STIRLING: Sorry no more — why Canada must reconsider UNDRIP, reconciliation, and resource development

In a March 27 op-ed in the Winnipeg Free Press, Niigaan Sinclair argues that “Spying on Indigenous peoples fuels mistrust, threatens Canada’s economy and society.” He is shocked and dismayed that CSIS spied on “peaceful Indigenous protesters and community environmental organizations that opposed the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project. They include the Dogwood Initiative, ForestEthics (now Stand.earth), Sierra Club BC, Leadnow.ca, and the #IdleNoMore movement.”Perhaps he has never heard of the approximately 30-year-long, multi-billion-dollar, foreign-funded Tar Sands Campaign that provided strategy and financial support to many of these groups, with the ultimate goal of landlocking Alberta’s oil sands and shutting down this source of oil.Sinclair’s comments support a “cargo cult worldview” of Canada. Just as native islanders, awed by the magical appearance of airplanes filled with “cargo” then built grass and bamboo replicas of the same, hoping for a miraculous new delivery of goods, so Sinclair seems to think Canada’s economy and the multi-billion-dollar payouts to First Nations come from thin air. Getting “land back” doesn’t bring “cargo” prosperity if property rights and associated legal frameworks are filled with uncertainty.Most Canadians are blissfully unaware of the numbers involved in funding for indigenous groups. We see endless stories of the abject poverty that most indigenous people live in, on Indian reserves in Canada. But billions of dollars are being paid out to an elite layer — where is this money going? Payouts to indigenous groups, like those collated from government data by “The Reclamare,” will soon hit the wall..If anything “fuels mistrust, threatens Canada’s economy and society,” it was and still is the Tar Sands Campaign, which includes an alliance between environmental groups and indigenous groups. The Hub has estimated that over $670 billion in oil and gas projects have been sidelined or cancelled since former prime minister Justin Trudeau was elected.According to a collection of Oak Foundation grants, the tanker ban on Canada’s West Coast was the result of foreign funding for an enviro-law ‘charity,’ plus joint action with various First Nations groups. This is what is keeping Alberta’s oil from world markets.Sinclair mentions “peaceful protests” and “grandmothers” in his piece, but he doesn’t seem to remember #ShutDownCanada protests of Feb. 2020, wherein indigenous activists and allies violently blocked road and rail transportation for weeks, nearly bringing Canada’s economy to its knees. And it certainly wasn’t peaceful grandmothers who perpetrated the professional domestic terror attack on the Coastal Gas Link pipeline work camp in 2022, that’s still unsolved.This is economic warfare against Canada over oil and gas resources, our economy, and national security!Now, with the Strait of Hormuz oil/LNG blockade, the world realizes oil and gas are vitally important to the operation of modern society. A missed opportunity for Canada, thanks to Tar Sands Blockadia. And who is first to oppose Alberta’s proposed pipeline to the West Coast? Coastal First Nations — an activist group with no official standing..Curiously, in Niigaan Sinclair’s op-ed denouncing CSIS and the RCMP, there is no reference to the recent news about the surveillance of George Manuel, which included insider reporting described as ‘betrayal’ by CBC. Betrayal of who? Does CBC stand for radicals or for Canada?In the early days of the National Indian Brotherhood (NIB) (aka now the Assembly of First Nations), they were closely allied with the radical Black Panther movement in the USA. J. Edgar Hoover called the often-violent Black Panthers a threat to US security, stating they were, “Schooled in the Marxist-Leninist ideology and the teachings of Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung…”In 1967, the Native Alliance for Red Power (NARP) was established in Vancouver. They were closely allied with the Black Power movement, according to Glenn Sean Coulthard’s introduction to George Manuel’s book “The Fourth World — An Indian Reality.”This alliance occurred at a time when the urban guerrilla, anti-colonial Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ), who shared Marxist-Communist ideological affiliation with Cuba and Algeria, had perpetrated more than 200 acts of violence and robberies (between 1963 and 1970), leaving six people dead, ultimately leading to the FLQ crisis and the War Measures Act.It is curious that in the midst of this crisis, Canada established diplomatic relationships with China on October 13, 1970. Pierre Elliot Trudeau, then prime minister, had taken a China-sponsored trip to China in 1960, as recorded by Quebec journalist Jacques Hebert in “Two Innocents in Red China.” This carefully conducted tour occurred during the “Great Leap Forward.” The grisly details are recorded in “Tombstone” by Yang Jisheng..NARP copied most of the Black Panther’s ideological pillars. Several NARP members went to China in 1975, issuing a press release in advance of their trip that claimed that absolute obeisance by the Chinese to Mao was a myth, and they hoped to find out how China treated minorities. China had just genocided 36 million of its own people through the famine caused by the Great Leap Forward.It is interesting to note that in today’s Canada, “struggle sessions” against those who question residential schools as “genocide,” or who ask for evidence of the Kamloops Indian Band’s claim of ‘215’ children’s bodies found in the orchard, the attacks mirror Maoist Great Leap era struggle sessions in methodology, language, and physicality.It is clear now that the Kamloops claim is responsible for the passing of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) through the Senate (which had filibustered its passing in a previous effort). UNDRIP led to the Cowichan ruling. Just read Article 26 if you have any questions.George Manuel and the NIB (today’s AFN) developed a position paper on Aboriginal title back in the day.At the time, Jean Chrétien, then Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, along with his indigenous parliamentary secretary Len Marchand (a Kamloops Indian Residential School graduate), rejected the paper..George Manuel saw Chrétien’s rejection as fear-mongering and ‘spurious.’ Chrétien commented that “whole cities in British Columbia might be found to be on land that was not Canadian.”Returning to Niigaan Sinclair’s premise that CSIS and RCMP surveillance of indigenous groups over the years “fuels mistrust, threatens Canada’s economy and society,” it is clear that just surveillance wasn’t enough.Millions of property owners in British Columbia now find that the land and properties they have paid for “might be found to be on land that was not Canadian,” which, I daresay, “fuels mistrust, threatens Canada’s economy and society.” How can they trust a system where the Cowichan case was going through the courts for a decade, but the parties involved decided not to inform property owners because … they might object.Canada’s economy is collapsing; university students berate and abuse once-honoured academics like Frances Widdowson in Maoist struggle sessions, and millions of property owners mistrust their governments, judicial authorities, and indigenous activist groups.Reconciliation equals wreck-a-silly nation. UNDRIP was passed through the Senate on a false pretext — it must be repealed. And we must be Sorry No More.

STIRLING: Sorry no more — why Canada must reconsider UNDRIP, reconciliation, and resource development

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