[IPSM] Delta Picket Today!

[Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Movment - Montreal]

SOLIDARITY PICKET FOR SECWEPEMC
ABORIGINAL TITLE AND RIGHTS
*Stop Delta Hotel's Expansion on
Traditional Skwelkwek'welt Territories

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Thursday, March 25th, 2004  @ 12pm.
Delta Hotel, 777 University Street
Metro Square Victoria
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Members of Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Movement (IPSM) have launched
a solidarity campaign with the Secwepemc People of Skwelkwek'welt, and
are calling for an information picket Thursday, March 25th, at the Delta
Hotel, to inform tourists of Delta's violations of Secwepemc Aboriginal
Title and Rights, encourage a boycott of the Hotels, and demand a stop to
their expansion on traditional Skwelkwek'welt territories.

Last April, 2003 Delta Hotels was hit with 2 information pickets with
signs and pamphlets "Boycott Delta Hotels". Cab drivers, tourists and
employees showed keen interest - one employee even asked to borrow
videotapes on the blockade to share with others. We met the manager,
explained our campaign, and demanded information be faxed to the owner. We
made it clear in weeks to come pickets would continue, and that Delta
would be targeted as long as it was complicit in the displacement of
Indigenous Peoples. This Thursday’s picket is being  coordinated as a
national day of action with supporters in other cities, and is being
organized in solidarity with a mass rally at Kamloops being called by
Secwepemc traditionalists and Native Youth Movement.

The Sun Peaks Ski Resort is built on Secwepemc land.  This land, known
to Secwepemc as Skwelkwekwelt, has provided hundreds of generations of
Secwepemc with everything needed to nourish their bodies and their
spirits. Each time the Sun Peaks resort has expanded it has caused
irreparable damage to the land, watersheds, vegetation & wildlife in the
area, seriously impacting the Secwepemcs ability to survive.

Since purchasing the Sun Peaks resort in 1992, the Japanese holding
company, Nippon Cable, and it's partner in crime, Delta Hotels, have
expanded on-site accommodation from 100 beds to 4,000. In 1997, the BC
government approved a $70 million development plan, allowing Sun Peaks &
Delta Hotels to continue to expand their resort to 20,000 beds and put ski
runs on the previously undisturbed Mt. Morrisey. The Secwepemc attended
stakeholder meetings and clearly said no to the development.

Land and Water BC however, clearly disregarded their voices and granted
new leases to Sun Peaks & Delta to facilitate their expansion. These leases
were granted through BCs severely outdated Land Act which does not
recognize Aboriginal Title. It is business as usual, despite their legal
obligations, on the old colonial frontier.

The state-party protects commercial, over Indigenous interests, and in
June 2001, Land and Water BC obtained a court injunction to forcibly remove
Secwepemc from their lands.

To date there have been more than 54 arrests of the Secwepemc people.
Charges range from criminal  contempt, mischief, intimidation and
obstruction of a police officer, to intimidation by blocking a road,
resisting arrest, and breach of bail conditions. While forced to pay
exorbitant legal defense fees, and/or be incarcerated, the BC
government, RCMP, Sun Peaks employees, local residents and tourists have
all committed crimes against Secwepemc people with total impunity.

The Secwepemc people set up the Skwelkwekwelt Protection Center at the
entrance of Sun Peaks Ski Resort in order to protect their Aboriginal
Land Title and ensure the accommodation of Aboriginal interests in the area.

To date, five Skwelkwekwelt Protection Centers, two traditional cedar
bark homes, a hunting cabin, two sacred sweat lodges, and one cordwood
house--home to a young Secwepemc family--have all been bulldozed or
burnt down. None of these acts of racial hatred have been investigated by
the state.

The outright destruction of Secwepemc sacred sweat lodges, and
desecration of sacred objects violates Secwepemc freedom of religion. The
Sun Peaks employees who committed these acts were not only not prosecuted,
but also publicly celebrated the heinous acts that they had committed.

As Aboriginal title is a collective proprietary interest in traditional
territories, the Skwelwekwelt Protection Center and cordwood home built
on Skwelkwekwelt territory, were authorized on the basis Aboriginal Title
permits. Those requesting permits did not want to be confined to their
reserve where dire social and economic conditions prevail, including
inadequate housing for all band members. When the homes were ordered
destroyed by the provincial government and demolished by Sun Peaks
workers on December 10th, 2002, the family’s right to housing was violated.

On January 10, 2003 a BC provincial judge found four Secwepemc
elders-Irene Billy, Charlie Willard, Segweses, and George Manuel Junior,
not guilty for their refusal to obey a court injunction obtained by the
Sun Peaks resort Corporation to tear down the Skwelkwekwelt Protection
Center. The judge found that the Crown could not prove beyond a 
reasonable doubt that the Secwepemc defenders intentions were "criminal".
This case sets an
important precedent for other cases of Aboriginal people defending their
lands.

The mounting of an Eastern public pressure campaign, and boycott of
Delta Hotels, is a very important tactic at this time. It is time for all
those opposed to the Canadian colonial system and corporate globalization
to support, through concrete actions of solidarity, the rights of the
Secwepemc people fighting state & corporate interests in British Columbia.
Sun Peaks Ski Resort and Delta Hotels are built in Secwepemc territories,
land which has never been ceded, released, nor surrendered. That they are
participants in the displacement of Secwepemc Indigenous  Peoples, that
they are forcibly removing Indigenous Peoples from their traditional
territories, constitutes genocide under International Laws to which Canada
is a signatory.

Come join us Thursday, March 25th, 12pm, for a Solidarity picket of
Delta Hotels.

Stop the genocide of Indigenous Peoples now!
For more information, email: ipsm at resist.ca or visit www.skwelkwekwelt.org