The Indigenous Missionary Council’s (CIMI) annual report on violence against indigenous communities in Brazil in 2020 illustrates an expansion of human rights violations committed during Jair Bolsonaro’s second year of his presidency. Under the guise of the coronavirus pandemic, land exploitation continued while indigenous communities benefited from no state protection.

Increased illegal incursions into indigenous territory by miners, loggers, farmers and hunters contributed to the spread of Covid19 among indigenous communities, which resulted in 900 deaths – a loss in terms of indigenous history, memory and culture.

Furthermore, the Brazilian government’s encouragement of land exploitation, in particular the legal proposals to open up indigenous territory to industrialization, contributed to an increase in violent clashes over territorial rights, with an increase of 174 percent in 2020 over 2019.

Equally important, and in line with the previous statistics, is an increase in the number of indigenous people murdered in 2020, when compared to 2019, with 182 and 113 people killed in these respective years. Last year’s tally represents a 61 percent increase over 2019. Additionally, 304 cases of violence were recorded in 2020, in comparison to the 277 cases documented in 2019.

In 2020, heritage related crimes amounted to 1,191 cases, while suspended demarcations of indigenous territory remains a key component of Bolsonaro’s presidency with 64 percent of territory still awaiting identification.

Bolsosnaro was one of the world leaders purportedly committing to halt deforestation by 2030, but his track record indicates otherwise, particularly when reports called out the deterioration of Brazil’s environment. The intimidation exhibited towards institutions and agencies is also reflective of the violence employed towards indigenous communities in Brazil, whose indigenous status is ridiculed by the government and who are the last standing frontline in between the rainforest and Bolsonaro’s exploitative politics.

How does Bolsonaro, for instance, seek to reduce deforestation when agribusiness is one of Bolsonaro’s main electoral bulwarks?

At the COP26 conference in Glasgow, indigenous representatives highlighted the Brazilian government’s contradictions. “If there is no protection of indigenous territories and rights, there will also be no solution to the climate crisis, because we are part of that solution,” Sonia Guajajara, head of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (ABIP), declared.

This is one core issue where Bolsonaro is intentionally failing, for profit. A recent report illustrates how indigenous reserves in Trincheira have been targeted by invaders who destroyed 20 hectares of forest area and planted grass, paving the way for additional pasture area and affecting 18 indigenous reserves. According to Global Forest Watch, this year’s deforestation in Brazil is already over 72 percent higher than the same period in 2020. Josiane Tavares dos Santos, leader of Trincheira, described the destruction as “becoming an island in the middle of farms.”

Clearly, the EU for example has failed to heed indigenous warnings. Commenting on Bolsonaro’s pledges to end illegal deforestation during a meeting with foreign affairs and environment ministers, EU Vice President Josep Borrell stated, “The will is there, because the ministers know that it will be good for Brazil to put an end to illegal exploitation of the Amazon Rainforest.”

In 2019, EU firms were among those benefiting from Brazil’s illegal logging business – an issue which ought to be investigated as part of the bloc’s complicity in abetting both the Brazilian government and illegal deforestation.

It is only the indigenous communities, however, who are clarifying the importance of their inclusion in political decision-making with regards to the environment. The international community makes an erroneous distinction between indigenous communities and their environment. CIMI’s report should serve as an eyeopener in terms of how indigenous communities require political protection, but the world would prefer to dissociate, thus associating politics with businesses and destruction with the humanitarian paradigm.

In May last year, the giant mining company Rio Tinto made headline news after blasting the Aboriginal sacred site Jukaan Gorge in Pilbara, in its expansion of its iron ore mine. The Australian government’s official consent to the destruction was given to Rio Tinto in 2013 and despite historical evidence being uncovered a year later, including artefacts and links to ancestral heritage, no renegotiation was made, because the Aboriginal Heritage Act does not allow for reconsideration.

Efforts to change the law, which favours mining corporations, have been deferred since 2012. Proposed amendments in 2014 elicited protests among the Indigenous communities due to lack of consultation with the Indigenous people and the absence of avenues for appeal against mining projects.

At that time, the opposition spokesman for Aboriginal Affairs Ben Wyatt had stated, “Aboriginal heritage isn’t something for the Government to bequeath to Aboriginal people. It’s been there well before the Government came along here in Western Australia.”

Wyatt’s record, however, isn’t pro-Indigenous. In 2017, Wyatt approved the destruction of 50 Aboriginal sites which are sacred to the Winatwari Guruma Aboriginal Corporation (WGAC) without consulting the traditional owners. The WGAC holds the native title to land in Pilbara, in which 40% of Rio Tinto’s iron ore mines are located.

Wyatt will be joining Rio Tinto’s board as Indigenous director in September – a move which Wyatt says will increase Indigenous representation but which other activists and individuals have criticised. Australian Labor Senator Pat Dodson’s scathing criticism pointed out Wyatt’s involvement in the destruction of Aboriginal heritage sites. “Rio Tinto may think it’s bought respectability by appointing Mr Wyatt, but Aboriginal people – especially those whose sacred sites are endangered by mining – will rightly be sceptical,” Dodson stated.

Indeed, Rio Tinto will need more than Wyatt’s appointment to salvage its public image. News reports this month revealed that the mining company has not yet paid compensation to the Puuti Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people (PKKP) for the destruction of Jukaan Gorge. In December 2020, an interim report into the destruction recommended that Rio Tinto should finance and reconstruct the Jukaan Gorge shelters. So far, no financial compensation has been made by the company and the Jukaan Gorge shelters have only been partially rehabilitated.

The WGAC have also requested that royalties are paid by Rio Tinto as compensation for Aboriginal heritage destruction, while the PKKP have requested a co-management system with Rio Tinto when it comes to Aboriginal ancestral lands.

Jukaan Gorge may be the most visible predicament for Rio Tinto, however, the company is also facing additional backlash over the deliberate destruction of Aboriginal artefacts in the Marandoo mine in the 1990s.

