Astronomers turn to teaching Indigenous star stories from around the world
CBC News
Nicole Mortillaro
The northern lights shine over Wood Buffalo National Park during the Thebacha and Wood Buffalo Astronomical Society’s Dark-Sky Festival. (Nicole Mortillaro/CBC)
It’s just after dusk on a cool August night in Wood Buffalo Park in Alberta, roughly 50 kilometres southwest of Fort Smith, N.W.T. For two days and nights, clouds and cool weather have hampered the group of astronomy enthusiasts hoping to enjoy the dark skies and perhaps even catch a display of the northern lights.
It’s the final day of the Thebacha and Wood Buffalo Astronomical Society’s Dark-Sky Festival. and, as if the sky takes pity on the group — made up of amateur astronomers and families with young children — the clouds begin to break up as the sun sets. But there’s one streak that remains in the dark blue sky.
“Keep an eye out,” says Roland Dechesne, a guest speaker and member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. “Could be aurora.”
Salt River First Nation elder Paul Boucher, who is standing nearby, looks skyward. “What? That?” he says. “Yeah. That’s the northern lights.”
Elders David Poitras and Paul Boucher bless the society’s camping area in Pine Lake, Alta. (Nicole Mortillaro/CBC)
The northern lights, or aurora borealis, are a familiar sight in northern skies. But those dancing lights mean much more in many Indigenous cultures.
The recognition of First Nations contributions to science has been on the rise in recent years. In astronomy, instead of teaching constellations and stories from the Greeks and Romans, many Indigenous people are turning to teaching the star stories of the people who have lived on this land for thousands of years.
For the Cree (Salt River First Nation is made up of Cree and Chipewyan) the sight of the dancing lights means spirits are dancing across the sky.
“In the wintertime, when these lights were in the sky most prominently, there was a connection, a connection to alternate realities, to the spirit world,” Wilfred Buck, a science facilitator at the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre (MFNERC) says of the northern lights. “And that connection was strong.”
Buck, from Opaskwayak Cree Nation, has a goal: to teach science from an Indigenous perspective, something that he’s been doing for 14 years. He’s a hard man to pin down; for many days of the year, he is traveling, often with his portable planetarium.
Wilfred Buck, a Cree science specialist, brings his planetarium to First Nations communities around Canada.(MFNERC)
When he took the position at MFNERC, he wanted to teach First Nations in science. In an effort to determine the best way to do this, he reached out to the elders who told him he had two ways he could approach it: he could teach it from a Western system and infuse First Nations’ culture into the subject areas or he could do it the opposite way. He opted for the latter.
“The students have to understand … they’ve been educated and told and colonized to think that our people were savages in a bush and surviving and we didn’t know anything,” Buck said. “That’s not true.”
‘Not just quaint little stories’
Buck’s interest in the stars began when he was about five years old.
“I remember sitting on the banks of the river and looking up at that night sky, and wondering … what’s out there and where our place is in it,” he says.
And then it dawned on him: the skies were heavily embedded in his culture.
“Sitting in the sweat lodge, singing these ceremonial songs, partaking in [the] sun dance, partaking in fasting, partaking in ceremonies — a lot of these ceremonial songs are in reference to the stars,” he says. “And all the ceremonies that are done are done in regards to the sun.”
Like Buck, Hilding Neilson wanted to bring Indigenous astronomy to the public. Neilson, who is Mi’kmaw from the Qalipu First Nation in Newfoundland and Labrador, is an assistant professor in the University of Toronto’s department of astronomy and astrophysics. He teaches Indigenous astronomy in his courses.
“I wanted to see more of Indigenous knowledge in classrooms, because we are on Indigenous land,” he says. “Simply put, if we’re going to be here, we should be learning about the peoples whose land we colonized. We should be learning about their knowledge and learning to appreciate that knowledge.”
Buck says most people don’t realize First Nations people had a deep understanding of the sky and even pondered such topics such as cosmology and quantum physics.
One example is the star cluster called the Pleiades or, in Western culture the Seven Sisters. The Cree referred to it as the “hole in the sky.”
“When they’re referring to a hole in the sky, they’re referring to a spatial anomaly. They’re referring to a wormhole, an alternate reality,” Buck says. “They meditated on these things, they dreamed about these things, they debated on these things and they philosophized on these things.”
See an elder explain the Cree traditions around the winter solstice:
What does the winter solstice mean in the Cree tradition?
Elder Wilfred Buck explains how the Cree observe the shortest day and the longest night of the year. 1:00
And it’s time that astronomers and scientists considered Indigenous contributions and their worth, Buck says.
“All these ceremonies and all these so-called mythologies … there’s a depth of knowledge involved. They’re not just quaint little stories. … Every Indigenous culture in the world has that depth of knowledge, that intellectual capacity,” he says. “It’s just that through the colonial process it’s been minimized and it’s been marginalized.”
Neilson says many of the stories have been lost, but he’s happy to see renewed interest in not only telling the stories, but respecting what they have to offer. The worry is that much of it may have already been lost.
“Like every aspect of Indigenous knowledge, we know we have to be very worried about what has been lost and what is unavailable,” Neilson says. “And who knows if we’ll ever get it all back? But preserving it is a big, important part of all this.”
It’s important that no one underestimates the importance stars play in the daily lives of Indigenous people from around the world, Buck says.
“Stars are part of our lives,” Buck says. “Every night they’re out there and my people believe we come from the stars.”
