school in *1991*)

Residential Schools quickly became an effective tool of assimilation and genocide.

I will not detail the situation; accurate information is available via many Indigenous writers, and through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

My point is simply that until 1996 - five years after I graduated from high school - Indigenous people in the country currently known as Canada were* being ground down by a specific weighted blanket of genocidal policies, perpetrated down through the generations by the Cdn state.

* Many oppressive and genocidal policies still exist, but an entire generation of Indigenous children, and now *those* children's children - have now never spent a single day at Residential School.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #WetsuwetenStrong #ShutDownCanada #ClimateStrike

I have important gaps in my knowledge, but from what I understand, the 1996 report of the Royal Canadian Aboriginal Commission revealed to many non-Indigenous Cdns that Residential Schools had existed (or gave new info of what they had been & what they had done).

#ShutDownCanada

In 2005, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement was established for Residential School survivors, but survivors often insisted that financial compensation wasn't what would bring them justice.

From this insistence was born the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

#LandBack

From 2008 - 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission traveled across the country, listening to the testimony of Residential School survivors and their families.

#ShutDownCanada #FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike

Survivors wanted their stories recorded, and so their history would not be neither forgotten nor shelved, they wanted it integrated into the Canadian consciousness.

Including an integration into Cdn school curriculum.

#FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike #ShutDownCanada #Wetsuweten

And this is where I believe #WetsuwetenSolidarity meets the #FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike.

Because starting in 1996 with the RCAP, teachers (and parents) have slowly been learning more and more about the history of genocide in Canada.

#ShutDownCanada

At first, like back in 1996 with the RCAP, I don't think it was mandated that anything be taught in schools.

Genocide! oh my! our privileged children can't learn about *that*, they're too delicate and innocent!

#FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike #LandBack #ShutDownCanada

Some teachers and parents began to face the situation though, and tiny bits of information began to be offered to children in Canadian schools in addition to whatever some children happened to catch in fragments of news broadcasts they were bored by ;)

#ShutDownCanada #LandBack

All at the same exact moment that ZERO Indigenous children passed through the door of the (now former) Residential Schools.

NO Indigenous 5yr old who started kindergarten in 1996 went to kindergarten at a Residential School.

❤️

#LandBack #ShutDownCanada

These children - Indigenous and non-Indigenous - began to learn more and more bits of info with the passing of every yr, from teachers, parents, media.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #WetsuwetenStrong #ShutDownCanada
#FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike #LandBack

Bits of info even began to find their way into official curriculum (curriculum requirements in Canada are different from one province to the next, btw), even before the Truth & Reconciliation Commission wrapped up and released its recommendations in 2015.

#FridaysForFuture

By now, *some* information about Residential Schools and the truth of Canada's history is included in all school.

Some provinces do better than others, some schools do better than others, some *teachers* go above and beyond. ❤️

Some *parents* go above and beyond. ❤️

#LandBack

Some *churches* go above and beyond. ❤️

... but the thing about information is that it... cannot be contained anymore.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #WetsuwetenStrong #AllEyesOnWetsuweten #ShutDownCanada #LandBack

So beginning to face the truth about Residential Schools meant that all *sorts* of things regarding Canada's... interactions... with Indigenous peoples started to get talked about.

Started to get taught.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #ShutDownCanada #FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike

And so when the #IdleNoMore movement hit in 2013, with two generations of digitally fluent children becoming better and better educated about the history of Indigenous peoples in the country currently called Canada...

#LandBack #ClimateStrike #ShutDownCanada #Wetsuweten

... all of a sudden many people, both young and not-so-young, who hadn't previously put together the full extent of the colonial deception, began to suspect the overall narrative of the Canadian state might actually not be entirely truthful.

#IdleNoMore #ShutDownCanada

Because the narrative seemed to be telling us the sky was green, when we could clearly see that it was blue

And then the Delgamuukw and Tsilhqot'in verdicts (refresher: "Aboriginal title exists") were delivered

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #WetsuwetenStrong #IdleNoMore #ShutDownCanada

So now we have an increasingly informed Canadian public in a digital age, increasingly uneasy about our colonial origins.

And we have an Indigenous population, increasingly healing from intergenerational trauma, increasingly speaking out...

#IdleNoMore #ShutDownCanada

... increasingly claiming their space in what had mostly been settler spaces of art and literature and jurisprudence and music and government and business and education and journalism and science.