The WGAC has alleged that Rio Tinto deliberately destroyed hundreds of Aboriginal artefacts stored in 66 large bags, which were disposed of in a rubbish dump in Darwin. The Marandoo mine approval was granted by Western Australia’s federal government in 1992, on condition that it would salvage and protect Indigenous burial sites and artefacts. With Rio Tinto unaccountable for heritage protection, 40,000 years of Aboriginal heritage were destroyed or lost, in collaboration with Western Australia’s federal government. Heritage workers evaluating the proposed mining site were obstructed by the mining company from conducting thorough surveys.

Rio Tinto may claim it is “not proud of many parts of our history at Marandoo,” but legislation has so far favoured giant corporations and their exploitation of land. The proposed Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Bill is not perceived as safeguarding Indigenous rights – Aboriginals have no right to veto and the final decisions over land exploitation rest with the government. An equal right to review does not translate as equality if Indigenous people’s concerns come secondary to profit.

Following the grim discovery of mass graves from Catholic-run schools for indigenous children, churches across Canada are being torched to the ground. Instead of the liberal government of Justin Trudeau harshly condemning the attacks, however, it has sent a weak and passive message to the arsonists.

There is no doubt that the history of Aboriginal children, physically removed from their parents and forced to attend state-run residential in Canada from the 1880s until 1996, is an appallingly tragic one. Inside of the Catholic schools, an estimated 150,000 attendees were indoctrinated with the new social and cultural values of the dominant Euro-Christian nation. Over the years, many of the children were sexually abused, tortured and even murdered in these “central training industrial schools,” criminal actors in what can be best described as the cultural genocide of an entire race of people.

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada put out a lengthy report on the findings, as well as its recommendations for addressing the grievances. Yet for whatever reason, the Canadian media shied away from the story, possibly because it was too keenly aware exactly how complicit the government was in the egregious acts. Could that be the reason that not a single person has been put on trial for these crimes against humanity? Whatever the case may be, last month the suppressed news exploded to the surface like a volcano after nearly 1,000 unmarked graves were discovered on the territory of a former residential school in Saskatchewan province.

As a result of the horrific revelations, which have been an open secret among journalists for many years, a proverbial bomb has exploded in the lap of the Catholic Church as dozens of churches in the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia have suffered arson attacks, while many more have been vandalized.

17th Catholic Church burned in Canada. https://t.co/WtI0NgBZG6

— Xavier1017 (@Xavier10171) July 10, 2021

Equally problematic, however, has been the tepid and late response from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party to these acts of wanton violence. Although the attacks on Catholic churches in Canada have been happening since around mid-June, Trudeau waited until July 2 to give his first comments on them. And those comments failed to carry the necessary ring of authority that lets the perpetrators understand in no uncertain terms that acts of arson would not be tolerated.

“It is unacceptable and wrong that acts of vandalism and arson are being seen across the country, including against Catholic churches,” Trudeau said, in remarks that amount to little more than a slap on the wrist to the perpetrators.

“I understand the anger that’s out there against the federal government, against institutions like the Catholic Church,” the Prime Minister continued. “It is real, and it’s fully understandable, given the shameful history that we are all becoming more and more aware of and engaging ourselves to do better as Canadians.”

When the moment called for a firm denunciation against arson, which ranks as one of the gravest crimes as it subjects a large swath of the population to grave danger, Trudeau provided guarded milquetoast criticism, which have done nothing to prevent the criminal acts from reoccurring, it should be noted. Moreover, such a kid gloves response will be replicated by other state officials, eager to trumpet the official line.

Needless to say, when Harsha Walia, the head of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said in a tweet “Burn it all down” in response to news that two more churches were torched in British Columbia (and without any punishment from Twitter to date, by the way), the conservative response came fast and furious. Critics implored their audiences to imagine the government’s response had a Muslim mosque, for example, suffered from such a barbaric attack. The predictable reaction from the government would be – correctly – to label those acts as “hate crimes.”

So Gerry, defending the “burning churches is cool” crowd?

— Terry Glavin 格立文 (@TerryGlavin) July 6, 2021

Terry Glavin, a columnist for National Post, took issue with Walia’s despicable call for violence, and found himself ridiculed by none other than Gerry Butts, who served as the Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from November 4, 2015 until his resignation in 2019.

In response to Glavin’s question if burning down churches “is cool,” Butts responded, “No Terry, it is not. Though it may be understandable.” It seems that attacks on Christian churches simply do not fall under the category of “hate crimes.”

Here we have, yet again, Canadian Liberals, in truly selective fashion, finding ways to justify acts of violence as a form of protest against historic crimes. This very same strange proclivity for denouncing law and order more than the initial crime itself was first popularized in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests, which saw one liberal run state after another allow the mob to run wild.

In the city of Seattle, an entire city block was declared an autonomous “police free zone,” which lasted right up until the moment people started getting killed; in Portland, Oregon, the incompetent mayor, Ted Wheeler, denied police the use of CS tear gas after a protester group filed a complaint. Portland police, who have had everything including Molotov cocktails hurled at them, said it was their last form of non-lethal methods for confronting the crowds; in St. Louis, Mark and Patricia McCloskey brandished firearms and pointed them at a group of protesters who trespassed onto their property. Last month, under threat of felony firearm charges, the couple pleaded guilty to lesser misdemeanor charges, yet was still required to surrender their firearms.

Now these same mindless liberal tendencies, first baked in the American madhouse, are being exported abroad to other Liberal hotspots. Canada, with spineless and spiritless Trudeau at the helm, has been an enthusiastic student of these decaying ways. Yes, the violation of human rights is very serious business, but to allow the passions of the mob to run wild as a form of “reconcilitation” is a recipe for the complete breakdown of society. Meanwhile, there are already definite warning signs that the American ‘woke’ mentality has moved across the ocean where it is now taking root in England and Western Europe.

It is the prediction here that the West is on the cusp of a massive right-wing backlash from these reckless liberal policies that refuse law and order its rightful place in the political establishment. Whether that backlash will wear the jackboots on cobblestone brand of fascism is anybody’s guess, but at this point it’s either a return to ‘strong conservative values’ or the complete self-destruction of the Western nations, whose fate will be determined by the destructive mob.

