tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/indigenous-rights-11921/articlesIndigenous rights – The Conversation2024-01-18T22:00:22Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2182982024-01-18T22:00:22Z2024-01-18T22:00:22ZFlipping Indigenous regional development in Newfoundland upside-down: lessons from Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570173/original/file-20240118-27-4y6ku6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4031%2C1816&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Newfoundland and Tasmania, Australia, have been described as 'mirror islands' with striking linkages. Site of one of the field excursions during the authors' 12-day exchange to Tasmania, Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Author Provided, Brady Reid)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/flipping-indigenous-regional-development-in-newfoundland-upside-down-lessons-from-australia" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>In an era of <a href="https://www.activesustainability.com/climate-change/global-boiling/?_adin=02021864894">“global boiling”</a> the Canadian government has set ambitious targets to transition towards a <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/services/environment/weather/climatechange/climate-plan/net-zero-emissions-2050.html">net-zero future</a> with important caveats that this transition must be <a href="https://climateinstitute.ca/reports/canadas-net-zero-future/recommendations/">fair and inclusive</a>. </p>
<p>However, does this future include vibrant, self-determined Indigenous communities? Research shows that inadequate engagement between settler governments, corporations and Indigenous communities leads to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101897">poor indications of reconciliation</a>. </p>
<p>This is a troubling reality given the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-people-economic-conditions">ongoing socio-economic challenges</a> imposed on Indigenous communities across the land now called Canada.</p>
<h2>Risk and uncertainty</h2>
<p>Everywhere in Canada has unique, and equally important, developmental considerations and climate risks.</p>
<p>For regional Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland) Mi’kmaw communities in Nujio’qonik, (the St. George’s Bay region), the uncertainty of the future is complicated by large-scale, natural resource developments. </p>
<p>A clear example of one such development is Project Nujio’qonik, billed as the <a href="https://worldenergygh2.com/about/">world’s first large-scale green hydrogen project in western Newfoundland and Labrador</a>. </p>
<p>Mi’kmaw communities and leaders, such as <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/calvin-white-powwow-qa-1.6907384">Elder Calvin White</a>, led the movement for recognition of the Mi’kmaq in Ktaqmkuk post-Confederation, and continue to do so today. </p>
<p>However, the <a href="https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1319805325971/1572459825339">controversial</a> establishment of the Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation has hampered efforts by Mi’kmaw across the west coast of Ktaqmkuk to fully realize effective stewardship and control over decisions impacting communities and surrounding territories. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas are an important example of self-governance for Indigenous Peoples. Overview of IPCAs produced by the Conservation Through Reconciliation Partnership.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The complexities behind the establishment of the Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation continue to be <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/qalipu-enrolment-court-decision-1.6882390">challenged in court</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/stranger-in-your-own-land-1.4407020/mi-kmaq-communities-divided-over-federal-government-s-qalipu-band-membership-decisions-1.4407060">families remain divided to this day</a>. </p>
<p>While the situation may seem intractable there are surprising insights to be gained from the experiences of Indigenous groups halfway around the world. </p>
<h2>18,000 km away</h2>
<p>Despite being geographically poles apart, both Newfoundland and Tasmania have been described by locals and scholars as <a href="https://figshare.utas.edu.au/articles/thesis/Artists_and_the_articulation_of_islandness_sense_of_place_and_story_in_Newfoundland_and_Tasmania/23240777">“mirror islands” with striking linkages and similarities throughout history</a>. </p>
<p>Indigenous groups in both regions have fought for decades to assert their rights and agency on traditional territory and continue to push back against a shared <a href="https://www.gov.nl.ca/publicat/royalcomm/research/Hanrahan.pdf">history of erasure</a> and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-13/winning-indigenous-aboriginal-rights-in-tasmania/11202128">extinction myths</a>. </p>
<p>Inequalities continue to facilitate patterns of uneven growth and opportunity with real impacts upon local communities.</p>
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<p>In response to growing concerns for the future of their communities Mi’kmaw leaders Chief Joanne Miles of the Flat Bay Band and Chief Peggy White of the Three Rivers Mi’kmaq Band travelled to Tasmania with PhD candidate Brady Reid. </p>
<p>The goal of the trip was to share knowledge and learn about advances in <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/connections-to-sea-country-cultural-fisheries-program-launched-for-tasmanias-aboriginal-people/ka7rfqm5f">sustainable and culturally-grounded economic development projects within Australia</a>. </p>
<p>The exchange took place between Nov. 4-16, 2023 in Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania, with some excursions to various locations around the southern part of the island. </p>
<p>At the invite of local Indigenous leaders, Professor Emma Lee of the National Centre for Reconciliation, Truth, and Justice at Federation University and Uncle Rodney Dillon of the <a href="https://www.ilsc.gov.au/">Land and Sea Aboriginal Corporation</a> — among others — shared Indigenous regional development and recognition initiatives. </p>
<h2>Shared lessons</h2>
<p>Recognizing, renewing and supporting Indigenous management and stewardship over traditional territories and resources is a key step in re-shaping settler-Indigenous relationships. This is especially true for Indigenous communities denied access to treaty resources and rights.</p>
<p>Though not without challenges, the Tasmanian and Australian governments have <a href="https://www.frdc.com.au/supporting-cultural-fisheries-research-aboriginal-tasmanians">supported Indigenous-led research and partnership development</a>. These efforts have helped to realize an economically viable and culturally significant fisheries industry. </p>
<p>Through Tasmanian Aboriginal efforts to align supportive federal policy with state regulations, top-down strategies have transformed local reluctance into regional development opportunities. </p>
<p>Lessons gleaned from discussions with federal and state representatives in Tasmania have helped shape future strategies to realize self-determined resource governance in Ktaqmkuk.</p>
<p>The shared experiences in colonial history — and the mutual legacy of marine industries — between the islands of Tasmania and Ktaqmkuk have led to similarities in actions Indigenous Peoples can take. </p>
<p>Actions which can serve to share knowledge, collectively strengthen self-determination rights, and develop social licence strategies that favour Indigenous-led regional development while re-shaping relationships across all levels of government.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-nature-agreement-underscores-the-need-for-true-reconciliation-with-indigenous-nations-217427">Canada’s Nature Agreement underscores the need for true reconciliation with Indigenous nations</a>
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<p>While change takes time, it is incredibly important that settler government, agencies and representatives support initiatives led by Indigenous communities and do not create barriers in bureaucratic policy or procedure, especially when strong business cases are evident. </p>
<h2>Moving forward</h2>
<p>Recommendations from the <a href="https://climateinstitute.ca/">Canadian Climate Institute</a> support green policy action that improve social and economic indicators, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/canada-needs-to-set-its-businesses-up-for-success-in-the-clean-energy-transition-206276">business interests and opportunities</a>. </p>
<p>After learning more about the <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/connections-to-sea-country-cultural-fisheries-program-launched-for-tasmanias-aboriginal-people/ka7rfqm5f">Tasmanian cultural fisheries pilot</a> we kept asking ourselves, why not assert Mi’kmaw communities as leaders in regional development over our own traditional territories? </p>
<p>In making clear statements that align traditional knowledge with renewable energy policies, Indigenous Peoples are <a href="https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/news/were-facing-extinction-as-a-people-in-our-territory-indigenous-leaders-from-bay-st-george-south-and-port-au-port-peninsula-say-wind-energy-project-is-needed-100914527/">creating the terms</a> for effective and fair transitions to a better future. </p>
<p>We saw this in Tasmania, where a groundswell of support for cultural fisheries operating within commercial quota led to a fascinating and consequential shift in relationship-building. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A report on the solar initiatives of the Métis Nation of Alberta produced by the CBC. Indigenous People have huge potential to create the terms of Canada’s renewable energy future.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Traditional institutions, such as universities and <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/services/environment/fisheries.html">fishery statutory authorities</a>, remain the obvious places of collaboration. However, it was the non-traditional avenues, such as Indigenous procurement initiatives at <a href="https://www.govhouse.tas.gov.au/vice-regal-news/professor-emma-lee-national-centre-reconciliation-truth-and-justice-federation">Government House</a>, that were most surprising and fruitful. </p>
<p>Indigenous-led regional development, as a fair and equitable process, is about recognizing that Indigenous Peoples want Indigenous cultural innovation to advance all sectors of society. </p>
<p>In re-shaping settler-Indigenous relationships, the emphasis here is on how self-assertion of rights has mutual gains at its heart. If renewable energy can come together to support cultural fisheries for healthier relationships, then our unique island character is retained as a strength rather than a deficit.</p>
<p>We learned and shared invaluable knowledge from a variety of stakeholders in Tasmania that have sparked ideas and creative strategies for improved relations at home in Ktaqmkuk. </p>
<p>Importantly, we know that for effective transitions to a better future and more sustainable society, the only way forward is to respect the terms of Indigenous Peoples’ regional development goals.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218298/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This article follows a two-week Indigenous exchange from Newfoundland, Canada to Tasmania, Australia that received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the University of Waterloo, and the Marine Biomass Innovation Project (<a href="http://www.mbiproject.ca">www.mbiproject.ca</a>). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chief Joanne Miles is the Chief of the Flat Bay Band.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chief Peggy (Margaret) White (BA, JD, LLM) is the Chief of the Three Rivers Mi'kmaq Band. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Lee is a board director of the Land and Sea Aboriginal Corporation Tasmania and is a current recipient of the Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation.</span></em></p>The lessons from Tasmania are clear. Asserting Indigenous rights in Canada can be mutually beneficial for all.Brady Reid, PhD Student, Sustainabilty Management, University of WaterlooChief Joanne Miles, Chief of the Flat Bay BandChief Peggy (Margaret) White, Chief of the Three Rivers Mi'kmaq BandEmma Lee, Professor, National Centre for Reconciliation, Truth, and Justice, Federation University AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2201332024-01-16T13:41:06Z2024-01-16T13:41:06ZLong after Indigenous activists flee Russia, they continue to face government pressure to remain silent<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568943/original/file-20240111-17-c8ekoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pavel Sulyandziga, a Russian Indigenous activist, poses with his family in 2017 in Yarmouth, Maine, where he awaits a decision on political asylum. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pavel-sulyandziga-a-russian-indigenous-leader-is-filing-for-news-photo/669416946?adppopup=true">Derek Davis/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pavel Sulyandziga, an Indigenous activist and member of the Udege people of Russia’s far eastern region, arrived in the United States in 2017 to seek political asylum.</p>
<p>Sulyandziga joined his wife and their five children, who were already living in Maine. They left following numerous threats to Sulyandziga’s personal safety, as well as to his family members and colleagues, because of his political activism. </p>
<p>Sulyandziga’s request for <a href="https://help.unhcr.org/usa/applying-for-asylum/what-is-asylum/">political asylum</a> in the U.S. is still pending, part of a large backlog of asylum cases before immigration judges. </p>
<p>Today, however, Sulyandziga, 61, and his family members continue to be harassed by the Russian government.</p>
<p>Sulyandziga is one of among <a href="https://www.iwgia.org/en/russia/4682-iw-2022-russian-federation.html">260,000 people who are recognized as Indigenous</a> and who are from Russia. Indigenous peoples living in Russia have <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501761317/galvanizing-nostalgia/">long fought for recognition</a> of their rights as native peoples and to protect their traditional territory, which is often located in areas that are used for natural resource extraction, such as mining. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2021.2002629">recent research</a> shows that Indigenous activists are fleeing Russia because of growing repression. Sometimes, they are being charged with working on behalf of foreign governments, or they are facing false accusations of corruption. </p>
<p>Beyond repression at home, the Russian government is increasingly trying to silence activists like Sulyandziga even after they leave Russia. </p>
<p>This kind of harassment is called <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/transnational-repression">transnational repression</a>, and it means that Indigenous activists are vulnerable in exile as well as at home.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568945/original/file-20240111-15-xmdht8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man with a grey beard sits on a red couch and watches young children run around." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568945/original/file-20240111-15-xmdht8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568945/original/file-20240111-15-xmdht8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568945/original/file-20240111-15-xmdht8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568945/original/file-20240111-15-xmdht8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568945/original/file-20240111-15-xmdht8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568945/original/file-20240111-15-xmdht8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568945/original/file-20240111-15-xmdht8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Pavel Sulyandziga watches his children play in his living room at home in Maine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pavel-sulyandziga-a-russian-indigenous-leader-is-filing-for-news-photo/669416920?adppopup=true">Staff photo by Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Indigenous people of Russia</h2>
<p>The Soviet Union officially recognized the many identities and languages of Indigenous peoples living within its borders. But Soviet officials also pressured Indigenous people to abandon their <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801481789/arctic-mirrors/#bookTabs=1">traditional, religious and livelihood practices</a> in order to more easily incorporate them in the Communist regime. </p>
<p>Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has legally recognized <a href="https://docs.cntd.ru/document/901757631?ysclid=lmxoe1ky4c246489387">47 Indigenous peoples</a>, though <a href="https://www.iwgia.org/en/russia.html">more than 150 groups claim Indigenous status</a>.</p>
<p>There was a flowering of Indigenous activism in Russia during the more open politics of the 1990s. Between 1999 and 2001, the government passed several <a href="https://arcticreview.no/index.php/arctic/article/view/2336/4826">new laws</a> ensuring Indigenous rights, such as cultural autonomy and access to territories traditionally used for hunting and pastureland. </p>
<p>But Indigenous peoples remain among the most socially and economically marginalized groups in Russia. </p>
<p>Socioeconomically, their <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IPeoples/SR/COVID-19/IndigenousCSOs/RUSSIA%20-%20Aborigen%20Forum%20position%20.docx">health</a>, <a href="https://online.ucpress.edu/elementa/article/8/1/445/116784/Socio-cultural-characteristics-of-the-Russian">educational and economic outcomes</a> are significantly worse than the average Russian citizen. They face <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/1/23/in-russia-indigenous-land-defenders-face-intimidation-and-exile">extensive dislocation and pollution from natural resource extraction</a>, including oil and gas drilling. </p>
<p>Many also live in areas particularly <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-arctic-indigenous-peoples-losing-traditional-way-life-climate-change/30973726.html">vulnerable to climate change</a>.</p>
<h2>Indigenous activism and Russia’s war in Ukraine</h2>
<p>Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has created new problems for Indigenous communities in Russia. </p>
<p>Driven by poverty and patriotic appeals, young men from Indigenous communities enlist in the military in <a href="https://www.iwgia.org/en/russia/5186-iw-2023-russia.html#_edn8">disproportionately high numbers</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/s43yf.html">Preliminary research</a> indicates that soldiers from impoverished and remote regions and from ethnic minority groups die in the conflict in disproportionately high numbers. </p>
<p>Government harassment of Indigenous activists from Russia has also <a href="https://batani.org/archives/2156">intensified since 2022</a>. </p>
<p>Like Sulyandziga, a number of Indigenous activists have left Russia over the past few years <a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/new-report-highlights-indigenous-rights-violations-russia">to protect themselves and their families</a>. </p>
<p>Some Indigenous exiles have exercised their new freedoms by <a href="https://indigenous.taplink.ws/">protesting Russia’s war in Ukraine</a>. Sulyandziga has also been vocal in <a href="https://polarconnection.org/international-committee-of-indigenous-peoples-of-russia/">his opposition to the war</a>. </p>
<p>However, an activist’s decision to go into exile to escape persecution does not always mean the end of repression. </p>
<h2>The Russian government’s pressure on Indigenous people</h2>
<p>The Russian government <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/transnational-repression/russia">uses the tools of transnational repression</a> against Indigenous activists who have left Russia. These include damaging activists’ reputations in media coverage, initiating spurious legal cases, confiscating their property and harassing relatives and colleagues who remain in Russia. </p>
<p>By increasing the risks of speaking out, the government discourages Indigenous activists from trying to influence the political situation back home and attempts to silence their concern about the survival of their people. </p>