#IdleNoMore #ShutCanadaDown #WetsuwetenSoludarity #FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike

Ten years ago, some of the #Wetsuweten hereditary chiefs began fighting a pipeline that was to be built thru their territory.

The Delgamuukw decision?

That involves a Gitxsan claim.

The Gitxsan are the literal, actual neighbours of the Wet'suwet'en.

#ShutCanadaDown

So when the Supreme Court of Canada handed down the Delgamuukw/Tsilhqot'in decision about Aboriginal title in 2014, you gotta believe it had an impact on the #Wetsuweten hereditary chiefs' certainty that they could fight for their Yintah (traditional territory)

#LandBack

As an aside, the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs who "oppose" the CGL pipeline don't *oppose* the pipeline.

They oppose the route CGL is insisting upon.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #ShutCanadaDown #LandBack #AllEyesOnWetsuweten

The hereditary chiefs in opposition say the CGL route poses some unacceptable environmental risks to certain specific locations of the Yintah, as well as a cultural site they refuse to allow construction upon.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #WetsuwetenStrong #LandBack #ShutDownCanada

They proposed an alternate route, which CGL rejected as being too costly.

The hereditary chiefs refuse to back down, knowing the time may finally be at hand to assert their sovereignty.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #WetsuwetenStrong #ShutDownCanada #LandBack

CGL, a typical extractive industry corporation, knows the Cdn state, its economy dependent on natural resources it controls on stolen land, can usually find a way to allow them to maximize their profits if the only "issue" is some Indigenous ppl "kicking up a fuss".

#Wetsuweten

So CGL doesn't back down.

But the Supreme Court finding that Aboriginal title "exists", with the Delgamuukw and Tsilhqot'in verdicts, doesn't mean Canada automatically conducts a make-over to redress all the intl law & human rights we're violating.

Nope.

Instead, Indigenous Nations will need to bring what sounds like a generational legal effort to court, and slog through years of court cases (I've seen it said it might take decades, once started) - and they have to pay for it themselves.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #LandBack

Which is an overwhelming endeavour, when maybe your reservation can't even get a boil water advisory lifted.

So that effort hasn't begun yet, never mind possibly be resolved in the timeframe of the RCMP invading #Wetsuweten territory.

#ShutCanadaDown #LandBack

Another aside, which is not AT ALL an aside for the Wet'suwet'en, is how Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls fits into this story.

I feel like I didn't get all of what I was wanting to say across in this thread -

#MMIWG #WetsuwetenSolidarity

https://twitter.com/Beccabluesky/status/1230621012032675846?s=19

The Highway of Tears & #MMIWG affects both sides of the pipeline issue in Wet'suwet'en

Those who *are* anti-pipeline (not just opposing the intended route) may also be unwilling to incur the statistically increased incidence of violence that extractive industry projects bring.

While those who support the pipeline, or who would support the pipeline if CGL would agree to the alternate route that's been proposed, may be certain that the economic opportunities the pipeline will bring will help alleviate the incidence of #MMWG along the Highway of Tears.

After all, the horrific situation of #MMIWG along the Highway of Tears happens in part because of the need for people to move between various communities where their relatives live and work, and go to medical appts, etc...

#ShutCanadaDown #LandBack

... with insufficiently accessible/affordable/frequent public transit and insufficient access to personal vehicle ownership.

With that being said, let's pay some silent respects to the missing & murdered, and the wounded families & communities left behind, before continuing.

💔

💔

Ok, so having sent our thoughts to those who've gone missing or were murdered along the Highway of Tears, and the families and communities there with holes torn thru them, let's return to the #ShutCanadaDown actions.

#LandBack

Why are Indigenous ppl all across the country currently known as Canada making this clearly HUGE big deal about this? CGL's pipeline doesn't go anywhere near their territories

It's not even a tarsands project; it's nat gas destined for the Kitimat BC liquified nat gas facility.

As an actual dyed-in-the-wool, anti-pipeline, #KeepItInTheGround person, let me assure you - almost NO ONE outside of the physical communities they exist in makes a big deal about nat gas pipelines.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #ShutDownCanada
#WetsuwetenStrong #LandBack #ClimateStrike

Never mind a natural gas pipeline running thru a fairly remote-ish Indigenous community no one seems to be sure of how to pronounce.