Ugly truths which some had preferred be kept in the dark have been pulled into the light of day as a mass grave of 215 children was discovered this month in Kamloops BC using ground penetrating radar.

The controversial find has sent shockwaves through the world Community and resulted in official calls by UN human rights experts that investigations be undertaken by both the UN and Holy See into these and other atrocities committed by the Canadian government whose Catholic Church-controlled Federal Residential School processed 150 000 First Nations children in 130 schools between 1831-1970.

Many of these children were heartlessly ripped from their homes and prevented from either speaking their native languages, seeing their families or practicing their customs as part of a multi-generational assimilation program to break the “culture of the savages” as outlined in explicit detail by Canada’s founding father and arch racist John A. Macdonald.

The UN human rights experts called on June 4 for the full implementation of all recommendations of the 2008-2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which released a 2015 final report covering the cultural genocide committed on Canada’s First Nations’ by the Federal Government and Catholic Church. During the commissions seven-year study, it was revealed that there were 3200 confirmed child fatalities (yet no records existent of causes of deaths) while former TRC Chair Murray Sinclair has concluded that the real number was closer to 6000. Among their extensive interviews with First Nations communities, the Commission found tens of thousands of reports of torture, sexual violence and other criminal abuse committed by overseers of the residential school system.

This is obviously embarrassing for a nation which has grown accustomed to “enlightened” virtue signaling often being the first to condemn alleged cases of government-sanctioned genocide and human rights abuses against nations like Libya, Syria and most recently China. The consequences of Canada’s liberal self-righteous condemnation of other nations’ bad behavior to their minority groups has resulted in Canada’s support for acts of war such as sanctions, spreading misinformation which often ignores the role of western intelligence agencies at the heart of many of the operations- especially across Africa and the Middle East- and has even led to the outright bombing of nations back to the stone age with the full backing of liberal imperialists among Canada’s power structure.

When such paragons of liberal enlightenment like Prime Minister Trudeau cry crocodile tears over the abuses committed against the First Nations over the decades- and the current mass grave situation is no exception- it is often undertaken with a fair dose of misdirection and fallacy. For instance, the language heard by virtue signalling politicians implies that these injustices are a thing of the past and the new “normal” involves a hypersensitivity and respect for First Nations.

However, evidence shows a very different story, as First Nation families continue to be ripped apart with over 52% of Canadian children in foster care being indigenous and with suicide rates among natives 3x higher than the national average.

Across Canada’s reserves, states of government-enforced stagnation and isolation have been maintained for the past 50 years which has deprived these minority groups of any genuine economic development under a modern “human flagpole” policy. This social engineering program dubbed officially the “Arctic Re-Allocation Project” was innovated between 1952-1958 and saw hundreds of First Nations family sent back to “their natural ecosystems” in the Arctic despite the fact that they had assimilated into the industrial economic paradigm for several generations and had forgotten many of their hunting-gathering skills resulting in many deaths. This program was more broadly adopted when the assimilation regime was ended in the 1970s and a new manipulative policy befitting a post-industrial paradigm was imposed which I described in a recent article on Eco Colonialism.

To this day, 61 native communities have no access to clean water and no federal regulatory protection on infrastructure.

A Human Rights Watch representative commenting: “If you are anywhere else in Canada and you turn on the tap, then you are protected by safe drinking water regulations. If you live on reserve, no such regulations exist. There are no safe drinking water protections.”

Indigenous communities find themselves often adrift with no sense of future and no economic opportunities suffering 3 times more infant mortalities than the national average, 11% of all opioid deaths (despite only accounting for 2.6% of the population), and 47% of native children living in poverty. Inuit communities suffer the worst statistics with 11 times more suicides than the national average. Up until last year, BC hospitals still maintained a “birth alert” registry to keep tabs on all native families that might be a risk to their children.

While it is nice that a $33 million registry was approved to track down other cases of abuse- much of which will be directed to families directly impacted by the Kamloops abuses, the federal government is showing its true colors by battling thousands of First Nations victims in court who are defending the Canadian Human Rights Tribunals ruling that each of the 50 000 victims are entitled to $40 000 compensation each who had been taken from their homes and did not receive welfare protection.

The facts show that the injustices of the past have not disappeared, but merely changed forms over the past decades and continue to distort and traumatize in lesser understood modes through the present day. Will the ultimate truth and justice be revealed through the UN or Vatican’s participation in a serious inquiry into the past and present crimes of the Canadian government or will blind eyes continue to be turned as past skeletons are kept in their unmarked graves?

The author can be reached at canadianpatriot1776@tutanota.com

The recent discovery of an indigenous mass grave in Canada bearing the remains of 215 children, is yet another reminder of colonial impunity. Kamloops Indian Residential School was the largest of many schools in Canada run by the government and the Catholic Church, which participated in the practice of separating indigenous children from their communities and families, in a bid to assimilate the younger generations to the settler-mainstream society. Over 150,000 Indigenous children were forced into these schools; over 4,100 have been reported dead or missing. From malnutrition, medical neglect, to sexual abuse, the crimes were covered up.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has come under criticism from indigenous leaders for failing to move beyond symbolic language of reconciliation. While the government pointed towards the Truth and Reconciliation report, Trudeau implied that the lengthy research process was partly due to the various partnerships and collaborations involved. “If it were only done by ministers, if it were only done by Ottawa, to solve these challenges, it might have been done long ago, but it would have been done wrong,” he stated.

A thriving colonial political supremacy should have been blamed for the stalling, as well as the Canadian government’s reliance on symbolic gestures as opposed to committed action to locate the missing indigenous children. To merely state, in the wake of the mass grave discovery, “We have committed as a government to be there for reconciliation, but also to be there for truth and that is an important step. So yes, we will be there to work with communities on the things they need and on the things we all need to know,” is not indicative of a government’s resolve to aid the process of Canada’s indigenous collective memory, let alone establish culpability and accountability for the historical atrocities.

