Weekly Round-Up
February 3, 2023
A lot has been happening lately across Turtle Island. We know it can be hard to keep up, so we’ve compiled a list of news, events, and big stories related to Indigeneity and the climate crisis.
Opportunities
ICPS Climate Policy Competition
Deadline: February 14, 2023
Are you passionate about finding solutions to the climate crisis? Do you want to make a real impact on the future of our planet? Then the ICPS Climate Policy Competition is for you! We know that the climate is changing. We know that it is destroying the livelihoods and futures of millions of youth across the world. We know that we are not the ones who have caused it. But we believe that YOUth have the solutions to solve it – and to shape a better world.
National Indigenous Scholarship Program
Deadline: March 14, 2023
Awarded annually to five Indigenous undergraduate students (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit) studying full-time at Western's main campus in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities, Engineering, Music, Health Sciences, FIMS, Social Science, Science based on their outstanding academic excellence and meaningful and impactful contribution toward Indigenous communities.
New Course: Home on Native Land
Self-guided | Online
Though they've been ignored and often trampled over the past 150 years, Indigenous Peoples have ways of relating to the land and to one another that allowed people to live on these lands and waters for thousands of years without disrupting the ecological balance. Those laws — upheld by Treaties and validated in case after case in the country's courts — offer a path forward not only for cultural understanding, but for our very survival in a time of climate crisis. Jump into this free 10-part course on Indigenous justice in Canada and discover the myths, absurdities, and possibilities that are baked into the laws of this land.
New Anishinaabemowin Language App
Self-guided | Online
This is a beginner-level Anishinaabemowin course consisting of 120 modules. Each module takes approximately 1 hour to complete. You will learn how to use various types of vocabulary and basic sentences (grammatical patterns). This course is designed to help learners attain a basic understanding of the dialect after completing the first 40 modules. Learners at this point should be able to provide one word responses. After completion of the entire course (120 modules), learners should find themselves with the ability to respond with 2 or more sentences.
Events + Training
CJRF Solution Series: Indigenous Climate Action
February 22, 2023 | 03:00 PM ET
Join us on February 22 for the latest installment of the CJRF Solution Series with Indigenous Climate Action. Indigenous Climate Action works to ensure that decisions on climate change solutions and climate policy are informed by Indigenous experts, values, knowledge and voices. Indigenous Climate Action's work aims to make sure Indigenous communities in Canada have capacity and tools to build their own climate solutions.
Métis Women's Food Sovereignty & Relationship to Land
February 8, 2023 | 8:00 PM EST
What does your relationship to land look like? Are you a Métis woman or gender diverse person living in the city or in an urban centre? Do you face any barriers in accessing land? LFMO wants to hear from you! Join LFMO as we sit down with Métis women and gender diverse folks to discuss this important topic.
News + Announcements
Land defenders build tipi along TMX construction route in ‘Burnaby’
January 31, 2023
As the January rain falls around her, Khursten Bullock carefully approaches a tipi that was recently assembled alongside the Trans-Canada highway in “Burnaby.”
The structure, emblazoned with a “Stop TMX” sign, interrupts the 1,150-km path of the still-unfinished Trans Mountain expansion project (TMX) — part of an ongoing effort with the environmental group Protect the Planet to set up camps along the pipeline route.
How Indigenous people are strengthening fur traditions in an anti-fur world
January 28, 2023
Inuvialuit fashion designer Taalrumiq says she knows first-hand how using real animal fur can foster harsh criticism and anger in people who are against the fur industry.
Taalrumiq, whose English name is Christina Gruben King, creates couture pieces and fine art using the materials and designs of her ancestors. She travels from her home in northern British Columbia to sell these pieces and often has to explain to non-Indigenous people — whose responses she say can range from discomfort, to disgust, to anger — the uses, beauty and cultural importance of fur.
