E1. Indigenous

Every March is Women’s History Month and this year, we uplifted four women–both past and present–who have been vital in the Native Vote.

While the month might be over, we know it is important to lift up the matriarchs around Indian Country 365 days a year.

Zitkála-Šá

Zitkála-Šá was born on the Yankton Indian Reservation in 1876. A boarding school survivor, she also studied the violin and even later taught for a couple of years at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. The treatment of the students there was reminiscent of her own experiences.

The observations she made regarding the treatment of Indigenous peoples of this time led her to write and critique federal policy that directly impacted Tribal communities. Her political beliefs also led to her to advocate for citizenship for all Native Americans as well as equality for women.

After the nineteenth amendment was passed in 1924, Zitkála-Šá continued to advocate for citizenship and ultimately, the Native right to vote. Her fervor was rewarded as Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924.

Zitkála-Šá continued to bring attention to Native rights and self determination until her death in 1938. She is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Lucy Nicolar Poolaw

Lucy Nicolar Poolaw was born in 1882 in Penobscot County, Maine. A citizen of the Penobscot Nation, Lucy started performing at a young age. She was recognized for her musical ability and moved to Chicago to study music. As she grew in popularity, Lucy adopted the stage name “Princess Watahwaso”.

At some point, Lucy began recording music with Victor Records which led her to a promotional tour. Activism was threaded into her travels as she attended debates in major cities on issues like immigration. She also participated in vaudeville acts until that sort of performance was no longer popular.

After early retirement, Lucy returned to her home. She owned and operated a gift shop that specialized in traditional Native items. Her retirement along with being back with her community led to more activism efforts. Along with her sister, Florence, she advocated for Penobscot students to attend public schools, lobbied for better access to the reservation, and demanded the right to vote for Native people in the state of Maine.

Lucy’s activism was the reason she was chosen to be the first Native individual to cast a ballot once Maine extended this right in 1955. She spent the rest of her life with her people.

Jacqueline De León

Jacqueline De León is a Senior Staff Attorney for the Native American Rights Fund and an enrolled member of the Isleta Pueblo. She co-led field hearings across Indian Country on Native American voting rights and co-authored the subsequent report, ‘Obstacles at Every Turn: Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters’.

She has testified before Congress on multiple occasions detailing voting rights issues in Indian Country and serves as the Chair of the Advisory Committee of American Bar Association’s bipartisan Standing Committee on Election Law.

At NARF, Jacqueline leads the voting rights practice group, which engages in nationwide litigation, advocates for Native American voting rights legislation, conducts research, crafts policy, encourages and protects civic engagement, and assists tribes advocating for greater voter access for their communities.

Prior to her work at NARF, De León focused on international antitrust and litigation at WilmerHale. She holds a J.D. from Stanford and a B.A. from Princeton University in Philosophy. De León clerked for Judge William H. Walls of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey and Chief Justice Dana Fabe of the Alaska Supreme Court.

Allie Young

Allie Young is a citizen of the Diné (Navajo) Nation from the Northern Agency of the reservation in Northern New Mexico. She is a storyteller and writer on a mission to increase the authentic representation of Native people in TV, film, and mainstream media by sharing the stories and traditions of her ancestors to help her community persevere in a world where they are largely invisible, underrepresented, and misrepresented.

She founded Protect the Sacred—a program of culture change organization Harness—a program that focuses on educating and empowering the next generation of Navajo and Indian Country leaders and allies. Through Protect the Sacred, Allie makes certain Native voices are centered in culture and policy, especially the voices of Indigenous youth and womxn.

It is her objective to ensure that the stories of her people are no longer history – the fabricated American narrative perpetuated in textbooks and Hollywood Westerns. Instead, they will be authentic and from the original peoples, the original storytellers of this land.

The post Women’s History Month appeared first on Native Organizers Alliance.

Racism in Iqaluit is a historical and ongoing issue that comes in waves, crashing into the city with changes in economic circumstances. These waves are driven by newcomers, who take up more and more, while Inuit are forced to watch and experience the trauma that comes with new hierarchies of injustice. While not new, the dynamics are shifting as racialized workers from Niger, Ivory Coast, Congo, and many other African countries arrive and contribute to the long-standing issues that Inuit face.

How can we work through these shifting dynamics and the complicated layers of colonization and racism to break the historical pattern, enact a new solidarity, and avoid economic exploitation?

We know that the forces that shape our world are structural and in many ways, the oppression that forces migration and anti-Black racism is linked to the very same attitudes and policies that facilitate the marginalization and racist views of Inuit. Without a shared understanding of this reality, our communities in Iqaluit face a troubling future. 

In the days of the Hudson’s Bay Company, throughout the 1950s, the upper-class English colonizers sought to control resources and manage relationships between and among people. Lower class English, Scottish and Irish men were hired as labourers for trade and made homes in Iqaluit. Inuit were pushed aside for a smoother colonization. 

In the Cold War climate, the American Army arrived, and the dynamic was once again reproduced. White American military men sought to dominate the landscape and hired Black Americans to build surveillance and aviation infrastructure. Inuit watched and were often displaced in the drive to build this infrastructure — much of which would provide the foundation for the city we know today. And then they left. Again, Inuit were pushed aside for a smoother colonization. 

The waves of newcomers continued. White women soon joined the transit as social services like education and healthcare required capacity that colonial administrators did not think existed among Inuit. As more infrastructure for the city was required, more labourers arrived — this time, English and French Canadians. They began to compete in their establishment of distinct communities. Inuit were once again pushed aside for a smoother colonization. 

Today, as the city grows again amid a booming economy, the same pattern continues: administrative “top dogs” use “lower-class” labourers to achieve their aims, with Inuit largely excluded. We see it all around, as we have in previous waves: who has the lowest employment rates? Who has the housing crisis, who has the bad educational attainment rates, who is experiencing language loss, and who has the highest rate of suicide in the country? Inuit! It is not a booming economy for all of us. Our First Nation relatives know this dynamic well, too. 

But now, there is a new dimension. For the past few years, the labour shortage has been addressed by recruiting workers from various regions of Africa. These workers are arriving in Canada via Iqaluit, working as taxi drivers, jail guards, nurses, and are present in nearly every sector of city society. (Iqaluit is attractive for these workers because in addition to jobs, there is also a housing program for employees; Iqaluit can actually be reprieve for people looking for work and homes in Canada). But tensions are emerging between the established white professional class (which is also growing), the racialized new arrivals, and Inuit on the margins.

With this unique dimension to the economic struggle, conflict is emerging, resulting in explosions of frustration and even violence. Colonization is not a smooth process. 

I personally witnessed a conflict at an event where the staff were Black and the attendees Inuit and white. Alcohol was involved, anti-Black slurs were uttered, and the result was an Inuk man left needing medical care. This happened despite the similar experiences of colonialism and racism that are shared by Black and Inuit communities. We know that awful racist language continues to be used towards Black people, despite the knowledge that the Black community — newly arrived or otherwise — has its own excruciating, centuries-long experiences of slavery, segregation and racism, which are all rooted in colonization and imperialism. Black communities and individuals continue to fight for institutions and society generally to treat them with equity and Inuit must avoid engaging in racism to vent their own frustrations. 

We know that this is all being driven by economic factors and decisions that are not being made by either community. More, anti-Inuit and anti-Black racism is overwhelmingly the practice of qallunaat in Iqaluit (and elsewhere). That has been written about and experienced since the first settlers.

So is there a chance to challenge these structural forces together — or will we allow economic exploitation and the racism that it requires to operate overwhelm us? 

How can we use our similar histories to build solidarity? These reflections do not offer an answer. But I hope they may help start a conversation.

Citation: Williamson Bathroy, Laakkuluk. “Reflections on Economy, Racism & Solidarity in Iqaluit”. 19 March 2024. Yellowhead Institute. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2024/03/19/economy-racism-solidarity-iqaluit/ 

Featured Image: Yumi Numata

The post Reflections on Economy, Racism & Solidarity in Iqaluit appeared first on Yellowhead Institute.

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Applications are open for our May 2024 National Training!

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Native Organizers Alliance is excited to announce that applications are now open for our  National Native Organizer Training happening May 20 – 25, 2024.

Our national trainings are for Native organizers and leaders who are committed to engaging our communities with strategies guided by intertribal Indigenous values. The weeklong gathering focuses on sharpening community organizing skills to build effective grassroots campaigns and movements to meet the needs of our communities.

Participants receive training on ways to envision and mobilize community action to make change possible and strengthen sovereignty and self-determination.

