Zoe Craig-Sparrow, Shelagh Day and Margot Young: Canada Chooses Oil Companies Over Indigenous Peoples

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The contradictions could not be more glaring. While recent laws passed by the federal and British Columbia governments commit to transforming relationships with indigenous peoples, their actions indicate otherwise.

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For example, in northern British Columbia, hereditary heads of the five Wet’suwet’en clans oppose incursion into their traditional lands not ceded by the Coastal GasLink pipeline. While some elected gang councils in the Wet’suwet’en territory support the project, both indigenous law and the Supreme Court of Canada recognize hereditary chiefs as stewards of the 22,000 square kilometers of central BC that is Wet’suwet’en yintah (territory).

The conflict with the RCMP in BC has shed light on this issue. The RCMP has invaded the Hereditary Chiefs’ camps three times in three years, the more recent in November 2021. Twenty-nine people, including two accredited journalists, were arrested in a multi-day invasion last month. When footage of the arrest was finally released, it showed UK Mounted Police officers pointing assault rifles at unarmed Indians.

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At the heart of the matter is a contradiction about the rule of law.

The narrative offered by the federal and provincial governments is that since the BC Oil and Gas Commission granted a permit and a court granted Coastal GasLink’s request for an injunction against blockades, the police are simply upholding the rule of law. . They represent the hereditary chiefs as a small band of dissident rioters defying a court order.

But the hereditary chiefs are not protesters, they are defenders of the land.

And they are acting in accordance with the Wet’suwet’en law, which predates colonization, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has also intervened, issuing a decision in 2019 calling on Canada to withdraw police forces and stop pipeline construction.

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It is clear that governments are choosing which law to defend, prioritizing the law that protects oil and gas corporations, rather than the law that protects the rights of indigenous peoples.

It’s also more than a little irony to see Indigenous Peoples arrested for protecting the earth from the sprawl of fossil fuels and rising carbon emissions, while British Columbia is experiencing another catastrophe driven by climate change.

Indigenous land defenders are helping Canada meet its climate obligations. TO Report 2021 estimated that over the past 10 years, indigenous resistance to the expansion of fossil fuels in Canada and the US has halted or delayed greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least a quarter of the annual emissions of both countries.

Make no mistake, our governments are choosing oil companies over indigenous peoples, and that is not a promising path to reconciliation.

Zoe Craig-Sparrow is Director of Indigenous Rights and Environmental Justice, Justice for Girls and a member of the Musqueam Indian Band; Shelagh Day is the Chairperson of the Human Rights Committee of the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action; Margot Young works at BC University Allard School of Law