[Indigsol] IPSMO Newsletter, Aug 17-24

[Angela Schleihauf]

*IPSMO Newsletter*

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*Meeting*

*Critical Help Needed Now at Dumpsite 41*

*No More Silence Network*

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*Meeting*

A community meeting with Jackie Hookimaw-Witt from Attiwapiskat will

take place at 6:00 pm in the J.K. Wyllie room at the PSAC offices - 233

Gilmour St.

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*Critical Help Needed Now at Dumpsite 41*



Dear Anishinabe Nation,



Hello my name is Elizabeth Brass Elson, councillor of Beausoleil First

Nation and one of the Anishinabe Kwe who have been protesting dumpsite 41

in the County of Simcoe.



The Dump Site 41 Protest has been going for 101 days now and we have

maintained a peaceful presence while being creative and using our culture

and traditions in conjunction with blockades of people at the gates to the

entrance of the landfill. Our blockade was formed when construction

accelerated and an email was circulated from the County to their council

implying the dumpsite would be in production in a few weeks.



Our protest started with Anishinabe women who understood our duty to stand

up and protect our water, our environment and save this pristine aquifer

from the destruction of a landfill site. Since that date we have welcomed

the local farmers and many other nations and cultures that have come

together to help in protecting what is so pure and untouched. This aquifer

extends through our lands with 13 underground rivers and the Laurention

Channel which is located in the bedrock beneath the tributaries which many

of our lakes and rivers in Ontario feed from. As Anishinabe people we have

the Aboriginal Right to protect the waters for the future generations and

we have taken on this responsibility on our own accord.



We had managed to keep the construction from happening for 5 weeks. We

faced police intimidation and court injunctions which prevented many from

helping keep the construction company from entering the gates this past

week. Ten individuals have been arrested with various charges to date

including myself being taken from the gates last Saturday morning while

surveying the breach to our blockade from the night before.



The police came in later in the afternoon on the Friday before my arrest

with 10-12 cruiser, 2 paddy wagons and 1 army and 1 police helicopter. We

had been warned the police were coming by many who had seen them

congregating on the surrounding side roads. The roads were also closed by

police preventing us from escaping by vehicle. There were 5 women, 3 young

children and 3 youth and us women with warrants hid in the corn field,

texting out messages for help with our struggle. The youth and children

occupied the lodge until the turmoil was over and I wondered how many

times in history has this happened and why do we in this day and age have

to go to these measures to protect our resources?



I am writing this letter to ask for help with our protest. There are very

few Natives left on sight because of arrests and those arrested from

Chimnissing are prohibited from coming back to the camp. I sent out a

press release stating to police I can not accommodate these conditions

because of my duty to protect the water and the spiritual connection to

our sacred fire. I just could not stay away from something I feel so

strongly about.



The road block has not been in place since the day of my arrest and we

feel the construction is in the critical stages where they will be

accepting garbage before the next court date which we feel will not be in

our favour because of the Crown not taking into account our Aboriginal

Rights because we have no leaders from our Anishinabe Nation in this

protest.



This water has been tested and proved to be the purest source in the

world. Having a landfill on this aquifer when we have no faith in the

science as stated in Beausoleil First Nation Band Council Resolution that

was forwarded onto the County Simcoe is a travesty to our Mother Earth.



We are asking our Brothers and Sisters, our Grandmothers and Grandfathers

to come and join us at “Site 41” – join our ancestors, and our extended

family that have joined together to stand up against the destruction of

our Water on this Sacred Land. We need support from First Nation people

who are willing to help in protecting our water.



May our intentions always be pure and lasting!



Miigwetch,



Elizabeth Brass Elson

Councillor, Beausoleil First Nation

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*No More Silence Network*



BASIS OF UNITY

February 2008









WHO WE ARE





The No More Silence Network (NMS) is a Toronto-based organization striving

to work at the grassroots level, comprised of Indigenous women and allies.

Our mandate is to develop an inter/national network to support the work

that is being done by activists, academics, researchers, agencies and

communities to raise awareness around state-colonizer complicity in the

murder and disappearances of hundreds of Indigenous women on Turtle Island

(North America).





Our members are engaged in a variety of activisms, including anti-poverty,

immigrants’ rights, land reclamation struggles (as in Six Nations and

Tyendinaga), Palestinian solidarity, transgender rights and anti-violence

work. We are of diverse ages, ethnicities and sexual orientations, and

work in a range of professions, including education, research, media and

the NGO sector.