<p>Ruslan Gabbasov, an activist from the Bashkir ethnic minority in the Russian region of Bashkortostan, left his homeland in 2021 due to increasing pressure on his activism. He was the leader of an organization to protect Bashkir cultural and language rights that the government labeled as “extremist.” </p>
<p>Gabbasov received political asylum in Lithuania, where he started a new organization – the Committee of the Bashkir National Movement Abroad. His half brother, Rustam Fararitdinov, has never been involved in political activism. </p>
<p>But in November 2023, Fararitdinov was <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/bashkortostan-terrorist-list-russia-activist/32770297.html">arrested by Russian security agents</a>. Gabbasov <a href="https://kyivindependent.com/exiled-russian-activist-reports-detention-of-brother-in-bashkortostan/">reports that he has heard</a>, “If I return to Russia, they will release him; if not, they will imprison him.”</p>
<p>In Sulyandziga’s case, a Russian regional court charged him in November 2023 with an <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/08/1140147">increasingly widely used</a> charge of “discrediting the Russian military.” The court cited an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaTSgj-cYtE">online lecture by Sulyandziga</a>, in which he criticized the Russian government’s historical treatment of Indigenous communities. </p>
<p>Following the charge, Sulyandziga said that his adult son, who lives in Vladivostok, has been chronically harassed by the Federal Security Service in relation to the case, subjected to repeated questioning and threatening language. </p>
<h2>A foreign policy concern</h2>
<p>What motivates the Russian government to continue to try to repress Indigenous activists abroad? In part, repression is a response to activists’ international efforts to <a href="https://www.hudson.org/events/new-architecture-northern-eurasia-sixth-free-nations-post-russia-forum">draw attention to their causes</a>, including through the creation of new organizations like the <a href="https://www.freeburyatia.org/">Free Buryatia</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/freeyakutiafoundation/">Free Yakutia</a> foundations. These anti-war groups compare Russia’s violence toward Ukrainians with their own <a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/indigenous-anti-war-initiatives-russia-are-inherently-anti">histories of oppression</a> and call for decolonization in the region. </p>
<p>Repression also is designed to <a href="https://polarconnection.org/international-committee-of-indigenous-peoples-of-russia/">drive a wedge</a> between Indigenous communities in Russia and activists abroad who maintain connections via online platforms such as Telegram. </p>
<p>Finally, <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/transnational-repression/russia">transnational repression</a> is a high-profile way to scare other Indigenous activists. </p>
<p>That tactic has not been effective, though, in intimidating Sulyandziga and others. </p>
<p>Sulyandziga, who also worked as an environmental activist in Russia, reestablished his <a href="https://batani.org/">nonprofit organization</a> in the U.S. The Russian government had labeled his original organization a foreign agent, even before he fled to the U.S. He now works to unite Indigenous communities across borders.</p>
<p>Sulyandziga also recently <a href="https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/russia-indigenous-communities-lobby-tesla-not-to-get-its-nickel-from-major-polluter/">participated in a campaign</a> to discourage Tesla from buying nickel for its cars from the Russian company Norilsk Nickel, <a href="https://www.iwgia.org/en/news/3790-russian-oil-spill-exposes-history-of-indigenous-peoples%E2%80%99-right-violations.html">a major polluter of Indigenous lands</a>.</p>
<p>Sulyandziga vows to continue his activism, despite the pressure. </p>
<p>Along with fellow Indigenous activist Dmitry Berezhkov, Sulyandziga continues to call for Indigenous citizens in Russia to have “access to their traditional lands and traditional resources, that Indigenous cultures and languages are preserved, and that Indigenous peoples have an opportunity to pursue the realization of their <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/09/09/what-decolonization-means-for-russias-indigenous-peoples-a82387">political, economic, and social potential”</a>. </p>
<p><em>Pavel Sulyandziga, president of the Batani International Indigenous Fund for Solidarity and Development and visiting scholar at Dartmouth College, contributed to this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220133/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura A. Henry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>More than six years after Pavel Sulyandziga, an Indigenous activist from Russia, left the country to seek political asylum in the US, he continues to face harassment by the Russian government.Laura A. Henry, Associate Professor of Government and Legal Studies, Bowdoin CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2182232023-12-06T19:44:54Z2023-12-06T19:44:54ZHow to encourage China to become a law-abiding member of the rules-based international order<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/how-to-encourage-china-to-become-a-law-abiding-member-of-the-rules-based-international-order" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Like many nations, <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4322130-how-should-the-west-respond-to-chinas-challenge-to-the-rules-based-international-order/">China’s relationship to the rules-based international order has often featured a selective adherence to those rules</a> and a focus on its own interests, sometimes resulting in violating international laws when they’re at odds with Chinese goals.</p>
<p>But China has the ability and opportunity to transform into a law-abiding member of the rules-based international system, which is founded on relationships among states and through international institutions and frameworks, with shared rules and agreements on behaviour.</p>
<p>The international community can support this transformation by engaging China on global human rights and avoiding what the Chinese government considers interference in internal and territorial affairs.</p>
<p>It’s important that China, now a formidable power, embraces the <a href="https://www.cigionline.org/articles/maintaining-the-rules-based-international-order-is-in-everyones-best-interests/">rules-based order</a> to achieve international harmony, strengthen international relations and tackle universal crises like climate change. China <a href="https://search.issuelab.org/resources/36927/36927.pdf">has criticized</a> the current international order for failing to address the development gap and promoting alliance-based confrontation, preventing peaceful international relations. </p>
<p>It has proposed replacing the current international order with what it calls “<a href="http://gd.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zxhd_1/202309/t20230927_11151010.htm">a global community of shared future</a>,” suggesting the current international order <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/03/international-system-unfit-to-deal-with-global-crises-annual-report-2022/">isn’t fit</a> to deal with global crises. </p>
<h2>Revising the existing order</h2>
<p>But the Chinese proposal doesn’t genuinely present an alternative vision that can potentially reform the existing order. Chinese authorities <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/10/10/responding-to-china-s-complicated-views-on-international-order-pub-80021">have complex</a> views on international order; they don’t want to dramatically change the existing order because it’s supported <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12036">China’s transition</a> to a position of global power. </p>
<p>Instead, China wants to revise the existing order by increasing the role of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27358-2_2">individual nation-states</a> and ensuring human rights standards align with unique national sovereignty priorities.</p>
<p>The Chinese stance provides a window of opportunity for the international community to include China in the international order, transforming it into a law-abiding member by deploying a human rights approach that temporarily prioritizes some rights over others.</p>
<p>If the international community continues to focus on ethnic and Indigenous rights, it’s likely to further alienate China and cause it to disengage from the international order. </p>
<p>Indigenous rights, which extend beyond individual rights, require providing legislative, executive and judicial powers and <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Publications/fs9Rev.2.pdf">allowing ethnic minorities to freely</a> pursue their economic, social, cultural and political developments. China claims that it has already provided its minorities with <a href="http://un.china-mission.gov.cn/eng/gyzg/bp/200502/t20050228_8410941.htm">regional autonomy</a>, and argues western demands that it provide additional freedoms is motivated by an interest to erode its territorial interests. </p>
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<h2>Tibet independence</h2>
<p>In response to Tibet’s demand for autonomy, for example, the Chinese government has said Tibetans <a href="http://un.china-mission.gov.cn/eng/gyzg/bp/200405/t20040524_8410940.htm">want independence</a> and nothing else. This suggests the Chinese government considers any focus on Indigenous and ethnic rights as aimed at bringing about territorial disintegration. </p>
<p>That’s why China has often warned the international community not to interfere in its internal affairs and territorial disputes <a href="http://ca.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zjwl/202106/t20210624_9020447.htm">under the pretext</a> of advocating for human rights. </p>
<p>While some western countries consider sovereignty to be contingent upon a state’s behaviour, the Chinese government considers sovereignty an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137027443_2">absolute, non-negotiable right</a>. Due to this conceptual gap, it is almost impossible to engage China in the area of Indigenous and ethnic rights.</p>
<h2>Universal human rights</h2>
<p>Focusing on universal human rights, however, would allow the international community to negotiate with China and further encourage it to become a law-abiding member of the rules-based international order.</p>
<p>Universal rights are more about individual rights and less about sovereignty rights. China is more comfortable with this approach. It’s issued white papers expressing its commitment to <a href="http://geneva.china-mission.gov.cn/eng/ztjs/aghj12wnew/Whitepaper/202109/t20210927_9594621.htm">human rights</a> and fundamental freedoms both nationally and globally.</p>
<p>Even though its record on individual rights <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/09/05/costs-international-advocacy/chinas-interference-united-nations-human-rights#:%7E:text=It%20is%20a%20member%20of,Periodic%20Review%20(UPR)%20process.">is problematic</a> in many instances — the United Nations and other organizations <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/china-and-tibet">continue to document</a> serious Chinese <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/06/china-must-address-grave-human-rights-concerns-and-enable-credible">human rights abuses</a> — universal human rights still remain an area where China is willing to engage and could provide a window of opportunity towards further progress in the future.</p>
<p>China <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/22338659231175830">has participated</a> in global human rights mechanisms and is trying to promote itself as a good international citizen that respects human rights. </p>
<h2>Ethnic rights advocacy abroad</h2>
<p>China consistently supports ethnic rights outside its national borders. <a href="https://www.iwgia.org/en/china.html">It has adopted</a> the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, for example. A focus on universal rights when engaging with China therefore aligns with its approach on advocating for global human rights.</p>
<p>It has chastised some western countries, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jun/22/china-canada-relations-xinjiang-human-rights">including Canada</a>, about their own human rights abuses against Indigenous Peoples. </p>
<p>Inside China, ethnic minorities like Tibetans and Uyghurs have sought international support, largely unsuccessfully — the <a href="http://doi.org/10.1080/13537113.2022.2056108">European Union’s</a> response to the Tibetans’ demand is its notable example. Despite passing resolutions on Tibetan autonomy and self-determination, the EU has not made Tibetan nationalism part of its human rights agenda. </p>
<p>In the absence of international support, ethnic minorities have adjusted their demands; <a href="https://www.proquest.com/openview/3db2fd9a88890415da415050ece17666/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=436384">Tibet’s demand</a> for ethnic rights within a human rights framework is evidence of this. Tibetans are now urging China to <a href="https://www.dalailama.com/messages/world-peace/human-rights-democracy-and-freedom">recognize their human rights</a> instead of focusing solely on their demand for self-determination. </p>
<p>If the international community eases up for now on Indigenous and ethnic rights within China, it may be able to incentivize China to play by the rules internationally on all fronts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218223/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hari Har Jnawali does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Global human rights is an area where Chinese officials are willing to engage with the international community and could provide a window of opportunity towards further progress in the future.Hari Har Jnawali, Instructor, Global Governance, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2124852023-11-09T16:40:01Z2023-11-09T16:40:01Z‘Bluewashing’: how ecotourism can be used against indigenous communities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549588/original/file-20230921-25-y63803.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C28%2C3840%2C2517&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The idea of vacation spots that are a "paradise on earth" can sometimes overlook uncomfortable truths. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/infinity-pool-near-beach-3155666/">Pexels</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the notion of “ecotourism” was introduced in the late 1970s, it was intended to be ecologically responsible, promote conservation, benefit local populations and help travellers foster a <a href="https://law.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Picchio.pdf">“reconnection with biocultural diversity”</a>. It’s now more of a marketing term, used to give mass adventure-tourism packages a more “responsible” sheen. Visitors might get a nature walk, but interactions with local residents are limited to souvenir sellers at best, and international consortiums arrange everything and <a href="https://ecobnb.com/blog/2019/10/giants-global-tourism/">keep the profits for themselves</a>.</p>
<p>While it’s no surprise that the original concept of ecotourism has been obscured by less virtuous projects, they become more problematic when they block local communities from ancestral lands or even involve their forced relocation. A recent case on the eviction of <a href="https://theconversation.com/victims-of-the-green-energy-boom-the-indonesians-facing-eviction-over-a-china-backed-plan-to-turn-their-island-into-a-solar-panel-ecocity-214755">16 villages on Rempang Island, Indonesia</a> to build a solar panel factory and “eco-city” illustrates this. While the need to increase renewable energy production is urgent, it’s harder to justify when it comes at the expense of local residents’ lives and territorial sovereignty.</p>
<p>To explore such questions, in June 2023 a group of researchers at Grenoble Ecole de Management (GEM) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uux4Ca5Mueo">organised a dialogue</a> with members of the Mbyá Guaraní community from Maricá, Brazil. Our motivation was to explore the relationship between business schools and the behaviour of multinational corporations toward indigenous peoples and their land rights. That questionable dealings can advance under the cover of “sustainable” or “responsible” social development – a practice referred to as <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/timothyjmcclimon/2022/10/03/bluewashing-joins-greenwashing-as-the-new-corporate-whitewashing/">“bluewashing”</a> – demonstrates how many firms have become adept at implying that their work is virtuous, whatever the reality.</p>
<h2>Maraey: a “sustainable” hotel complex in a biological reserve</h2>
<p>In Maricá, residents of the Mbyá Guaraní village of <em>Ka’Aguy Hovy Porã</em> (known in Portuguese as <a href="https://www.instagram.com/mataverdebonitaoficial/">Aldeia Mata Verde Bonita</a>) are now facing the possibility of being pushed aside for a massive resort branded as <a href="https://www.maraey.com/en/home-3/">“Maraey”</a>. The name is taken from a sacred Guaraní concept signifying “land without evil”, and according to community representatives, it was chosen by the developers without securing authorisation from the Guaraní themselves.</p>
<p>The project is being led by the Spanish firm Cetya, commercialised locally as IDB do Brasil. It has support from two industry heavyweights – US-based <a href="https://news.marriott.com/news/2023/01/17/maraey-signs-agreement-with-marriott-international-to-build-three-distinct-hotels-in-marica-on-rio-de-janeiros-sun-coast">Marriott Hotels</a> and Germany’s <a href="https://siila.com/news/siemens-maraey-closed-deal-smart-destination-rio/389/lang/en">Siemens</a> – as well as the Swiss hospitality school <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/maraeyrj_andre-mack-ehl-activity-7064669504617742336-75j2/">EHL in Lausanne</a>.</p>
<p>While billed as “development with an environmental conscience”, the project would include three luxury hotels with a total of 1,100 rooms. The tagline on the project’s website is “paradise living”. The site being targeted is a narrow strip of coastal wetlands in a <a href="https://antigo.mma.gov.br/areas-protegidas.html">biological reserve</a>, established in 1984, 41 kilometres south of Rio de Janeiro.</p>
<p>As part of the dialogue organised by GEM, we interviewed Tupã Nunes, leader of the Mbyá Guaraní community, coordinator of the <a href="https://www.yvyrupa.org.br/">Comissão Guarani Yvyrupa</a> (CGY), and president of the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/instituto_nhandereko/">Instituto Nhandereko</a>. Also interviewed was Delphine Fabbri-Lawson, co-founder of the institute. Both described the difficulties that the community faces to preserve its land and traditions.</p>
<h2>Divide and conquer?</h2>
<p>While IDB do Brasil asserts that it has the required legal permits to move ahead, in such areas <a href="https://www.equaltimes.org/in-brazil-a-nature-reserve-near">building rights remain ambiguous and relatively permissive</a>. It should be noted that corruption has been a frequent problem in the past and legal battles often pit municipalities, state governments against national courts, and even divide indigenous families.</p>
<p>When asked to provide specific information on the company’s interactions with the community, Maraey’s CEO, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilio-izquierdo/">Emilio Izquierdo</a>, shared that an agreement was signed in December 2021 between the company and the indigenous community’s <em>cacique</em> or main representative, Chief Jurema. Izquierdo insures that as part of the agreement, the municipality agreed that it would “look for a public area that would guarantee the permanent establishment of the village”. Maraey representatives stated that such an area was purchased in December 2022, but declined to provide additional information on the transaction.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Emilio Izquierdo reacting to critics in July 2023, proposing that Maraey is an appropriate solution for the protected natural reserve.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Tupã Nunes stipulated that he had “no knowledge” of the 2022 agreement signed with the chief Jurema, who does not appear to have shared any news of it with her community. According to the Guarani tradition of governance, doing so is a crucial obligation of the <em>cacique</em>, and ambiguous dealings of this sort have fostered deep fractures within the community itself. Members discovered the extent of the local government’s involvement and the advanced state of the project only when the bulldozers arrived to clear the land.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Tupã Nunes declaring, in April 2023, the illegality of the construction equipment present on what he asserts are his community’s lands.</span></figcaption>
