Turtle Island Solidarity Network

As I travelled to Oak Flat for the vigil on 15 January, I stopped to pray as Wendsler suggested. It was a very different way of arriving. I noticed the land so much more and the birds and the plants. There is a section of desert where there are ancient elders, grandparent saguaros with so many limbs that you can't count them at a glance. I needed to stop and give thanks for safe passage and then ask permission to enter the next area. 

We ask for prayers first for our Mother Earth and our sacred water which is our life blood. We ask for prayers for a cessation to the raping, murdering and killing of our mother by a "wendigo spirit" of greed and corruption which is manifesting itself in the development of an oil pipeline. This pipeline will carry tar sands oil through sacred water, wetlands, wild rice beds and forests to increase the profits of a Canadian corporation. 

Over the last five years, Christian Peacemaker Teams and Mennonite Church Canada worked tirelessly alongside Indigenous and ecumenical partners to support federal legislation to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And this month, at long last, the Canadian government tabled Bill C-15: An act respecting the UN Declaration. A consensus international human rights instrument, the Declaration was crafted by Indigenous peoples and representatives of nation-states over 25 years. It affirms the inherent rights of Indigenous peoples; rights aren’t “special” but “the minimum standards for the survival, dignity, and well-being of the Indigenous peoples of the world” (Article 43, UNDRIP). 

At the entrance to the womb-like valley of Oak Flat, near the deeply rooted ancient oaks, Wendsler Noisie, San Carlos Apache leader, spoke with me about some questions raised by an official of the U.S. Forestry. The official had asked why the Apache included non-Apache/settler voices regarding the sacredness of Oak Flat in their response to the Environmental Impact Statement. 

Christian Peacemaker Teams condemns the violation of treaty rights and recent attacks against the lobster fishers of Sipekne’katik First Nation in Nova Scotia. We demand: The federal government to intervene and ensure that the Mi’kmaw lobster fishers can enact the rights recognized in the Treaty of 1752 and so sustain their livelihood; the Department of Fisheries and Oceans must publicly recognize the legitimacy of the Mi’kmaw Fishery operation; and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police must stop and prevent the attacks on Mi’kmaw lobster fishers.

The stories of settler violence coming from Sipekne'katik First Nation in central Nova Scotia this week mirror the experience of their kin at Esgenoôpetitj First Nation (EFN) in New Brunswick twenty years ago. 

On 9 September 2020, Nellie Jo David and Amber Lee Ortega, Indigenous women of O'odham Jewed, took direct action to protect the sacred site of A'al Vappia/Quitobaquito Springs from destruction by the racist border wall. This action took place in Hia-Ced O'odham Jewed (O'odham Lands) near Ajo, Arizona, on lands that the United States of America claims as its own.

Through this article, we invite our settler constituency to reflect. Get comfortable; grab a pen and paper, and reflect on the questions in the italicized sections journal.