Nicole Mortillaro
Senior Reporter, Science
Nicole has an avid interest in all things science. As an amateur astronomer, Nicole can be found looking up at the night sky appreciating the marvels of our universe. She is the editor of the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the author of several books.
“We have a duty to protect what we’ve all been blessed with in British Columbia in regard to the pristine beauty of the environment,” said one First Nations leader. “We will rise to the challenge.”
Naomi Klein✔
This is the problem with drinking the Kool-Aid served by politicians who are masters of progressive symbolism but evade substance. Once in power, they can be counted on to do substantive harm. On climate (and much else) we do not have even 1 more year to waste on these imposters.
The National Energy Board of Canada on Friday recommended approval for the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project. (Photo: Greenpeace)
Indigenous tribes and green campaigners were angered but not surprised Friday when Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) recommended that the government move ahead with its planned expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline—despite acknowledging that the project will negatively affect the environment.
The decision paved the way for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration to increase fossil fuel emissions, endanger wildlife, and threaten the lives and livelihoods of the eight million people who live in the pipeline’s path.
The NEB argued that the pipeline is in the public interest and provided the government with a list of 16 conditions that it must meet as it prepares to expand the 1,150 kilometer (714 mile) pipeline, tripling the amount of oil the tar sands pipeline will carry from Edmonton, Alberta to Burnaby, British Columbia—but critics including Burnaby mayor Mike Hurley argued that the NEB has no intention of protecting the environment or wildlife by enforcing strict regulations on the construction.
“This is the problem with drinking the Kool-Aid served by politicians who are masters of progressive symbolism but evade substance. Once in power, they can be counted on to do substantive harm.” —Naomi Klein
The conditions will not “prevent significant public safety risks and harms to marine life and other environmental impacts,” Hurley told the Vancouver Sun.
The board noted that the Trans Mountain pipeline is likely to have a significant negative impact on the Southern resident orca, whose population in the Salish Sea off the coast of British Columbia is rapidly dwindling; on the Indigenous population in the area, especially in the event of an oil spill; and on the environment, with fossil fuel emissions rising as cargo ships carry the oil after it travels from Edmonton.
Outcry from First Nations and campaigners ensued when the NEB initially approved the project in 2016, and opponents rejoiced last summer when the Federal Court of Appeals temporarily blocked construction. The court argued that Trudeau’s administration and Kinder Morgan, which sold the pipeline to the government for $4.5 billion last year, had not sufficiently considered its effects on Southern orcas and indigenous tribes.
But Friday’s approval—which came after what one campaigner called a rushed process with a “compressed hearing schedule” that allowed for little input from the public—was not unexpected among critics.
“This entire process is a joke,” Peter McCartney of the Wilderness Committee told the Sun. “I don’t think anybody’s surprised to see the NEB green lighting this pipeline—it’s what they were designed to do.”
Kwikwasut’inuxw Haxwa’mis Chief Bob Chamberlin, vice-president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said Trudeau has indicated his government will stop at nothing to complete the project.
“The troubling part for me and First Nations concerned about their water and their territories is the fact that Trudeau has stated this pipeline will be built, full stop. It makes an absolute mockery of the consultation process that was court ordered and has been accomplished today,” Chamberlin told the Sun.
In a press conference, Grand Chief Stewart Philip also said indigenous tribes will not relent in their “deeply entrenched opposition” to the pipeline, which will threaten food sources of the 29 tribes that live in the path of the proposed route.
“We are proud British Columbians and we have a duty to protect what we’ve all been blessed with in British Columbia in regard to the pristine beauty of the environment,” Philip said. “We will rise to the challenge.”
“I understand in British Columbia, this pipeline will provide a way of having an income,” said Noel Purser of the Suquamish Tribe, which joined four other Northwest U.S. tribes in challenging the project in 2013. “But is it worth the potential of a spill, that risk? Is it really worth that? Because that will impact everybody, not just here in British Columbia. It will impact us in Suquamish; it will impact our relatives in Alaska.”
“Once again, Canada’s NEB has sided with short-term Big Oil profits instead of the long-term health of the Pacific Northwest’s people, climate and orcas,” said Marcie Keever of Friends of the Earth. “Shame on Prime Minister Trudeau, his government, and the National Energy Board of Canada for ignoring widespread opposition and serious concerns in favor of this destructive pipeline. Canada’s decision will likely bring about the extinction of the Northwest’s iconic killer whales and drive us further towards the brink of climate chaos.”
Author Naomi Klein argued that the Trans Mountain pipeline project should offer a lesson to voters who have been convinced by politicians who exude “progressive symbolism” while campaigning “but evade substance” when asked how they will initiate a bold, ambitious agenda to protect the planet and human rights.
Paul Watson@wherewarlives
Pipeline Prime Minister @justintrudeau is a serial liar whose phoney energy regulators support sacrificing iconic wildlife in order to expand tar sands exports that fuel catastrophic global warming. He must be stopped for the sake of us all. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-neb-says-trans-mountain-pipeline-expansion-in-public-interest-despite/ …
What is happening to Venezuela is a coup d’état and it has nothing to do with democracy, human rights, free and fair elections or international law. The US and Canada represent the antithesis of those values; defying the United Nations Charter and international law by interfering in the internal affairs of Venezuela. Their hands are not clean, and their motives are not pure, because their foreign policy objectives everywhere are to promote the interests of their domestic corporations, oligarchs and war profiteers.