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<p>It should be noted that the International Labor Organization’s <a href="https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f">C169 agreement on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples</a>, signed by both Spain and Brazil, requires at least a dialogue with indigenous communities prior to launching projects that would affect them.</p>
<p>The discovery of a number of irregularities as well as confrontations between the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q-RawXPgtU">community and the construction workers</a> in April 2023 led local courts to <a href="https://maricainfo.com/2023/05/26/stj-0rdena-par4lisacao-das-obras-do-resort-na-restinga-de-marica.html">suspend the project</a>. A 26 May 2023 Superior Court of Justice document <a href="https://processo.stj.jus.br/processo/dj/documento/?&sequencial=189597232&num_registro=20210">listed a number of determining factors</a>, including “incessant pressures” on the
lagoon’s system and water table and the “illegality of the environmental licensing process”. Maraey representatives have asserted that all licenses were obtained after a “rigorous process” with the State Environmental Institute (INEA).</p>
<h2>Virtue signalling through collective messaging</h2>
<p>IDB do Brazil maintains that the 54-hectare project will be <a href="https://www.jornaldogolfe.com.br/em-destaque/marica-no-rio-de-janeiro-tera-um-novo-campo-de-golfe-sustentavel-e-inclusivo/">“sustainable and inclusive”</a>, and the promised facilities would include a hospital and schools. However, there will also be mall and an 18-hole golf course, and 150,000 to 300,000 tourists are <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CyMVk6oPcnR/">projected to visit annually</a>. Given that the project is also <a href="https://diariodoporto.com.br/maraey-comeca-obras-de-complexo-turistico-em-marica/">forecasted to generate 1 billion reales</a> in tax revenue (197 million US dollars), there is a lot more than environmental and social concerns at stake.</p>
<p>Bolstered by the work of <a href="https://inpresspni.com.br/">PR and marketing firm</a>, Maraey has mobilised a rallying message and woven its story to garner collective support. Using the hashtags such as #JuntosPorMaraey, #VivaMaraey and #TogetherForMaraey, the project has promoted, with increasing intensity, what is presented as local support and commitment to sustainability. Maraey’s promoters even proclaim that the project, despite its size and density, will help <a href="https://www.maraey.com/en/maraey-the-project/">preserve fauna and flora</a>.</p>
<p>The Maraey website and communications are silent on the Guarani communities now living in the reserve, despite a crescendo of protests and declarations against the legality of their operations.</p>
<p>Coverage in Spain’s <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2023-04-28/el-ladrillo-de-un-resort-espanol-cerca-una-de-las-ultimas-aldeas-indigenas-de-rio-de-janeiro.html"><em>El País</em></a>, on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxeWJfioyMU">France 24</a> and other <a href="https://www.equaltimes.org/in-brazil-a-nature-reserve-near">international sources</a> has laid bare the tensions behind the Maraey project. Local political opposition <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CzFw-lGOwqI/">recently asserted</a> that “this company has been trying to occupy Maricá’s reserve for almost 20 years. The resistance of civil society and environmentalists to denounce this massacre of fauna and flora is what allowed its partial preservation.” Summed up in <a href="https://www.equaltimes.org/in-brazil-a-nature-reserve-near">words of one local resident</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“They say it will create jobs. But fishermen don’t want jobs in the hospitality industry. Can you imagine a fisherman on a golf course? Golf is for millionaires, for people with money. Fishermen want a healthy, clean lagoon. It’s our livelihood.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Native lands are not just a habitat</h2>
<p>The significance of the Amazon rainforest and Atlantic coastal forest for indigenous peoples such as the Guarani Mbyá goes far beyond a simple habitat. They derive their culture, language and social order from the natural structure of the forest, as explained by anthropologist <a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/anthropology/people/eduardokohn">Eduardo Kohn</a> in his book <a href="https://www.academia.edu/43472285/How_forests_think_Toward_an_anthropology_beyond_the_human_Eduardo_Kohn"><em>How Forests Think</em></a>.</p>
<p>The International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation has recently called for <a href="https://www.ifrs.org/news-and-events/news/2023/04/issb-prepares-to-consult-on-future-priorities-and-international-applicability-of-sasb-standards">greater scrutiny on non-climate-related reporting</a>, in particular societal and social issues. For multinationals, however, the temptation will always be there to find ways to minimise risks and <a href="https://www.allens.com.au/insights-news/insights/2023/07/bluewashing-risks-and-challenges/">continue business as usual</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/psj.12085">Research has shown</a> that lax reporting and the lack of enforcement mechanisms have led firms to shirk social sustainability and human rights requirements and favour bluewashing strategies. This regulatory environment has enabled MNCs to increasingly follow what <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623520601056240">historian Patrick Wolfe called a “logic of elimination”</a> that erases natives from the land.</p>
<p>However, there is reason to think that attitudes can shift over time. A <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/americas_victory-brazil-tribe-hotel-group-cancels-plans-luxury-resort/6179721.html">2019 victory in Bahía</a> of the <em>Tupinamba de Olivença</em> tribe over the Portuguese hotel giant Vila Gale created a legal precedent demonstrating that if local authorities license projects without involving federal agencies, it can backfire. <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/americas_victory-brazil-tribe-hotel-group-cancels-plans-luxury-resort/6179721.html">For Juliana Batista</a>, human rights lawyer for the Brazilian NGO <em>Instituto Socio-Ambiental</em> involved in the case, it is a matter of understanding the nature of indigenous land rights which, for her “take precedence over any other rights.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212485/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Mielly est membre de Grenoble Ecole de Management.</span></em></p>As detailed in a June 2023 event in Grenoble, France, business schools hold partial responsibility for the longstanding behaviour of multinational corporations (MNCs) in indigenous territories.Michelle Mielly, Professor in People, Organizations, Society, Grenoble École de Management (GEM)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2137642023-10-03T19:06:27Z2023-10-03T19:06:27ZHow might the First Nations Voice to Parliament referendum affect Australia’s international reputation?<p>In late September, American rap legend MC Hammer made a spectacular intervention into Australia’s upcoming referendum to establish a Voice to Parliament for First Nations people. In a tweet, he urged Australians to “repair the breach”. </p>
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<p>Hammer’s tweet garnered some 1.1 million views, 1,300 retweets and 5,700 likes. It also triggered a wave of online criticisms from “no” supporters. Some accused him of being a “one-hit wonder” with no place in the debate. </p>
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<p>While Hammer seemed to enter the fray on his own accord, Labor’s recruitment of retired American basketballer <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/from-insulting-to-welcome-shaquille-oneals-support-for-indigenous-reform-draws-mixed-reactions/0jlz2g5wo">Shaquille O'Neal</a> to the campaign in support of the Voice to Parliament last year drew similarly mixed reactions.</p>
<p>While it is not yet clear whether these endorsements from overseas celebrities help or hinder the “yes” campaign, there are bigger questions here about the extent of global attention on the referendum and whether the result will affect Australia’s international reputation. </p>
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<h2>International attention on the vote</h2>
<p>On October 14, Australians will vote whether to amend the Constitution to establish a new advisory body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people called the Voice to Parliament. The new body would provide advice and make representations to parliament and the government on any issues relating to First Nations people. If the referendum passes, the body’s powers would be set by federal parliament.</p>
<p>The Voice model has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-no-campaign-is-dominating-the-messaging-on-the-voice-referendum-on-tiktok-heres-why-212465">fiercely debated</a> in Australia. Supporters say it will help remedy a litany of failed policies in health care, employment and education for First Nations people, while opponents claim it is <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-yes-voice-campaign-is-far-outspending-no-in-online-advertising-but-is-the-message-getting-through-213749">divisive</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-divided-australia-will-soon-vote-on-the-most-significant-referendum-on-indigenous-rights-in-50-years-212259">A divided Australia will soon vote on the most significant referendum on Indigenous rights in 50 years</a>
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<p>Using data from Meltwater, a global media monitoring company, we have identified more than 1.7 million mentions of the Voice to Parliament referendum in traditional and social media globally over the last three months. Much of this has been generated in Australia, where the Voice has been mentioned 887,000 times. </p>
<p>Once we exclude content generated in Australia and unknown locations, the number of mentions drops to around 148,000 in the last three months. </p>
<p>International attention on the Voice for Parliament referendum peaked on August 30 when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the voting date. Global news outlets such as the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-62374703">BBC</a>, <a href="https://time.com/6309565/australia-indigenous-voice-parliament-vote/">Time</a> and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/94cc23e2-1991-4973-808d-9b1f56730d23">Financial Times</a> produced explainers for their audiences. </p>
<p>More recently, global reporting has interrogated the “<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/40a5689c-2f00-411d-9fb4-b228567c5c08">backlash</a>” against the referendum, as well as the spread of disinformation online, as polls have suggested declining <a href="https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/09/28/australians-looks-set-to-reject-new-provisions-for-aboriginal-people">support</a> nationwide. </p>
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<h2>Which countries are the most interested?</h2>
<p>Most news and social media mentions of the Voice were generated in “Anglosphere” countries, such as the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. Meltwater data had the US well out in front with over 63,000 mentions of the Voice in the last three months, with the UK second at just over 16,000. New Zealand is also following the debate, with more than 2,000 mentions, as well as <a href="https://twitter.com/RRegenvanu/status/1708400914422476965?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1708400914422476965%7Ctwgr%5E10b49fee55c6293ea7eab0f1a5536625cd67e789%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheconversation.com%2Fhow-might-the-first-nations-voice-to-parliament-referendum-affect-australias-international-reputation-213764">politicians in the Pacific</a>. </p>
<p>Launches and rallies in support of the “yes” campaign have also been held in the US and UK, receiving online attention: </p>
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<p>But the Meltwater data is restricted to English, and can only reveal so much about how much attention people in other countries are paying to the Voice referendum. </p>
<p>And while there are public reports on <a href="https://poll.lowyinstitute.org/report/2023/">Australian attitudes</a> to other countries, there is much less research on how people in other countries think about Australians.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ussc.edu.au/the-asian-research-network-survey-on-americas-role-in-the-asia-pacific">Previous research</a> by Professor Simon Jackman shows a general sense of ambivalence towards Australia’s national character among people in Japan, South Korea, China, Indonesia and the US. The lack of research on Australia’s reputation in other countries will make it difficult to assess the impact of the Voice result. </p>
<p>What does seem likely, however, is that a “no” result will be weaponised by other countries against Australia. While the <a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/index.html">Global Times</a>, a leading Chinese English-language news outlet, has been relatively quiet on the Voice so far, it has a history of using strategic narratives to blunt criticisms of China’s human rights record. </p>
<p>For example, China has cited the gaps in health, life expectancy and incarceration rates between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians as a way to criticise Australia’s “<a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202209/1276412.shtml">systematic discrimination and oppression</a>” of First Nations people in international forums such as the UN Human Rights Council. </p>
<p>The Global Times has also <a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202211/1279141.shtml">reported</a> on the effects of colonialism on First Nations people, the deaths of First Nations people in custody and the destruction of cultural sites such as Juukan Gorge.</p>
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<p>The groundwork for using strategic narratives around the Voice has already been laid. Albert Zhang and Danielle Cave from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute have tracked how inauthentic social media accounts that are likely linked to the Chinese Communist Party have sought to amplify “<a href="https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/chinas-cyber-interference-narrows-in-on-australian-politics-and-policy/">division over the Indigenous voice referendum</a>”. This is also a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-yes-voice-campaign-is-far-outspending-no-in-online-advertising-but-is-the-message-getting-through-213749">central message</a> being used by the “no” campaign to argue against the Voice.</p>
<p>A “no” result will make countering these hostile narratives more difficult. In addition, it would likely compromise Australia’s moral authority when it seeks to advocate or pressure other states on human rights issues. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/despite-its-pacific-step-up-australia-is-still-not-listening-to-the-region-new-research-shows-130539">Despite its Pacific 'step-up', Australia is still not listening to the region, new research shows</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Australia’s foreign policy</h2>
<p>The referendum result could also affect Australia’s ability to employ a foreign policy approach that seeks to “<a href="https://www.dfat.gov.au/sites/default/files/indigenous-diplomacy-agenda.pdf">elevate</a>” Indigenous people and issues.</p>
<p>In 2021, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade released an <a href="https://www.dfat.gov.au/sites/default/files/indigenous-diplomacy-agenda.pdf">Indigenous Diplomacy Agenda</a> committed to reconciliation in Australia and supporting Indigenous rights globally.</p>
<p>At the time, DFAT Secretary Frances Adamson cast First Nations people as key to how Australia defines and expresses itself globally. She argued a foreign service that properly represents the diversity of Australia has “a <a href="https://www.dfat.gov.au/news/speech/contribution-indigenous-australia-our-diplomacy">genuine competitive advantage</a>”. </p>
<p>Foreign Minister Penny Wong has also sought to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajph.12876">centre and value</a> First Nations people in Australia’s modern identity and diplomacy, including in international speeches. To the UN General Assembly last week, she said Australia draws “<a href="https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/penny-wong/speech/national-statement-united-nations-general-assembly">on the knowledge of First Peoples</a> carrying forward the oldest continuing culture on earth”.</p>
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<p>As a result, a “yes” vote could provide Australian diplomats with “<a href="https://perthusasia.edu.au/PerthUSAsia/media/Perth_USAsia/Publications/An-Aboriginal-and-Torres-Strait-Islander-Voice-to-Parliament-why-it-matters-to-Australia-s-Indo-Pacific-relationships.pdf">the momentum</a>” to embed a First Nations foreign policy into their practice. A “no” vote, meanwhile, will make it more difficult to establish Australia as a credible leader on Indigenous and human rights issues, particularly in its relations with neighbours in Asia and the Pacific. </p>
<p>How to position the Voice internationally may become a problem for the government as polling has shown dwindling support for the measure. </p>
<p>When questioned by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour about what the low support for the Voice means for Australia’s commitment to Indigenous people, Wong <a href="https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/penny-wong/transcript/interview-christiane-amanpour-cnn">responded</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>referenda are hard to win in Australia because of the nature of how our voting [works], of what is required to change the Constitution. But, you know, we remain hopeful.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This points to the government’s careful international messaging as the success of the referendum – which the Labor government supports - becomes less certain. </p>
<p>If the “no” vote succeeds, as <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-yes-voice-campaign-is-far-outspending-no-in-online-advertising-but-is-the-message-getting-through-213749">polling suggests is likely</a>, it will be interesting to observe how other governments and people around the world respond to the result (if at all) and how the Australian government will seek to manage any international fallout.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213764/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Strating receives funding from a La Trobe University Synergy grant for this project. She is a recipient of external grant funding, including from the governments of Australia, United States, United Kingdom, the Philippines and Taiwan.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrea Carson receives funding from a La Trobe University Synergy grant for this project and from the Australian Research Council for a Discovery project on media and political trust.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Jackman is a past recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation (USA) and was one of the principal investigators of the Australian Election Survey (funded by the Australian Research Council).</span></em></p>A ‘no’ result in the vote could compromise Australia’s moral authority when it seeks to advocate or pressure other states on human rights issues.Rebecca Strating, Director, La Trobe Asia and Associate Professor, La Trobe University, La Trobe UniversityAndrea Carson, Professor of Political Communication, Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy, La Trobe UniversitySimon Jackman, Professor, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2120892023-09-21T03:11:59Z2023-09-21T03:11:59ZFrom ‘pebble in the shoe’ to future power broker – the rise and rise of te Pāti Māori<p>In his <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/kahu/a-pebble-in-your-shoe-maori-partys-rawiri-waititis-promise-to-be-unapologetic-voice-for-maori/HTE3ZYUI7FJAUWANYTQ4AIQQDY/">maiden speech</a> to parliament in 2020, te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi told his fellow MPs:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You know what it feels like to have a pebble in your shoe? That will be my job here. A constant, annoying to those holding onto the colonial ways, a reminder and change agent for the recognition of our kahu Māori.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Three years later, most would agree that he and fellow co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer have been just that – visible, critical, combative, prepared to be controversial.</p>