• We explore how we have traditionally and historically used our intertribal Indigenous values to organize in our communities and how we continue to do so today.
• We discuss building political power for change and how Tribal and urban communities can challenge the power that denies our peoples’ inherent and sovereign rights.
• We share organizing tools to meet community challenges and share knowledge gained from our teachings and life experiences.
• We learn from our rich history of inter-tribal cultural values of building community by using interactive sessions that are grounded in teamwork.  And folks go home energized with a shared theory of change grounded in traditional Indigenous community building.

Our week-long, in-person Native Organizing Trainings are a critical part of our year-round efforts of building a powerful ecosystem of Native leaders who will continue to build our collective community power.

The training will be held on Federal Way in Washington from Monday, May 20 to Saturday, May 25, 2024.

We encourage Tribal and Native community leaders in rural, reservation, or urban communities, and the staff of Native nonprofits and Tribal entities to apply.

The cost of housing, transportation, and most meals will be covered by the Native Organizers Alliance (NOA). Participants are responsible for additional costs. Organizations, Tribal governments, groups, or individuals who can contribute to defraying the costs of this training will provide the opportunity to go beyond 30 participants.

The application deadline is 11:59 PM EST on Monday April 1, 2024. Click here to apply today!

One recent training attendee, June Shorthair, formerly with the Phoenix Indian Center, said:

“I recently attended the 2023 Native Organizers Alliance national Native community organizing training, and it was a fantastic experience!

The training was centered on Native issues and strategies that our organizations are currently working on. We emphasized our Native core values, Tribal community values, and personal experiences to refine our strategy. The environment was engaging, and I was able to strengthen my network and build relationships with other participants.

Looking forward to implementing our new strategies to build Native Power in 2024 and beyond!”

Space is limited and unfortunately, not all applicants will be accepted. Emails of  Acceptance, Waitlist, and Not Accepted at this Time will be sent on Monday, April 9, 2024.

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Apply Today! Applications are open!
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Right-wing members of Congress have used annual government funding bills as a political football — threatening government shutdowns in an attempt to push through their wildly unpopular policy ideas including attacks on communities bearing the brunt of systemic racism and exploitation as well as cuts to critical programs and services.

All this month, Congress is voting on funding bills with the threat of a shutdown looming in the background. Government shutdowns do one thing: hurt people.

That’s why we need “advance appropriations” on services under the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Indian Education, and Indian Health Service so that funding for Indian Country is not threatened by the whims of extremists in Congress.

We’re urging Congress to pass the Indian Programs Advance Appropriations Act — a bipartisan bill introduced in the House and the Senate to ensure the continuation of critical programs like Indian Health Facilities, Payments for Tribal Leases, Operation of Indian Education, Operation of Indian Programs, and more.

According to Francys Crevier (Algonquin), CEO of National Council of Urban Indian Health:

“This legislation is simple and essential. It would enable Congress to appropriate funding for the Indian Health Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Bureau of Indian Education one year in advance — ensuring timely and sustained funding for essential programs and services that are vital to the well-being and prosperity of Native communities. The Act demonstrates a commitment to transparency and accountability, ultimately empowering our communities to thrive. I urge Congress to swiftly pass this bill, a significant step forward in supporting Native American health and education initiatives.”

Take action today and send a message to your members of Congress to pass the Indian Programs Advance Appropriations Act now.

Together, we’re strengthening Native communities and the movements for self-determination, sovereignty, and a multiracial democracy.

The post Tell Congress: Pass the Indian Programs Advance Appropriations Act appeared first on Native Organizers Alliance.

The climate crisis grows more critical each year. Despite this, and despite the fact that Anishinaabek and Cree, among others, are on the frontlines of land and water preservation and revitalization, Canada (federal and provincial governments and industry) continues to break treaties and, in so doing, threaten the livelihoods of Indigenous people. . 

Grassy Narrows, or Asubpeeschoseewagong, is a small community one hour north of Kenora. It’s where I grew up understanding Indigenous sovereignty as stewardship of the land and challenging environmental racism. We are under constant pressure because Canada and Ontario want our land — land in the mineral-rich boreal forest that we rely on. However, many First Nations are part of the same colonial project that Grassy Narrows faces every day.

And so, it is critical that we continue to hold those accountable for climate change so we can set up a future for healthy land and water for our communities. 

Industry at Grassy Narrows

Grassy Narrows upholds stewardship — a natural way of land preservation — of the land through Anishinaabe governance structure, direct action, and maintaining a cultural and spiritual connection with the land. Anishinaabe governance structure is rooted in our laws surrounding traditional land use and is nourished by generations of leaders continuing to use their ancestors’ knowledge. Today, Anishinaabe governance also manifests in advocacy. As industrial logging continues to negatively affect our lands and waters, the community has had to proclaim, “We will make our own decisions and there will be no industrial logging on our Anishinaabe territory” — as Chief Rudy Turtle did in 2018. It is also manifested in community members taking direct action against logging, such as when Grassy Narrows youth held their bodies against heavy machinery to ultimately put a stop to development in the Whiskey Jack Forest. Over the last 20 years, such action has halted resource extraction. 

While the fight against logging is not over, recently, there has been greater focus on mining in our territory. With the growth of staking and exploration in Ontario, there are now more than 6,000 mining claims in Ontario’s Mining Lands Administration System (MLAS) in Grassy Narrows territory.

Some of them can be seen on Yellowhead’s Mine Sweeper Map. It has led to individual First Nations — including my own — putting bans on mining, and a group of regional First Nations have demanded a moratorium on mining until issues of consent can be addressed. 

The Dynamics of Environmental Racism

We must continue to challenge these colonial developments. Maintaining a connection to the land through culture and spirituality improves the lives of Grassy Narrows people and ensures we are safe to gather traditional medicines, build our lodges meant for ceremonies, and have those ceremonies. Organizers in Grassy often create spaces for youth who are struggling with high rates of mental health issues, and according to Dr. Mergler’s 2023 study on the impact of long-term mercury exposure, there is a higher chance that children and youth will develop anxiety, depression, and suicidal tendencies. 

And yet, settler society continues to blame First Nations peoples for the colonialism that we face.

Because we prioritize Anishinaabe law, fighting against industry and federal and provincial governments, and working to repair the loss of cultural and spiritual knowledge of the land, we are seen as standing in the way of development or ungraciously refusing the economic development opportunities on offer. 

Environmental racism is a daily reality for people in Grassy Narrows, and we see it in the government’s refusal to engage with our laws around consent and protecting future generations. Chelsea Vowel explains that this refusal is rooted in international colonial legal frameworks like the Doctrine of Discovery, which was used for centuries to justify the seizure of Indigenous land. As it becomes more difficult to rely on explicitly racist doctrines, strategies have shifted more heavily toward divide and conquer. 

An example of this strategy can be seen in how Canada and Ontario are working with some First Nations to develop a mining framework for the massive Ring of Fire development, and shutting those who refuse out of the discussion. Only the willing are consulted on meetings about mining, even in our own territory. Even as Grassy Narrows tries to communicate with governments via press conferences at Queens Park or travelling hundreds of kilometres to Toronto – we are still being met with a cold shoulder. Environmental racism continues, despite the fact that we are trying to find solutions to ensure a healthy environment in Grassy Narrows territory for future generations. 

Stewardship is Sovereignty

Our Anishinaabe laws and governance will continue to address the ongoing issues of clean air, safe drinking water, and food security in our communities.  And so, Grassy Narrows will continue to call out problematic government policy, protect the land, and create alliances with other First Nations and allies. 

Stewardship is Indigenous sovereignty. Maintaining a connection with the land is sovereignty. Resisting non-consensual mining on stolen Indigenous land is sovereignty. The threats that mining and industrial logging present greatly outweigh the so-called benefits of any proposed road access or jobs the government promises. We deserve to have ceremonies and relationships with the land without colonial harassment. As a member of the Grassy Narrows community, I hope that future generations get to experience this wonderful land the same way that I have been able to.

 

The post Resistance & Sovereignty at Grassy Narrows First Nation appeared first on Yellowhead Institute.

 

Native Organizers Alliance praises bill to protect “Indigenous ways of life”

South Fork Kuskokwim River, August 1914

Washington, DC—The “Balance for the Kuskokwim River Act” was introduced today in Alaska that would protect the Kuskokwim River’s water quality and prioritize the customary and traditional subsistence lifestyle of the Alaska Native people of the region under the Federal Clean Water Act. Stretching over 700 miles, the Kuskokwim River is the second largest river in Alaska and a resource for subsistence fishing for the Yup’ik, Cup’ik, and Athabascan people. The following statement from Judith LeBlanc (Caddo), executive director of Native Organizers Alliance, can be quoted in-part of in-full. 

