Environmental Justice Struggles in Canada: Asubpeeschoseewagong (“Grassy Narrows”) First Nation

Barker, J. (2008). Gender, Sovereignty, Rights: Native Women's Activism against Social Inequality and Violence in Canada. American Quarterly, 60(2), 8. Retrieved fro m http://search.Proquest.com.Ez proxy.library.yorku.ca/docview/61688929?Acc ountid=15182.

Throughout history, the Native people of North America and the Europeans have continually had arguments and disputes over land. To this day there are still issues trying to be resolved. Twenty years ago, the beginning of one of the most violent and intense land disputes in present day Canada occurred. This event is now referred to as the Oka Crisis, named after the town Oka in Quebec. This crisis caused a confrontation involving the Quebec provincial police, the Canadian armed forces and the Mohawk people.1 The stand that the Mohawk people took in the town of Oka became a major revelation for the aboriginal people spreading awareness of aboriginal rights across Canada.

Encouraged by diverse foundations from across the globe, The Environmental Justice movement has become one of the most important topics in the media. Europeans have used Marxist philosophy on class laddering, while non-Western countries required its encouragement in the criticism of colonialism. In the United States, The Civil Rights Movement was its forerunner. The notion of “Environmental Justice”, nevertheless, has its genesis in the resistance of black culture and lower income-communities in opposition to uneven ecological trouble in the United States during the last few years of the 1970s and the early 1980s. In the framework of racial improvement and public activism, the phrase was

In 1976 the Fraser government passed the Aboriginal Land Rights Act. Several state governments passed their own Land Rights Acts, which recognised aboriginal and Torres Strait islander claims to land and guaranteed them royalty payments from mining companies working there. Some laws enforced by the government became challenging for most indigenous people to abide by. Through the analysis of this information we understand the impacts the government and its laws had towards the indigenous society of

Even though Canada is holds the 2nd position from all nations for its tolerance and inclusion, Canada has a more atrocious racism problem than the US. In comparison to the African-American population, the Aboriginal population is treated worse with bountiful hardships, obscene education and bad living conditions (). Nearly all measurable indicators of the Aboriginals are worse than the African-American population including the unemployment rate (). Additionally, Canada fails to supply the Aboriginals with health care especially when Aboriginals have dreadful health issues (). Overall, Canada faces a racial and appalling crisis in its hands when it comes to the circumstances involving Canada’s native people. The last feature that I am not proud of in Canada is its environment. Canada is practically dead last when it involves environmental protection (). Even though Canada has some greenbelts and parks for wildlife and biodiversity, in large amounts of Canada the wildlife habitats and ecosystems are not preserved and nothing is done to prevent species at the risk of

Although the Canadian government has done a great deal to repair the injustices inflicted on the First Nations people of Canada, legislation is no where near where it needs to be to ensure future protection of aboriginal rights in the nation. An examination of the documents that comprise the Canadian Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms reveal that there is very little in the supreme legal documents of the nation that protect aboriginal rights. When compared with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples it is clear that the Canadian Constitution does not acknowledge numerous provisions regarding indigenous people that the UN resolution has included. The most important of these provisions is the

For the decades the first nation peoples are not being treated properly. Whether in terms of signing treaties or getting compensation of using their water from shoal lake 40. The Canadian government has carried out against Indigenous people, their land and their water as well. A centaury ago when the demand for water was increasing in Winnipeg city because of growing population , the federal government forcefully captured their reserve land on shoal lake 40 in order to construct aquaduct which is used to carry water extracted from shoal lake into the Winnipeg city. The federal government did not think about the consequences the first nation people will face who actually depend on shoal lake for their survival. T

Here the authors address an important solution; allow residents to hire their own experts from the community who are well versed in delivering the proponents message to the residents in a manner that does not exclude anyone from the process. The landfill began operating in 2006, as the proponents deemed there was not any substantive opposition to the project through official Environmental Impact Assessment (Deacon & Baxter, 2013). Deacon and Baxter in this case set out to understand the role and relation between power and participation as it relates to procedural environmental justice in order to challenge understanding of environmental justice and cease production and reproduction of environmental injustice. The residents protested as they felt they were being sacrificed for economic growth, “the landfill has become a symbol of the slow decline of the community of Lincolnville” (Race and Waste in Nova Scotia, 2006). They call this environmental racism, which is the racial discrimination in the enforcement of environmental rules and regulations, targeting minority communities for the siting of polluting industries or the exclusion of people of color from public and private boards, commissions and regulatory bodies (Race and Waste in Nova Scotia,