In 2017 the US and Canada formed a posse of vigilantes that they named the Lima Group. The members of the Lima Group are Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Saint Lucia. Mexico’s newly elected liberal government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has withdrawn from the Lima Group, saying that Mexico follows the principles of sovereignty, non-intervention, and self-determination in foreign policy. Viva AMLO! The Lima Group makes a mockery out of the United Nations and international law.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Idriss Jazairy specifically condemned the US and Canada for imposing economic sanctions on Venezuela. Jazairy stressed that the economic sanctions are immoral on humanitarian grounds, and they are an illegal attempt to overthrow the internationally recognized sovereign government of Venezuela. On January 31, 2019 the UN released a report that quoted him as saying:
“I am especially concerned to hear reports that these sanctions are aimed at changing the government of Venezuela… Coercion, whether military or economic, must never be used to seek a change in government in a sovereign state. The use of sanctions by outside powers to overthrow an elected government is in violation of all norms of international law…. Economic sanctions are effectively compounding the grave crisis affecting the Venezuelan economy, adding to the damage caused by hyperinflation and the fall in oil prices.”
Former UN Special Rapporteur Alfred de Zayas, who is also an international expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, said on his website on February 7th the following about the current situation in Venezuela:
“Members of the United Nations are bound by the Charter, articles one and two of which affirm the right of all peoples to determine themselves, the sovereign equality of states, the prohibition of the use of force and of economic or political interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states…… the enormous suffering inflicted on the Venezuelan people by the United States is nothing less than appalling. The economic war against Venezuela, carried out not only by the United States, but also by the Grupo de Lima in clear violation of Chapter 4, Article 19 of the OAS Charter, the financial blockade and the sanctions have demonstrably caused hundreds of deaths directly related to the scarcity of food and medicines resulting from the blockade.”
Zayas also said that what the US, Canada and the mainstream media are doing to Venezuela reminds him of the deliberate disinformation campaign that led to the US, and the “coalitions of the willing” that included Canada anonymously, illegally invading Iraq in 2003, and their destruction of Libya in 2011.
In the case of Libya in 2011, the so-called “no-fly zone” authorized by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 was for the intended purpose of bringing about a ceasefire. It specifically forbade any “boots on the ground”, which the US is known to have violated.
The US, Canada and other NATO forces illegally exceeded their UN mandate, and used it as a cover to completely destroy Libya and regime change. It later was learned that the supposed Gaddafi genocide, which the no-fly zone was intended to stop was a hoax. The point is that the US and its junior partners can never be trusted to tell the truth when a lie serves their purposes much better.
Whenever the US and its junior imperial partners resort to pleas of democracy and human rights, an ulterior motive should be assumed. For instance, the little the US and Canada care about democracy, human rights and free elections is shown by their long history of supporting non-democratic governments.
Canada has supported every US regime change project, and the overthrow of democratic governments, which did not conform to their mutual foreign policy objectives. Both countries’ foreign policies prefer corrupt business-centric rightwing repressive governments. Democracy and human rights conflict with the interests and profits of their exploitative and extractive corporations.
Both the US and Canada supported the apartheid government of South Africa right up until the very end; they support the apartheid government of Israel, which is the number one violator of human rights in the world; and they both sell arms and support the most repressive government in the world, Saudi Arabia. Human rights have not been an issue.
The US overthrew the democratically elected Salvador Allende of Chile, with Canada’s support. Both countries supported the junta regime of Augusto Pinochet, whom was later arrested for crimes against humanity. Both the US and Canada supported the illegitimate coup governments of Haiti in 2004, and in Honduras in 2009. By some estimates, the US (and Canada) support 73% of the dictators in the world. Human rights have not been an issue.
The US and Canada have been trying to overthrow the democratically elected reformist government of Venezuela, known as the Bolivarian Revolution, since 1999. Hugo Chavez’s elections were all certified by the Carter Foundation, the OAS and other legitimate observers. Chavez was elected in free, fair and democratic elections, but that did not matter to the US and Canada. They wanted to overthrow him anyway. Human rights were not an issue.
Democracy, human rights, the right-to-protect, humanitarian interventions and all the other righteous soundbites are just talking points for the US and Canada. They are only used against governments that get in their way, and never used against corrupt business-friendly governments, no matter how oppressive. Paul Jay, a Canadian, who is the editor-in-chief of The Real News Network says that he personally became aware in 2005 of Canada’s involvement in the conspiracy of regime change in Venezuela:
The hypocrisy of US concerns over human rights is on full display in a leaked US State Department memo from Brian Hook to then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The memo is titled “Balancing Interests and Values”. The memo does not mince words about human rights concerns being only a tactic to use against adversaries:
“America’s allies should be supported rather than badgered…. allies should be treated differently — and better — than adversaries…. We do not look to bolster America’s adversaries overseas; we look to pressure, compete with, and outmaneuver them…. pressing those regimes [adversaries] on human rights is one way to impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically.”
Hook continues his memo by giving Tillerson a history lesson on the art of US hypocrisy from 1940 to 2017.
In other words, rightwing dictators, military juntas, ethnic cleansing, fraudulent elections, human rights violations, political prisoners, torture and murder should be treated differently, and better, with compliant allies. Even when adversaries are democratically elected, they should be roasted in order to “extract costs”, according to Hook…. but not because the US cares about people.