Between 2007 and 2015, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission embarked upon a mission to gather testimonies and accounts pertaining to the Residential Schools which targeted indigenous children. In the span of six years, the commission gathered historical accounts from over 6,500 witnesses, while the Canadian government presented over 5 million records to the Commission. In December 2015, the Commission presented its report, along with recommendations for the government to embark upon the reconciliation process. Prominent among the recommendations was the importance of “constructive actions on addressing the ongoing legacies of colonialism.”

Yet Trudeau’s rhetoric indicated no reference to the colonial cultural genocide which established control over indigenous lands and peoples. The justification for the residential schools targeting indigenous children was rooted in white supremacy. As Canada’s first Prime Minister John A Macdonald in 1883 declared, the policy was that children should be removed from their parents and “the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.”

Canada’s recent discovery not only alludes to the existence of other mass graves in the country. Additionally, it also sheds light on the global colonial legacy and how the military empire expanded through settler-colonialism and exploitation of indigenous lands – the latter hindered by the presence of the indigenous.

While the UN Human Rights Office has called for an investigation into the deaths of indigenous children in Canada, it has avoided mentioning the ramifications of colonialism. “Lack of exhaustive clarification and access to truth and redress for what happened during this dark period compounds this,” UN spokeswoman Marta Hurtado stated. At an international level, the organisation purportedly responsible for protecting human rights is still deeply entrenched in safeguarding the historical colonial legacies, hence the refusal to politicise human rights, lest the struggle for collective memory, which is common to all indigenous peoples, dent the structure which has served the colonial powers so well until now.

This week, the Canadian parliament, became the second nation of the Five Eyes (after the USA) to pass a motion condemning China as a promulgator of genocide against its Muslim population living in Xinjiang with all 266 parliamentarians representing all four federal parties joining in the dangerous game.

It would appear that these parliamentarians either didn’t realize that all of the claims of genocide promoted by anecdotal evidence accumulated by the NED-funded World Uyghur Congress or BBC have no bearing in reality and have been conclusively disproven, or these officials are exceedingly dishonest and lazy minded.

It would also appear that these parliamentarians forgot that they happened to preside over one of the largest abuses of an indigenous minority group of modern times as 350,000 First Nations (making up Aboriginals, Metis and Inuit) currently find themselves living in reserves with no hope for economic development, job opportunities or access to a life any different from their parents and grandparents which the state and covertly racist anthropologists dominating academia have deemed to be their “natural state”.

The naïve onlooker may ask: “But isn’t this the opposite of China’s ethnic genocide? Isn’t it the case that Canada’s natives are being left alone by the government, and permitted to live outside of the corrupt influences of western society, polluting technology and corrupting industry?”

Our naïve onlooker might continue to say: “Sure, there have been generations of abuses, but hasn’t our modern Canadian society become enlightened to the point that it now respects each first nation tribe’s rights to speak their own language, and be left alone? Of the 50 distinct languages spoken among the 634 tribes, many don’t even speak Canada’s official languages of French or English! Canada even supplies subsidies to ensure that welfare cheques and other benefits are extended to anyone living on native reserves across the nation (which they typically lose the moment they move off their allocated reserves of course). Isn’t that progressive?”

But here’s the rub:

Canadian native communities have forever been removed from their supposedly “pristine state of nature” and will never return to that. And that is a good thing, since the average life expectancy of someone living in the harsh climate of Northern Canada with no access to modern medicine, infrastructure and agriculture is abysmally low. At this moment, nearly any given member of a reserve across Canada has running water, electricity, internet and television, so anyone applauding Canada’s policy on native minorities due to our respect for “their natural way” should avoid straining their arm patting themselves on the back.

Despite the access to electricity, water, and some other modern amenities, the question persists: WHY are suicide rates among Canadian natives 3 x higher than the national average; with 5 x more indigenous women committing suicide than women of other non-native groups and 11 x more suicides in Inuit populations than other groups in Canada? WHY is it that natives living on reserves are 2.4 x more likely to commit suicide than those living off-reserves? WHY is it that the native communities only represent 2.6% of the total population and yet account for over 11% of all opioid deaths? Why are natives 13 x more likely to die of drug overdoses than other Canadians? WHY is infant mortality among natives 3 x higher than the national average while life expectancy is over 10 years shorter? And finally WHY do 47% of native children live in poverty with that number increasing across every province and territory?

Could it have anything to do with the fact that Canada’s natives have been the target of a racist imperial strategy designed to prevent any actual development of technology and mass infrastructure into reserves and especially not in the Arctic?

The Racist Strategy of Cultural Relativism and Human Flagpoles

Since the earliest days of the Cold War, Canadian natives have been manipulated by geopoliticians on two insidious levels:

On the first level, natives who had adapted to western civilization working in factories, farms and construction were quite literally extracted from cities during the 1950s and flown to northern outposts to “re-adapt” to their natural habitat under RCMP surveillance leaving many to starve and die for lack of knowledge of their lost hunting and gathering lifestyles. The name for this 1953-1958 geopolitical agenda was the High Arctic Reallocation Project.

This was later admitted to be a “human flagpole” program designed to justify Ottawa’s claims on Arctic territories. A royal commission report finally exposed the grave abuses of this program and published a final report in 1994 writing: “there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that the central, if not the sole, reasons for the relocation of Inuit to the high Arctic was the desire by Canada to assert its sovereignty over the Arctic Islands and surrounding areas”.

On the deeper level, natives across all of Canada have been encouraged to believe that “western civilization” is intrinsically antagonistic to their culture since the west is rooted in technology, logic and colonialism while the natives are supposedly “spiritual, illogical, and at-one with nature”. While this cultural relativistic outlook masquerades behind pro-indigenous rights and seems to support the idea of defending indigenous culture from western imperialism, the ugly reality is that this outlook is simply conducive to crushing development, via the manipulation of entire native ethnic groups. This program itself goes back to the 1876 Indian Act and Britain’s desperate need to destroy the threat of USA-Russian collaboration on Arctic development which began with Russia’s 1867 sale of Alaska to the USA as told in my recent report “Canada and the Missed Chance of 1867”.

