Towards Atonement

The New Year has Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence still on a hunger strike in a teepee on Victoria Island, waiting for a meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Canada’s Governor General as representative of the Crown. She would wait 44 days while Idle No More protesters flashdanced and drummed their support from coast to coast. On January 11, thousands gathered on Parliament Hill as Grand Chief Atleo and other chiefs met with Prime Minister Harper. Chief Spence was conspicuously absent because the Governor General would not be there. Many other chiefs joined her protest and stayed away as fractures begin to emerge in the AFN. Chiefs threaten to bring Canada’s economy to its knees with railways and border blockades and highways. Although Prime Minster Harper promised Grand Chief Atleo that his government would make First Nations’ issues a priority, there was no follow up to January 11 meeting. On January 24th, after 44 days of a liquid only fast, Chief Spence finally ends her hunger strike but not before First Nations chiefs and opposition leaders sign a 13 point declaration of intent to keep pressure on the federal government. Chief Spence and others want a meeting with the Prime Minister and the Governor General on a nation to nation basis to honour inherent and treaty rights, which are threatened under Bill C-45. In the meantime, Idle No More protests spread across the Canadian border into the United States. Protests grow as environmentalists join forces against the Harper extraction agenda. Tarsands, pipelines and mining on native lands have been planned by the government without consultation or consent of First Nations, the owners of the land. A day of action is organized for January 28th and Idle No More demonstrations go global when people see how the Canadian government has systemically abused First Nations treaty rights. Advancing corporate interests to extract valuable resources without regard to the devastating environmental and social problems incurred. The toxic legacy of coal and gold mining is exposed in a UN report on the environmental damage that mining in remote northern communities like Attawapiskat reaps.