There is no serious doubt about the legitimacy of the more than a dozen elections in Venezuela between 1998 to 2013. That did not prevent the US and Canada from “extracting costs”, and trying to overthrow Hugo Chavez anyway. Given the examples of the US and Canada overthrowing the democratically elected governments in Chile, Haiti and Honduras, the objections to Maduro are unbelievable.
In the past few years, there have been a half-dozen certified democratic elections in Venezuela. The real motives for opposing Maduro must be something else. It is obvious what that something else is. The real motives behind the US and Canada are Venezuela’s massive wealth in oil, gas, and other natural resources, such as gold, copper and coltan.
There are also tremendous profits to be had by bringing Venezuela into the Washington Consensus. US and Canadian banks profit from IMF and World Bank loans. The corrupt politicians and oligarchs steal the loans, and then it is the poor that have to repay them, through higher prices for life’s necessities, reduced wages and government-imposed austerity. The privatization of state-owned enterprises at corrupt fire-sale prices enrich oligarchs and corporations tremendously.
The Washington Consensus also forces unequal trade agreements and currency devaluation on poor countries. The resulting lower prices are used to extract natural resources, monocrops and sweatshop produced products for export. Small farmers are driven off the land because they cannot compete with dumped US and Canadian tax-payer highly-subsidized agricultural products, such as corn and wheat. Those that suffer are the local farmers, the poor, landless and indigenous people, who go from subsistence, to poverty, to wage slavery.
The chaotic political situation in Venezuela has been purposely made worse by the US and Canada. Since Venezuela is “cursed” with natural resources, especially oil, its economy has historically gone from boom to bust depending on international oil prices.
It was low oil prices, endemic poverty, gross inequality, and neoliberal economic policies that favored the rich in the 1990’s, which swept Chavez into power in the 1998 election. A majority of the Venezuelan people elected Hugo Chavez and his “Bolivarian Revolution” of rewriting the constitution, increasing participatory democracy, frequent elections, and implementing social programs for the poor. The Carter Center (as well as the OAS)certified the election, and praised Venezuela’s modern voting systems as one of the best in the world:
“Venezuelans voted peacefully, but definitively for change. With more than 96 percent voting for the two candidates who promised to overhaul the system, Venezuelans carried out a peaceful revolution through the ballot box”, said Jimmy Carter’s Foundation upon Chavez’s victory.
The US opposed Chavez regardless of fair and democratic elections. A surprisingly honest 2005 article in the Professional Journal of the US Army explained why the US opposed Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution for economic and geopolitical reasons:
“Since he was elected president in 1998, Chávez has transformed Venezuelan Government and society in what he has termed a Bolivarian revolution. Based on Chávez’s interpretation of the thinking of Venezuelan founding fathers Simón Bolívar and Simón Rodríguez, this revolution brings together a set of ideas that justifies a populist and sometimes authoritarian approach to government, the integration of the military into domestic politics, and a focus on using the state’s resources to serve the poor—the president’s main constituency.”
“Although the Bolivarian revolution is mostly oriented toward domestic politics, it also has an important foreign policy component. Bolivarian foreign policy seeks to defend the revolution in Venezuela; promote a sovereign, autonomous leadership role for Venezuela in Latin America; oppose globalization and neoliberal economic policies; and work toward the emergence of a multipolar world in which U.S. hegemony is checked. The revolution also opposes the war in Iraq and is skeptical of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). The United States has worked fruitfully in the past with Venezuela when the country pursued an independent foreign policy, but the last three policies run directly contrary to U.S. foreign policy preferences and inevitably have generated friction between the two countries.” [Emphasis added.] [See Appendix]
Whether it is Chavez or Maduro, the US, Canada and the oligarchs in Venezuela have been trying to kill the Bolivarian Revolution from when it was an infant in the cradle.
The opposition with the support of imperialists have been trying to get rid of the Bolivarian Revolution with every means imaginable. They have tried a US supported military coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002. It failed. They tried strikes by the management of the Venezuelan oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela. It failed. They tried a recall election in 2004. It failed. Obama tried economic sanctions in 2015. It failed. The US and Canada tried an economic blockade in 2017. It has failed, as of this article. They tried to assassinate Maduro with a drone. It failed.
In 2018 the opposition boycotted the election. Maduro won by a landslide. He had invited the United Nations to be election observers, but the opposition kept the UN away. Other international observers certified the election. Now the opposition complains about the integrity of the election observers. The opposition is making a circus out of elections. The objections by the oligarchs, the US and Canada that the 2018 elections in Venezuela where fraudulent is itself a fraud. Their objectives are to knowingly “extract costs” that Venezuela can ill afford.
The US chose Canada to be the mouthpiece for the Lima Group, but the coup is being directed by imperial powers in Washington. Canadian politeness is not working, and its imperialism is out of the closet where it has been hiding. As Canadian historian Yves Engler puts it, the US carries the big stick in Latin America, and Canada comes along afterwards with the billy club. Engler is referring to Canadian peacekeeping missions, which he exposes as actually policing and counter insurgency missions. Yves Engler has written dozens of books and articles on Canadian imperialism.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may be fooling some of the people, some of the time. But he is now under attack at home for corruption. His accusers say that he has obstructed justice in the world-wide corruption scandal involving the powerful international Canadian conglomerate SNC-Lavalin. SNC-Lavalin is a mining, energy and engineering company that is typical of the corrupt face of Canadian imperialism.