 

“Native Organizers Alliance stands with our Alaska Native relatives to celebrate the introduction of a bill that aims to protect the Kuskokwim River and Indigenous ways of life. For too long, Native rights have been ignored in favor of corporations and government agencies that have continued to exploit our lands and destroy our traditional ways. This bill aims to acknowledge Alaska Natives’ subsistence rights and protect one of the state’s most valuable resources—salmon. 

 

Numerous Alaska Tribes and Indigenous grassroots organizations have opposed projects like the Donlin Mine that could potentially pollute the Kuskokwim River. This bill extends much needed protections to this critical water and food source.

 

We are grateful to members of Alaska’s legislature, and for the work that Mother Kuskokwim and numerous Alaska Tribes and organizations are doing to fight for Native rights. Their resistance is felt across Indian Country.”

 

The post NOA Supports New Bill to protect Kuskokwim River appeared first on Native Organizers Alliance.

In 2019, Canada enacted An Act Respecting First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Children Youth and Family. The Act recognized and affirmed Indigenous peoples’ inherent right to self-government over child and family services, established national standards related to the best interests of Indigenous children, and protected Indigenous jurisdiction over children from provincial intrusion. In short, the Act responded to Indigenous peoples’ calls for support in their care of their children and families, and for Canada to begin to fix over a century of harm caused to Indigenous peoples by the removal and disappearance of Indigenous children from their communities. 

The Act was referred to the Quebec Court of Appeal. A reference is when a party is asking the Court for guidance on legislation. In this case, Quebec argued that the Act was unconstitutional because it interfered with its powers and that Aboriginal rights to self-government cannot be unilaterally affirmed by legislation. Rather, Quebec argued that the right to self government must either be proven in Court or negotiated with the provinces and Canada. Canada responded to the reference since it was Canada’s legislation.

Because of the nature of a reference, all of the other provinces and Indigenous communities and organizations were interveners. Interveners get less time and space to make submissions. In addition, because the reference came from Quebec, the Court of Appeal’s decision was in French, and Canada and Quebec’s submissions were also in French (Canada gave a translation, Quebec did not). In a reference to Indigenous self-government, the structure of the reference prioritizes the concerns and interests of Quebec and Canada.

On February 9, 2024, the Supreme Court of Canada found that the Act was constitutional. 

They affirmed that the exercise of self-government is permissive, meaning that it will be up to Indigenous peoples to choose whether and when to exercise their powers. However, those national standards related to the best interests of the Indigenous child will apply, meaning there are some limitations on the exercise of self-government.

Still, Canada and the provinces will likely be required to comply with Indigenous peoples’ exercise of their jurisdiction related to Indigenous children and family services, subject to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Court has also provided important guidance on the coordination of Indigenous child and family services between Indigenous governing entities, and the provincial and federal governments.

What does Child Welfare mean for Self-Government?

The practical effect of the Court’s decision is positive. Since 2019, several communities have transitioned their Indigenous child and family services from provincial jurisdiction. This means that they are providing services through their inherent right to self-government, rather than as a provincial agency. Several communities have also entered into coordination agreements with the provinces and Canada to secure financial support for Indigenous child and family services, among other things. The Court’s decision ensures that this work can continue.

In the short-term, how will Indigenous jurisdiction over child and family services be funded?. The Act states that funding can be part of a coordination agreement, but does not require nor set out a standard for funding. As a result, funding will likely be negotiated by communities with the provincial and federal governments through coordination agreements. The discretionary and voluntary nature of these negotiations might mean that communities could be unable to secure sufficient funding for their services. For more information on potential challenges with the Act, see the Yellowhead Report on “The Promises and Pitfalls of C-92.”

Long-term, Indigenous peoples may find the Court’s decision lacking, and at worst, a barrier to exercising self-government in other contexts. The Court’s reasons are narrowly focused on Parliament’s jurisdiction over “Indians and lands reserved for them”. The Court declined to answer whether the Constitution Act, 1982 includes an Aboriginal right to self-government and what that right includes. The judges’ questions at the hearing suggest that they did not have enough information to decide this point and were concerned about the implications of defining self-government. 

The Court describes the Act as a form of “legislative reconciliation”. Legislative reconciliation, as theorized by Naoimi Metallic, is a form of reconciliation that recognizes Indigenous peoples’ inherent jurisdiction without needing them to prove their rights in court or negotiate an agreement with government. This form of legislation can be an efficient way for a government to legally bind itself to its recognition of Indigenous jurisdiction, without having to work out the precise details through litigation or an agreement. Legislative reconciliation is not a delegation of provincial or federal powers to an Indigenous community. Rather, it is a form of recognition of the inherent right to self government; the activity of recognition becomes a limit on the state’s conduct, requiring it to respect Indigenous jurisdiction (subject to any limitations that the state places on its recognition of Indigenous jurisdiction). The Act’s recognition of the inherent right to self-government for children and families is limited by the national standards as well as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

Because the Court largely avoided answering whether the right to self-government is an Aboriginal right under s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, it has left the door open for other governments to argue that such a right does not exist.

As long as R. v. Van der Peet and R. v. Pamajewon remain the law, the potential for the Indigenous right to self-government to be legally recognized outside of “legislative reconciliation” may be limited. In those cases, the Court constructed a test for Aboriginal rights that is difficult to apply to the right to self-government. A recent case at the Quebec Superior Court, White and Montour, however, suggests that it is time for the Court to overturn Van der Peet and Pamajewon in light of Canada’s domestic incorporation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Possible Futures for Federalism, the Charter & UNDRIP

The Court seems to be nudging the provinces and Canada in the direction of UNDRIP, though it is unclear how committed the Court is to that vision. Because the decision focuses on Parliament’s legislative jurisdiction over “Indians and lands reserved for them”, the judgement seems to support the Crown’s assertion of sovereignty over Indigenous peoples and their territories. This is a point argued by Bruce McIvor in his recent blog. At the same time, the Court clearly states that UNDRIP has been incorporated into the Country’s domestic positive law”. 

The Court also refers to the Honour of the Crown to suggest Canada, in creating the Act, has bound itself to recognize Indigenous jurisdiction, at least over children and families. The Court also describes the Act as educational, as putting forward a vision for reconciliation that Canada hopes other governments may follow. Whether there is enough in the Court’s reasons to finally move out of the shadow of the Crown’s assertion of sovereignty is unclear. I’ve written before that the Court’s jurisprudence may end up limiting the imagination and political will of the Canadian and provincial governments. Overall, the Court’s reasons seem to be hyper-focused on issues of federalism; this seems to cement, rather than unsettle, the Crown’s sovereignty.

Another issue relates to whether the Charter applies to the exercise of self-government under s. 35. Section 25 of the Charter says that the Charter shall not apply in a manner that “abrogates or derogates” from the rights of the “Aboriginal peoples of Canada.” The Act specifically says that the Charter will apply to the exercise of the inherent right to self-government under s. 35. However, the Court did not consider whether s. 25 of the Charter prohibits this outcome. A companion case, Dickson v. Vuntut Gwichin, which is currently on appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, raises this issue directly. We will need to see what the Court says.

If s. 25 shields Aboriginal rights from the Charter, then the Act’s application of the Charter to the exercise of self-government will likely be unconstitutional.

Finally, one of the interesting moves that the Court makes is an apparent attempt at rehabilitating s. 91(24)’s racist past. In its reasons, the Court refers to the core of s. 91(24) as related to “Indianness” or “Indigeneity”. By referring to “Indigeneity”, the Court may be gesturing towards Indigenous peoplehood. This would align the Court’s interpretation of s. 91(24) with UNDRIP. This passing discussion is important to our understanding of Indigeneity within a liberal framework based on self-identification or within the context of peoplehood and political collectives.  

Franks, Scott. “The Supreme Court of Canada’s Child Welfare Ruling: Short and Long-Term Implications”. Yellowhead Institute. 20, February 2024. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2024/02/20/scc-child-welfare-ruling/

Artwork: Eleanor Biidaskonwe King

 

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Late last month, Nunaviummiut were surprised to learn that the long-discussed Nunavut devolution agreement has been finalized. The agreement in principle was signed in 2019, though there was little indication it was close to completion. This devolution agreement is meant to be the final chapter of what Inuit negotiated as part of the land claim process: first, the land claim agreement, then the formation of a new territorial government, and finally a devolution to more fully assume control of resources in the territory. 

