WORLD WORLDWIDE CANADA News Journal Update - (en) Canada, Collectif Emma Goldman - Nitassinan: blocking a railway against the Petapan treaty (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Last Thursday, March 30, a blockade of a railway owned by Rio Tinto took place in

protest against the Petapan Treaty. For more than two hours, indigenous
protesters maintained this blockage in an effort to make it clear that opposition
to the Petapan colonial treaty is alive and well. Here is their press release.
---- The Mashk Assi Collective, Nitassinan not ceded. ---- The Petapan Treaty:
Innuat hereditary chiefs demand an end to territorial negotiations ---- More than
30 Innuat territory chiefs demand by signature an immediate end to negotiations
as well as an immediate end to logging in the Cyriac forest sector and the
shutdown of the first phosphate corp mine!!! The communication of opposition to
the Petapan treaty of the Innuat hereditary chiefs was sent to all levels of
government yesterday before the illegal signing scheduled for today of this
treaty on March 31, 2023!!!

An illegal treaty in Innu law

The territorial negotiations aim to break up this territory into small
territories and extinguish the right to self-determination of the Innu people.
Colonization, cultural amnesia and above all, seclusion on reserves have meant
that many people and certain chiefs no longer see what they are letting go, a
vast territory, but imagine what they think they are gaining, a larger reserve.
The complex of the colonized is to come to define oneself through the gaze of the
colonizer. It becomes all the more problematic that those who do not see clearly
are solely responsible for negotiating the future of all our people.

Under the Indian Act, it is important to remember that band councils have
jurisdiction over the management of reserve lands only. In this sense, they do
not have jurisdiction over land located off-reserve. It is the chiefs of the
territory, the guardians of the territory and the circles of kukum (grandmothers)
who have the obligation to protect the ancestral territory. In Innu law, land is
inalienable and constitutes a legacy for future generations that must be
protected and respected. In this sense and according to Innu law, these
negotiations are illegitimate and illegal. In this sense, the hereditary chiefs
demand an immediate halt to the process of global territorial negotiations.

Moreover, in a letter submitted in 2005 to the Prime Minister of Canada, Paul
Martin, the Ukauimau aimu coalition "words of mothers" made up of more than 270
members of different communities, denounced the lack of transparency,
consultation in the process of territorial negotiations and the illegal session
of the ancestral territory.

At the time of a global ecocide, the time is no longer for the fragmentation of
the territory, its alienation or its exploitation, it is imperative to continue
the exercise of our Innu legal obligation to protect Tshikauinu Assi, our Earth-
Mother. Today more than ever, this obligation has become a planetary imperative.
Playing the game of colonial division has only benefited financially and
politically only one small elite and the latter cannot discuss and decide
unilaterally, behind closed doors and secretly, on the extinction of an entire
people.

The Extinction Clause, also known as the "Certainty Clause", is a statement that
aims to transfer the sovereignty of First Peoples to the federal and provincial
Crown, which in turn modifies it, in order to transform the status of inalienable
Indigenous lands , provincial and federal marketable lands. In this sense, Canada
and the provinces become the ultimate owners of these territories. This clause
brings certainty to the federal and provincial governments, it is they who have
an interest in these modern treaties and not the First Peoples who are, de facto,
sovereign. This sovereignty is notably recognized in the Oswegatchie
International Treaty of 1760.

To this speech of certainty, the three councils declare that Aboriginal rights
will not be extinguished but that their exercise will be "suspended", as
stipulated in article 3.3.4 of the Agreement-in-Principle. However, the
suspension of the exercise of rights and their extinction both have the same
effect, that of preventing the implementation of the right to self-determination
and the exercise of Innu tipenitamun. This legal lure gradually leads to the
renunciation of Innu sovereignty. As Professor Michael Asch, Emeritus Professor
at the University of Victoria, put it: "Treaties should be based on the
recognition of rights rather than their extinguishment or abandonment".

MAMU PIMUTETAU TSHETSHI SHUTSHIEK!!!! BAD TREATED PETAPAN!!!!

by Emma Goldman Collective

http://ucl-saguenay.blogspot.com/2023/03/nitassinan-blocage-dun-chemin-de-fer.html
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