(wet-SO-wetten, as an approximation, fyi. Land heavy on the "SO".)

#ShutDownCanada
#WetsuwetenSolidarity #WetsuwetenStrong #LandBack

Like, sure, absolutely - the public consciousness is *finally* swinging around to at least examine some of the choices we need to make, find of the changes that *must* happen, in regards to #ClimateChange...

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #ShutDownCanada

.. but here in Canada, where our winters absolutely require significant heating of buildings...

... grappling with the problem of natural gas use is almost a taboo subject.

#ClimateEmergency #WetsuwetenStrong #decarbonize #1o5C #ClimateStrike #FridaysForFuture #ClimateJustice

Much like the colonial deception of state authority in Canada, transitioning off Nat gas heating is something more people are starting to realise we need to resolve... but barely anyone speaks about it aloud, if they even allow the initial thought to complete itself.

#Wetsuweten

My comprehension of what's happening is this:

No Indigenous community within the aspirational borders of the country currently known as Canada can let that CGL pipeline be built against the will of the traditional governance of the #Wetsuweten.

#ShutDownCanada #LandBack

Not with the geographically/culturally/legally relevant verdicts of Delgamuukw and Tsilhqot'in still unfinished (in terms of those possibly decades-long battles yet to be fought) in the courts.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #WetsuwetenStrong
#ShutDownCanada
#LandBack #IdleNoMore

Part of what the Delgamuukw or Tsilhqot'in case ruled was that Aboriginal title existed in part cuz the genocidal Canadian state occupation of Gitxsan territory had never managed to stamp out, completely, their structures of trad gov't

#WetsuwetenStrong #ShutDownCanada #LandBack

If Indigenous people* don't stand up to #ShutDownCanada right now, to support #Wetsuweten hereditary chiefs who oppose the pipeline...

* non-Indig allies need to stand up right now too, but in this tweet I'm talking about those with claims to actual *sovereignty* - Indig ppl.

... if the authoritarian Canadian state, desperately trying to find a way to continue to control land use rights to profit from resource extraction on stolen land, is able to get the CGL pipeline built...

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #ShutDownCanada #LandBack #AllEyesOnWetsuweten

... those are legal precedents.

And in settler Court, legal precedents matter.

And Indigenous people trying to regain some semblance of (or full) sovereignty from the colonial State, are already working from a deficit in settler Court:

#WetsuwetenStrong #LandBack

A major challenge to the Court's ruling that, say, the Wet'suwet'en are sovereign, is the possibility that the Court may not actually be able to legally rule that Canada isn't real.

Like, *no matter* what logic or evidence says, if in so ruling, it would "un-make" Canada.

I have ZERO expertise in legal and constitutional stuff.

So please, look into that for yourselves & listen to folks who know their stuff, versus me.

That's merely what I've pieced together from reading & listening.

#LandBack #WetsuwetenStrong #ShutDownCanada

So Indigenous Nations hoping to force the transformation of the currently-authoritarian Canadian state, by means of the settler Court system, will need all the help they can get.

#WetsuwetenSoludarity #WetsuwetenStrong
#LandBack #ShutDownCanada

And that means: Indigenous peoples from coast to coast to coast will #ShutDownCanada in #WetsuwetenSolidarity actions.

And I don't think they're going to back down.

It's time.

#IdleNoMore #WetsuwetenStrong #LandBack #AllEyesOnWetsuweten

It's time because #IdleNoMore taught millennial Indigenous kids, & non-Indig kids, about #Oka.

It's time because those Indig millennials & their younger siblings and cousins are healing the world, even tho the world has no right to expect that of them.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity

It's time because the non-Indig millennial kids and their younger siblings and cousins brought all those questions and conversations back to their own families' dinner tables.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #WetsuwetenStrong #IdleNoMore #ShutDownCanada #LandBack #AllEyesOnWetsuweten

It's time because @SenSincmurr led this abusive, dysfunctional, fictional country - so carefully, so firmly, so resolutely - thru the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to give Residential School survivors some semblance of peace.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #WetsuwetenStrong

It's time because Elijah Harper said NO to the Charlottetown Accord constitutional talks, & then Canada figured they could just stick their fingers in their ears and shout LALALALALA, I CAN'T HEAR YOUUU believing no one would care about human rights when it came to Indig people.