<p>The question in 2023, however, is how does the party build on its current platform, grow its base, and become more than a pebble in the shoe of mainstream politics?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/09/20/poll-national-act-retain-slender-advantage-in-path-to-power/">Recent polls</a> suggest te Pāti Māori could win four seats in parliament in October. But its future doesn’t necessarily lie in formally joining either a government coalition or opposition bloc, even if this were an option.</p>
<p>The National Party has already <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/489609/christopher-luxon-rules-out-working-with-te-pati-maori-post-election">ruled out working</a> with the party in government. And te Pāti Māori has indicated partnership with either major party is not a priority.</p>
<p>Such are the challenges for a political party based on kaupapa Māori (incorporating the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values of Māori society) in a Westminster-style parliamentary system. </p>
<h2>Focusing on Māori values</h2>
<p>These tensions have existed since 2004, when then-Labour MP Tariana Turia and co-leader Pita Sharples <a href="https://www.maoriparty.org.nz/about_us">established te Pāti Māori</a> in protest against Labour’s <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/law-of-the-foreshore-and-seabed">Foreshore and Seabed</a> Act. </p>
<p>Under that law, overturned in 2011, the Crown was made owner of much of New Zealand’s coastline. Turia and others argued the <a href="https://www.odt.co.nz/2004-foreshore-seabed-bill-passed">government was confiscating land</a> and ignoring Māori customary ownership rights.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/putting-te-tiriti-at-the-centre-of-aotearoa-new-zealands-public-policy-can-strengthen-democracy-heres-how-180305">Putting te Tiriti at the centre of Aotearoa New Zealand’s public policy can strengthen democracy – here's how</a>
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</p>
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<p>As a kaupapa Māori party, te Pāti Māori bases <a href="https://www.maoriparty.org.nz/policy">its policies</a> and <a href="https://www.maoriparty.org.nz/our_constitution">constitution</a> on tikanga (Māori values), while advocating for mana motuhake and tino rangatiratanga. That is, Māori self-determination and sovereignty, as defined by the Māori version of <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/interactive/waitangi-treaty-copy">te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi</a>. </p>
<p>A tikanga-based constitution has helped shape policies advocating for Māori rights. But it has also, at times, sat at odds with the rules of parliament. Waititi, for example, <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/430853/calls-for-parliamentary-oath-of-allegiance-to-recognise-te-tiriti-o-waitangi">called pledging allegiance</a> to Queen Elizabeth II “distasteful”. He also <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/436073/rawiri-waititi-ejected-from-parliament-for-not-wearing-a-tie">refused to wear a tie</a>, breaching parliamentary dress codes. </p>
<h2>Between left and right</h2>
<p>Over the years, the party’s Māori-centred policies have enabled its leaders to move between left and right wing alliances. </p>
<p>Under the original leadership of Turia and Sharples, te Pāti Māori joined with the centre-right National Party to form governments in 2008, 2011 and 2014. This was a change from traditional Māori voting patterns that had <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/labour-party/page-6">long favoured Labour</a>. </p>
<p>During it’s time in coalition with National, te Pāti Māori helped influence a number of important decisions. This included <a href="https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/07/judith-collins-denies-united-nations-declaration-on-rights-of-indigenous-peoples-signed-by-national-in-2010-led-to-he-puapua.html">finally signing</a> the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the development of <a href="https://www.horoutawhanauora.com/history-of-whanau-ora/">Whanau Ora</a> (a Māori health initiative emphasising family and community as decision makers), and <a href="https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/repeal-foreshore-and-seabed-act-announced">repealing the Foreshore and Seabed Act</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/history-and-myth-why-the-treaty-of-waitangi-remains-such-a-bloody-difficult-subject-202038">History and myth: why the Treaty of Waitangi remains such a ‘bloody difficult subject’</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>However, <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/69277/harawira-leaves-maori-party">internal fighting</a> over the decision to align with National led to the resignation of the Te Tai Tokerau MP at the time, Hone Harawira. Harawira <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/kahu/hone-harawira-quits-maori-party/O2XLD3RNEBBZUSPW7GF74L43EU/">later formed the Mana Party</a>. </p>
<p>The relationship with National proved unsustainable when <a href="https://e-tangata.co.nz/comment-and-analysis/did-the-maori-electorates-decide-the-2017-election/">Labour won back all the Māori electorates</a> at the 2017 election. Notably, Labour’s Tāmati Coffey beat te Pāti Māori co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell in the Waiariki electorate.</p>
<h2>Rebuilding te Pāti Māori</h2>
<p>Waiariki was front and centre again in the 2020 election, where despite Labour’s general dominance across the Māori electorates, new te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/election-results-2020-maori-party-back-in-parliament-as-rawiri-waititi-wins-waiariki/U2KUOHTTTYXCW3WMSN4U7IH25E/">reclaimed the seat</a>. The party also managed to win enough of the party vote to bring co-leader Ngarewa-Packer into parliament with him. </p>
<p>Sitting in opposition this time, the current party leaders have been vocal across a range of issues. The party has called for the banning of seabed mining, removing taxes for low-income earners, higher taxes on wealth, and lowering the superannuation age for Māori.</p>
<p>It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Some policies, such as 2020’s “<a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/426797/maori-party-housing-policy-includes-immigration-halt-homes-on-ancestral-land">Whānau Build</a>” have caused discomfort. Aimed largely at addressing the housing crisis, Whānau Build identified immigration as the root of Māori homelessness. </p>
<p>It was a sentiment more often associated with the extreme right, and the party has <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/496840/te-pati-maori-apologises-to-refugees-and-migrant-communities-for-harmful-narratives">since apologised</a> for that part of the policy. </p>
<h2>Contesting more seats in 2023</h2>
<p>Those bumps and missteps notwithstanding, recent polls show just how competitive te Pāti Māori has become in the Māori electorates.</p>
<p>Ex-Labour MP <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/meka-whaitiri-unleashed-i-left-labour-because-labour-left-me/UHNEDDBIFFFU5GPD2RNGTGKSQM/">Meka Whaitiri</a> – an experienced politician who has held the Ikaroa-Rāwhiti electorate since 2013 but left to join te Pāti Māori this year – is in a <a href="https://www.newsroom.co.nz/the-race-to-represent-a-battered-region">tight race to regain her seat</a> against new Labour candidate Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. </p>
<p>Co-leader Ngarewa-Packer is also <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/whanganui-chronicle/news/election-2023-labour-te-pati-maori-in-tight-race-for-te-tai-hauauru/D7MAG47TEZGYRHUQAD3OWIS47M/">running a close race</a> against Labour candidate Soraya Peke-Mason for the Te Tai Hauāuru electorate – a Labour stronghold.</p>
<p>But te Pāti Māori has also shifted from its previous focus on the Māori electorates, with <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/493293/merepeka-raukawa-tait-to-contest-rotorua-for-te-pati-maori">Merepeka Raukawa-Tait</a> standing in the Rotorua general electorate. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.justice.govt.nz/justice-sector-policy/key-initiatives/maori-electoral-option">Māori Electoral Option</a> legislation, which came into effect this year, now allows Māori voters to change more easily between electoral rolls. In future, te Pāti Māori may find it can best to serve Māori by standing candidates in general electorates. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-tie-that-binds-unravelling-the-knotty-issue-of-political-sideshows-and-maori-cultural-identity-155109">The tie that binds: unravelling the knotty issue of political sideshows and Māori cultural identity</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Broader social change across Aotearoa New Zealand has also likely been an important contributor to the success of te Pāti Māori, with greater understanding of te Tiriti o Waitangi, tikanga and te reo Māori among voters.</p>
<p>Indeed, the current party vision of an “<a href="https://aotearoahou.co.nz/">Aotearoa Hou</a>” (New Aotearoa), includes reference to tangata tiriti, a phrase being popularised to refer to non-Māori who seek to honour partnerships based on te Tiriti o Waitangi. </p>
<p>According to the most <a href="https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/09/20/poll-national-act-retain-slender-advantage-in-path-to-power/">recent polling</a>, te Pāti Māori may not be the deciding factor in who gets to form the next government come October. </p>
<p>But the party’s resilience and growth after it’s electoral disappointments in 2017 and 2020 show an ability to rebuild. In doing so, it is carving out it’s place in New Zealand’s political landscape. </p>
<p>And if te Pāti Māori is not the kingmaker in 2023, it is still on the path to influence – and potentially decide – elections in the not-too-distant future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212089/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annie Te One does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Te Pāti Māori was born out of protest. After almost two decades, the party is carving out a political presence beyond its traditional base of support.Annie Te One, Lecturer in Māori Studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2089232023-08-16T12:26:33Z2023-08-16T12:26:33ZMichigan pipeline standoff could affect water protection and Indigenous rights across the US<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542481/original/file-20230813-175390-x00yus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4446%2C2884&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A ferry arrives at Mackinac Island in the Straits of Mackinac, Michigan's largest tourist draw.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Travel-Trip-MackinacIsland/9896e61c897e4175ba9ce529bd127562/photo">AP Photo/Anick Jesdanun</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Should states and Indigenous nations be able to influence energy projects they view as harmful or contrary to their laws and values? This question lies at the center of a heated debate over <a href="https://www.michigan.gov/egle/about/featured/line5/overview">Enbridge Energy’s Line 5 pipeline</a>, which carries oil and natural gas across Wisconsin and Michigan. </p>
<p>Courts, regulatory agencies and political leaders are deciding whether Enbridge should be allowed to keep its pipeline in place for another 99 years, with upgrades. The state of Michigan and the <a href="http://www.badriver-nsn.gov/">Bad River Tribe</a> in Wisconsin want to <a href="https://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/MIEOG/2020/11/13/file_attachments/1600920/Notice%20of%20%20Revocation%20and%20Termination%20of%20%20Easement%20%2811.13.20%29.pdf">close the pipeline down immediately</a>.</p>
<p>My expertise is in Great Lakes water and energy policy, environmental protection and sustainability leadership. I have analyzed and taught these issues as a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YKC4V5gAAAAJ&hl=en">sustainability scholar</a>, and I have worked on them as the National Wildlife Federation’s <a href="https://nwf.org/greatlakes">Great Lakes regional executive director</a> from 2015 until early 2023. </p>
<p>In my view, the future of Line 5 has become a defining issue for the future of the Great Lakes region. It also could set an important precedent for reconciling energy choices with state regulatory authority and Native American rights.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OCW6fiNSXjs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Tribal leaders and Native community members explain what the Straits of Mackinac mean to their cultures.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A Canadian pipeline through the US Midwest</h2>
<p>Line 5, built in 1953, runs 643 miles from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario. It carries up to 23 million gallons of oil and natural gas liquids daily, produced mainly from <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/tar-sand">Canadian tar sands in Alberta</a>. </p>
<p>Most of this oil and gas goes to refineries in Ontario and Quebec. Some remains in the U.S. for propane production or processing at refineries in Michigan and Ohio.</p>
<p>Controversy over Line 5 centers mainly on two locations: the Bad River Band Reservation in Wisconsin, where the pipeline crosses tribal land, and the Straits of Mackinac (pronounced “Mackinaw”) in Michigan. This channel between Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541274/original/file-20230804-17305-8y9tf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map showing the Line 5 route across Wisconsin and Michigan and through the Straits of Mackinac." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541274/original/file-20230804-17305-8y9tf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541274/original/file-20230804-17305-8y9tf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541274/original/file-20230804-17305-8y9tf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541274/original/file-20230804-17305-8y9tf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541274/original/file-20230804-17305-8y9tf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541274/original/file-20230804-17305-8y9tf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541274/original/file-20230804-17305-8y9tf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario, is part of a larger regional pipeline network.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.enbridge.com/projects-and-infrastructure/public-awareness/line-5-michigan/about-line-5">Enbridge</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Line 5 crosses through the open water of the straits in twin pipelines that rest on the lake bottom in some stretches and are suspended above it in others. The route lies within an easement <a href="http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/michigan/files/201409/1953-04-23_Lakehead_Pipe_Line_Company_Easement_through_the_Straits_of_Mackinac.pdf">granted by the state of Michigan in 1953</a>. </p>
<p>The Straits of Mackinac are one of the most iconic settings in the Great Lakes. They include <a href="https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/the-straits-of-mackinac-connecting-people-places-and-so-much-more-msg20-nelson20">hundreds of islands and miles of shorelines</a> rimmed with forests and wetlands. Scenic Mackinac Island in Lake Huron, a <a href="https://www.michigan.org/city/mackinac-island">popular resort area</a> since the mid-1800s, is Michigan’s top tourist destination. </p>
<p>The straits also have long been <a href="https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/travel/michigan/2017/03/07/restoring-mackinac-islands-native-american-history/98809484/">spiritually important for Great Lakes tribes</a>. Michigan acknowledges that the Chippewa and Ottawa peoples <a href="https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2021/03/treaty-rights-line-5-oil-pipelines-controversial-history/">hold treaty-protected fishing rights</a> that center on the Mackinac region.</p>
<h2>The Line 6b spill</h2>
<p>In 2010, another Enbridge pipeline, Line 6b, <a href="https://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/2020/07/10-years-ago-kalamazoo-river-oil-spill-was-an-awakening-in-pipeline-debate.html">ruptured near the Kalamazoo River in southern Michigan</a>, spilling over 1 million gallons of heavy crude. Line 6b is part of a parallel route to Line 5, and the cleanup continues <a href="https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-environment-watch/10-years-later-kalamazoo-river-spill-still-colors-enbridge-pipeline">more than a decade later</a>. </p>
<p>The spill, and Enbridge’s <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26062012/dilbit-diluted-bitumen-enbridge-kalamazoo-river-marshall-michigan-oil-spill-6b-pipeline-epa/">slow, bungled response and lack of transparency</a>, led to scrutiny of other Enbridge pipelines, <a href="https://www.nwf.org/%7E/media/pdfs/regional/great-lakes/nwf_sunkenhazard.ashx">including Line 5</a>.</p>
<p>In a 2014 analysis, University of Michigan oceanographer <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wWTpqmEAAAAJ&hl=en">David J. Schwab</a> concluded that the Straits of Mackinac were the <a href="https://news.umich.edu/straits-of-mackinac-worst-possible-place-for-a-great-lakes-oil-spill-u-m-researcher-concludes/">“worst possible place</a>” for a Great Lakes oil spill because of high-speed currents that were unpredictable and reversed frequently. Within 20 days of a spill, Schwab estimated, oil could be carried up to 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the site into Lakes Michigan and Huron, fouling drinking water intakes, beaches and other critical areas.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ELlWwTF9PDs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">This animated video created by David J. Schwab of the University of Michigan Water Center shows how an oil spill beneath the Straits of Mackinac could spread within the first 20 days.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This and other research intensified a burgeoning advocacy campaign by pipeline opponents, including <a href="https://www.oilandwaterdontmix.org/">regional and national environmental organizations</a>, <a href="https://earthjustice.org/feature/bay-mills-fighting-the-good-fight-to-protect-the-great-lakes-line-5-enbridge">Indigenous leaders and advocates</a>, and a newly formed network of <a href="https://glbusinessnetwork.com/">local and regional businesses</a>. </p>
<p>Pipeline supporters include the <a href="https://www.api.org/">American Petroleum Institute</a> and others in the fossil fuel industry, many <a href="https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2021/11/15/enbridge-line-5-shutdown-not-soon/6369707001/">conservative lawmakers</a>, several key <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-canada-pipelines-activists-idUSKBN2A11ED">labor unions</a> and the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-wisconsin-line-5-pipeline-1.6565809">government of Canada</a>. They argue that the current pipeline is safe, violates no federal laws and is a key piece of infrastructure that helps keep <a href="https://www.enbridge.com/projects-and-infrastructure/public-awareness/line-5-michigan/about-line-5">energy costs low</a>.</p>