The land claim creates certainty of rights on land, protects Inuit way of life (especially around hunting), and allows for input on economic, social, and cultural programs. The creation of the public government was seen as critical to expand this participation with mandated Inuit leadership across the territory. Then finally, the devolution agreement was seen as the last piece to realize Inuit interests. It is important to understand these pieces as stacking, and reliant on each other for optimal Inuit control in Nunavut and for Inuit to achieve self-determination.

In negotiating a self-determination package, Inuit wanted their lives to improve, their culture and language protected, and to be the decision-makers in all aspects of their lives. It is in this context we must look at the devolution agreement.

During the devolution press conference in Iqaluit, Prime Minister Trudeau hailed the largest land transfer in Canada’s history, referring to the two million square kilometres of land and water that is being transferred to the Government of Nunavut (GN). Meanwhile, Premier P. J. Akeeagok remarked that it is “one more step in the realization of the vision of a self-reliant Nunavut…Our people made many sacrifices in the name of Canadian sovereignty. In the past, too many decisions about us were made without us. With the signing of the agreement, we can now bring decision-making home.”

The decision-making may be in Nunavut, but is it self-determination? The Devolution Agreement outlines the transfer of responsibilities (also referred to as administration and control) for Nunavut’s public (Crown) lands, freshwaters, and resources from Canada to the government of Nunavut. It means that administration of these lands will transfer from the Federal government to the Government of Nunavut, including revenues from mining activity. Since, according to Natural Resources Canada, Nunavut’s mineral production is estimated to be worth $2.58 billion (the Government of Nunavut’s budget for 2020-21 was $2.35 billion), the territory will be expected to be self-reliant. As the Premier alludes to, Southern Canadians love to complain how dependent Nunavut is on handouts from the federal government. Canada was built on our land and resources. 

The news reports and opinions following the announcement, then, have been celebratory, hailing a new era for Inuit. But few have asked what the Agreement actually means for Inuit in tangible ways, and the surprise announcement has meant little analysis of that question. The biggest questions being whether it will offer long-promised self-determination; will it help to address the socio-economic challenges Inuit face; Will it help to protect our language and culture; will it transform the relationship between Inuit and Canadians? These questions are yet-to-be answered. There is very little real critical feedback.

That is a problem. 

Who is the Government of Nunavut for?

Most Canadians know that Nunavut is a territory in the federation of Canada. Because it is a territory, the legislative powers are delegated by the federal government. Unlike a province that has constitutionally listed roles and responsibilities. Canadians may also know that it is a public government, meaning it represents all who reside in Nunavut, Inuit and non-Inuit. While the Nunavut Agreement is meant to include Inuit in government decision making to reflect their population representation, since its creation, the promise of a representative territorial government has not been fulfilled. 

In fact, in contrast to benefitting Inuit, the territory has left Inuit behind in many important aspects seen through the social inequities. 

There are desperate housing shortages, extremely high levels of food insecurity, an increasing number of boil water advisories in communities, stagnant low Inuit employment levels, a healthcare crisis where health centres are forced close when nurses take holidays (less than half of the health care positions are filled), an absolute failure to deliver Inuktut language education, teacher shortages and now the heavy reliance on southern contractors to administer (or not) all of the above because the Inuit capacity is so low (there is a 38 per cent vacancy rate in government positions – this from a 2022 government study that has been since deleted from their website). 

This reality is embedded in the history of our collective relationship that emerged out of the assumption Inuit – like Indigenous people generally – were inhuman. Canada’s presumption of sovereignty itself flows from the Doctrine of Discovery: that they could steal our land in the first place because Inuit weren’t Christians. Even after the majority of Inuit converted to Christianity, Inuit still had to negotiate for decades to get some of their land back. Negotiations for the Nunavut Agreement were ruthless, leaving us with a mere 18-19 per cent ownership of lands and 2 percent of the subsurface. A very small percentage makes up municipal and other lands. The rest – or over 80 per cent is considered public or Crown lands.

These are the lands that have now been transferred to the Government of Nunavut, not to Inuit. Imagine having no or very little choice but to cede 80 percent of your homeland to have guaranteed rights in a country founded on your lands.

This history – and contemporary reality – is critical to consider when we ask who benefits from devolution. 

Is this Self-Determination?

The Government of Nunavut’s website on Devolution states “Devolution will bring decision-making closer to home, giving Nunavummiut a greater say in issues that affect them.” But, as outlined above, closer to home doesn’t necessarily mean the home of the Inuit, who are increasingly alienated from the territory. One example – and where we can track benefit and decision making, is around employment. Given the status quo, there must be a significant investment, political commitment, and will to act. 

While the Government of Nunavut has begun investing in training and education for teachers, nurses, managers, and lawyers, it has failed to address the stranglehold non-Inuit employees have exercised in management positions and attempts to prioritize Inuit hiring. Over time, it has become clear that non-Inuit prefer to maintain the power they have accrued in the years since the creation of Nunavut and now challenge hiring plans. There have never been anti-racist policies and measures that would create the atmosphere for meaningful inclusion of Inuit. The reality is that the territorial government has serious barriers to Inuit employment.

A Nunavut Inuit Labour Force analysis released in 2018 found Inuit account for 50 per cent of Government of Nunavut employees and 40 percent of Government of Canada employees in Nunavut (these are not typically policy and senior management positions that inform government action). The federal government has even lower employment rates. Many of the transferred responsibilities under devolution will be specialised professions, according to the human resource strategy on devolution released in 2020. The list includes regulatory and permitting administration in various land use scenarios. It is not clear how, with the history of ineffective Inuit employment strategies and approaches, the GN’s actions now will be different.

This constitutes a danger for the territory. If the training and employment issues are not dealt with, and non-Inuit continue to dominate the government, Nunavut is at greater risk of moving further away from Inuit values. This could serve to heighten the existing issue of unrestricted jurisdiction for mining and extractive industries in the territory. The current mining activities are in caribou calving grounds, which Inuit have sacrificed for job opportunities. (There is a clear tension here: if Inuit speak about wanting to protect wildlife we rely on for food, they are quickly excused as being anti-jobs). We are already allowing mining activities to take place without a Nunavut-wide land use plan, a departure from land claim agreement. 

There is a human resource strategy as part of the Devolution Agreement. But how is the government going to approach Inuit employment differently this time, to assure Nunavummiut that control over lands, waters, and resources will mean an Inuit say in how it is managed; as opposed to control by outsiders?

It is surprising Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. signed the agreement, given the history of taking legal action on the lack of action on Inuit employment by governments when it is unclear if there is political will and progress being made on Inuit employment.

A Missed Opportunity?

Speaking of Inuit organizations – by signing onto the Devolution Agreement, what additional benefits of rights have they, those responsible for representing rights holders, really accrued? In one view, they may have actually abandoned a major leverage for negotiating a self-government agreement – something that currently does not exist in Nunavut but which the Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. board has stated they want to pursue, through their resolutions. Could this not have been negotiated in part through devolution?

Instead, the GN’s Department of Devolution calls itself Namminiqsurniq, which means running our own affairs. It is a misnomer, this word should be saved for Inuit self-government or true self-determination and not a performative version of it.

Indeed, on the signing and celebration, most Nunavummiut did not know until the day before that the signing was to take place. The only people to partake in the celebration were those invited, and it seems they were sworn to secrecy. It was not a Nunavut celebration. This lack of transparency is all the more frustrating given the history of excluding Inuit.

Public dialogue and transparency should be critical for a territory claiming now to “run our own affairs” after years of colonial intervention. The secrecy cheated Nunavummiut out of partaking in not only celebrations but the critical piece of talking about what it means for us; if we truly believe it is an agreement worth celebrating. 

There will be opportunities for Inuit arising from Devolution. But given the failed implementation of the land claim agreement in many key areas, the Government of Nunavut’s drift away from commitments to Inuit, and the slow abandonment of Inuit self-determination generally, it remains to be seen if these opportunities for our political leaders will translate to Inuit values and interests are the future of Nunavut. That future imagines Inuit language thriving, hunting way of life as a livelihood, and Inuit are healthy and accessing their lands. 

Inutiq, Kunuk. “Devolution in Nunavut: Is this Really Namminiqsurniq (Self-Determination)?”. Yellowhead Institute. 15, February 2024. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2024/02/15/devolution-in-nunavut/

 

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Recently, the Biden administration announced their decision to pause pending approvals for all exports of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). The pause will be in effect while the Department of Energy (DOE) conducts a public interest determination that will include an analysis of the impacts of climate change and the harms to Native communities. Too often, our Native communities and sacred places have had to bear the brunt of toxic messes and pollution created by the fossil fuel industry. 