Trudeau’s conspiracy with Trump to overthrow the internationally recognized government of Venezuela has unmasked Canada as a second-rate imperial power. Upon closer look, Canada has been protecting its oil and mining companies that have been raping Latin American countries, destroying their environment and poisoning their people for decades. Canadian imperialism has to obey its “deep state” too, as Canadian journalist Bruce Livesey puts it:
“Those who believe the oil industry has become a deep state point to how the political elites, whether Liberal, Conservative or NDP — from Justin Trudeau to Stephen Harper to Rachel Notley — go to bat for the industry….”.
Mining companies as well as oil and gas are a big part of Canada’s “deep state”. They control approximately 50 to 70% of the mines in Latin America, and they are not held accountable in Canadian courts for their destruction to the environment and harm to human beings in foreign countries. They dispossess the indigenous people and poor of their land. They hire goons to threaten, attack and murder those that try to form labor unions, or demonstrate about land confiscation and human rights abuses. Honduras is just one example of what happens when a democratically elected leader is overthrow by a US and Canadian-backed coup; Canadian mining companies move in. It is all exposed in the book “Ottawa and Empire: Canada and the Military Coup in Honduras”, by Tyler Shipley.
All extractive industries wound the planet. That happens with relatively more impunity abroad, but capitalism inflicts severe harm at home, too. [Canadian Mining Companies in Latin America. Photo Council on Hemispheric Affairs.]
Dispossessing native people of their land and natural resources comes natural to Canada. After all, like the US it was a settler colonial outpost for the British Empire. Both the US and Canada committed genocide and ethnic cleansing of their mutual Indigenous People. They were even allies and coordinated the genocide. According to historian Andrew Graybill:
“….the NorthWest Mounted Police were created and the Texas Rangers renewed and reorganized in the early 1870s specifically to address the pressing ‘native question’ confronting Texas and western Canada, among the few places where bison still roamed after 1870….. both Austin and Ottawa called on their rural police to manage indigenous populations facing societal collapse….by controlling or denying the Natives access to the bison.”
In other words, both the US and Canada collaborated in killing the buffalo to extinction. It was the coup de grâce for the starving “native question”. [This reminds us that the “settler” capitalist states have been morally despicable practically from inception, all propaganda to the contrary.—Ed ]
Mining is one of Canada’s biggest and most powerful and politically influential industries. Canada has approximately 60% of all mining companies in the world. Canadian companies such as Ascendant Copper, Barrick Gold, Kinder Morgan, and TriMetals Mining have operations in Canada, Latin America and elsewhere. They are continuing the ethnic cleansing of the “native question” in Latin America, and at home. (See map and statistics of Canadian Mining in Latin America.)
Canadian mining and natural resource companies are heavy handed when it comes to First Nations at home. TransCanada Corporation recently was in the news because of its pipeline route, which they are trying to put through First Nation’s land in the Wet’suwet’en territory, in northern British Columbia. On a court order, a militarized unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police broke up a road blockade, which the tribal leaders had put up to keep the pipeline company out of their nation. The Mounties whom lacked jurisdiction arrested 14 tribal leaders on their sovereign land.
During the reign of the British Empire, Canada helped the British put down slave rebellions in the Caribbean. Canada was involved in the slave trade, and slavery was legal in Canada until 1834. The products of slavery, such as cotton and sugar were used for trade and to industrialize Canada. When the British conquered New France, the 1760 declaration of surrender signed in Montreal specifically said:
“The Negroes and panis [aborigines] of both sexes shall remain, in their quality of slaves, in the possession of the French and Canadians to whom they belong; they shall be at liberty to keep them in their service in the colony, or to sell them; and they may also continue to bring them up in the Roman Religion.”
In the 19th century Canadian banking and insurance companies, along with those of the British, monopolized finance in British controlled parts of Latin America. Canada is still financially powerful in the English-speaking Caribbean. For example, the Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and the Royal Bank of Canada, as well as Sun Life Financial are dominate in the Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, and Trinidad. After the decline of the British Empire, Canada assumed its natural role as a second-rate imperial power and junior partner for US imperialism.
In the Lima Group, Canada is the US’s junior partner. The US has the leading role from behind the curtain. To prove it, right on cue at the January 4th meeting of the Lima Group, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pulled the curtain back in a video presentation to the group. Pompeo showed the members who they would have to answer to if they did not vote according to Washington’s wishes. The Lima group obeyed, and voted to politically isolate and economically blockade Venezuela, contrary to international law. Leaving nothing to chance, Pompeo again addressed the group from behind the video curtain at their February 4th meeting in Ottawa.
As Christopher Black wrote in New Eastern Outlook:
“The United States is the principal actor in all this but it has beside it among other flunkey nations, perhaps the worst of them all, Canada, which has been an enthusiastic partner in crime of the United States since the end of the Second World War. We cannot forget its role in the aggression against North Korea, the Soviet Union, China, its secret role in the American aggression against Vietnam, against Iraq, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Haiti, Iran, and the past several years Venezuela.”
Black left out many other imperial crimes of the partners in Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Somalia, Sudan, the Congo, Palestine, Libya, Yemen, etc. The US and Canada are “always there for each other” and stand “shoulder to shoulder” in war and imperialism, in Justin Trudeau’s own words. Even against Cuba!
The current Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland recently referred to Venezuela as being in “Canada’s backyard”. As the SNC-Lavalin case illustrates, the Canadian “backyard” of imperialism also extends to Africa, Asia, the Middle East and former Soviet Union republics, such as Ukraine.