<h2>Michigan revokes its easement</h2>
<p>After years of scrutiny, including the formation of the <a href="https://mipetroleumpipelines.org/">Michigan Pipeline Safety Advisory Board</a> and two <a href="https://mipetroleumpipelines.org/document/independent-risk-analysis-straits-pipelines-final-report">expert reports</a> commissioned by the state, analyses showed that Enbridge was <a href="https://www.mlive.com/news/2017/06/line_5_unsupported_spans.html">violating provisions of its easement</a>. Most notably, the section of Line 5 that ran under the straits lacked proper anchors and coating, <a href="https://michiganlcv.org/line5/">increasing the threat of a rupture</a>. The state concluded that the easement <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public_trust_doctrine#:%7E:text=Public%20trust%20doctrine%20is%20a,waters%2C%20wildlife%2C%20or%20land.">violated the public trust doctrine</a> – the idea that government should protect certain natural resources, including waterways, for public use.</p>
<p>State reports concluded that the highest risk for rupture was from <a href="https://mipetroleumpipelines.org/document/independent-risk-analysis-straits-pipelines-final-report">anchor strikes</a>. Environmental nongovernment organizations found that Line 5 had already leaked <a href="https://www.nwf.org/-/media/Documents/PDFs/Press-Releases/2020/11-20-20-Line-5-Report">more than 1 million gallons</a> of oil and natural gas liquids. On April 1, 2018, a boat anchor struck the pipeline and <a href="https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/05/15/mackinac-enbridge-oil-pipeline-anchor-damage/3679013002/">nearly ruptured it</a>, temporarily shutting it down. </p>
<p>In 2019, Gov. Rick Snyder was succeeded by Gretchen Whitmer, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/14/gretchen-whitmer-enbridge-line-5-pipeline-mackinac-time-bomb/">who pledged in her campaign to close Line 5</a>. Seeking to avert a shutdown, Enbridge proposed building a tunnel beneath the lake bed to <a href="https://www.michiganradio.org/environment-science/2018-12-19/mackinac-straits-corridor-authority-approves-enbridge-tunnel-agreements">protect the pipeline</a>.</p>
<p>But after more analysis and <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/06/19/whitmer-line-5-shut-down-after-significant-damage-anchor-support/3225987001/">another anchor strike</a> that temporarily shut down the pipeline again, Whitmer issued an order in November 2020 <a href="https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2020/11/enbridge-line-5-ordered-shut-down-by-michigan-gov-whitmer.html">revoking Enbridge’s easement</a> and giving the company six months to close Line 5. The state <a href="https://casetext.com/case/michigan-v-enbridge-energy-ltd-pship">sought a court order</a> to support its decision.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1393293141256642562"}"></div></p>
<h2>Challenging state and tribal authority</h2>
<p>Instead of accepting state orders, <a href="https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-environment-watch/enbridge-michigan-we-wont-shut-down-line-5">Enbridge resisted</a>. The company argued that Michigan lacked authority to tell it how to manage the pipeline; that the project had not required an easement in 1953; and that building the tunnel would mitigate any risks. </p>
<p>Enbridge <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DJAw1cNSvCRGxOwJlFl5-U95VVr1jbSV/view">sued Michigan in federal court</a>, arguing that pipeline safety regulation was a federal issue and that the state had no authority to intervene in what was essentially <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMuK5LDlsF4">international commerce</a>.</p>
<p>Enbridge also faced pressure from the <a href="http://www.badriver-nsn.gov/">Bad River Tribe</a> in Wisconsin, where some 12 miles of the pipeline runs through the Bad River Band reservation and across the Bad River. Enbridge’s easement on parts of the reservation expired in 2013, and in 2017 the tribal council <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16012017/dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock-enbridge-line-5-native-american-protest/">voted to evict Enbridge from their land</a>, calling the pipeline a threat to the river and their culture. </p>
<p>When Enbridge continued operating Line 5, the tribe <a href="https://www.wpr.org/sites/default/files/7-23-19_lawsuit.pdf">sued the company in federal court</a> in 2019, charging it with trespass, unjust enrichment and other offenses, and sought to get the pipeline closed. </p>
<p>Today, Michigan’s case against Enbridge is <a href="https://www.michigan.gov/ag/news/press-releases/2023/03/03/attorney-general-nessel-asks-court-of-appeals-to-move-enbridge-case-back-to-michigan">bogged down in jurisdictional battles</a>. But on June 16, 2023, the federal judge overseeing the Bad River case <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bad-river-vs-enbridge-pipeline-lawsuit-decision.pdf">ruled largely in favor of the tribe</a> and ordered Enbridge to stop operating the pipeline on tribal land within three years. Enbridge vowed to appeal the ruling, but is also seeking permits for a <a href="https://www.wpr.org/judge-orders-enbridge-shut-down-part-wisconsin-oil-pipeline-3-years">41-mile reroute</a> of Line 5 around the reservation.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542373/original/file-20230811-15-nv1ukl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Trudeau and Biden shake hands at the entrance to a stone building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542373/original/file-20230811-15-nv1ukl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542373/original/file-20230811-15-nv1ukl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542373/original/file-20230811-15-nv1ukl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542373/original/file-20230811-15-nv1ukl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542373/original/file-20230811-15-nv1ukl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542373/original/file-20230811-15-nv1ukl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542373/original/file-20230811-15-nv1ukl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, shown welcoming U.S. President Joe Biden to Ottawa on March 24, 2023, strongly supports Line 5, which carries Canadian oil and gas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BidenCanada/9c3b7f736a704947b4fc2b08c25532f6/photo">AP Photo/Andrew Harnik</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A national precedent</h2>
<p>Line 5 is more than a Midwest issue. It has become a focus for <a href="https://narf.org/bay-mills-line5-pipeline/">national activism</a> and is a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-10/why-a-flowing-pipeline-has-canada-michigan-at-odds-quicktake?sref=Hjm5biAW">major diplomatic issue</a> between Canada and the U.S.
President Joe Biden, who has <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/03/08/974365298/biden-faces-balancing-act-advancing-clean-energy-alongside-labor-allies">worked to balance</a> his ties with organized labor and his support for a clean energy transition, has avoided taking a side to date. </p>
<p>To continue operating Line 5, Enbridge will have to convince the courts that its interests and legal arguments outweigh those of an Indigenous nation and the state of Michigan. Never before has an active fossil fuel pipeline been closed due to potential environmental and cultural damage. </p>
<p>The outcome could set a precedent for other pipeline and fossil fuel infrastructure battles, from the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/27/supreme-court-mountain-valley-pipeline/">mid-Atlantic</a> to the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2023/07/20/tcenergy-gtn-pipeline-expansion-northwest-climate-change/">Pacific Coast</a>. Ultimately, in my view, Line 5 is an under-the-radar but critical proxy battle for how, when and under what authority the phasing out of fossil fuels will proceed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208923/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike Shriberg previously served from 2015-2022 as the Great Lakes Regional Executive Director for the National Wildlife Federation, where his position included grant and donor funding to work on issues related to the Line 5 pipeline. He also served as a gubernatorial appointee under former Gov. Rick Snyder to the Michigan Pipeline Safety Advisory Board.</span></em></p>A pipeline that has carried Canadian oil and gas across Wisconsin and Michigan for 70 years has become a symbol of fossil fuel politics and a test of local regulatory power.Mike Shriberg, Professor of Practice & Engagement, School for Environment & Sustainability, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2077972023-06-15T17:37:26Z2023-06-15T17:37:26ZCrowdsourcing new constitutions: How 2 Latin American countries increased participation and empowered groups excluded from politics – podcast<p>Over the past few decades, countries across Latin America have witnessed a surge in demands by its people for increased political participation and representation. Colombia and Chile stand out as notable examples of countries responding to these calls with constitutional reform. </p>
<p>Colombia’s 1991 constitution emerged from <a href="http://ips-project.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/The-1991-Colombian-National-Constituent-Assembly.pdf">a backdrop of armed conflict and social unrest</a>. It represented a turning point in the country’s history by acknowledging the multicultural fabric of Colombian society, including Indigenous communities and Afro-Colombian populations.</p>
<p>Likewise in Chile, the government has embarked on a journey of constitutional reform in response to the widespread discontent and social unrest that erupted in 2019. The protests reflected grievances related to inequality, education, health care and pension systems, and a desire to replace the constitution imposed during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. </p>
<p>Under the new government of progressive president Gabriel Boric, <a href="https://theconversation.com/chiles-progressive-new-constitution-rejected-by-voters-after-campaign-marred-by-misinformation-190371">a draft constitution was presented to the people</a>. The draft included progressive elements such as gender parity, Indigenous rights and a restructuring of the parliamentary system to distribute power more evenly. </p>
<p>The draft was ultimately rejected in a referendum in September 2022, although some commentators argue that the process remains a victory for democracy.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/chiles-progressive-new-constitution-rejected-by-voters-after-campaign-marred-by-misinformation-190371">Chile's progressive new constitution rejected by voters after campaign marred by misinformation</a>
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<p>In this week’s episode of <em>The Conversation Weekly</em>, we speak with two researchers about Latin America’s ongoing democratic transition, with a particular focus on the involvement of populations in democratic processes in Colombia and Chile. </p>
<p>We examine how countries are looking to empower their populations through crowdsourcing participation, what the implications of these reforms for marginalized communities are and how Chile’s rejection of a progressive constitution remains a significant step for empowering citizens.</p>
<iframe src="https://embed.acast.com/60087127b9687759d637bade/648b152cc6f9af0011f94bb1" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="190px"></iframe>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-561" class="tc-infographic" height="100" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/561/4fbbd099d631750693d02bac632430b71b37cd5f/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Crowdsourcing the constitution</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/carlos-bernal-1447440">Carlos Bernal</a> is a professor of law at the University of Dayton in the United States and commissioner of the America Human Rights Commission. As part of his research, he focuses on what he calls “constitutional crowdsourcing,” a process by which governments gather the opinions, views and demands of their populations in the making of a constitution. </p>
<p>The basic idea is that in a democracy, everyone should have the chance to participate and define the institutions that preside over them. Bernal says, as societies change, so do the social and political values of that society — and this change can be a challenge to a constitution. “If a constitution becomes a stagnant in the past, that constitution is not able, is not relevant anymore.”</p>
<p>To reflect those shifts, countries can either enact legislation to supplement the constitution, or they can specify the meaning of the constitution without changing the wording. But in certain instances, simple amendments of a constitution might not be enough to reflect those social shifts. </p>
<p>“And when there is a big gap between the constitution text and the constitutional reality,” Bernal adds, “the constitution must be replaced to create a new institutional framework that is able to regulate your society.”</p>
<h2>Political inclusion</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jennifer-m-piscopo-378304">Jennifer Piscopo</a> is an associate professor of politics at Occidental College in Los Angeles, in the United States. Her work focuses on representation, gender quotas and legislative institutions in Latin America, and how countries involve underrepresented groups in political processes. </p>
<p>She says that during Latin America’s democratic transition in the 1980s, “women were very active in the human rights movements that criticized the abuses under authoritarian governments. They were very active in the peace movements that really urged for an end to the conflict in Central America.”</p>
<p>But she says when democratic systems began replacing authoritarian governments, there was a gap between women’s roles as activists and in the democratic transition, versus the kinds of opportunities they had in politics. So when, in September 2022, <a href="https://theconversation.com/chiles-progressive-new-constitution-rejected-by-voters-after-campaign-marred-by-misinformation-190371">the new draft constitution was rejected</a>, many observers were perplexed. Some analysis argued the government’s radically democratic process had been too ambitious.</p>
<p>As a result, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/chile-starts-second-attempt-draft-new-constitution-2023-03-06/">the government initiated a second, more institutional process for drafting a new constitution</a>, which removed certain representational quotas for Indigenous people and women that had characterized the first constitutional process.</p>
<p>But according to Piscopo, although the first draft was rejected, “there is still an appetite for processes that are more open and more democratic. The challenge is, electorates are fickle and how do you hold someone’s attention and someone’s preferences in a stable way as everyday politics is pushing them around?”</p>
<p>Listen to the full episode of <em>The Conversation Weekly</em> to learn more about Latin America’s democratic transition, crowdsourcing constitutional processes, and what their impact means for marginalized groups. </p>
<hr>
<p>This episode was written and produced by Mend Mariwany, who is also the executive producer of The Conversation Weekly. Eloise Stevens does our sound design, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.</p>
<p>You can find us on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/TC_Audio">@TC_Audio</a>, on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">theconversationdotcom</a> or <a href="mailto:podcast@theconversation.com">via email</a>. You can also subscribe to The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/newsletter">free daily email here</a>. </p>
<p>Listen to <em>The Conversation Weekly</em> via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our <a href="https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/60087127b9687759d637bade">RSS feed</a> or find out <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-listen-to-the-conversations-podcasts-154131">how else to listen here</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207797/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Piscopo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article. She is a Senior Advisor to the Gender Equity Policy Institute in Los Angeles, United States.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carlos Bernal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article. He is commissioner of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission.</span></em></p>People across Latin America are demanding greater political participation. Some countries, including Colombia and Chile, have responded by involving citizens in the making of their constitutions.Mend Mariwany, Producer, The Conversation Weekly, The Conversation Weekly PodcastNehal El-Hadi, Science + Technology Editor & Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2035702023-05-07T12:38:08Z2023-05-07T12:38:08ZAs Alberta’s oilsands continue leaking toxic wastewater, aquatic wildlife face new risks<p>Three months ago, <a href="https://www1.aer.ca/compliancedashboard/enforcement/202302-02_Imperial%20Oil%20Resources%20Limited_Kearl_Order.pdf">5.3 million litres of industrial wastewater was reported to have overflowed from an Imperial Oil storage pond</a> into a muskeg and forested area. This industrial wastewater could have filled more than two Olympic-sized swimming pools, and is now one of the largest known spills of its kind in Alberta’s history. </p>
<p>Then came news of <a href="https://thenarwhal.ca/imperial-oil-kearl-aer/">a separate incident</a> where an unknown amount of industrial wastewater has been leaking from an Imperial Oil tailings pond for the last 12 months. The leakage flows underground and then resurfaces to contaminate surface waters outside the Kearl Oil Sands Processing Plant and Mine. </p>
<p>These waters flow into the Athabasca River, which is part of an important waterway that supports communities in Alberta and the Northwest Territories. In addition to its significance to the Indigenous communities here, this waterway also provides crucial habitats for endangered wildlife species.</p>
<p>While <a href="https://www.imperialoil.ca/en-ca/company/operations/kearl/kearl-epo#:%7E:text=Imperial%20continues%20to%20work%20with,indication%20of%20impact%20to%20wildlife.">Imperial Oil</a> and <a href="https://www.aer.ca/providing-information/news-and-resources/news-and-announcements/announcements/announcement-february-07-2023">Alberta’s energy regulator</a> have reported no impacts on wildlife or waterways yet, the federal government believes the leaking waste is harmful to aquatic life, and <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/news/2023/03/ministers-provide-a-status-update-on-federal-action-to-address-ongoing-situation-at-kearl-oil-sands-mine.html">has ordered Imperial Oil</a> to take immediate action in preventing any further seepage of toxic water.</p>
<p>Scientists, including <a href="https://qe3research.ca/">our group at Queen’s University</a>, have been studying the chemicals in oilsand tailings ponds for decades to better understand their dangers and to protect wildlife from their effects.</p>
<h2>Fish struggle to survive in contaminated waters</h2>
<p>The mining and extraction of <a href="https://www.capp.ca/oil/what-are-the-oil-sands/">bitumen</a> — a heavy crude oil with the consistency of cold molasses — produces industrial wastewater with high concentrations of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1139/er-2015-0060">several dangerous components</a>, including salts, dissolved organic compounds and heavy metals like cadmium and lead. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521684/original/file-20230418-18-jg306z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A fish in a hand" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521684/original/file-20230418-18-jg306z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521684/original/file-20230418-18-jg306z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521684/original/file-20230418-18-jg306z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521684/original/file-20230418-18-jg306z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521684/original/file-20230418-18-jg306z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521684/original/file-20230418-18-jg306z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521684/original/file-20230418-18-jg306z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wastewater chemicals are toxic to fathead minnows, an important prey species in the oilsands region.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fathead_Minnow_(8741579480).jpg">(NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Research and <a href="https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/alberta-energy-regulator-suncor-has-reported-dead-birds-at-oilsands-tailings-pond-1.6367072">real-world incidents</a> have found that oilsands wastewater is toxic to wildlife including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.06.024">mammals, fish, frogs and birds</a>.</p>