This decision is a major win for our Tribes, Native communities, and grassroots advocates who have been organizing for government action on climate change. It is also a continuation of this administration’s proven historic efforts to curb climate change and phase out these harmful fossil fuels. Native Organizers Alliance (NOA) applauds the administration for their efforts toward regenerative energy to create a sustainable future for us all. 

Indigenous and youth organizers provided the political momentum to make this shift happen as well as the leadership behind the March to End Fossil Fuels and the Global Fight to End Fossil Fuels.

While this decision does not address the harms already caused by current and ongoing projects, it’s a critical step in the right direction to end reliance on fossil fuels. Pushback from fossil fuel supporters is already underway with a Senate hearing called last week to investigate the pause. 

We must not let corporate greed derail this moment. We will continue to press for the right decisions on behalf of Mother Earth. This includes shutting down DAPL, Line 5, the Willow Project, and more.

As the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairwoman Janet Alkire said, “As a matter of sovereignty, honor, and respect for the Standing Rock Sioux Nation, we must demand that DAPL be shut down. Now. Shutting the pipeline down will also protect crucial water supplies for millions and reject the increase of greenhouse gasses responsible for disastrous climate change.”

“A just democracy for all requires transformational change,” said Tremayne Nez, NOA’s Policy Director, “We must prioritize Mother Earth and people before fossil fuel profits for a sustainable future for all.”

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The Shompen live in the forested interior of Gt Nicobar Island. They won’t survive the destruction of their homeland. © Anthropological Survey of India

Shompen band traversing a river on Great Nicobar Island. © Anthropological Survey of IndiaGenocide scholars have warned that India's plans to turn an uncontacted tribe’s island into a mega-port will wipe them out. #

This Baka woman was raped by an African Parks ranger. ‘African Parks are very bad people. Everybody who works with them is really bad to us. That man was cruel, he was inhumane.’ © Survival

It’s a new year! And while we are preparing for the upcoming events of 2024, we also know it is important to reflect on the various accomplishments of the previous 365 days.

While so much of our organizing includes on the ground trainings, email campaigns, and education, Native Organizers Alliance was included in 26 panels, webinars, podcasts, interviews.

Here’s a look at just some of the projects we were involved in throughout 2023: 

 Training Program

Our Native Community Organizer Training is for Native leaders, nonprofits, and organizations both in rural and urban communities. During these in-person sessions, we share new skills and strategies that are vital for effective organizing.

In 2023, we held 1 National and 7 State-Based or Regional Trainings for a total of 245 total training participants.

Save Oak Flat

In Spring 2023, we were notified of a Trump-era deal, which would hand over Oak Flat in Arizona to a notoriously devastating mining corporation. We organized an email campaign that supported the San Carlos Apache and Apache Stronghold, who are on the ground and working towards permanent protections for Oak Flat. Thankfully, the Biden administration listened, pushing that approval.

The constant attack on Oak Flat is why we also have shown support for Rep. Raúl Grijalva’s Save Oak Flat from Foreign Mining Act. Let’s keep up the fight to protect Oak Flat for future generations!

Re-Indigenizing National Parks

At Native Organizers Alliance, we’re working with Tribes, Native communities, and grassroots organizers across the country to grow the movement to re-Indigenize and protect national parks. In 2023, we used social media and our email list to push for co-management legislation as well as programs that would teach the Indigenous histories of the land where these parks exist.

We also organized a letter program to President Biden establish a new national monument to protect the Grand Canyon. Tribal leaders and organizers were able to celebrate the years of work put towards this designation when the White House announced Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni:

“Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument will conserve nearly 1 million acres of public lands surrounding Grand Canyon National Park. The new monument protects thousands of cultural and sacred sites that are precious to Tribal Nations in the Southwest – including the Havasupai Tribe, Hopi Tribe, Hualapai Tribe, Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, Moapa Band of Paiutes, Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, Navajo Nation, San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe, Yavapai-Apache Nation, Pueblo of Zuni, and the Colorado River Indian Tribes.”

The White House on August 8, 2023

Honoring Chaco Initiative

Many of our partners are fighting to protect Greater Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, a sacred place with deep cultural significance for Indigenous people. While steps have been taken to protect certain areas of Greater Chaco from industrial exploitation, more needs to be done to truly safeguard the safety and well-being of this cultural landscape and surrounding communities. We will continue to uplift this need and support The Honoring Chaco Initiative.

This legislation is a first of its kind effort to change the paradigm of public lands management in this sacred landscape and finally prioritize the health, economic and environmental justice, equity, and sustainability of the region.

All Our Relations Snake River Journey

Native Organizers Alliance was honored to be a part of the Indigenous-led 2023 All Our Relations Snake River Journey. Traveling through Washington, Oregon, and Idaho in September and October the campaign set out to build community and demonstrate the momentum of public support for restoring salmon to abundance and upholding treaty promises to Northwest Tribes.

Read more about our time on the journey here.

Free Leonard Peltier

Leonard Peltier is the longest-incarcerated political prisoner in our country. The fight for Leonard Peltier’s freedom continues to this day. In the fall, we brought together a coalition of organizations to bring renewed pressure on the Biden Administration to act.

We rallied for support via a petition with 70,000+ names that was then delivered to the White House by Congressman Raúl Grijalva.

Indigenous Futures Survey

The Indigenous Futures Survey is an annual survey that aims to capture Indigenous people’s voices, perspectives, and concerns for use in developing policy, understanding socio-economic trends, and highlighting important issues impacting Indian Country.

This information will help inform Tribal leaders and members of Congress about issues facing Indigenous People and inform so much for the upcoming Native Vote 2024.

The success of this year’s IFS is only possible because of the 10 fellows that worked in their communities with local organizations. Each fellow is part of our ‘moccasins on the ground’ approach and their work is important in the continued community and power building that makes grassroots organizing possible.

This year’s survey is co-led by IllumiNative and Native Organizers Alliance, with Kauffman and Associates, Inc. supporting the survey development and analysis.

DAPL and the Draft Environmental Impact Statement

After many years of delays and a fatally flawed Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) written by a member of the American Petroleum Institute — a clear conflict of interest — the Army Corps of Engineers is finally took public comments on this dangerous violation of the sovereignty of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

Through our channels, we were able to submit over 101,000 comments on this DEIS. The fight against DAPL might have began in 2016 but we will continue to stand in support of Tribal sovereignty until this pipeline is no longer a threat to the area.

 

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This Baka woman was raped by an African Parks ranger. “African Parks are very bad people. Everybody who works with them is really bad to us. That man was cruel, he was inhumane.” © SurvivalA charity linked to Prince Harry has been funding rangers responsible for abuses against Indigenous people in the Congo. #

Where in the hell of Gaza is international law for Palestinians?

For months, UN experts and hundreds of international law and genocide scholars have been warning of genocide in Gaza: as schools have been transformed into field execution sites, homes and hospitals have been turned into mass gravesites, entire family lines have been annihilated, more than a million have been displaced into “safe zones” where they continue to be incinerated, and so many Palestinian children have been simultaneously orphaned and maimed that a new medical acronym – WCNSF, “Wounded Child No Surviving Family” – has had to be coined. 

The intensive mass killing (“homicide”), combined with the eradication of Palestinians’ means of physical and social reproduction via attacks on their homes (“domicide”), on schools, universities, libraries, journalists, and scholars (“epistemicide”), on ancient churches, mosques, cemeteries, and arts institutions – “everything beautiful” (“culturicide” and “memoricide”), on life-sustaining lands and environments (“ecocide”), on hospitals and other essential health infrastructure (“medicide”), and on children and pregnant women (“futuricide”): all signal an attempt to destroy the Palestinian people in Gaza as a people, “genocide.” 

And yet, it is South Africa’s complaint to the International Court of Justice challenging the obliteration of Palestinians that is impugned, by the same “liberal democracies” whose primary expertise on genocide is as its perpetrators.

Experts in Genocide of the “Civilized World”

According to US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, for instance, South Africa’s 84-page submission – which is based predominantly on reports by the UN and other humanitarian organizations – is “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.” Far more “meritorious” and “productive,” apparently, to persevere in supplying Israel with billions of dollars in military “aid” – “by 4 December, at least 200 American cargo flights were reported to have delivered 10,000 tonnes of military equipment to Israel,” according to a recent study reported on by the Guardian – without even the façade of a “human rights” review. 