These ‘White Papers’ focused on the social and economic problems that were rampant within the First Nation communities and was considered to be humane because of the fact that Native peoples were integrated within mainstream society [pp.6]. These problems were ‘highlighted’ through the result of various studies conducted by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development from 1966 to 1969 and became the basis of the ‘White Paper’. Although the paper was ultimately defeated, these beliefs were brought into mainstream society and became a more idolized form of modernizing the Aboriginal peoples. This form of ‘helping’ the First Nations peoples was the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development [D.I.A.N.D] way of dissolving the First Nations reservations. These institutionalized ideologies were masked as social and economic reforms that addressed the First Nation communities [pp.5-6]. Such reforms include the state of welfare on First Nation communities, re-educating the youth, and the identification of a First Nations person according to the government, which also includes the apology that Prime Minister Harper spoke on June 11th, 2008. These ideals have become the driving force behind the United Nation’s ‘Universal Declaration of Indigenous Rights’. This declaration has yet to be signed by Canada for a variety of reasons, one of them being that it is in direct violation of Article 25, which is a right to social services and health

Throughout history, First Nations rights and privileges has been a highly controversial subject in Canada, and remains a debatable topic in society, even in the present-day. Whether it has been the controversies surrounding the missing and murdered Indigenous women or the funding of First Nation’s education, concrete results have yet to be achieved. Consequently, the above forces have delayed the restorative process for the First Nations People. That said, the Canadian Government, whether it is the Conservatives or the Liberals, have attempted to take an active approach to aid the Aboriginal community in their healing process. While the Conservative government failed to address the concerns of the First Nations community such as launching a public inquiry for the missing and murdered Indigenous women and raising funds to increase the literacy rate within the Aboriginal community, the Liberal government has acted in accordance with the above requests from the First Nations community. Although the Liberal government has agreed to provide proper funding to further Indigenous education and to launch a public inquiry for missing and murdered Indigenous women, the federal government has failed to acknowledge that to achieve a sense of reconciliation, the First Nations community requires complete self-government.

The First Nations people of Canada have a long list of treaty rights, as well as many undefined aboriginal rights, from their right to hunt and fish on their land to housing and annuities. However, it’s not all gift-giving and sunshine; while the government of Canada is supposed to respect their rights to hunt on their land and the right to hold title to their land, there are many disputes such as the Ron Sparrow case and the Oka Crisis that show that the Aboriginal peoples’ inherent rights are not always respected, with cases such as that of Don Marshall that show that the government might not exactly be on the First Nation’s side.

The reading of “Defending the Land: Sovereignty and Forest life in James Bay Cree Society” by Ronald Niezan is a great reading. Mr. Niezan illustrates how Cree people live and what they still currently do to protect their land and religion. This book also allows us to understand that people will try to take what they can’t have because that’s exactly what Canada’s government tries to accomplish with new construction projects and other

This could apply to Enbridge through their choice to engage with Native American advocates but weakening the arguments by maintaining control over the medium and format of that engagement. While this isn’t an equitable strategy, nor one that would solve the controversy, it elucidates the problem for Enbridge on both sides. By refusing to engage with dissent, Enbridge weakens their own argument for the pipeline while strengthening the unity and potency of the opposition’s arguments. Finally, Phaedra Pezzulo examines how Native American advocates and environmental justice advocates alike subvert existing power structures to assert their arguments. In reference to the emergence of the Environmental Justice Movement within Warren County, NC, Pezzulo cites the theory of critical interruptions. Essentially, through the case study of corporations discarding toxic waste in a low-income mostly black community, this article observes the importance of narratives within environmental discourse. Pezzulo identifies the importance of narratives constructed by either the Environmental Justice movement as a whole or of the state

The substance of this paper will be to discuss the discourse regarding the inequalities facing aboriginal peoples living on reserves in the northwestern corner of Ontario. Inequality is not naturally occurring; poverty is not an innate cultural trait that accumulates at the feet of the marginalized (Schick & St.Denis, 2005, p.304). Stephens, Nettleton and Porter stated in the Lancet (2005) “Aboriginal people in Canada suffer enormous inequalities in health and in accessibility to health

Myeengun Henry, who serves as the manager of Aboriginal Services for Conestoga College in Kitchener, Ontario. Myeengun was an interesting individual as he mentioned his active participation in many environmental projects such as trees for life and Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline. Much of the environmental activism that Myeengun participates in involves and an improvement in the human contact and spiritual relationships between first nations and the environment (Henry, 2016, Lecture). Human health is vulnerable to disturbances in the ecosystem which was noted through Myeengun’s attempts to promote the devastating impact that could happen if Line 9 were to burst. To see an individual so inspired about an issue and take it to court and fight for justice for his community and their surrounding environment engaged my knowledge of the environment greatly. It engaged my learning and how looking after environmental issues that pertain to our community has the ability to bring individuals together and conduct forms of resistance that can be transferred through future generations (Henry, 2016, Lecture).