<p>A group of organic compounds, referred to as naphthenic acids, are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5b02586">responsible for most of the toxicity</a> of wastewater. These compounds exist naturally in the region, but accumulate to harmful, unnatural levels in wastewater during the mining process. Despite this, environmental guidelines for “safe” naphthenic acid concentrations do not exist. </p>
<p>The concentrations of these acids in wastewater are studied to determine the extent of the threats to wildlife, and in particular to aquatic species, as their habitats are extremely susceptible to accumulating harmful pollutants.</p>
<p>Studies have found that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquatox.2015.04.024">fathead minnow</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2015.08.022">walleye</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2005.07.009">yellow perch</a> experience increased mortality, physical deformities and reduced growth when exposed to naphthenic acids. These are all species commonly found in the oilsands region.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A researcher samples the content of tanks as a part of a field experiment" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524228/original/file-20230503-27-zpuo5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524228/original/file-20230503-27-zpuo5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524228/original/file-20230503-27-zpuo5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524228/original/file-20230503-27-zpuo5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524228/original/file-20230503-27-zpuo5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524228/original/file-20230503-27-zpuo5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524228/original/file-20230503-27-zpuo5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A researcher samples tanks as a part of a field experiment testing the effects of oilsands wastewater on aquatic animals.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Chloe Robinson)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In one investigation, these chemicals <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aquatox.2012.03.002">altered hormone levels and reduced spawning success in fish</a>. This effect could have population-level consequences in the wild. Meanwhile, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/etc.5314">in another study</a>, the fish showed reduced survival and abnormal swimming behaviours, even after being held in clean lake water for one month following a week-long exposure to sublethal levels of naphthenic acids.</p>
<p>The science clearly suggests that fish are negatively impacted by wastewater contaminants and even short-term contact can have lasting effects on animals in the affected area.</p>
<h2>Canada’s declining amphibians face new threats</h2>
<p>Amphibians are one of the most <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2021.108022">rapidly disappearing groups of animals in Canada</a>, as their wetland habitats often face the threat of pollution, among other stressors. Research on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15287394.2012.640092">wood frogs</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2012.04.002">Northern leopard frogs</a> has raised numerous concerns. </p>
<p>Like with fish, studies have found that exposure to wastewater and naphthenic acids can <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15287394.2015.1074970">interfere with sexual development</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/conphys/coac030">impair breeding</a> in adult frogs. Tadpoles exposed to these chemicals are more likely to die, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquatox.2023.106435">behave abnormally when escaping predators</a> and are less likely to develop into frogs.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2022.120455">One of our studies</a> found that exposure to these chemicals can also cause developing frogs to develop striking malformations, including kinked spines and missing toes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521677/original/file-20230418-14-n1z16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Malformed tadpoles with missing toes and shorter limbs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521677/original/file-20230418-14-n1z16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521677/original/file-20230418-14-n1z16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521677/original/file-20230418-14-n1z16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521677/original/file-20230418-14-n1z16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521677/original/file-20230418-14-n1z16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521677/original/file-20230418-14-n1z16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521677/original/file-20230418-14-n1z16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tadpoles exposed to wastewater chemicals (right) show malformations not present in tadpoles raised in clean water (left) like shorter limbs, swollen bodies, and missing toes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Chloe Robinson)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Science suggests that if pollutants reach dangerous levels due to spills, it could impair the survival and health of aquatic wildlife in affected areas. Over time, these impacts could cause wildlife population declines and even local species extinctions. Long-term monitoring will be crucial to determine the full impact of these spills.</p>
<h2>A need for transparent oilsands waste management</h2>
<p>In addition to wildlife, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-019-0059-6">industrial activities in the oilsands region have affected the Indigenous communities</a> over the years as well.</p>
<p>Indigenous Nations located downstream of recent oil spills in Alberta — including the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-first-nation-angry-at-imperial-s-silence-while-tailings-pond-leaked-for-9-months-1.6766007">Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation</a> and <a href="https://www.mikisewcree.ca/press-release-mcfn-sounds-alarm-bells-following-albertas-largest-oil-sands-seepage/">Mikisew Cree First Nation</a> — voiced their concern over this pollution and its impact on the plants and animals they harvest for food.</p>
<p>While these communities rely on the lands and waters near the spill, they <a href="https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/03/03/news/alberta-oilsands-spill-hidden-first-nation-act-environmental-racism">were only notified of the contamination</a> when the provincial regulator issued an <a href="https://www1.aer.ca/compliancedashboard/enforcement/202302-02_Imperial%20Oil%20Resources%20Limited_Kearl_Order.pdf">environmental protection order</a> in February.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1631392295265378304"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9601276/alberta-energy-regulator-emergency-response-kearl/">The lack of transparency and delayed responses</a> surrounding these current spills raises questions about how many undocumented incidents could be taking place every year.</p>
<p>In April, while Alberta continued to deal with the aftermath of these incidents, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2023/04/18/suncor-reports-release-of-water-from-sediment-pond-on-alberta-oilsands-mine.html">another 6 million litres of water</a> spilled from a Suncor settling pond into the Athabasca River. The current method of managing wastewater is neither safe nor sustainable. </p>
<p>Change is needed to ensure that economic activities do not jeopardize the environment further. <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/first-nations-blast-alberta-energy-regulator-at-hearing-minister-promises-reform-1.6813307">As government, industry and Indigenous partners begin the process of building new management and monitoring plans,</a> which will likely include guidelines for <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bakx-oilsands-tailings-release-mining-effluent-regulations-1.6271537">treating and releasing oilsands wastewater back into waterways</a>, it is important that the science is not forgotten.</p>
<p>Evidence-informed policies, built on what we know about the toxic extent of wastewater, have the potential to make accidental spills, and the environmental and social injustices they perpetuate, a thing of the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203570/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diane Orihel received funding from Environment and Climate Change Canada for her lab's research on the effects of oilsands contaminants on aquatic biota.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chloe Robinson received funding from Queen's University (Craigie Fellowship), and the Government of Ontario (Ontario Graduate Scholarship). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris K. Elvidge is affiliated with the Fish Ecology and Conservation Physiology Laboratory at Carleton University. </span></em></p>As toxic water continues to spill from tailings ponds across mining developments, decades of scientific research provides evidence of how wildlife will be affected.Diane Orihel, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology & School of Environmental Studies, Queen's University, OntarioChloe Robinson, Junior Research Associate, Experimental Ecology and Ecotoxicology Research Team, Queen's University, OntarioChris K. Elvidge, Postdoctoral Researcher in Freshwater Ecology, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2006192023-03-05T17:20:03Z2023-03-05T17:20:03ZTo improve drinking water quality in First Nation communities, a collaborative approach is important<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513236/original/file-20230302-24-37x8t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C507%2C3983%2C2963&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The federal government announced its intention to fund the construction of a new drinking water pipeline between Oneida Nation of the Thames and the Lake Huron Primary Water Supply System.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Sheri Longboat)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recently the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/feds-commitment-to-onedia-water-supply-met-with-hope-and-uncertainty-1.6722846">federal government announced</a> its intention to fulfil its responsibility and fund the construction of a new drinking water pipeline between the Oneida Nation of the Thames and the Lake Huron Primary Water Supply System.</p>
<p>A long-term drinking water advisory has been in effect on the <a href="https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1614618557239/1614618578831">Oneida Public Water System since 2019,</a> affecting community homes and buildings. For this reason, the federal government’s announcement is hopeful news. </p>
<p>Much of our research, which we review in this article, explores the potential of collaborative arrangements to improve drinking water quality outcomes in First Nations communities. </p>
<p>Water sharing arrangements, like the proposed one between the Oneida Nation of the Thames and the Lake Huron Primary Water Supply System, have the potential to enhance water security, but they require strong communication and co-ordination between community leaders in addition to adequate financial support. </p>
<h2>Key issues</h2>
<p>In one of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107147">our recently published papers</a> we point out that water sharing agreements between Ontario municipalities are commonplace. For example, York Region receives water from the City of Toronto. </p>
<p>That said, the commonness of water sharing between Ontario First Nations and municipalities is far lower than it is between municipalities. </p>
<p>These differences are associated with factors like remoteness. A high proportion of First Nations are located in Northern Ontario and located relatively far from nearby communities who could enter into a water sharing arrangement.</p>
<p>But some First Nations, like the Oneida Nation of the Thames, have municipal neighbours within a feasible distance, where water sharing for access to safe drinking water is a viable option.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1471882468131282945"}"></div></p>
<p>A few other First Nations are also engaged in similar arrangements. The Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation now receive water from Haldimand County via a connection in Hagersville, Ont. Six Nations of the Grand River have <a href="https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/mississaugas-of-the-credit-and-six-nations-of-the-grand-river-launch-innovative-water-main-project-803931368.html">joined in this arrangement</a> with the Mississaugas of the Credit through a boundary watermain. Meanwhile, the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation are collaborating with Durham Region regarding the potential to service Port Perry. </p>
<h2>Positive effects of water sharing agreements</h2>
<p>In a recent article we find a positive association between <a href="https://doi.org/10.3368/le.99.3.053022-0042R">enhanced drinking water quality and Indigenous-municipal drinking water arrangements</a> in Ontario. </p>
<p>Using historic data, and controlling for many factors, we find that First Nation drinking water systems in Ontario are more likely than municipal water systems to experience a drinking water advisory.</p>
<p>However, the presence of water sharing arrangements between First Nation systems and nearby municipalities are associated with reductions in the likelihood that a First Nation water system will experience a drinking water advisory. </p>
<p>This is a welcome outcome for all communities.</p>
<h2>Partnerships beyond water</h2>
<p><a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487522643/a-quiet-evolution/">Indigenous-local intergovernmental partnerships</a> are not limited to water. </p>
<p>There are numerous <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423918000409">types of agreements</a> for community services that exist between First Nations and municipalities. These agreements include fire protection, trash collection, animal control and co-ordinated efforts to recruit medical professionals to serve the communities.</p>
<p>The success of these agreements, as well as the water sharing ones, relies on the acknowledgement of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/capa.12492">unique histories and aspirations</a> of the communities and the governments before exploring any partnership. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A river" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513221/original/file-20230302-1678-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C144%2C3995%2C2649&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513221/original/file-20230302-1678-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513221/original/file-20230302-1678-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513221/original/file-20230302-1678-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513221/original/file-20230302-1678-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513221/original/file-20230302-1678-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513221/original/file-20230302-1678-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oneida Nation of the Thames, who reside along the eastern shore of the Thames River in Ontario, will soon have access to clean drinking water. But Indigenous-local intergovernmental partnerships are not limited to water alone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Sheri Longboat)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This includes an appreciation of the nation-to-nation relationship between First Nations and the federal government, Indigenous rights and autonomy, cultural differences, funding, long-term sustainability of the projects and a host of economic considerations, like the costs to implementing and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12765">developing any legal contract</a>. </p>
<h2>Path to a collaborative future</h2>
<p>There is no silver bullet to addressing any specific issue — especially one as chronic and complex as drinking water quality in First Nations communities.</p>
<p>Water servicing agreements should only be viewed as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/capa.12363">one component of the portfolio of efforts to address this historic problem</a>.</p>
<p>Voluntary mutually beneficial exchanges, like the water sharing agreements, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNacjFIk3-o">require leadership</a> that enhances trust, transparency and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1078087413501638">communication</a> between First Nation, municipal and federal governments. And we hope that the evolving relationship between the Oneida Nation of the Thames and the Lake Huron Primary Water Supply System will prove mutually beneficial. </p>
<p>Our research suggests this collaboration has the possibility of improving drinking water quality by reducing the likelihood of persistent drinking water advisories. The emergence and success of collaborative relationships like these will depend on a host of factors that will require purposeful efforts to develop understanding and trust.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brady Deaton, Jr. receives funding from SSHRC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brandon Doxtator receives funding from ISC. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Alcantara receives funding from SSHRC. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sheri Longboat receives funding from SSHRC. </span></em></p>Water sharing arrangements have the potential to enhance water security, but they require strong communication and co-ordination between community leaders in addition to adequate financial support.Brady Deaton, Jr., Professor of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of GuelphBrandon Doxtator, Environmental Consultation Coordinator, Oneida Nation of the ThamesChristopher Alcantara, Professor of Political Science, Western UniversitySheri Longboat, Associate Professor, Rural Planning and Development, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1988742023-02-16T19:16:11Z2023-02-16T19:16:11ZThe 1967 referendum was the most successful in Australia’s history. But what it can tell us about 2023 is complicated<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510464/original/file-20230216-26-shxihw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Australia/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>This article references antiquated language when referring to First Nations people. It also mentions names and has images of people who may have passed away.</strong></p>
<hr>
<p>Before the end of this year, Australians <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Voice_to_Parliament">will vote</a> on enshrining an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice in the nation’s constitution. Referendums are famously fraught, and both <a href="https://thewest.com.au/opinion/patrick-dodson-yes-to-the-voice-referendum-will-help-make-amends-c-9436639">advocates</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/nationals-declare-they-will-oppose-the-voice-referendum-195446">detractors</a> of the Voice have drawn comparisons to the 1967 referendum, the nation’s most successful to date.</p>
<p>Then, 90.77% of Australians endorsed two constitutional amendments. One removed Section 127, whereby “Aboriginal natives” were not counted when “reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth”. The second altered Section 51 (xxvi) – the race power – to allow the Commonwealth to make “special laws” concerning Aboriginal people.</p>