It's time because CLIMATE STRIKERS - young *preteen* and teenage ZOOMERS, whether Indigenous or non-Indigenous - understand instinctively; understand better than WE do that

This

Cannot

Stand.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #WetsuwetenStrong #ShutDownCanada #LandBack #IdleNoMore

It's time because the current generations increasingly want no part of complicity in human rights abuses and petrostate control over human lives.

Even if it means their own lives will have to change.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #ShutDownCanada #LandBack #ClimateStrike #ClimateJustice

They all see, so CLEARLY, the connections.

How any wealth and power Canada has in the world comes from the ongoing authoritarian control over stolen land for the purposes of profits from resource extraction.

#FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike #ShutDownCanada #WetsuwetenSolidarity

How Canada *must* exert that control to generate the profits that keep it afloat on the global stage.

Even to the point of using violence to enforce their control.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #AllEyesOnWetsuweten #ShutDownCanada #ClimateStrike #1o5C #LandBack #WetsuwetenStrong

How the exertion of that power feeds into the #ClimateEmergency, and how it will be impossible under the status quo for Canada to do anything but *continue* to feed into the climate emergency.

#ClimateStrike #ShutDownCanada #WetsuwetenSolidarity #LandBack #1o5C #ClimateJustice

How the #ClimateEmergency impacts frontline communities first, and hardest, when they have often done the least to cause the problem and often have the least ability to take measures to protect themselves or recover.

#FridaysForFuture #ShutDownCanada #WetsuwetenSolidarity

In Canada that means Indigenous people, whose traditional foods (a right guaranteed by Treaty, btw), are under threat by resource extraction projects and climate pressures on ecosystems;

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #WetsuwetenStrong #Biodiversity #FoodSecurity #ClimateEmergency #1o5C

... Indigenous communities whose transportation by winter roads is under threat, whose homes are under threat by fire and flood and landslide and sea level rise and permafrost slump.

#ClimateEmergency #ClimateJustice #HumanRights #WetsuwetenSolidarity #ShutDownCanada #LandBack

How while the fates we're dictating to Indigenous peoples here in the country currently known as Canada look different than those we're dictating to the Small Pacific Island States,

it's all genocide.

At our hands.

For our affluence.

#ShutCanadaDown #ClimateStrike #LandBack

You cannot unsee this.

It's time.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #WetsuwetenStrong #ShutDownCanada #LandBack #AllEyesOnWetsuweten

So I dropped what I was doing when I heard Indigenous youth and their allies in Winnipeg had occupied and locked down at Minister of Northern Affairs @stbstvdan Dan Vandal's constituency office - my MP - earlier this month, in #WetsuwetenSolidarity, to #ShutDownCanada.

& when I got there I found an incredible assortment of youth, including many familiar faces from last yr's grade 12 #ClimateStrike-rs & *this* yr's gr 12 Climate Strikers (Winnipeg's @FFFCanada org, @mbyouth4climate).

Quietly & resolutely standing as allies to Indigenous youth.

I met youth from Camp Morningstar, at Hollow Water First Nation on the East shore of Lake Winnipeg, where some members oppose a proposed fracking sand mine that will destroy cultural sites & harm the ecosystem (& ppl's health).

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #ClimateEmergency #LandBack

That sand, mined at Hollow Water?

Some of it will be used in fracking operations that will feed into the CGL pipeline the #Wetsuweten hereditary chiefs are refusing to allow to be built

That the Canadian state is sending in militarized RCMP for

The youth see.

#ShutDownCanada

And Canada's natural gas production?

A full TWENTY-FIVE percent of all of it ends up being used by tarsands operations.

Which impact other Indigenous Nations.

And all of it impacting us all, sooner or later, as it is burnt.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #ShutDownCanada #ClimateCrisis

The youth see.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #WetsuwetenStrong #ShutDownCanada #LandBack #ClimateJustice #FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike #1o5C

And when, after the MP Vandal occupation was over, I heard a different group of Indigenous folks (adults this time) were disrupting the rail in southern Manitoba, I got in my car and drove out to support, where "this* all happened.

#WetsuwetenSolidarity

https://twitter.com/Beccabluesky/status/1229544235503902720?s=19

You cannot unsee.

It's time.

The colonial fiction must enter into right relationship with the original peoples of this land.

No more delusions.

You cannot unsee.

It's *time*.

/End

#WetsuwetenSolidarity #WetsuwetenStrong #ShutDownCanada #LandBack #ClimateJustice