This is not the 19th century. Central America, South America and the Caribbean Islands are not anybody’s back yard. It is insulting, degrading and shows a colonial mentality for the US and Canada to even think about having a backyard.
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David William Pear is a columnist writing on U.S. foreign policy, economic and political issues, human rights and social issues. David is a Senior Contributing Editor of The Greanville Post (TGP) and a prior Senior Editor for OpEdNews (OEN). David has been writing for The Real News Network (TRNN) and other publications for over 10 years. David is a member of Veterans for Peace, Saint Pete (Florida) for Peace, CodePink, and the Palestinian-led non-violent organization International Solidarity Movement.
Featured image: A Hands Off Venezuela protest in London on January 28, 2018. (Socialist Appeal/Flickr).
The original source of this article is Global Research
On January 7th the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) swept into a non-violent checkpoint set up by the Unist’ot’en and Gidimt’en clans of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. Fourteen people were violently arrested in the ambush by the militarized colonial forces. The camp was set up by hereditary leaders to defend the ancestral lands of the Unist’ot’en and other clans from the unwanted incursions of TransCanada and its Coastal Gaslink pipeline. Following the incident Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had the temerity to extol the neoliberal scheme behind the incident as something that is good for the earth. In a speech to supporters he said: “We moved forward on the LNG Canada project, which is the largest private sector investment in Canada’s history, $40-billion, which is going to produce Canadian LNG that will supplant coal in Asia as a power source and do much for the environment.” After being pressed in a radio interview about the brutal raid Trudeau said of the arrests that it is “not an ideal situation, but at the same time, we’re also a country of the rule of law.” Apparently he does not consider Article 10 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to be law. It states: “Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their land or territories.” It may be difficult for ordinary people to choke out hypocritical, ahistorical fallacies without missing a beat, but the Prime Minister has a gift for spouting empty platitudes that fly in the face of reality and he isn’t alone.
There is something familiar about Trudeau’s lamentation on this situation as well as his appeal for the rule of law. This is because neoliberal leaders around the world have used similar justifications for the violence of the corporate state. And while Trudeau has attempted to brand himself a leader on reconciliation with First Nations and for addressing climate change he has demonstrated time after time his true allegiance is to the corporate state. Last year he pledged 4.5 billion dollars of tax payer money to purchase the controversial, badly aging and perpetually leaking Kinder Morgan pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands to BC. Protests and a court decision have stymied this for the moment, but in taking this action he has joined a cadre of world leaders who only pay lip service to indigenous concerns, ecological impacts and the science of climate change while steamrolling ahead toward a dystopic future. Of course like any neoliberal politician Trudeau ultimately does the bidding of the fossil fuel industry which works tirelessly behind the scenes writing and directing policy, like the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) who has an army of lobbyists that outnumber any other group in Ottawa.
Like the US, Canada is a settler colonial state founded upon the expulsion, ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide of its indigenous population. Its history is drenched in the blood of broken treaties with First Nations and tainted by the cruelties meted out over decades to the present day against indigenous children. And while Canada may now possess more progressive domestic policies than its ruthless neighbor to the south, it is a fallacy that it is a leader when it comes to indigenous rights, protection of the environment and climate change. One look at the Tar Sands is a testament to this. Bigger in area than England, it is the third largest reserve of oil on the planet. So it is of little surprise that those who profit from them the most have enormous sway in the Canadian political process. In addition to their tremendous greenhouse gas emissions the Tar Sands also use gargantuan amounts of fresh water creating massive lakes of poisonous effluent while belching out tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. Great swaths of forest and wetlands have been decimated creating a new cancer alley mainly afflicting First Nations in the region. In short, it is a lethal, festering and human inflicted wound on the skin of the earth, so big that it can be seen from space. And Trudeau has fashioned himself to be the charming, boyish face that hides all its hideousness.
Trudeau, like Macron or Merkel, possesses an enormous capacity for doublespeak. He is well known for shedding tears for Canada’s crimes of the past on more than one occasion. Sometimes he genuinely appears to care for people and the environment. Barrack Obama had this gift too. And when comparing actions and policies to words it is easily demonstrated as a trick of optics and branding. Interestingly enough Obama has given several speeches since his presidency for his admirers on Wall Street, imploring them to thank him for making them so much money and turning the US into the world’s biggest oil producer while admitting those policies gave aid to the rise of the far right. It is a kinder face for plutocratic corporatism that may make it seem more palatable to some than the ugly face of fascism espoused by Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro. But we have seen how neoliberal policies are opening the way for these fascist populists so there is no innocent game being played here.
Neoliberal politicians ultimately strip people of their agency by supporting or enacting policies that break down the commons and privatize everything, all while drowning them in sugary bromides and platitudes of meaninglessness. They pay lip service to the plight of the poor, the oppressed, indigenous communities, people of colour, and the living earth itself while they laugh it up at galas done in their honour by the 1%. And in doing so they have paved the way for the rising global fascism we see today. The incident at the Unist’ot’en camp last week may not become Trudeau’s Standing Rock, but it certainly echoes it. The image of tanks, attack dogs and heavily armed police raining tear gas down and firing water cannons at unarmed Native Americans must certainly be in the back of his mind. But no matter what he is thinking, no tears he sheds now will obscure his role in defending an economic and political order that has maintained merciless colonialism, is ravaging the very foundations of democracy and may very well drive the biosphere toward its full scale collapse.
