#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #CANADA #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Canada, Collectif Emma Goldman - Chicoutimi: Railroad blockade in solidarity with the communities of Uashat mak Mani-utenam and Matimekush-Lac John (ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 We are republishing a press release that we have just received in our inbox. ----

07 September. Chicoutimi, Nitassinan not ceded. On Wednesday evening, a group of
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal activists blocked the Roberval-Saguenay railway
belonging to the multinational Rio Tinto in solidarity with the National
Committee for the Rights of First Peoples, which is paralyzing the railway
located in limits of Labrador and Schefferville and which is used by the Tatta
Steel mine. These actions are intended to remind governments that members of
Indigenous communities in the country will no longer accept any compromise on
criminal acts committed against them.
The band councils of Uashat mak Mani-utenam (ITUM) and Matimekush-Lac John are
suspected of having obtained the majority of electoral votes through corruption,
fraud, extortion and breach of trust. The alleged facts would have occurred
between 2019 and 2022 and would involve an amount of nearly $1.8M in bribes and
favors of all kinds. In the official complaint made to the Sureté du Québec by
the First Peoples' Rights Committee, proof of the list coming directly from
ITUM's accounting system shows that there were, without the knowledge of the
members, approximately 325 billing payments registered for an approximate amount
of $1,780,000. This sum would be the result of a contract signed with the mining
company IOC Rio-Tinto in 2020, in which the team of chef Mike McKenzie would have
hidden the legal meaning of the many clauses of this agreement from the members,
which would have had the effect of giving exclusively and without delay of
extinction to this agreement, all future decision-making rights for the
exploitation of natural resources being on the unceded greater Nitassinan,
territory to which the Innuat people belong!

Today's action carried out by the collective in Saguenay is to remind us that the
Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC) as well as the band councils, which are nothing
more than an organ of colonial assimilation put in place by the federal
government, are not masters of the unceded Nitassinan. Agreements signed
illegally, by extortion, without the consent of the great Innuat people, will
never again be tolerated. Mining companies have been destroying and polluting
Innuat territory for several decades. Our action is a direct act of ancestral
sovereignty of the First Peoples. We have been perpetuating this ancestral
governance for thousands of years. We also act for future generations in order to
bequeath them a healthy land and to perpetuate our ancestral rights, our sacred
relationship with Assi (the Earth) and all living beings. Enough is enough! Today
we are acting on behalf of a movement by the Indigenous people and their allies
and for the people to denounce these criminal acts sanctioned by the Canadian and
Quebec courts of justice. We call for the multiplication of solidarity actions in
connection with this fight.

Also consult the press release of the National Committee on the Rights of First
Peoples.

by Emma Goldman Collective

http://ucl-saguenay.blogspot.com/2022/09/chicoutimi-blocage-de-chemin-de-fer-en.html
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