Canada too has refused to support the “premise” of South Africa’s case, UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron has condemned it as “nonsense” and “unhelpful” (“it is for the courts to define genocide not states” – what has South Africa done but appeal to a court?!), while Germany has announced its decision to intervene on Israel’s behalf – “in light of German history and the crimes against humanity of the Shoah [Nazi Holocaust], the German government is particularly committed to the Genocide Convention [and] we stand firmly against [its] political instrumentalization.”

How symptomatic of colonial modernity’s grotesquely inverted morality: “their” atrocities are a sign of their backwardness and inhumanity, while “ours” are a source of our superior enlightenment and moral authority. 

Incredibly, even with this self-identified special genocide expertise, Germany’s Foreign Minister has professed herself incapable of “detecting any [genocidal] intention by Israel.” This despite the relentless stream of incitement from Israeli leaders referring to Palestinians in paradigmatically genocidal terms such as “human animals” and calling for Gaza to be “erased,” “eliminated,” “flattened […] just like Auschwitz,” etc. in Israel’s “battle of civilization against barbarism,” as documented in eight full pages of South Africa’s submission. (The updated database of statements in this eradicatory vein compiled by Europe-based NGO Law for Palestine is now up to over 500). Just the day before the ICJ proceedings commenced, the Deputy Speaker of Israel’s Knesset reiterated his recommendation that Gaza be “burned.”   

Precisely how the Canadian, British, and German governments’ positions on Gaza square with their own recent Declaration to Intervene in the ICJ Rohingya genocide case – which states, for example, that “the Genocide Convention extends to […] acts causing serious bodily or mental harm, including torture and forced displacement,” and that “evidence that children have been targeted on a significant scale would be likely to preclude a defense that members of a protected group were targeted solely for certain other reasons, such as that they posed a “security threat” – remains unexplained.

Evidently, this “axis of civilization’s” preferred fate for Palestinians is to be consigned to the same graveyard of oblivion as the casualties of their own colonial atrocities, shrouded in impunity for centuries: the Indigenous nations of the “Americas,” genocided in the millions, who continue to be refused reparations or were even required by colonial legal systems to pay “reparations” themselves for their “depredations” against settlers; the enslaved Africans, whose descendants are also denied restitution, because their abduction, torture, and treatment as “property” was not illegal according to the “international” law at the time as formulated by Europeans; the Herero and Nama Namibians and the Tanzanians, Germany’s “first genocides of the 20th century,” deprived not only of legal redress but even the return of the remains of their dead interned in German institutions; the Marshall Islanders, involuntarily conscripted to serve as the US’s sacrificial testing zone for its nuclear weaponry, whose case to the ICJ was rejected in 2016 on preliminary technical grounds even as they testified that “women of the island have [been giving] birth to babies [with] no arms, no legs, no heads […] that look like blobs”; to name only some of the inhabitants of this graveyard of “civilized” barbarities. 

How to Defend a Colonial Genocide

Far from being an aberration, the condoned devastation of Gaza is an expression of the colonial present’s violent foundations: discursively erased and legally denied.

Encapsulated in Israel’s arguments during the first round of hearings on the Gaza genocide at the ICJ (held on January 11 and 12), are the various forms of epistemic violence required to project coloniality’s alternative facts as “reality.” 

Atomization – isolating and dissociating particular events from the structure of domination as a whole: ex. “[South Africa] declares that: ‘it is important to place the acts of genocide in the broader context of Israel’s conduct towards [the] Palestinians during its 75-year-long apartheid.’ Leaving aside the outrageous nature of that statement […] the immediate and proximate context for the specific allegations of genocide claimed by South Africa lies in the events of 7 October.” It is only by deleting Israel’s 75 years of apartheid, 57 years of illegal occupation, and 17-year-long strangulation of Gaza – implemented by blockade, in itself an act of war under international law – that the current onslaught could be presented as an act of “self-defense” against Palestinian aggression.

Minimization – obfuscating the scale of destruction: ex. “The Court is told of over 23,000 [Palestinian] casualties, as [South Africa] repeats; as many have, unverified statistics provided by Hamas itself – hardly a reliable source.”  In fact, the damning death figures have not only been validated as reliable by UN agencies, Human Rights Watch, and estimates from within Israel’s own military, but if anything are an undercount – impeded by Israel’s incapacitation of Palestinian health facilities, pending the identification of bodies immolated and mutilated beyond recognizability, and excluding deaths from the “slow violences” of siege-induced starvation, dehydration, suffocation under the rubble, and disease (predicted to far exceed even the bombing fatalities). Just 20 days into Israel’s campaign – more than 80 days ago – the Associated Press reported that “each Gaza governorate” already had “at least two mass graves.” 

Fabrication – obscuring severe international legal violations: ex. “Hospitals have not been bombed.” Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital, for instance, has been bombed 35 times; other hospitals assaulted by Israeli airstrikes include the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship cancer hospital, Al-Awda hospital (killing three doctors), Al-Nasr children’s hospital … when rescuers were able to return to Al-Nasr several weeks later they found the dead bodies of babies decomposing in their incubators. As affirmed by Human Rights Watch, “no evidence put forward [by Israel] would justify depriving hospitals and ambulances of their protected status under international humanitarian law.”

Inversion – reversing the balance of violence between the occupier and the occupied: ex. “What Israel seeks by operating in Gaza is not to destroy a people, but to protect a people, its people, who are under attack on multiple fronts.” 

Therefore, Hamas “proudly filming” its acts of violence against individual Israelis is “barbarism”; while Israeli soldiers posting videos celebrating their detonation of entire Palestinian villages and chanting annihilatory slogans are simply ignored. Hamas’s attack, which killed 1,200, is decried as “unparalleled” and “genocidal”; Israel’s military operations – which have killed more than 25,000 as of writing, including more children in three weeks alone than in all the world’s wars combined annually, more UN aid workers than ever before in the UN’s history, and several times more people per day in total than any other “conflict” in the 21st century, with a 70% civilian death rate praised as “tremendously positive” by a spokesperson for Israel’s military – are merely the “harsh realities” of war.

Even Palestinians’ statelessness – which Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly reconfirmed his dedication to maintaining – is represented as an anti-Israel weapon! Armed with the weapon of their mass dispossession (the only “WMD” Palestinians have, unlike their occupiers), Palestinians evade the inter-state jurisdiction of the ICJ as non-state actors, declaims Israel; yet Israel simultaneously denounces any recognition of Palestinian statehood in international institutions.

Whether as a state or non-state, Palestinians are damned either way. The nefariousness of the Palestinian “other” is enshrined as an “unfalsifiable” hypothesis: a hallmark of genocidal ideology.  

Demonization – expelling the victims from humanity: ex. “[Israel] is committed, as it must be, to demonstrate humanity, but it does so in the face of Hamas’ utter inhumanity.” As in colonial genocides of decades past, the inherent “inhumanity” of the colonized “enemy” is used to rationalize deploying inhumane means of virtually unlimited violence against them. Yet again, genocidal logic is reproduced, in the very submissions purporting to disprove Israel’s genocidal intent.

Projection – displacing responsibility onto the occupied for their own suffering: ex. “Yes – damage and harm have occurred […] But always as a direct result of Hamas’ abhorrent method of warfare.” Perversely, Palestinians’ “humanity” and “agency” is recognized only to blame them for their own deaths as Hamas’s “human shields.” Israel’s assertion that it is Hamas that forces them to bomb homes, churches, markets, and refugee camps by using them for military purposes is directly refuted by reports from Amnesty International, which “in a number of cases [examined] found no evidence of the presence of fighters or other military objectives in the vicinity at the time of the attacks.”    

The demonization of Palestinians is so complete in Israel’s submissions, that mere insinuation suffices to paint them as the authors of their own demise: ex. “the Court is told of widespread damage to buildings, but it is not told, for example […] how many buildings were struck by over 2,000 indiscriminate terrorist rockets that misfired and landed in Gaza itself.” Israel does not bother to tell us how many, either; nor how “2,000 terrorist rockets” could possibly account for more than a mere fraction of the more than 300,000 homes, schools, hospitals, food production facilities, and universities – also known in Israeli military lexicon as “power targets” – that have been fully or partially destroyed. Even to describe this as the “decimation” of Gaza is a euphemism, for decimation literally means a 10% destruction, while approximately 70% of Gaza has by now been laid to waste. 

Self-Sanctification – extolling the superior humanity of the occupiers: ex. “Israel’s practice of mitigating civilian harm – such as by forewarning civilians of impending action by the unprecedented and extensive use of telephone calls, leafletting and so forth – coupled with the facilitation of humanitarian assistance, all demonstrate the precise opposite of any possible genocidal intent.” 