While two world wars, a handful of assassinations and a western-backed color revolution in Russia ensured that the natural development of rail connections between the USA and Eurasia via the Bering Strait would not blossom as many leading 19^th century statesmen had planned, the friendship between Franklin Roosevelt and Stalin threatened to bring this long-overdue vision back to life. In 1944, FDR’s Vice President Henry Wallace described the need to bring advanced development into the Arctic along with a Bering Strait rail corridor (alongside Foreign Minister Molotov) writing in his Two People One Friendship:

“Of all nations, Russia has the most powerful combination of a rapidly increasing population, great natural resources and immediate expansion in technological skills. Siberia and China will furnish the greatest frontier of tomorrow… When Molotov [Russia’s Foreign Minister] was in Washington in the spring of 1942 I spoke to him about the combined highway and airway which I hope someday will link Chicago and Moscow via Canada, Alaska and Siberia. Molotov, after observing that no one nation could do this job by itself, said that he and I would live to see the day of its accomplishment. It would mean much to the peace of the future if there could be some tangible link of this sort between the pioneer spirit of our own West and the frontier spirit of the Russian East.”

In recent years, whenever native bands have tried to deal with the stagnation, and despair plaguing their communities by participating in real economic development that would finally introduce factors of opportunity, employment, skill creation and creative thought, as seen during the fight to construct the Coastal Gaslink Pipeline, white technocrats and other anthropologists working in universities, funded by billionaires arranged anti-pipeline mass protests to stop those initiatives from being created.

In response to the racist social engineering designed to prevent the development of natural gas pipelines that had unanimous support by all elected native chiefs in Alberta and BC, Native BC provincial MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly) Ellis Ross stated:

“Many of those lining up against the Coastal GasLink pipeline are non-Aboriginal, while some are even from south of the border. Foreign influence is nothing new, but what we are seeing today is a well-executed campaign financed by the likes of [Soros’] Tides Canada and the U.S. based Rockefeller Foundation.”

Compare this with China’s Uyghur Policy in Xinjiang

Many analysts have done a remarkable job debunking the Five Eyes claim of “Uyghur genocide” (as we see here and here and here and here), so I would like to end this report with a slightly different focus: Why is the disruption of today’s Belt and Road Initiative the primary agenda animating every aspect of imperial grand strategy today, including accusations of Uyghur genocide?

Additionally, China’s cultural/economic policy towards its dozens of minority groups demonstrate a living proof of principle that large scale economic development designed to end poverty and uplift cultural groups along the way can actually be done while respecting the rights and traditions of those minority groups being positively affected by great projects.

Sitting at the gateway to Central Asia and Europe (and standing in stark contrast to the destructive Anglo-Canadian aboriginal policy of the past 70 years), the Xinjiang Autonomous Region has seen per capita GDP increase 100 -fold between 1978 to 2020, while the dismal 20% school enrollment of children in 1949 has risen to 99.9% today. While citizens living in Xinjiang could expect to live to 30 years on average in 1949, that number has risen to 72 years today and is growing with every passing month.

China’s approach to economic development has created a new model which Canada and other western nations would be wise to follow including a vast de-desertification project involving forestation programs in South Xinjiang which has increased forest space from 15% coverage to 23.5% coverage in 20 years, increasing evapotranspiration leading to cloud coverage and overall cooling in formerly desert zones. The Tarim Basin Water project in the under-developed south Xinjiang has also rejuvenated the vital water source and has boosted agricultural output for the coming generations.

Throughout the Cold War, a major challenge blocking development of Xinjiang has been the lack of interconnectivity between the hundreds of villages which have nearly all been united by a vast network of road and rail with the first high speed rail track being built as I write this, running from Lanzhou-Urumqi totalling 1776 km and running parallel to the electrified Lanxin passenger railway completed in 2014. With the new high-speed route completed, the Lanxin passenger railway will be transformed to freight rail servicing the Eurasian Continental Landbridge with goods flowing 11,000 km from East China to Rotterdam.

Other rail projects now underway in Xinjiang involve the Ruoqiang-Hotan railway which completes a loop circling the Taklamakan desert, and also the 600 km Kashgar to Osh railway from China to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. This latter project will provide a vital boost of needed growth to Uzbekistan’s Ferhana Valley which has served as a landing point for Saudi Wahabism since the 1990s, where radicalized jihadis were infused into Pakistan and Afghanistan (and also back into China). A new highway from Kashgar City in Southern Xinjiang to Pakistan is now being finalized as an extended component of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as well as a new railway cutting through the desert.

Inland ports of Urumqi and IIi bordering Kazakhstan have also been completed with new cities, energy corridors and water projects built up along the way.

Has all of this development come at the cost of the local traditions and cultures of minority groups?

Not at all. Uyghur languages are still taught in schools which now also teach Mandarin as well as civic and law classes along with a vast array of trade schools and cultural centers across Xinjiang. It is also noteworthy that 24,800 venues for religious activities currently exist in Xinjiang, of which 24,400 are mosques, 59 Buddhist temples, 227 protestant churches and 26 catholic churches. Anyone of a Muslim, Buddhist or Christian minority group wishing to practice their faith have no difficulty finding imams, priests and pastors happy to help. Anyone wishing to see a performance of traditional Uyghur dance, music and drama can choose among an array of hundreds of cultural centers and theaters throughout Xinjiang with no difficulty.

If you were to listen only to the National Endowment for Democracy-funded World Uyghur Congress, or the Falun Gong-funded Epoch Times, or the BBC, you would not know about any of this.

The key theme in all of this is that genuine win-win, non-zero sum development is the only viable solution to closed-system geopolitics. As Saudi/Five Eyes sponsored radical Islamic Wahabi groups which once ran rough shod over China’s western border regions is put to an end by a common-sense approach that doesn’t involve bombing Islamic nations to smithereens or droning innocent people to pieces. China has managed to both find a sustainable cure for terrorism without destroying a single nation, while providing a foundation for extending the Belt and Road into the Middle East via Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and beyond.

