The speech Alberta Premier Rachel Notley gave to over 1,000 federal NDP delegates on Saturday in Edmonton’s Shaw Convention Centre was a stunning thing to behold.

In a mere half-hour, she received around a dozen standing ovations, cracked a pretty solid joke about Donald Trump and delivered a unabashed appeal for the approval and construction of pipelines “that are built by Canadians, using Canadian steel.”

But even more stunning was the fact that she completely failed to mention the rights or interests of First Nations, Métis and Inuit people.

Oil and Gas Industry Currently Critical to Alberta Economy

The Alberta government clearly has a reason for wanting to facilitate the export of more oil and gas via the proposed TransCanada Energy East and Kinder Morgan Trans-Mountain pipelines.

In 2014, energy products accounted for one-quarter of the province’s GDP and three-quarters of its exports. The global oil price has since plummeted by two-thirds, resulting in a projected provincial deficit of over $10 billion.

Notley emphasized in her speech that “hundreds of thousands of Canadians work in resource industries — here and across Canada” and “we need to be able to get the best possible world price for the oil we produce here” via “pipelines to tidewater that allows us to diversify our markets and upgrade our products.”

Alberta NDP Pledged to Implement UNDRIP, “Ensure Respectful Consultation”

Those are very nice ideas, supported by many political pundits and Alberta NDP supporters.

But unfortunately for such boosters, the NDP committed in its election platform to implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and to “work with Alberta Indigenous Peoples to build a relationship of trust and ensure respectful consultation.”

Article 32 of the declaration states that “Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or territories.”

And free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) underpins much of the document, requiring that Indigenous peoples are consulted with in a way that ensures a process free of manipulation, conducted well in advance and with plenty of information provided.

Eriel Deranger, communications manager of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) suggests the NDP’s push for the development of pipelines and oil and gas resources simply doesn’t respect the principle of free, prior and informed consent.

“Where’s the consent?” asks Deranger. “If communities want to say ‘no,’ then we’re talking about a government that’s willing to respect communities’ right to say ‘no’ and to uphold that right,” she says.

Many First Nations Oppose Energy East and Trans Mountain Expansion

Many First Nations and other Indigenous groups have voiced opposition to Energy East and the Trans Mountain expansion (the two projects considered most likely to be approved and constructed).

The Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam nations and Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs are explicitly opposed to Trans Mountain, while the entire Iroquois caucus, Wolastoq Grand Council and Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs have united in resistance to Energy East.

A letter sent by Mohawk Kanesatake Grand Chief Serge Simon to Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard in early March stated: “The Mohawk Council of Kanesatake as well as the rest of the Iroquois caucus has made its choice. Other First Nations are making the same choice.”

Mike Hudema, climate energy campaigner at Greenpeace Canada, says: “Not only have First Nations not given their consent but they have said very strongly that they don’t want these pipelines going through their traditional territory.”

Federal Government Positioning to Implement Pipeline Strategy

On Monday, the National Post’s John Ivison reported (while vaguely citing “people with knowledge of the matter”) that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has instructed cabinet ministers to prepare a pipeline strategy to “make Energy East and Trans Mountain expansion in British Columbia a reality.”

The federal government has also pledged to implement UNDRIP, as well as all 94 calls to action contained in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The TRC also emphasizes the concept of free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous peoples “before proceeding with economic development projects” and the requirement of “recognition and integration of Indigenous laws and legal traditions in negotiation and implementation processes involving Treaties, land claims, and other constructive agreements.”

Many First Nations Desire Co-management of Resource Development

Deranger emphasizes that First Nations communities are not anti-development: “There’s this really, really antiquated notion that if you give First Nations the right to say ‘no’ we’re going to end up back in teepees and sending smoke signals or something really ridiculous,” she jokes.

Rather, she says First Nations are asking for co-management of resource development, something that has been done in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Northern Quebec and Manitoba (ACFN has been petitioning for a similar arrangement for 20 years).

“Co-management is not asking for everything,” she says. “It’s asking to be partners. Our ancestors signed our treaty agreements believing that we were signing nation-to-nation agreements, to be given equal say in the development of our lands and territories.”

There has been no public indication that such conversations are on the radar of the provincial or federal government.

Alberta’s Push for Pipelines “Flies in the Face of These Commitments”

After all, truly engaging with documents like UNDRIP and the TRC would require a complete overhaul of how development is conducted, could potentially pose a threat to corporate profits and prove difficult to explain to voters.

But the Alberta NDP perhaps shouldn’t have promised to implement such policies if it just wanted to continue rapid oilsands development in Treaty 8 territory and ram pipelines through other sovereign territories without ensuring free, prior and informed consent beforehand.

“I do think the Alberta government pushing so hard for pipelines really flies in the face of these commitments,” Hudema says. “A lot of First Nations communities are looking to see how the government deals with this situation to know how serious the government really is to its commitments to First Nations people.”

Image: Premier Rachel Notley holds a sign in support of the Energy East pipeline. Photo: Premier of Alberta/Flickr.

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Residential school survivors, their families, indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians alike packed the ballroom of the Delta Ottawa hotel on Tuesday for the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's (TRC) monumental report on 130 years of ‘Indian’ residential schools in Canada. 

“The eyes of the world and the gaze of history is upon us. What we do now and in the years ahead matters a great deal,” the commission’s chair, Justice Murray Sinclair, said during the report’s launch.

Six years of research and thousands of survivor testimonies led Sinclair and fellow commissioners Dr. Marie Wilson and Chief Wilton Littlechild to conclude residential schools were central to a century-long Canadian government indigenous policy that “can best be described as 'cultural genocide.'”