In reality, Israel’s grossly partial “humanitarianism” has been the continuation of domination and elimination by other means – as apartheid in South Africa, French colonization in North Africa, and genocidal residential “schools” in the US and Canada also advertised themselves as exercises in “care,” “sincere love,” and “charity” for Indigenous populations. In Gaza, 24-hour “evacuation” orders, leaflets instructing Palestinians to leave or be presumed “terrorist” sympathizers, and water supplies strategically directed to corral and “super”-concentrate Palestinians dying of dehydration into ever-shrinking areas: all have served as instruments of ethnic “cleansing” and forcible transfer. 

Mere hours after Israel’s representatives boasted to the ICJ of having “co-ordinated the entrance of a United Nations delegation into northern Gaza,” UN Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths recounted to the Security Council the “scenes of utter horror” witnessed there by the few aid convoys permitted through: “Corpses left lying in the road. People with evident signs of starvation stopping trucks in search of anything they can get to survive […] Our efforts to send humanitarian convoys to the North have been met with delays, denials, and the imposition of impossible conditions […] There is no safe place in Gaza.” 

Legalization – “law-washing” impunity: ex. “Israel’s legal system ensures accountability. The IDF [“Israel Defense Force”] has a robust law enforcement system.” (See also Fabrication above). Particular accomplishments of this “robust” apparatus for “accountability” include a >99% non-punishment rate for soldiers accused of murdering, torturing, or otherwise harming (i.e. “self-defending” themselves against) Palestinians, as well as the sole conviction for Israel’s previous mass-casualty incursion on Gaza, Operation Protective Edge: of three soldiers for stealing the equivalent of $900. 

Externally, Israel exalts the superior capabilities of its own “justice” system to avoid coming under international courts’ jurisdiction; while domestically, claiming a lack of resources and capacity to justify the absence of prosecutions: a brazen contradiction. Yet, it is supposedly the Palestinians and South Africans who, by appealing to the Genocide Convention in a desperate attempt to curtail the current carnage, are the ones “weaponizing” and “abusing” the law. 

Legal Ways of (Not) Seeing

Cultural critic John Berger famously elucidated the “ways of seeing” that structure our perception. Illuminated in the fires of the Gaza genocide are the equally powerful ways of not seeing, that sustain (selectively) organized ignorance even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

The systematic invisibilization of structural brutalization has been accomplished through international law itself. From the Nuremberg Trials, where Allied prosecutors avoided setting precedents against the Nazis that could also be applied to their own white supremacism; to the Genocide Convention, drafted at the impetus of Global South states to rectify Nuremberg’s limitations, yet restricted by colonial powers to preserve their prerogative to forcefully inaugurate the “primitive and backwards” into “civilization”; to the Apartheid Convention, which remains unsigned by settler states like the US and Canada, warned by the Afrikaaners that they would be considered guilty of apartheid too “as a result of the existence of Indian reservations”: the shielding of colonial state violence is the predictable result, when it is the criminals who define the crime.

As Congo’s representative to the UN remarked in 1968: “[we are] not surprised to note the zeal with which the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the other colonialist countries were attempting to exclude apartheid from the draft convention [on crimes against humanity], for the African delegations had no illusions about the real motives behind the negative attitude of those countries.” 

Echoing in the denigrations of South Africa’s case to uphold the most basic protections for Palestinians, denounced as a “subversion of the rules-based international order” and “legal absurdity,” is the international legal system’s deeply-entrenched history of anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity – relegating those on the “other” side of the global colour line to a position of “legal subalternity.”  

However, those resisting this subjugation are the inheritors of another tradition: of an internationalist solidarity across the undersides of colonial modernity, premised on an understanding that our liberations are inextricably intertwined. This includes knowing, as Nelson Mandela said, that “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” 

And so, it is the South Africans, survivors and rememberers of apartheid’s horrors, who have taken up the task of legally challenging Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. As before them, it was Haiti, Liberia, Ethiopia and other Global South states that bore the mantle of the long struggle against South Africa’s apartheid in international institutions – prevailing eventually in spite of the obdurate opposition by apartheid’s European, North American, and Israeli allies, and the apartheid regime’s accusations of “anti-European bias.” 

In 1946, the Black South African president of the African National Congress, Dr Alfred Bitini Xuma, implored the United Nations to counter apartheid and “adopt as their motto” not “Might is Right” but “Right is Might.” It took 48 years more for apartheid in South Africa to be formally abolished: a justice delayed by at least a decade, in the estimation of eminent international law expert John Dugard, by the ICJ’s dismissal of Liberia’s and Ethiopia’s complaint against the apartheid state.   

For the Palestinians, now, how much longer will the illegal occupation and obliteration to which they have been subjected be permitted to endure?

The ICJ is expected to deliver a preliminary decision this Friday on South Africa’s request for emergency “provisional measures”; but the final judgement on the genocide is still many years away.  The ICJ Statute claims as one of its sources the laws of “civilized nations”; how many more colonial genocides and apartheids, before international law lives up to the “standard of anti-colonial civilization” expressed, for example, in Indigenous concepts of care “for all our relations,” in the South African principle of ubuntu, the interconnectedness of all people, in Palestinian sumud, steadfast dedication to opposing injustice and oppression? 

Even as the hearings on the Gaza genocide were occurring at the ICJ’s “Peace Palace,” “intense Israeli bombardments from air, land, and sea continued,” hundreds more Palestinians were killed and injured – sequestered behind the shutters of yet another telecommunications blackout – while four more Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance workers were mourned and buried. In a recent press conference on the case, South Africa’s High Commissioner to Canada asked only for Palestinians’ forgiveness, for having allowed their suffering to go on for so long before this intervention. As for those who persist in perpetrating and facilitating the butchery, how can there ever be any absolution?

Kanji, Azeezah. “The Genocidal ‘Civilized’ vs the Colonized: Gaza”. Yellowhead Institute. 23, January 2024. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2024/01/23/the-genocidal-civilized-vs-the-colonized-gaza-at-the-icj/

 

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There is widespread discrimination in the Canadian criminal justice system. 

Indigenous Peoples represent 4.5 percent of the Canadian adult population1 but 26.3 percent of new admissions to federal prisons.2 Compared to non-Indigenous offenders, Canadian Indigenous offenders are over-represented among those in structured intervention units (formally known as administrative segregation), released later in their sentence, and are often denied parole.3 Both legislative and judicial attempts to address the overrepresentation of Indigenous Peoples4 have been ineffective, as overrepresentation has increased since the late 1990s.5 

There is a similar overrepresentation of Indigenous Peoples in the criminal justice system in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand (with conviction or incarceration rates ranging from three to ten times higher than non-Indigenous Peoples).6 Although the culture and experiences of Indigenous groups vary widely between (and within) these countries, they all face similar challenges in learning how to maximize the fairness and effectiveness of a European-imposed justice system not suited to Indigenous histories, culture, language, and conceptions of justice.

Classifying “High Risk”

But how does this dynamic unfold?

Almost all decisions in the criminal justice system (e.g., bail, sentencing, parole, community supervision conditions) are influenced by a formal or informal assessment of an individual’s risk of reoffending. Risk assessment is necessary to apportion limited resources most effectively.7 As a prolific activity in the criminal justice system, offender risk assessment engages in the ubiquitous task of determining the likelihood of a future event. Although practitioners decide whether or not an offender should receive treatment, risk assessment scales are just one piece of the puzzle that informs reoffending.8 Risk assessments measure the probability of reoffending and can be understood as a prognostic tool. Hence, risk is determined by various factors that describe an individual’s risk as more or less danger

Existing risk assessment tools and core risk factors tend to predict recidivism better for non-Indigenous offenders but worse for Indigenous offenders.9 Furthermore, Indigenous offenders are more likely to be classified as high-risk.10

In many ways, this is the core of institutional discrimination in the system: Based on factors due to colonialism, Indigenous offenders are deemed high risk and, therefore, subjected to even more colonialism.

It is a cycle of criminalization that ensures the statistics at the outset endure. 

For example, a recent study by Muir et al. revealed that colonialism likely contributes to elevated scores on the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) for young Indigenous offenders.11 Colonialism reduces opportunities for protective factors like cultural involvement, which reduces the likelihood of future criminal activity. While this issue may appear unique to the SAVRY, many Indigenous-specific protective factors are not included in most risk assessments for youth and adults. 

A Culturally Sensitive Risk Assessment?