Dreaming is an integral part of Native American’s tradition and spiritual practice.
Since childhood, they teach children to remember their dreams so they can learn to interpret them and use them as spiritual tools for guidance in life.
7 Reasons Why Native Americans Believed Dreaming Is Extremely Important Part Of Life
Native Americans have the following 7 beliefs regarding dreaming:
1. They believe we have 3 souls:
Ego-soul – which is embodied in the breath.
Body-soul – which gives energy to the body and life force during our waking state.
Free-soul – which is the soul that leaves the body during dreams and trances and explores the dream realm alongside the brain, while the other two souls remain attached to the body.
2. The Dream world is equally important as the physical world.
They believe that our mind and body don’t dream anything. Chippewa elder John Thunderbird specifically explains this in the following words:
“Your soul dreams those dreams; not your body, not your mind. Those dreams come true. The soul travels all over the world when you dream.”
3. Our souls can communicate.
They believe we can communicate with other souls, humans and even animals when our soul disconnects from our body and goes into the dream realm.
For them, the dream world is just as real as the physical world.
4. Life is one big dream.
5. The dream world has consequences.
6. We have spirit guides and dreaming is how we contact them.
7. Dreaming is where the soul receives spiritual guidance.
A recent article in the Toronto Star and its accompanying photo bear comment. The reaching hands are not of rioting, starving people grasping for food but of stockbrokers on the trading floor. The article, about protecting individual portfolios, counsels people to know of their options though “the majority of investors have little or no understanding of puts and calls and, in most cases, don’t want to be bothered.” A number of practices keep the public uninformed, including a plethora of neologisms that defy comprehension, lack of transparency, and skewed computations that omit life’s crucial externalities. Economics has been called the “dismal science,” but “abysmal” more fittingly describes its deadly impact on people worldwide.
The Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) is believed by many to represent the caring face of Canada, while it is lauded as the “New Masters of the Universe” and “Maple Revolutionaries” by the OECD, G20, and the World Bank.
“OECD analysts describe these Canadian funds as ‘pioneers in infrastructure investing’ that helped to establish infrastructure as an important and increasingly popular asset class.”1
It is no exaggeration to state that the CPP is “banking on death,” the title of Robin Blackburn’s comprehensive history of pensions. The Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade lists CPP investments in seventy three corporations (and here) supporting Israel’s military/police/surveillance/prison industrial complex. The CPP is also a big investor in nuclear weapons and in Canada’s fossil fuel and mining sectors which are wreaking havoc in indigenous communities worldwide.
The Capitalist System
At its core is the pricing of human life in the capitalist system. George Monbiot succinctly explains it in his article about Britain’s chief economist Nicholas Stern’s influential report on climate change and the economy: Stern calculated that Heathrow airport expansion makes economic sense because it lessens the time that a rich person has to wait for a flight as his time is worth much money, so this wealth far outweighs the monetary loss if many impoverished people die due to aviation’s carbon emissions.
In 2016, private pension assets in OECD countries reached their highest-ever level at over $38-trillion (U.S.). Pension funds are part of a closed political economic system and its facilitating legalities. Representative are the links between the CPP, Imperial Oil, universities and think tanks, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) to “free, prior and informed consent.” While information is essential, particularly for indigenous people subject to land theft and to environmental contaminants, UN declarations are non-binding and unenforceable. Nonetheless, Anglo-Saxon democracies were the last to sign.
The importance of “informed consent” derives from the infamous longitudinal Tuskegee syphilis experiments on Black men who were not informed that they would not be treated for syphilis even though treatments were available. In practice, informed consent has been turned on its head as it is often configured to protect power.
Indigenous consent is obstructed by many loopholes: the state’s claim of eminent domain, the Doctrine of Discovery justifying European expropriation of supposedly “empty” land (terra nullius), a clause of Canada’s Delgamuukw ruling on Aboriginal title that allows the Canadian government to infringe on title under specific circumstances, the Carter doctrine asserting U.S. entitlement to Canadian resources for national security purposes, trade agreements that pre-empt national laws, the Canadian Mining Act which “does not require that the holder of an exploration permit inform property owners of its existence … and that the permit can be acquired via the Internet with a simple click [so] that First Nations, property owners, and municipalities are ever informed or forewarned of the acquisition of a land claim on their land or territory.”2 The Canadian National Energy Board is made up of industry people whose consultations with Indigenous people and the general public are minimal.
CPP investments are also opaque. Private equities have privacy protections, ostensibly to protect trade secrets.
“The CPPIB’s (Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board) private equity team is a blessing to the oil patch. In addition to holding shares in Canada’s largest oil, gas, and coal companies, the most impressive CPPIB contribution to the sector comes from their private equity arm.”
The Canadian Pension Plan is a major investor in Imperial Oil, with its tar sands operations, pipelines, and refineries wreaking destruction on indigenous communities in Canada and abroad. An investigation into the Imperial Oil refinery adjacent to the Aamjiwnaang First Nations in Sarnia, Ontario, just published on May 5th, revealed that it emits ten times more fine particulate matter, seven times more carbon monoxide, and 49 times more sulphur dioxide than the nearby Detroit plant. Imperial Oil owns four facilities within 2 to 7 km from Aamjiwnaang. Forty per cent of Canada’s petrochemical industry surrounds this small community.