<p>Why was this campaign so successful? Today commentators largely put it down to unanimity: there wasn’t a “no” campaign in 1967. This is one of the reasons, no doubt, but as historians often say: “it’s complicated”. Deconstructing the mythology that surrounds the vote provides a fuller answer.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-history-of-referendums-in-australia-is-riddled-with-failure-albanese-has-much-at-risk-and-much-to-gain-198799">The history of referendums in Australia is riddled with failure. Albanese has much at risk – and much to gain</a>
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<h2>The road to referendum</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-26/larissa-behrendt-mythbusting-the-1967-referendum/8349858">Indigenous</a> and <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/ielapa.200709280?download=true">settler</a> scholars have long questioned the accepted narrative around 1967. The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Council_for_the_Advancement_of_Aborigines_and_Torres_Strait_Islanders">founded in</a> 1958 with the purpose of fighting for constitutional change, had a big role in shaping the referendum’s meaning. The council first fought a petition campaign in 1962-3, and the vote itself, on the basis that a “yes” victory would grant citizenship rights for Indigenous people.</p>
<p>This was only ever <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/library/prspub/JTZM6/upload_binary/jtzm62.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22library/prspub/JTZM6%22">partly true</a>. The same activists who led the council’s campaign, including feminist Jessie Street, communist and scientist Shirley Andrews, Quandamooka poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) and Faith Bandler, an activist of South Sea Island and Scottish-Indian heritage, had already fought for and won many of the trappings of citizenship. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1031461X.2017.1313875">Voting rights</a>, for instance, were secured federally in 1962, and in every state by 1965. And while various state acts continued to limit movement and alcohol consumption for the people under their so-called “protection”, constitutional alteration in itself would do little to change this. By giving the federal government powers to override state laws, it was hoped, pressure from within and without would lead to the end of official discrimination.</p>
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<h2>The ‘wind of change’</h2>
<p>The long, conservative government of Robert Menzies had stone-walled moves to hold a referendum, at least partly owing to a desire to maintain Section 51 unamended. That the Commonwealth would make “special laws” for Indigenous people ran counter to the goal of assimilation. Menzies’ successor, Harold Holt, was more amenable.</p>
<p>Holt’s progressive agenda – as well as supporting the referendum, he removed discriminatory provisions from the Migration Act – signalled his difference from Menzies to a changing electorate. But he and his ministers were also looking internationally. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s 1960 declaration that a “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_of_Change_(speech)#:%7E:text=Macmillan%20went%20to%20Africa%20to,consciousness%20is%20a%20political%20fact.">wind of change</a>” was sweeping away racial discrimination and colonial domination had an Australian echo. </p>
<p>The 1965 “<a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/1965-freedom-ride">Freedom Rides</a>” had done much to highlight continued apartheid-style practices in rural Australia. And during the Cold War, Australia’s overseas perception carried substantial weight. </p>
<p>Indigenous rights activists had <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/human-rights-in-twentiethcentury-australia/11327035CBFC43692CA18A2888DC9128#fndtn-metrics">long warned</a> that Australia needed to act on issues of discrimination, with anti-colonial sentiment widespread in Asia, and the quickly growing United Nations watching. Liberal parliamentarian Billy Snedden <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/692626/cabinet-submission-660.pdf">hoped that</a> removing mention of “Aborigines” from the constitution would also “remove a possible source of misconstruction in the international field”.</p>
<h2>Right wrongs, write yes!</h2>
<p>While reflective of international sensitivities, the 1967 referendum was hardly a rejection of assimilation policy. Indeed, the Federal Council’s slogan of “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Black_and_White_Together_FCAATSI.html?id=xM5yAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">black and white together</a>” can be read as a reflection of integrationist ideology: the goal of “Aboriginal advancement” was to live on white terms. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1304&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1304&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1304&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of South Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The campaign materials used in support of the referendum, much of which was produced by the Federal Council and distributed via trade unions and community organisations, reflected a simple message of unity and national absolution. Perhaps the most famous leaflet of the campaign – “Right Wrongs, Write Yes!” in large lettering, alongside an image of an Indigenous child – elevated the message above politics. The wrongs of the past could be done away with at the stroke of a pen.</p>
<p>The resounding victory was indeed read as a vindication of the decency of Australians. As <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/ielapa.8111425093?casa_token=NOqhQxHENsMAAAAA:6NxHy_KYw3FDsRsxlUcJj4j0yt0nT_nTM_UOs4xdP-OnaC8IyLm5X0wbFo3ZKbNObaJ_iAOAa80pXe8">one commentator</a> put it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The politicians were proud, the priests popular, the promoters propitiated, the public pleased. Being party to the most overwhelming referendum victory in the history of the Commonwealth of Australia demanded self-congratulation and the bestowal of bouquets upon all.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/pm-says-voice-to-parliament-critics-are-attempting-to-start-culture-war/00d7b9d3-89dd-4c41-ba89-b366de90b757">channelling</a> similar sentiments earlier this month, declaring the Voice referendum offered a chance for Australians to show their “best qualities”. It would, he said, “be a national achievement in which every Australian can share”. </p>
<p>1967 shows us the power that such unifying language can have, but also that unanimity can conceal inertia.</p>
<h2>‘Advocated by all thinking people’</h2>
<p>This sense of national duty and righting wrongs at least partly explains why opposition to the proposed changes in 1967 was muted. Adelaide’s Victor Harbour Times <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/187330397?searchTerm=referendum">captured</a> the tenor: “a Yes vote is advocated by all thinking people”. But this opinion, much like today, was not unanimous.</p>
<p>Despite the lack of a formal campaign, the West Australian newspaper ran a particularly hard “no” line. Fears of creeping Commonwealth power over “<a href="https://www.qhatlas.com.au/content/1967-referendum-%E2%80%93-state-comes-together">state rights</a>” were propounded, as was the referendum’s lack of detail. “It was a pity that this issue was not worked out in advance”, <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-684049566/view?partId=nla.obj-684073384#page/n26/mode/1up">one article bemoaned</a>, for then “the people could have been presented with a firm, rational policy”. </p>
<p>Western Australia registered the highest “no” vote of any state at the referendum, at close to 22%. This reflects at least in part this editorialising. Post-referendum <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/ielapa.8111425093?casa_token=NOqhQxHENsMAAAAA:6NxHy_KYw3FDsRsxlUcJj4j0yt0nT_nTM_UOs4xdP-OnaC8IyLm5X0wbFo3ZKbNObaJ_iAOAa80pXe8">analysis</a> also indicated that racist attitudes shaped voting patterns. The greater the proximity to an Aboriginal reserve or mission, the more likely a person was to vote “no”. </p>
<p>That the referendum was, in the language of the West Australian, “double-barrelled” – paired with another, defeated, proposal to expand membership in the House of Representatives – does not seem to have affected the result. Even hard-right Democratic Labor Party Senator Vince Gair’s “<a href="https://archives.anu.edu.au/exhibitions/vote-yes-equality/voting-27-may-1967">No More Politicians Committee</a>” advocated for a “yes” vote on “Aboriginal rights”. Left and right understood, if for sharply differing reasons, that formal discrimination needed to end. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 1967, there was widespread understanding that formal discrimination needed to end.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.centreofdemocracy.sa.gov.au/event/remembering-the-1967-referendum/">Centre of Democracy</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>After the referendum</h2>
<p>Today’s “no” campaign’s key talking point, that the Voice “lacks detail”, was made in 1967, but failed to sway many voters. A writer for the <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-684049566/view?partId=nla.obj-684073384#page/n26/mode/1up">Bulletin magazine</a> commented that while the West Australian was </p>
<blockquote>
<p>right when it says there should be a policy […] the time for it is after the referendum.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What mattered wasn’t the specifics, but that policy could be developed at all.</p>
<p>The referendum’s aftermath also illuminates another point of difference between then and now: a lack of Indigenous opposition. Indigenous scholar Larissa Behrendt <a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUIndigLawRw/2007/96.html">argues</a> that an “unintended consequence” of the 1967 referendum, and the hopes it raised and subsequently dashed for many Indigenous peoples, was a “more radical rights movement” led by those “disillusioned by the lack of changes that followed”. The Commonwealth was slow to use its new powers, and reticent to override powerful premiers like Queensland’s Joh Bjelke-Petersen.</p>
<p>The land rights and sovereignty movements of today have their origins in this moment of radicalisation. The Referendum Council, whose 2017 <a href="https://ulurustatement.org/">Uluru Statement</a> from the Heart reads “in 1967, we were counted, [now] we seek to be heard”, represent the unifying spirit of that earlier referendum. <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/we-are-the-voice-sydney-invasion-day-speakers-reject-voice-to-parliament-20230126-p5cfpe.html">Indigenous critics</a> of the Voice such as Lidia Thorpe and Gary Foley, on the other hand, inherit the radical tradition it inadvertently birthed. In Foley’s words, a Voice to Parliament would be <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/the-politics/rachel-withers/2023/01/26/whose-voice-it-anyway">akin to</a> putting “lipstick on a pig”. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1621307323921874944"}"></div></p>
<p>Does all this mean the vote will fall differently in 2023? Something Voice advocates have in their favour is that “no” supporters, while loud, appear to be in a minority. State, territory and federal leaders have <a href="https://twitter.com/AnnastaciaMP/status/1621746325766414336">unanimously</a> pledged to support the “yes” case, leaving the federal opposition isolated, while <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/indigenous-support-for-voice-at-80pc-despite-protests-by-noisy-few-20230127-p5cfwj">80% of</a> Indigenous peoples support it. </p>
<p>One thing though is certain. If the 2023 referendum fails, it will at least in part be due to the shortcomings and spoiled hopes of 1967.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198874/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jon Piccini does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If the 2023 referendum fails, it will at least in part be due to the shortcomings and spoiled hopes of 1967.Jon Piccini, Senior Lecturer in History, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1995992023-02-15T19:07:32Z2023-02-15T19:07:32ZYoung people may decide the outcome of the Voice referendum – here’s why<p>A referendum on a First Nations Voice to Parliament is set to be held in the second half of this year. Australians will be asked if they agree to a constitutional amendment to give First Nations people a voice in government decisions that directly affect them. This body aims to circumvent complicated bureaucracy, address consistently poor life outcomes, and improve the services and support of Indigenous communities in Australia. </p>
<p>Given young Australians, mostly progressive and most engaged in issue-based politics, helped <a href="https://theconversation.com/young-australian-voters-helped-swing-the-election-and-could-do-it-again-next-time-184159">swing the 2022 election</a>, it is likely their support will be crucial to the “yes” campaign.</p>
<h2>Why is youth support crucial?</h2>
<p>Historically, Australians have been reluctant to change the Constitution. Only <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/elections/referendums/referendum_dates_and_results.htm">eight out of 44 referendums</a> carried, with no successful constitutional change since 1977. For the referendum to be successful, the proposed alteration must pass by a “double majority”: this means a majority of voters nationwide and a majority of voters in a majority of the states (that is, at least four out of six states).</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/changing-the-australian-constitution-is-not-easy-but-we-need-to-stop-thinking-its-impossible-183626">Changing the Australian Constitution is not easy. But we need to stop thinking it's impossible</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510219/original/file-20230214-16-6uuwho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510219/original/file-20230214-16-6uuwho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510219/original/file-20230214-16-6uuwho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510219/original/file-20230214-16-6uuwho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510219/original/file-20230214-16-6uuwho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1304&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510219/original/file-20230214-16-6uuwho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1304&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510219/original/file-20230214-16-6uuwho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1304&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1967 referendum had the highest ‘yes’ vote in history, garnering over 90% support.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of South Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But referendums are not bound to fail. Since the referendum is inherently an issue-based vote, the success in the past depended heavily on the issue. Previously, campaigns have been more successful when they focused on principles or outcomes, rather than on the technical and procedural issues concerning particular amendments. </p>
<p>For example, the 1967 referendum on Indigenous constitutional recognition <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/elections/referendums/referendum_dates_and_results.htm">scored</a> the highest percentage of votes (90.77%) in favour of any referendum. In contrast, the 1999 referendum to change Australia from a constitutional monarchy to a republic did not garner majority support from any state. </p>
<p>Since young Australians are more <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-will-young-australians-do-with-their-vote-are-we-about-to-see-a-youthquake-180883">inclined to policy voting</a> than partisan voting, educating young people about the issue will be vital for the Voice referendum. Further, <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8056057/voice-debate-turns-to-young-australians/">young voters may help inform</a> older non-Indigenous people – the group most likely to vote “no” in the referendum.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-will-young-australians-do-with-their-vote-are-we-about-to-see-a-youthquake-180883">What will young Australians do with their vote – are we about to see a 'youthquake'?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What’s in it for the young person?</h2>
<p>For a young Indigenous Australian, an Indigenous Voice to Parliament is important for two key reasons.</p>
<p>First, the national Voice would have a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/05/what-is-the-indigenous-voice-to-parliament-referendum-australia-how-would-it-work-why-should-we-have-it-explainer">youth advisory group</a> – as one of two permanent groups – that is expected to focus on improving Indigenous peoples’ educational, psychological, health, economic and other social outcomes. Second, and more broadly, it gives a voice to their communities, which all levels of government are obliged to consult. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-voice-referendum-how-did-we-get-here-and-where-are-we-going-heres-what-we-know-198299">The Voice referendum: how did we get here and where are we going? Here's what we know</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>For a non-Indigenous young person, the proposed body will play an important role in educating and explaining what has happened and is still happening to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Cobble Cobble woman Allira Davis, co-chair of the Uluru Youth Dialogue, <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8056057/voice-debate-turns-to-young-australians/">said</a> the essential but “harsh business of truth-telling” has been lacking in national conversations, although this is “changing among younger generations of non-Indigenous Australians”.</p>
<h2>Why are young people likely to vote in favour?</h2>
<p>In a recent nationally representative survey, Australians were asked: “If a referendum were held to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution, would you support or oppose such a change to the Constitution?” Young Australians, aged 18-34, strongly supported a constitutional amendment for Indigenous recognition. </p>
<hr>
<iframe src="https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/12754496/embed" title="Interactive or visual content" class="flourish-embed-iframe" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="width:100%;height:500px;" sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-scripts allow-downloads allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<div style="width:100%!;margin-top:4px!important;text-align:right!important;"><a class="flourish-credit" href="https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/12754496/?utm_source=embed&utm_campaign=visualisation/12754496" target="_top"><img alt="Made with Flourish" src="https://public.flourish.studio/resources/made_with_flourish.svg"> </a></div>
<hr>
<p>Data from the 2022 <a href="https://australianelectionstudy.org/">Australian Election Study (AES)</a> show that, compared to older age groups, the youngest voter group is most likely to “strongly support” and least likely to “strongly oppose” the referendum.</p>
<p>An analysis of the <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/Enrolling_to_vote/Enrolment_stats/elector_count/2022/elector-count-dec-2022.pdf">latest enrolment data</a> from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) shows that millennials and Gen Z make up about <a href="https://theconversation.com/young-australian-voters-helped-swing-the-election-and-could-do-it-again-next-time-184159">43% of the electorate</a>. This indicates a major generational replacement as the polls are being populated with more progressive, younger voters. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/will-multicultural-australians-support-the-voice-the-success-of-the-referendum-may-hinge-on-it-199304">Will multicultural Australians support the Voice? The success of the referendum may hinge on it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Although lifecycle theories oppose this idea and predict people become more conservative as they age, this may not apply to millennials and younger people. Evidence from the AES suggests millennials are <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/millennials-are-getting-older-but-not-more-conservative-20221205-p5c3na">not becoming more conservative</a> as they get older and are sticking with left-of-centre parties. </p>