Moreover, Indigenous scholars have criticized the neglect of culture in risk assessment.12 We are missing an essential piece of the puzzle, and assessment practices for Indigenous offenders — though better than nothing — are not good enough.

No risk assessment tool currently in use has been developed in a culturally responsive way or has considered the possibility of culturally specific risk factors for Indigenous offenders.

It has been argued that commonly used risk assessment scales overclassify Indigenous Peoples as high-risk because they are assessed using risk factors potentially irrelevant to Indigenous offenders.13 Accordingly, risk assessment scales used by the Canadian correctional system are potentially harmful to and discriminate against Indigenous offenders. Over-classification results may be severe, as a lack of appropriate identification inhibits suitable treatment for Indigenous offenders.14 The overestimation of recidivism for Indigenous offenders may also neglect other important risk factors not included in risk assessment scales. 

This crucial gap in risk assessment research/practice takes on particular importance given a recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling regarding the applicability of risk assessment tools with Indigenous offenders.15 In this case, a Métis federal prisoner contended that the risk assessment scales used by Correctional Services Canada (CSC) were not validated with Indigenous populations, rendering them harmful due to the potential for discrimination. During his trial, Ewert challenged five psychological and actuarial risk assessment tools, including the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (“PCL-R”), the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (“VRAG”), the Sex Offender Risk Appraisal Guide (“SORAG”), the Static-99, and the Violence Risk Scale–Sex Offender (“VRS-SO”). 

This case has generated considerable debate and attention in Canada and internationally, and its exact implications have yet to be discovered. Still, one thing is clear: the Supreme Court mandates that risk tools must be appropriately validated for this population. Given that risk assessment scales are not working well for Indigenous offenders, we must understand why this is the case and how to improve risk assessment practices. 

An endeavour like this involves two core components: content and process. Examining the content of risk assessments will help criminal justice personnel understand risk factors for crime among Indigenous Peoples. This process may involve culturally specific risk factors (i.e., apply uniquely to Indigenous Peoples, likely due to the legacy of colonialism and genocide), culturally salient (i.e., more critical for Indigenous Peoples compared to non-Indigenous Peoples), or universal risk factors that need to be measured in more culturally informed ways. Conversely, the process of risk assessment consists of weaving existing research methods. Current risk assessment scales have taken an exclusively Western, colonial epistemological approach that has silenced Indigenous perspectives and research methodologies.16

Reconciliation and Criminal Justice Policy

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) developed 94 Calls to Action for our country to move forward with reconciliation and Calls to Action 30, 36, and 37 call for us to eliminate the overrepresentation of Indigenous Peoples in custody, provide culturally appropriate services to prisoners, and provide more support for Indigenous programming in community corrections.17  

That is not to say there is a “fair” representation of Indigenous Peoples in custody. In fact, the Calls to Action stated above are evidence of systemic discrimination against Indigenous Peoples, who are disproportionately populated in prison compared to their white counterparts. Indigenous Peoples experience the colonial weapon of racialized criminality.18 In other words, this problem is not new.

Indigenous Peoples are incarcerated in extreme numbers and have also experienced imprisonment since the formation of Canada. For many, prisons become the “new residential schools.” 19

Despite the federal government’s meagre attempts to address these injustices, these injustices thrive in Canadian society today and are entrenched in the criminal justice system as discerned with risk assessments.20 This fundamental insight cannot be discarded and must be foregrounded in any discussion of the impact of trauma and risk factors for Indigenous Peoples. A shift away from the language of “overrepresentation” could reorient the application of assessing the risks and needs of Indigenous Peoples. Although such a shift will not dismantle the colonial structures that identify our current understanding of Indigenous Peoples’ experiences in custody, a meaningful shift in the colonial production of Indigenous criminalization might lead to the questioning and rejecting of the violence of state justice policies. 

Endnotes

1Jamil Malakieh, Adult and youth correctional statistics in Canada, 2018/2019, Statistics Canada, December 21, 2020, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2020001/article/00016-eng.htm

2 Public Safety Canada, Corrections and conditional release statistical overview: Annual report 2018, Public Safety Canada, August 2019, https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/ccrso-2018/ccrso-2018-en.pdf 

3 Public Safety Canada, Preliminary observations of the operation of Correctional Service Canada’s structured intervention units, Public Safety Canada, October 26, 2021, www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/2022-siu-iap/2022-siu-iap-en.pdf; Public Safety Canada, 2019; Office of the Correctional Investigator, Annual Report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator 2013-2014, Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, June 27, 2014, https://oci-bec.gc.ca/en/content/annual-report-office-correctional-investigator-2013-2014.

4 Criminal Code (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46) s. 718.2(e); R. v. Gladue [1999] 1 SCR 688.

5 Public Safety Canada, 2019.

6 Jake Flanagin, “Reservation to prison pipeline: Native Americans are the unseen victims of a broken US justice system,” Quartz, April 27, 2015; S.M Shepherd, Y. Adams, E. McEntyre, and R. Walker, “Violence risk assessment in Australian Aboriginal offender populations: A review of the literature,” Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 20, no. 3 (2014): 281-293; A. J. Tamatea, “Culture is our business: Issues and challenges for forensic and correctional psychologists,” Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences, 49, no. 5 (2017): 564- 578, https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000017  

7 James Bonta and D. A. Andrews, The Psychology of Criminal Conduct: 6th Edition (New York: Routledge, 2017).  

8 Maaike Helmus and Kelly Babchishin, “Primer on risk assessment and the statistics used to evaluate its accuracy,” Criminal Justice and Behavior, 44, no. 1 (2017): 8-25, https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854816678898

9 Leticia Gutierrez, L. Maaike Helmus, and R. Karl Hanson, “What we know and don’t know about risk assessment with offenders of Indigenous heritage,” Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, 3, no. 2 (2016): 97-106, https://doi.org/10.1037/tam0000064; Letcia Gutierrez, Holly A. Wilson, Tanya Rugge, and James Bonta, “The prediction of recidivism with Aboriginal offenders: A theoretically informed meta-analysis,” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 55, no. 1 (2013): 55-99, https://doi.org/10.3138/cjccj.2011.E; Bronwen Perley-Robertson, L. Maaike Helmus, and Adelle Forth, “Predictive accuracy of static risk factors for Canadian Indigenous offenders compared to non-Indigenous offenders: Implications for risk assessment scales,” Psychology, Crime & Law, 25.3 (2019): 248-278, https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2018.1519827 

10 Maaike Helmus and T. Forrester, Construct validity of the Static Factors Assessment in the offender intake assessment process (Research Report R-309) , Correctional Service of Canada, February 1, 2014, https://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/005/008/092/005008-0309-eng.pdf

11 Nicole Muir, Jodi L. Viljoen, and Stephane M. Shepherd, “Violence Risk Assessment Tools and Indigenous Peoples: Colonialism as an Underlying Cause of Risk Ratings on the SAVRY,” International Journal of Forensic Mental Health 22, no. 4 (2023): 289-301, https://doi.org/10.1080/14999013.2023.2178554 

12 Tamatea, 2017.

13 Tamatea, 2017.

14 B. Perley-Robertson et al., 2019.

15 Ewert v. Canada [2018] SCC 30

16  Antje Deckert, “Criminologists, duct tape, and Indigenous peoples: Quantifying the use of silencing research methods,” International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, 40, no.1 (2016): 43-62, https://doi.org/10.1080/01924036.2015.1044017  

17 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada [TRC], Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Winnipeg, MB: TRC, 2015).

18  Robert Nichols, “The colonialism of incarceration,” Radical Philosophy Review, 17, no. 2 (2014): 435-455, https://doi.org/10.5840/radphilrev201491622

19  Robert Nichols, “The colonialism of incarceration,” Radical Philosophy Review, 17, no. 2 (2014): 435-455, https://doi.org/10.5840/radphilrev201491622

20 Ewert v. Canada [2018] SCC 30

Kyne, Ashley. “The Violence of Justice Policy:  Risk Assessments of the Criminalization of Indigenous People”. Yellowhead Institute. 17, January 2024. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2024/01/17/violence-of-justice-policy/

 

The post The Violence of Justice Policy: Risk Assessments and the Criminalization of Indigenous People appeared first on Yellowhead Institute.

The Yanomami are suffering an acute health crisis, and hundreds of children are acutely malnourished. © Urihi

The Yanomami are suffering an acute health crisis, and hundreds of children are acutely malnourished. © UrihiA health crisis is ravaging the Yanomami people in Brazil’s northern Amazon, one year on from emergency operation. #