WHAT WE DO





1) educate ourselves and others about Canada’s colonial reality past and

present and the resulting genocide;

2) explore and act on strategies to end inaction, impunity, injustice, and

deliberate ignorance on the part of the Canadian State surrounding the

deaths and disappearances of Indigenous women in this country and

internationally;

3) work together as Indigenous women and allies in the struggle, thereby

fostering new forms of solidarity and a practice of decolonization amongst

all people living on Turtle Island.





Since our inception in 2004, we have worked with Indigenous women from

London, Ontario in mutual efforts to raise public consciousness around the

disproportionate violence experienced by Indigenous women on Turtle

Island. Through the diverse activisms of our members, we have also

established connections with Indigenous women and allies working on

related issues in Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Sudbury, and intend to

expand this network to include other cities in Canada. Likewise, we have

forged solidarity ties with Indigenous women activists in Chiapas and

Oaxaca, Mexico.





Our activities include an annual February 14th rally in Toronto in

solidarity with the women of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside to mark and

memorialize the deaths and disappearances of women from that neighbourhood

as well as the many other Indigenous women missing across the country.

While mindful of the over-policing of Indigenous communities alongside the

need for a complete transformation of the police and justice systems, we

hold our event at the Toronto Metropolitan Police Headquarters in order to

highlight the current levels of impunity of the law enforcement system in

investigating the cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women.





THE PATH WE ARE ON





We envision a decolonized world where women, particularly Indigenous

women, are not harmed, and where the State does not sanction their murder

and disappearance. We are engaged in a collective process of

decolonization and the work of supporting Indigenous land claims and

sovereignty struggles. We are committed to building radical new

relationships that do not replicate the hierarchical power dynamics that

have characterized mainstream white, middle class women’s movements in

North America.





VIOLENCE AGAINST INDIGENOUS WOMEN





While we acknowledge that Indigenous men also experience disproportionate

levels of violence and imprisonment, we choose to focus our activism on

the violence and impunity experienced by Indigenous women, because

hundreds of Indigenous women have been murdered or disappeared over the

past 20 years with impunity: the investigations of these cases are given a

very low priority and thus are exceedingly shoddy, the perpetrators are

almost never charged, and on the rare occasion when they are, they receive

light sentences.





Amnesty International’s Stolen Sisters Report challenges the Canadian

government and justice systems to do more. Amnesty’s Report confirms that

the exact number of murders and disappearances is unknown because police

have not kept adequate records. And in cases where they have kept records,

ongoing irregularities, gaps in information, and insensitive and racist

treatment of the families is the norm.





Some facts





Indigenous communities in Canada have been displaced through widespread

violations of their land and resource rights – including the erosion of

more than two-thirds of their land base – since the formation of Canada

[Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples 1996 Report].





Indigenous people in Canada in urban settings (the percentage of

Indigenous Canadians who are now living in urban areas is more than 60%)

are at a disadvantage compared to non-Indigenous people, as there is a

lack of economic support and appropriate services.





The Indian Act, residential school system and 60’s scoop have all

contributed to destroying the social fabric of Indigenous societies. The

residential school system, which continued into the 1970’s and 1980’s (the

last school in Canada was closed in 1996), kept children from their

communities and subjected many of them to physical, sexual, cultural and

spiritual abuse. All of this has resulted in Indigenous women bearing the

brunt of an ongoing cycle of violence at 5 times the rate of

non-Indigenous women [Stats Can Survey, 1999; Bonita Lawrence, 2004].





OUR POLITICS





As members of No More Silence, we believe all people living on Turtle

Island have a great responsibility vis-à-vis Indigenous communities. We

must: 1) decolonize our thinking and practices; 2) act to restore justice

to Indigenous communities, in part by supporting Indigenous struggles for

sovereignty and land claims; 3) speak out against the colonial violence

affecting all Indigenous people, particularly women, trans-gendered and

two-spirited people; 4) call for an end to the impunity of all Canadian

State actors and institutions implicated in this violence, including the

police, the RCMP, coroners’ offices, and the courts; 5) call for the

progressive transformation of Indigenous/settler State relations; and, 6)

recognize that Indigenous communities are over-policed and

over-represented amongst prison populations. Instead of calling for more

law and order type policies, we look to traditional Indigenous systems of

justice as a way of holding accountable violent perpetrators.





We maintain that Indigenous peoples in Canada have been the targets of a

genocidal policy, which is at the centre of ongoing colonial relations

between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian State. Colonization

(historical and current state-sanctioned acts and modes of thought to

dominate peoples) and racist treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada

through land usurpation, the education, health and justice systems, and

policing has resulted in appalling levels of violence against all

Indigenous people, with specifically gendered impacts on women and girls.




No More Silence - Basis of Unity
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