Just over two weeks ago, Roméo Saganash, a Cree NDP Member of Parliament (MP), stirred up controversy by severely criticizing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s insistence on the construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline as proof that “he doesn’t give a fuck about their rights.”
It certainly looks that way—Trudeau’s commitment to passing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into full domestic force evaporated early on. Trudeau nixed the possibility of these rights being formalized into section 35 and thus constitutionally protected, despite a spike in anti-Indigenous public sentiment and violent incidents, such as the deaths of Colten Boushie and Jon Styres, and cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
Among these is the right to free, prior, and informed consent to developments concerning Indigenous communities and their traditional territories. Trudeau’s proposed legal framework concerning Indigenous peoples has been questioned by Indigenous nationalists as yet another attempt at societal assimilation and dilution of sovereignty, in the same vein of his father’s infamous 1969 White Paper, which purported to abolish reserves and Indian Status, and assimilate Indigenous peoples into Canadian society.
However, no conflict has galvanized Indigenous and environmentalist interaction with the government in recent years quite like the proposed addition of a second pipeline to the Trans Mountain pipeline system in British Columbia. The addition would expand the pipeline’s 300,000 barrels per day to over 890,000 per day. With four large spills—82 in total since 1961—activists were understandably concerned about the potential environmental destruction Trans Mountain could wreak.
After all, bitumen would be passing to the pipeline’s terminus via the Juan de Fuca Strait. The Strait is a precarious, unique, and highly biodiverse environmental area sacred to Coast Salish nations that has already suffered from high commercial traffic and is particularly spill-prone due to its narrow, shallow navigable area.
In spite of seven federal court challenges from municipalities, the provincial government, First Nations, and a long-lasting protest movement leading to many arrests, Canada found it easy to cough up $4.5 billion to buy the pipeline expansion where the area’s grassroots stakeholders are vehemently opposed.
In addition, the federal government promised to indemnify future owners of the pipeline for any losses incurred by provincial or federal challenges and delays. However, it inexplicably cannot seem to find a quarter of that sum needed to ensure clean drinking water on all First Nations reserves.
This country’s discussion of the rights of Indigenous peoples are always placed under a colonial veil. As is evident with the Trans Mountain pipeline, the consent of Indigenous people to development is but an afterthought, that are only consulted to rubber stamp the will of a concocted majority.
The legal precept of Indigenous communities as sovereign and equal nations as per the treaties upon which this country is built, is never realized. Trudeau’s threats to use both his legislative mandate and “the rule of law” to circumvent further Indigenous protests and a federal court judgment thus seem hypocritical and legally empty.
If Trudeau is interested in upholding the rule of law and acting on his ostensibly feminist rhetoric, why does he refuse to acknowledge the right of First Nations people to consent, irrespective of settler whims?
The Trans Mountain pipeline fiasco seems to conclusively prove what has always been true to the marginalized—Indigenous peoples and average citizens defending their unceded territories and environments will always come second to pleasing corporate interests.
Photo by Jasmine Foong