New book shows why Indigenous leadership must be at the heart of Canada’s just transition
January 27, 2023
When new oil and gas projects are approved in Canada, whether it’s an individual drill pad, a sour gas line, or a massive oil sands mine, their environmental impacts are assessed individually. If, for example, a company applies for a permit to build the 20,000th piece of fossil fuel infrastructure on Beaver Lake Cree territory in northern Alberta, the project will be assessed based solely on its individual potential impact, not on the cumulative ramifications that 20,000 pieces of infrastructure could have on waterways, wildlife, or the ecosystem more broadly.
Documents show how 19 ‘Cop City’ activists got charged with terrorism
January 27, 2023
A burst of gunfire rang through a forest on the edge of Atlanta, Georgia, on the morning of January 18. Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, whose chosen name was Tortuguita (Spanish for “little turtle”), had been shot and killed by police officers, becoming the only known person killed by law enforcement during an environmentalist act of land defense in the modern U.S., according to experts Grist consulted.
Sask. Opposition MLA, Indigenous leaders call for halt of Crown lands auction
January 24, 2023
Indigenous leaders and the Opposition NDP critic for First Nation and Métis relations assembled at the Saskatchewan Legislature Monday, once again calling on the provincial government to halt an upcoming auction for Crown lands.
Betty Nippi-Albright, NDP MLA for Saskatoon Centre, and First Nations chiefs accused the Saskatchewan Party government of failing to fulfil its duty to consult — and warned there could be legal action as a result.
Fossil fuel lobby waged $4m disinformation campaign during climate summit, report finds
January 24, 2023
Fossil fuel companies spent millions of dollars on advertisements containing climate disinformation and greenwashing attempts when leaders assembled for the United Nations climate summit in November, new research has claimed.
A report by the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition analysed fake information and misleading claims circulating online during the Cop27 summit in Egypt.
Saskatchewan Indigenous leaders continue to stand up to province on selling Crown lands
January 23, 2023
In an attempt to make their voices and concerns heard with the province, Indigenous leaders in Saskatchewan gathered at the Regina Legislature on Monday morning to plead with the Saskatchewan government to stop the sales of Crown lands.
“First Nations say that if government continues down this reckless path, they will be displaced. Not once, but twice from their traditional territories,” said Betty Nippi-Albright, the Opposition First Nations and Metis Relations Critic.
Indigenous people protect some of the Amazon’s last carbon sinks: Report
January 19, 2023
Some of the last remaining carbon sinks in the Amazon Rainforest are largely managed by Indigenous people, a new report from the World Resources Institute says.
In areas of the Amazon managed by Indigenous communities, forests tend to be carbon sinks rather than carbon sources, while areas under different management tend to have already passed their tipping point — yet another reason why Indigenous communities are so vital to forest conservation, the report says.
20 Years of Resistance: Grassy Narrows' Land Defenders
January 18, 2023
It’s a story of resistance.
On December 2, 2002, members of Asubpeeschoseewagong Anishinabek, an Indigenous community located in the heart of Canada’s boreal forest, decided that after more than a decade of meetings, protests, petitions, letter-writing and legal actions they needed to do more to stop the industrial logging that was taking place on their territory without their consent.
Where Indigenous feminisms and food sovereignties meet
January 18, 2023
Destruction of Indigenous women and of Indigenous food systems were two powerful weapons used by colonists to conquer the North American continent. Today, stories of recovering traditional foodways are braided in with stories of re-making women’s place in society, as well as reclaiming the important role of two-spirit people. Previous to colonization, not only did women hold places of equal power in many indigenous societies, but many more shades of gender and sexuality were recognized as normal, and even special.
Wet’suwe’ten leadership preparing for criminal trial over Coastal Gaslink
January 13, 2023
A well-known Wet’suwet’en land defender expressed concern that she and some supporters who oppose the Coastal Gaslink pipeline may go to jail after an upcoming trial.
“The human rights abuses, the Indigenous rights experiences we experience on the ground and that we have been experiencing for years, this is the first time that we are actually going to trial facing criminal charges for defending our lands and upholding laws,” said Sleydo’ (Molly Wickham).
For the past four years, there have been multiple police raids on Wet’suwet’en territory as RCMP enforce a B.C. Supreme Court injunction to stop those who oppose the pipeline from slowing construction.
Chiefs remain opposed to the pipeline running through their territory.
