Giving Compass' Take:

• In Canada, the government ignores Indigenous consent for local extraction and undermines Indigenous self-determination when it comes to land rights. Indigenous blockades are a way to stand in solidarity to protect lands and people. 

• What is the role of donors in helping struggling Indigenous communities? 

•  Learn about the work foundations can do to better support Indigenous peoples. 

I began the long journey back to my home—Nishnaabe territory in central Ontario, Canada. My first layover was in Yellowknives Dene, Somba K’e or Yellowknife, NWT, and by the time I had reached Yellowknife, Global News was reporting that “61% of Canadians oppose Wet’suwet’en solidarity blockades, and 75% back action to help Indigenous people: poll.”

In some ways, 39% of Canadians supporting Indigenous dissent through solidarity blockades is significant, yet the single most profound way non-Indigenous peoples can help Indigenous peoples is by respecting our self-determination and our ability to protect our lands, waters, and peoples for the coming generations. The Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs have clearly stated that there is no access to their lands without their consent, and over the past two decades, they have done everything possible within the current structures to protect their lands. And when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police invaded their territory to enforce a court injunction and to make way for the construction of the pipeline, they asked us for our help.

Canada has always ignored consent when it comes to resource extraction, and they have always undermined our self-determination and paternalistically decided what is best for our communities and our lands.

The state has always placed limits on Indigenous efforts to protect our lands and our peoples with clear demarcations between moral and “legitimate” forms of defending our rights—usually negotiations between state-sanctioned Aboriginal leadership and the crown, along with symbolic acts of peaceful and nondisruptive demonstrations sanctioned by Canadian law, and tactics that disrupt the economic and political systems, such as blockades.

In other words, when protecting the land for generations to come, you must do so within the structures we’ve created, and we’ve created these structures to ensure the status quo will be maintained, and that you do not have the right to say no to the extraction of resources from your territory.

You can say no to a pipeline, but you must whisper.

Read the full article about Indigenous blockades by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson at YES! Magazine.