Beginning in the 1880s, more than 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children were removed from their families and forced into state-run and church-run schools where physical, emotional and sexual abuse was rampant and indigenous languages and cultural practices banned. The last school closed in 1996.

“There are words, stories, medicines that have been lost forever. We don’t even know the extent of what we lost and we’ll likely never know,” indigenous lawyer Caleb Behn said. Behn is Eh Cho Dene and Dunne-Za/Cree from Treaty 8 territory in northern British Columbia.

The commission’s report documents the crimes perpetuated against the children of residential schools and provides recommendations on how Canada can deal with the legacy of a racist policy designed to “kill the Indian in the child.”

“What the TRC has done is brought out the stories of survivors and awoken something deep and profound in our elders and our young people,” indigenous rights and oilssands campaigner Clayton Thomas-Muller told DeSmog Canada. Muller is a member of the Missinipi Ethinewak  (Big River Cree) in Manitoba.

The commission’s recommendations, 94 in total, are broad in scope and are intended to close the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians. If implemented by the federal government, the recommendations would bring changes to key policy areas such as education, healthcare and justice.

The recommendations could also change business-as-usual in the energy sector.

“There can be no true reconciliation until the fight for land and resources is resolved,” said Crystal Lameman, treaty co-ordinator and tarsands communications manager for the Amisk Sakahikan Nehiyaw or Beaver Lake Cree Nation in Alberta.

“Until then, we will never have true reconciliation or a relationship with Canada based on peace, friendship and sharing as outlined in the treaties,” Lameman told DeSmog Canada.

Implement UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights: Commission's Recommendation

The commission’s report makes multiple references to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and recommends the internationally recognized document be the “framework” for reconciliation in Canada:

“The Commission therefore believes that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is the appropriate framework for reconciliation in twenty-first-century Canada. Studying the Declaration with a view to identifying its impacts on current government laws, policy, and behaviour would enable Canada to develop a holistic vision of reconciliation that embraces all aspects of the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians, and to set the standard for international achievement in its circle of hesitating nations.” (pages 243 -244 of the executive summary)

Canada was one of four countries to vote against the declaration in 2007 at the United Nations. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government had and has concerns the founding concept in the declaration of ‘free, prior and informed consent’ (FPIC) will undermine Canada’s sovereignty and ability to extract resources. 

“When does FPIC matter? Consent is an absolute necessity in a free and just society. We are not asking for the world here,” Behn said.

The declaration requires its signatories to obtain the free and informed consent of indigenous peoples “prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories.” This notion alone could throw a wrench into the Harper government’s plans on transforming Canada into an oil and gas “energy superpower.”

States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources. (Article 32(2) of UNDRIP)

Canada eventually signed the declaration in 2010, but has not made free, prior and informed consent part of federal policy. A private member’s bill by the NDP for implementing the declaration was voted down last month in Parliament.

Resource Extraction: “You Can’t Address Abuse While Abusing”

“Residential schools violated our bodies and souls. Inappropriate resource development violates our land and culture,” Behn told DeSmog Canada. 

“You can’t address abuse while abusing. You cannot address injustice while perpetrating injustice.”

Behn’s home in northeastern British Columbia is at the centre of the gas fracking bonanza featured in the documentary Fractured Land.

If there is one glaring common dominator between the crimes committed against the children of residential schools and the growing number of legal challenges mounted by Canada’s indigenous people against pipelines, mines and oil and gas developments, it is the lack of consent.

“Part of the colonial conquest and Canada's Indian Act was an attempt to eradicate the family, the most powerful element of indigenous worldview and cosmology,” Muller explains.

“Breaking up families to get indigenous peoples off the land were all part of this exploitation, and is the fundamental foundation of the current Canadian economic model.”

“Every Single Molecule of Us is Connected to the Land”

The Beaver Lake Cree Nation of Treaty 6 is locked in a major lawsuit with the governments of Alberta and Canada concering 19,000 oilsands and other energy projects on their traditional territory northeast of Edmonton. 

“The ongoing violation of nature through unchecked resource extraction is a violation to us. Every single molecule of us is connected to the land,” Lameman of the Beaver Lake Cree told DeSmog Canada.

The Beaver Lake Cree argue in their case that the ongoing environmental degradation of their traditional land violates their treaty rights to hunt, fish and trap. Furthermore, they did not consent to this infringement of their constitutionally protected rights.  

“This Moment Needs to be Used to Push a Social Movement”

Many Canadians will be pessimistic about the current federal government embracing the commission’s recommendations. After all, hasn't Canada been down this road before with the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples less than twenty years ago? Its recommendations were largely ignored.

But as Justice Sinclair was quick to point out yesterday, the report was not written solely for Canada’s government today. It was written for the future.

"We've described a mountain and shown you the path to the top. We're calling on you to do the climbing," Sinclair said in his closing remarks.

“Reconciliation is not an aboriginal problem, it is a Canadian one. It involves us all.”

“This moment needs to be used to push a social movement with the moral authority of TRC’s recommendations, like the Idle No More movement which exploded in Canada under Harper,” Muller said.

Canadian political philosopher John Ralston Saul argues in his latest book that Canada’s indigenous people are growing in strength and influence after hitting an abysmal low that is most heinously epitomized by the residential school system. He writes:

“And yes, non-Aboriginals have a choice. We can go on allowing our governments and power systems and corporations to slow or attempt to stop or deform this return of the founding peoples to their proper place. Or we can learn to listen and to understand what is happening. And then we can ensure that we do not continue to be the problem.” (The Comeback, p.68)

“We might not see reconciliation in the next ten years but I guarantee we will see dramatic changes,” Muller told DeSmog Canada.

Image Credit: Derek Leahy, Fractured Land, We Are the Land, Clayton Thomas Muller via Flickr

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