The water is so contaminated that it affects endocrine balance: two girls are born for every boy, and the effects on health have been substantiated by medical and legal reports and a charter challenge launched on behalf of the 800 member Aamjiwnaang community. In 2017 Imperial Oil’s flaring caused a five-hour massive explosion. Over 500 incident reports had been filed in 2014 and 2015 for spills and leaks in the Sarnia area: yet only one public warning had been issued through the municipality’s alert system. The government has still not installed an effective monitoring and warning system.
Critical Information is Withheld or Concealed
The Canadian government fired public health physician Dr. John O’Connor for informing the public of rare forms of cancer in Chippewa First Nations communities downstream from the tar sands, nor is it broadcast that preeminent climate scientist James Hansen states that tar sands development means “game over” for the planet. Pam Palmater, indigenous lawyer and Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University, writes of the latest pipeline expansions:
“Trudeau’s approval of the Kinder Morgan expansion is proof – once and for all – that even the most charming leader, with the biggest tears and sincerest sounding apologies, who is ‘absolutely’ committed to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples – can and will ignore those rights in the name of corporate interests every single time.”
Imperial Oil is 69.6% owned by Exxon-Mobil, the corporation associated with Rex Tillerson and with deception of the public about climate change. Oil was discovered in Ontario in 1858, a year before Titusville Pennsylvania, and by 1880 the Imperial Oil Company was producing, distributing, and refining oil. In the 1950s Imperial Oil and smaller companies banded together to lease some 2 million acres in the tar sands and by the early 1960s there were generous, publicly funded incentives and loose regulations to promote extraction. Imperial’s Board of Directors come from Exxon-Mobil, from the conservative C.D. Howe Institute, from executive positions at the major universities. In 1975, the chair of Imperial Oil led other CEOs to form the Business Council on National Issues, now the Canadian Council of Chief Executives with close ties to the Canadian and U.S. governments. In 2014 Exxon published a detailed report that brushed aside concerns about climate change, “saying oil and gas will remain the dominant sources of energy through 2040…”3
The former president and CEO of the CPPIB, Mark Wiseman, was also “bullish on the fossil fuel sector.” Wiseman recently left the CPP to join his wife at BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager. A Code Pink petition states that BlackRock is “making a killing on killing!” with its investments in Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop Grunman, Elbit, and General Dynamics – exactly the same investments as the CPP.
The current head of CPPIB is Heather Munroe-Blum. She is Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University and her directorships include the Association of American Universities, the Conference Board of Canada, Rio Tinto, CGI (oil and gas sector), the Royal Bank of Canada (mining). She is a vocal opponent of the academic boycott of Israeli universities. Her combined pension entitlements gave her the richest package of any university president in Canada at a time when Quebec universities were being asked to absorb $124-million in cuts.
Social Security
The main variables in providing social security have been whether to provide universal or selective coverage, to what degree it should be publicly funded, and the sources of funding. Traditional communities characteristically developed a range of ways to care for their members, whereas nation states came late, if at all, to take on social security, and originally only for selected groups like military men or senior state functionaries. “It was not until the epoch of the French Revolution and its Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen that the first proposals were heard for the paying of pensions as of right to all citizens who had reached an advanced age and were in want.” It was the “unlikely executor of the social legacy of French republicanism … Otto von Bismarck, who established the first universal pension system in 1889.”4 The modest 1935 U.S. Social Security Act provided a minimal benefit. Initially it did not cover non-waged women’s work or Black people. Its strengths were that it was a federal program, that it was comprehensive and not voluntary, and that it had its own autonomous administration.
Despite hopes that social security would be a stepping stone to a socialized society, insufficient benefits necessitated supplementary pensions. From the 1970s, pension fund managers took advantage of the erosion of New Deal protections and of the inflow of capital from abroad,5 and by the 1990s pension funds became a powerful driver of financialization. The trajectory has been from state responsibility for universal benefits at one end, to private pension funds based on individual contributions. In the cases of the Enron and Nortel Network bankruptcies, pensioners took huge losses as their plans were not guaranteed, and money from asset sales were prioritized for paying legal fees, creditors, and fund managers.
The erosion of state responsibility for social security was further exacerbated by the concerted assault on unions, a factor in the decline of cross-border class solidarity. The inclusion of union representatives on pension boards does not effectively change the “fund-first” principle of fiduciary duty that weights profit over social justice and the public interest.6 Not untypical is the case of American and Canadian pension fund investments in Chile’s privately owned water utilities despite a mass social movement within Chile to re-nationalize water.7
Currently, divestment victories are politically significant and a result of public pressure. Unlike corporate shareholders and coop members, contributors to pension plans do not have a vote. System change is urgent: fossil fuel impacts are already transforming ocean circulation, the jet stream, even the stratosphere, and are amplifying positive feedbacks. An adequate social security system at this calamitous time needs to go beyond monetary benefits, to go beyond mere reform, and ensure across national borders housing, food, and healthcare for all. It is intolerable that the knowledge- and morally- compromised few “bank on death” of the majority human population.
*
Judith Deutsch is a member of Independent Jewish Voices, and former president of Science for Peace. She is a psychoanalyst in Toronto. She can be reached at judithdeutsch0@gmail.com.
Notes
Kevin Skerrett, “Canada’s Public Pension Funds: The ‘New Masters of the (Neoliberal) Universe’,” in Kevin Skerrett, et al., eds., The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017, p. 122.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