The author can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

January 26 marks Australia Day in colonial narratives, when the British First Fleet arrived in 1788 to establish a penal colony on indigenous land. For the Aboriginal people, the annual commemoration is a reminder of the colonial invasion and its ramifications – the historical massacres, heritage theft, exploitation of history and a political system which to date discriminates against the indigenous.

Defying Covid restrictions, Aboriginal people and activists demonstrated in Sydney and Brisbane, calling for the day to be celebrated on another date. The chosen date marginalises Aboriginal ancestry, attributing Australia’s history only to its colonial legacy.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison described the day as “the moment where the journey to our modern nation began.” Such discourse of modernisation has been used in other colonial contexts – the legitimisation of destroying one history and people to impose a purportedly superior and industrialised culture. Establishing such settler dominance, alongside the economic exploitation of colonised territory, is the first step towards the political oblivion of the indigenous population. Indigenous resistance, often times organised belatedly upon realisation of the settler-colonial intent and politics, is then used as a pretext upon which to dehumanise and massacre the indigenous population. The colonial narrative, however, blames indigenous populations for their decline, once again exploiting the concept of modernisation to cultivate impunity.

The Australian government endorsed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People in 2009, thus recognising the Aboriginal right to self-determination and compensation for crimes related to colonial violence. However, there is no signed agreement between the Australian government and the Aboriginal people which would commit to addressing the country’s colonial past, Aboriginal land rights, history and memory. Aboriginals are still not recognised as Australia’s first people.

Besides the debate on whether the commemoration should be scrapped, or the date changed, the question of Australia’s identity should be raised. With Aboriginals marginalised, economically and socially, the narrative remains settler-colonial, hence the commemoration has nothing to do with Australia’s earlier heritage.

The change needs to start from within – coming to terms with the settler-colonial history of the country in order to find common ground for reconciliation with the indigenous population.

Reconciliation Australia reveals that awareness regarding the colonial violence of British colonialism in the country is increasing. In 2016, the organisation identified five concepts upon which reconciliation could be achieved: historical acceptance, race relations, equality and equity, institutional integrity and unity. The 2021 State of Reconciliation Australia Report makes one important point – reconciliation with the Aboriginal people was sought by a small percentage of the early colonisers. Expounding upon this history would bring about an acknowledgement of the settler-colonial violence against the indigenous Aboriginal population, thus strengthening the historical, collective memory of Australia.

At government level, however, exploitation of indigenous lands, carrying on from the earlier colonial framework, remains paramount. Earlier in January the South Australian government gave permission to Argonaut Resources subsidiary company, Kelaray, to drill for mineral exploration at Lake Torrens – a site of Aboriginal heritage but without native title protection, as decided by a 2016 Supreme Court case. “I am not persuaded that a determination of native title in favour of any of the three applicants should be made in respect of any part of the claim area,” the judge ruled, citing the absence of proof of ownership in the pre-colonial era.

The symbolic “Australia Day” celebrations should be juxtaposed against the normalised violations occurring against indigenous populations and their terrain. Unless indigenous rights are politically recognised, the symbolism associated with Australia Day will take precedence over Aboriginal history and collective memory – the reason being that one commemoration is being carried out on a daily level in Australia, excluding the indigenous to pave the way for the colonial legacy to flourish.

By Raul DIEGO

Buried deep in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2015, section 3003 calls for the expeditious facilitation of a land exchange agreement between Resolution Copper Mining, LLC and the United States government to create one of the largest and deepest copper mines in the country, spanning nearly 11,000 square miles of national forest terrain and penetrating 7,000 miles into beneath the surface of the earth.

The land swap specifically targets approximately 2,500 acres that are not already owned by the mining concern and which rest inside Apache hallowed ground known as Oak Flat in the Tonto National Forest in central Arizona. Considered sacred by the Apache and other First Nation peoples who still use the land they call Chich’il Bildagoteel for important ceremonies, food, and a vital link to their heritage, Oak Flat has been at the center of a decades-long battle between the San Carlos Apache Tribe and Resolution Copper, comprised of extraction industry behemoths Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton.

Closed to mining activities by President Eisenhower in 1955, Oak Flat has since flourished as a significant habitat for wildlife, including several endangered species of fish, snakes, and birds, as well as a popular campground and world-renowned rock climbing destination. Reaffirmed in the early ‘70s the protective regulations have nevertheless been incessantly targeted by UK-based Rio Tinto, whose lobbying efforts to obtain burrowing rights to the land have been rebuffed 13 times since.

In 2014, John McCain – the largest recipient of Rio Tinto political contributions in Congress that year ­– inserted the aforementioned rider in the 2015 NDAA, effectively reversing 66 years of environmental protection law and betraying his own history of advocating for indigenous rights as a ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs in 1989, when he led a Republican minority in the fight for the religious freedom of First Nations and the protection of sacred lands.

More than 30 years later, as President Trump leaves office, his administration looks to finish this act of duplicity initiated by his biggest political enemy in yet another demonstration of the hypocrisy that runs through the American political system and pervasive history of broken treaties and disenfranchisement of Native peoples.

Rushing into destruction

The U.S. Forest Service will release the final version of the environmental analysis for the Resolution Copper Project and Land Exchange in three days’ time and a full year ahead of schedule as a result of pressure from the Trump administration, according to local officials.

Members of the San Carlos Apache Nation have been camping out at Oak Flat since January 2020 as part of their continued effort to halt the mining project. Tribal member Wendsler Nosie Sr, interviewed by The Guardian in November described the urgency of their plight as the “fourth quarter with two minutes left in the game,” adding that Trump’s move to push the approval process forward by a year meant they now only “have one minute left.”

Oak Flat is just one of several large-scale mining and energy projects the outgoing administration is looking to approve before the proper assessments and consultations with affected populations are made. Other projects include a lithium mine in Nevada; a helium extraction project in Utah and an oil and gas drilling venture in Alaska, among others.

Virtually every one of these projects is facing opposition from Native tribes, whose very survival is threatened by the relentless advance of the extraction industry. That industry not only represents a catastrophic menace to their sources of clean water and food but also poses a direct risk to their safety as the proliferation of so-called “man-camps” or the temporary labor sites, plays a central role in the ongoing tragedy of missing and murdered indigenous women.

In the case of Oak Flat, Native communities have found an unlikely ally in their fight against Rio Tinto and BHP. A British government pension fund group with a stake in both companies has requested more information from their subsidiary, Resolution Copper, as to the potential impacts the proposed mine would have on Native American cultural and religious sites.

Ally or cover?

Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF) Chairman, Doug McMurdo, has voiced his opposition to the mining method Resolution Copper is expected to use in Oak Flat, should the project move forward. The head of the £300 Billion pension investment fund echoes the concerns of the indigenous communities who oppose the “block caving” method planned, which consists of blasting beneath the surface to extract the copper ore through tunnels and inevitably cause the collapse of the rock above, taking ancient burial grounds, petroglyphs, and medicinal plants with it.

LAPFF has advocated for communities affected by Rio Tinto’s irresponsible mining practices in other parts of the world as well. Last year, Rio Tinto faced an official inquiry from the Australian government after the company blew up 46,000-year old caves in Western Australia that were part of the country’s Aboriginal heritage. McMurdo participated in the parliamentary inquiry that found Rio Tinto culpable of knowingly destroying the Aboriginal cultural heritage site. The LAPFF Chair pointed to the conclusions as the reason why the fund “has increased its call for companies to engage meaningfully with affected communities. The fact that Rio Tinto’s senior management had not reviewed a critical report about the site itself calls into question the company’s governance and oversight processes.”

But, at the end of the day, the question arises whether such remonstrations are enough to curtail the irreparable damage the extraction industries have done and continue to do to the environment and to the indigenous communities who are not only fighting for their own survival but the survival of the entire planet.

The legend of Oak Flat 

One of the most significant areas of Oak Flat threatened by Resolution Copper’s project is a place called Apache Leap. The 400 foot-high cliff is the site of a historic incident of Native American resistance, from which 75 Apache warriors leaped to their death rather than be captured by the U.S. troops that surrounded them after a sneak attack that took the lives of 50 Apache warriors within minutes.

The Legend of Apache Tears is an enduring account of defiance against an enemy that keeps coming. When the wives and children discovered the bodies of their brave men at the bottom of the precipice, the legend states that their tears turned the white earth at their feet into black stones (obsidian) and, henceforth, anyone who acquired any such stones would never have to cry again since so many tears had already been shed by the Apache women on that tragic occasion.

If we stand with our Native American brothers and sisters against the destruction of their sacred sites, we might realize that they are sacred to us as well and then we might be able to arm ourselves with obsidian to begin the hard road back to living in harmony with nature and avert the creation of the Legend of Oak Flat.

mintpressnews.com

By Alan MACLEOD

Despite sub-zero winter temperatures, a conflict over a controversial new pipeline is threatening to boil over in rural Minnesota, turning it into the next Standing Rock. 22 people were arrested last week during protests in Aitkin County, around 120 miles north of Minneapolis, for trespassing against the construction of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline. The pipeline project would carry more than 750,000 barrels of fracked Alberta tar sand oil through the United States.

Activists from environmental and indigenous groups are braving the snow to form a barrier to the construction of a pipeline that will traverse the Mississippi and pass through a number of delicate ecosystems, threatening many of the state’s famous rivers and lakes.

Other segments of the new pipeline have already been completed in Canada, North Dakota, and Wisconsin, leaving only the 337-mile Minnesotan section to be constructed. The final go-ahead for the nearly $3 billion project was given late last month. Around 2,000 people are currently employed on the Minnesotan portion, with 2,000 more expected to join soon. Yet a whole range of environmental groups, including Greenpeace USA and the Sierra Club have come out strongly against its construction. They have been joined by a number of local legislators. Reporter and photographer Emma Fiala recorded their visit to the protest encampment for MintPress, which included two individuals staying high up in the trees.

“We have a moral imperative to do our part of mitigating the damage of the climate crisis,” said Jen McEwen, Senator-elect from District 7 in Duluth, “If this happens right now while we are at the helm of these decisions, history will not look kindly on us.”

Protest encampments have existed since 2017. However, there is a feeling that, with construction beginning, something big might be about to happen, turning Aitkin County into the next Standing Rock. That is certainly the worry of local police, who have been engaged in constant monitoring of the protesters, with documents showing they have repeatedly turned to North Dakota officials responsible for the militarized crackdown at Standing Rock for guidance.

The state of Minnesota is clearly expecting trouble and does not want to be left with a huge bill and cleanup operation like North Dakota was following the massive protests at Standing Rock. As a condition of its approval of the pipeline, the state required Enbridge to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in expected future policing costs up front. While this might have been financially prudent, it has led to a situation where Enbridge is effectively calling the shots, working closely with law enforcement to suppress dissent. One county sheriff even admitted that the oil company had donated the tools that he used to cut loose pipeline opponents who had chained themselves to Enbridge’s equipment.

The molding of state and corporation goes further, as considerable resources have been spent on monitoring and spying on the water protectors. “When you walk in the grocery store of a town of 200 people, and there’s some guy taking a picture of you with a cellphone, that’s really obvious,” said one leader. However, others have alleged a near-constant network of surveillance, including drones and the use of informants and undercover agents posing as protesters, in what effectively amounts to a counterinsurgency operation.

MintPress spoke to a number of environmental groups opposing the pipeline. “Tar sands are some of the world’s worst, most carbon-intensive oil on the planet…Studies confirm that the climate impact would be that of 50 coal plants, causing upwards of $280 billion in climate damages globally. Line 3, Keystone XL, and all tar sands extraction and pipelines must be stopped immediately,” Osprey Orielle Lake, Executive Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) told us, adding that,

Business as usual must not and cannot continue. It is far past time for governments and financial institutions to immediately implement a managed decline off of all fossil fuels and support the already flourishing regenerative, renewable energy sector, just transition plans, and community-led climate solutions. These are the solutions we need.”

Enbridge, a Canadian energy giant employing over 11,000 people, is infamous for the 2010 spilling of close to one million barrels of oil into the Kalamazoo Creek, a mistake for which it paid the state of Michigan $75 million in damages. The new pipeline would cross the Mississippi three times, as well as 200 additional bodies of water.

“Minnesota should be worried,” Malik Russell from Stop the Money Pipeline, a coalition of 130 organizations attempting to halt Wall Street funding of environmental destruction, told MintPress. “The Tar Sands process of oil extraction is the most horrible ways of oil extraction methods on the planet. Tar Sands is a toxic and brutal method that poisons and destroys our natural environment, clean water, and the communities near it.”

Much of the resistance to the project is led by local Indigenous organizations, who argue that the pipeline violates many treaties the U.S. signed with them. The pipeline cuts through Ojibwe and Chippewa Reservations, including sacred land that the Ojibwe use to harvest wild rice.

“Line 3 is yet another example, similar to the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines, where governments and corporations refuse to uphold and respect the rights and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples, refuse to listen to the public who do not support these pipelines and refuse to act in good faith to protect water and the global climate,” said Osprey Orielle Lake. “We need to put people and the planet before profit.”

Minnesota is currently enduring an intense epidemic of COVID-19, losing 92 people on Wednesday to the virus. Bringing in thousands of out-of-state workers in risks overwhelming the already strained rural state hospitals. Over 20,000 people have already been hospitalized since the pandemic began.

Activist groups have promised to continue fighting and brave the winter’s temperatures until the pipeline is shelved. But protesting the fossil fuel industry will soon become a criminal offense, turning civil disobedience into serious felonies. That is if new legislation pushed by industry groups such as the American Legislative Action Council (ALEC) is passed. Minnesota is among their test states, where some legislators, their pockets greased with oil money, are attempting to essentially criminalize protest.

“This pipeline isn’t about the so-called ‘safe’ transportation of a necessary product, it’s the final gasp of a dying industry desperately trying to perpetuate fossil fuel use in a society that knows its past time to make better choices for energy use,” said Amy Gray of the Stop the Money Pipeline Coalition.

At the protests against the Keystone XL pipeline at Standing Rock, protesters — and even journalists — were essentially treated as such. Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was charged with rioting and faced one year in prison for covering the events. Heavily armed police officers in full riot gear arrested nearly 500 people, even using water cannons on them amid freezing conditions in the winter of 2016-2017. The process was begun under President Obama, who refused to halt the pipeline’s construction, even symbolically, during his lame duck session. Almost as soon as Donald Trump assumed office, he canceled the environmental impact assessment and the project was swiftly completed, the first oil being pumped by May 2017. Later that year, the pipeline leaked 210,000 gallons of oil in Marshall County, South Dakota.

It is clear that, for many of the activist groups opposing the project, the question of the Enbridge pipeline construction is virtually a life and death one. “This is a fight we must win if we as a nation are going to beat back an existential crisis heading our way at full speed – the climate emergency,” Russell told MintPress. Senator-elect McEwen seemed to agree; “We have a moral imperative to do our part of mitigating the damage of the climate crisis… If this happens right now while we are at the helm of these decisions, history will not look kindly on us,” she said. Protesters in Aitkin County predicted that, if construction is not halted, their numbers would swell, threatening to spark a nationwide story that could dominate the festive period.

mintpressnews.com

Indigenous communities in the Amazon, as well as environmental activists, have no protection from the state. A Human Rights Watch report published in 2019 states that since 2009, out of 300 killings attributed to loggers, who are protected by the state, only 14 were brought to trial. State institutions were found to have been complicit in some cases – four killings happened in police stations in urban areas.

Bolsonaro’s political alignment with the U.S. under Donald Trump might be coming to a stand-still. There have been no congratulations so far from Brazil for U.S. President-Elect Joe Biden, who has warned of economic sanctions on Brazil if deforestation is not halted. After declaring Trump as “not the most important person in the world,” Bolsonaro proceeded to threaten the incoming U.S. administration over the possible climate change policies that will affect the Brazilian government. “Just diplomacy is not enough … When saliva runs out, one has to have gunpowder, otherwise it doesn’t work.”

Only there is no defender of the Amazon in either Biden or Bolsonaro. A change in U.S. governance does not translate to abandoning the exploitation of Latin Americas resources. Bringing the U.S. back to the international fold on issues such as the Paris Agreement is still based upon a capitalist venture that does not recognise the indigenous people’s rights.

According to Reuters, indigenous leaders in Brazil have called for “concrete policy commitments” from the U.S. to curb deforestation in favour of sustainable development. But sustainable development is alien to the U.S. and its history in Latin America, where the indigenous populations are always the first victims in the power play between governments and multinational companies.

More than 3,000 applications have been received by Brazil’s mining authority to wreak havoc in the Amazon. Brazil’s constitution allows mining in indigenous territory only if it serves the national interest. With Bolosonaro and the changes he seeks to enact, the national interest will no longer be a state of exception but rather an exploitative norm.

International outcry has mostly centred upon the Amazon fires, which Bolsonaro had accused environmental activists of starting, while refusing international aid to curb the spread. Once again, there has yet to be a collective, international approach that amalgamates environmental protection with indigenous protection; the latter is the only safeguard of the land, and no government is willing to acknowledge either knowledge or role of indigenous communities.

It is likely that the Amazon’s indigenous communities will be pawns once again in a new political battle that pits international interests against those of Bolsonaro. Between Bolsonaro’s intent to industrialise indigenous terrain, and the international community’s refusal to acknowledge the indigenous role and rights as regards territory and environmental protection, there is little to consider a triumph. Turning to the UN is a hopeless endeavour, while governments are known to systematically exclude indigenous communities. Biden or Trump, the fact remains that Brazil’s Amazon, and its people, are still threatened by a system that values land according to profit, generating an imbalance that can only be restored by allowing indigenous rule over indigenous terrain.