<iframe src="https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/12754152/embed" title="Interactive or visual content" class="flourish-embed-iframe" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="width:100%;height:600px;" sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-scripts allow-downloads allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<div style="width:100%!;margin-top:4px!important;text-align:right!important;"><a class="flourish-credit" href="https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/12754152/?utm_source=embed&utm_campaign=visualisation/12754152" target="_top"><img alt="Made with Flourish" src="https://public.flourish.studio/resources/made_with_flourish.svg"> </a></div>
<p>Extending the findings in the figure above, and analysing the AEC enrolment data, it is evident that a majority of states (except Tasmania) reflect the high percentage of youth population. That means there is a fair chance mostly progressive young people and younger generations may be driving the “yes” vote in the referendum. </p>
<h2>But there is still opposition</h2>
<p>Some young people, especially those affiliated with the Liberal Party, raise <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/young-libs-raise-mixed-views-on-voice-referendum-20230122-p5cek0">mixed views</a> about the referendum, demanding <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/the-odds-are-stacked-in-vote-for-the-voice-20230115-p5cclz">more clarity</a> on the proposal in its current form. That is, most do support the need to recognise the historical wrong done to Indigenous communities, but they are not supportive of the approach because, as a young Liberal <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/young-libs-raise-mixed-views-on-voice-referendum-20230122-p5cek0">said</a>, isolating a group for benefits or harm “is inherently wrong and should be opposed”. </p>
<p>Plus, there are both right and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jan/27/anthony-albanese-calls-left-wing-opponents-of-voice-to-parliament-radicals">left-wing opponents</a> of the Voice. Therefore, we must be cautious in thinking a progressive individual will definitely vote “yes”. </p>
<p>Historically, one of the biggest threats to referendums has been a <a href="https://theconversation.com/changing-the-australian-constitution-is-not-easy-but-we-need-to-stop-thinking-its-impossible-183626">“no” campaign run by a major political party</a>. A strong opposition, or lack of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2023/feb/07/bipartisanship-peter-dutton-opposition-indigenous-voice-to-parliament-referendum-vote">bipartisan approval</a>, may render voters <a href="https://theconversation.com/changing-the-australian-constitution-is-not-easy-but-we-need-to-stop-thinking-its-impossible-183626">vulnerable to scare campaigns</a>. </p>
<p>Young people – mostly those who haven’t yet had a chance to participate in a referendum – already have a low level of understanding of constitutional matters. But given they are more likely to strongly support the Indigenous cause than their older counterparts, a transparent and thorough public education campaign is much needed to gather informed youth support.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199599/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Intifar Chowdhury does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With less adherence to party politics and a broadly progressive viewpoint, young people will play a key role in the outcome of the Voice to Parliament referendum.Intifar Chowdhury, Associate Lecturer, School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1982322023-01-20T18:25:16Z2023-01-20T18:25:16ZPeru protests: What to know about Indigenous-led movement shaking the crisis-hit country<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505644/original/file-20230120-22-9yc830.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=27%2C179%2C4573%2C2883&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A movement on the march.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/thousands-of-protesters-coming-from-all-over-the-country-news-photo/1246378481?phrase=peru%20indigenous%20protest&adppopup=true">Carlos Garcia Granthon/Fotoholica Press/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Peru is in the midst of a political and civil crisis. Weeks of protest have culminated in thousands descending on the capital amid violent clashes and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/20/peru-protests-running-battles-police-lima-thousands-march">running battles with police</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Triggered by the recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/amid-coup-countercoup-claims-what-really-went-down-in-peru-and-why-196207">removal from power of former leader</a> Pedro Castillo, the protests have exposed deep divisions within the country and are being encouraged by a confluence of internal factors and external agitators.</em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation asked Eduardo Gamarra, an <a href="https://pir.fiu.edu/people/faculty-a-z/eduardo-gamarra1/eduardo-gamarra.html">expert on Latin American politics</a> at Florida International University, to explain the wider context of the protests and what could happen next.</em></p>
<h2>What sparked the protests in Peru?</h2>
<p>The immediate trigger was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-63895505">events on Dec. 7, 2022</a>, that saw now-ousted President Castillo embark on what has <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/what-pedro-castillos-failed-coup-attempt-means-for-peru">been described as an attempted coup</a>. But whether it was a “coup” is subject to debate. Castillo’s supporters say he was trying to head off a different type of coup, one instigated by Congress.</p>
<p>Castillo – a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-57941309">leftist, Indigenous former teacher</a> from the country’s south – tried to shut down a Congress intent on impeaching him over <a href="https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-10-12/president-pedro-castillo-of-peru-faces-new-corruption-accusation.html">corruption claims</a> and <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/11/24/peruvian-constitutional-court-annuls-treason-complaint-against-president-pedro-castillo/">accusations of treason</a>. He called on the military to support him, and his intention was to form a constituent assembly to reform the country’s constitution. But his plan didn’t work. The military rejected Castillo’s ploy, and Congress refused to be dissolved and <a href="https://theconversation.com/amid-coup-countercoup-claims-what-really-went-down-in-peru-and-why-196207">went ahead with its impeachment vote</a>, removing him from power.</p>
<p>The events of that day set off the protests that have built in momentum over the subsequent weeks. </p>
<p>But while the events of Dec. 7 were the immediate trigger, it is important to understand that this crisis was long in the making.</p>
<h2>What is the wider background of the political crisis?</h2>
<p>The crisis is rooted in the nature of Peru’s political system. In part by design, the <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Peru_2021.pdf?lang=en">country’s constitution</a>, which was adopted in 1993 but amended a dozen times since, creates ambiguity in who has the greater power – the president or Congress. Constitutionally, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/12/07/1141372595/peru-s-president-dissolves-congress-and-imposes-a-curfew">Congress is given enormous scope</a> to limit executive power, including removal through impeachment. The idea was to serve as a bulwark against the excesses of authoritarian-minded presidents. But in reality, it encourages instability and a weak executive. The constitution is so ambiguously written that it also gives wiggle room for presidents who want to shut down Congress, as Castillo unsuccessfully tried to do.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Peru has seen a dismantling of its old, established political party system. Once-powerful parties no longer exist or struggle to get support. As a result, the country’s party system has fractured – more than a dozen parties are represented in Congress, which makes it hard for any one leader or party to achieve a majority. In short, it makes it hard to govern when you have no legislative base to do so. For example, Castillo had the support of only 15 members of his own party in the 130-seat assembly.</p>
<p>On top of all that, the country is deeply polarized and divided along a number of different lines: ethnic, racial, economic and – as the protests have fully shown – regional.</p>
<h2>Who is protesting and just how large is the movement?</h2>
<p>First off, they are Castillo supporters. While he had no real power base in the country’s capital, Lima, Castillo – as the first real rural president the country has had – had <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/16/the-forgotten-ones-rural-supporters-stand-by-perus-castillo">significant support in the south</a>. </p>
<p>The protests have been <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/7/anti-government-protesters-attempt-to-take-over-an-airport">concentrated around the city of Puno</a>, but support has come from the whole high Andes of southern Peru.</p>
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<p>The area is predominantly <a href="https://minorityrights.org/minorities/highland-aymara-and-quechua/">Quechua and Aymara</a> – the two major Indigenous groups in the Peruvian south. Peruvian Quechua and Aymara are “first cousins” to the same groups over the border in Bolivia. And this is important in the context of the current protests.</p>
<p>Evo Morales, the former president of Bolivia, has long <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2021/04/27/runasur-a-new-latin-american-regional-integration-mechanism-created-in-bolivia/">talked about “runasur</a>” – the concept of uniting Indigenous people across the Andes region. </p>
<p>Morales <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/10/evo-morales-barred-peru-bolivia-pedro-castillo">has been blamed by the Peruvian government</a> for stirring up the protests – indeed he has now been banned from entering Peru. No doubt, <a href="https://elcomercio.pe/politica/gobierno/evo-morales-quienes-son-ocho-operadores-del-expresidente-boliviano-que-no-podran-ingresar-al-peru-y-cual-es-su-historial-pedro-castillo-mas-ipsp-puno-dina-boluarte-cusco-dini-protestas-noticia/">Bolivian allies have been in Peru’s south</a> mobilizing the movement, and some have been arrested. </p>
<p>But what you are really seeing is a “Bolivia-ization” of the protest movement in Peru. The tactics of the protest movement in Peru are similar to those of the forces behind the pro-Morales <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/14/international/americas/death-toll-rises-in-antigovernment-protests-in.html">unrest in Bolivia of both 2003</a> <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bolivia-politics/supporters-of-bolivias-morales-march-with-coffins-of-dead-protesters-idUSKBN1XV1O3">and 2019</a> – the road blockades, the violence against police that has seen <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/world/peru-police-officer-burned-death-patrol-car-casualties-violent-post-election-protests-reaches-47">at least one officer killed</a> and others injured. That in no way excuses the the brutal response by police, which has seen <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/world/americas/peru-protests-democracy.html">more than 50 demonstrators killed</a>.</p>
<p>But even in the treatment of these deaths you see echoes of Bolivia. Just as in Bolivia, protesters are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/11/genocide-investigation-opened-against-peru-president-after-protest-deaths">framing the anti-demonstration violence by authorities as a “genocide</a>” – claiming that police are targeting Indigenous groups because of who they are.</p>
<p>In my view, that is incorrect. The police are obviously using excessive force, but the officers involved are themselves, in many cases, Indigenous.</p>
<h2>What are the demands of protesters?</h2>
<p>Primarily they are trying to force the government in Lima to agree to a <a href="https://constitutionnet.org/news/peru-proposed-constitutional-reform-bring-forward-elections-and-shorten-presidential-and">constituent assembly</a> to devise a new constitution; what that new constitution would look like is a secondary concern.</p>
<p>They are also trying to force the resignation of the woman brought in to replace Castillo, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/07/americas/dina-boluarte-profile-intl-latam/index.html">Dina Boluarte</a>. I believe that is an achievable goal. Boluarte suffers from many of the same problems as her predecessor – she has little real support in Congress and no support in the streets. On top of that, having not been elected into office, she lacks democratic legitimacy in the eyes of many.</p>
<p>President Boluarte has said she <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/peru-protesters-pour-remote-andean-regions-demand-president-resign-rcna66580">will not resign</a>. She is studying the possibility of calling early elections, but there is little chance of her agreeing to a constituent assembly at this time.</p>
<p>As to how this movement will advance the concept of a regional runasur, that is difficult to judge. Certainly the Peruvian situation is no longer just a Peruvian issue – it involves Bolivia, and the protest has vocal support from the Latin American left.</p>
<p>But it is tough to say how well supported the protest movement is within Peru, given how divided the country is. It certainly hasn’t got the backing of urban areas in the north of the country.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, it has shown the mobilizing capacity of Indigenous people – just as in Bolivia. And the goal of many is not to win support, but to demonstrate this strength.</p>
<h2>Will Peru’s protest follow the course of past unrest in the region?</h2>
<p>That is anybody’s guess. If you follow the logic of the Bolivian comparison you will see increasing turmoil, and potentially more violence – such as that country experienced in 2003 and 2019. If that is the case, returning Peru to the old style Lima-centric politics will be difficult. The deep divides in Peruvian society and the fracturing of its political system make it hard to envision a political force emerging that can deal with all of these issues. And that is what makes the current situation so difficult to resolve.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, comparisons to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2000/07/29/peru-inaugural-incites-protests-against-fujimori/0b8296b0-299a-414a-8bcc-b3bbf5c04789/">protests in Peru that ousted Alberto Fujimori</a> in 2000 may be misplaced. Those protests took place in a very different context – Fujimori was perceived by then as a dictator who had plundered the country of billions of dollars. It was an uprising to remove a dictator.</p>
<p>What you have now is an unpopular ex-president in jail and an unpopular president with contested claims to legitimacy in power. It is very different context. It isn’t a transition from authoritarianism to democracy; it is protest resulting from an inefficient democratic system at a time of a deeply divided country.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198232/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>As an academic and as director of a university research center, I've received funding from foundations, US government agencies, and multilateral institutions.
</span></em></p>Thousands of demonstrators have descended on Lima amid violent clashes with police. The protest movement could be taking cues from earlier mobilizations in neighboring Bolivia.Eduardo Gamarra, Professor of Politics and International Relations, Florida International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1951882022-12-20T20:13:16Z2022-12-20T20:13:16ZCOP15’s Global Biodiversity Framework must advance Indigenous-led conservation to halt biodiversity loss by 2030<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502047/original/file-20221220-14-yqs7ym.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2968%2C3777%2C2172&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted their new post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework on Dec.19, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/cop15-s-global-biodiversity-framework-must-advance-indigenous-led-conservation-to-halt-biodiversity-loss-by-2030" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>In the early hours of Dec. 19 — the last day of the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) conference in Montréal — the Parties to the <a href="https://www.cbd.int/">Convention on Biological Diversity</a> (CBD) adopted their new <a href="https://www.cbd.int/doc/c/e6d3/cd1d/daf663719a03902a9b116c34/cop-15-l-25-en.pdf">post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework</a>. </p>
<p>The goals and targets agreed within this framework, including the widely discussed Target 3, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1162/GLEP_a_00239">will guide conservation policy and investment for years to come</a>. Target 3 — also known as the 30x30 target — calls for the conservation of 30 per cent of global land and sea areas by 2030. </p>
<p>The CBD has long promoted the creation of protected areas (parks) for the protection of both <a href="https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.138421">terrestrial</a> and marine environments. The 30x30 target is a significant increase from the Aichi targets, set during the COP10 conference in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, which called for <a href="https://www.cbd.int/sp/targets/">17 per cent terrestrial and 10 per cent marine areas</a> to be protected by 2020.</p>
<p>As researchers who study conservation governance, we have closely followed the four years of negotiations that led to this historic agreement. We believe that as protected and conserved areas increase under the framework, an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.2027">equity-based approach</a>, which respects Indigenous rights and title, is essential to help bring the transformative changes we need to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. </p>
<h2>Challenges of 30x30</h2>
<p>In 2019, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2869">scientists called for a global deal for nature to save biodiversity</a>, including a minimum of 30 per cent of Earth to be formally protected. The <a href="https://www.hacfornatureandpeople.org/home">High Ambition Coalition</a> — a group of more than 100 countries including Canada — has advocated for the 30x30 target since its launch in January 2021. </p>
<p>Such area-based targets, however, raise concerns. Protected areas have <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/land9030065">perpetuated colonial ideologies</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.104923">violated Indigenous rights</a>. </p>
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<p>Some international organizations, like <a href="https://survivalinternational.org/campaigns/biggreenlie">Survival International</a>, campaigned against 30x30, fearing that it would lead to further land grabs, human rights violations and dispossession of Indigenous Peoples globally, such as <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/06/23/in-tanzania-the-maasai-are-evicted-from-their-land-in-the-name-of-wildlife-protection-and-tourism_5987719_4.html">the recent eviction of the Maasai from the Ngorongoro Nature Reserve in Tanzania</a>. </p>
<p>At COP15, many countries insisted that the ambitious 30x30 target must be matched by similarly ambitious funding. The Democratic Republic of the Congo <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/19/we-didnt-accept-it-drc-minister-laments-forcing-through-of-cop15-deal-aoe?CMP=share_btn_tw">initially rejected the framework on Monday</a>, arguing that promised financial transfers from developed to developing countries were still insufficient. Although <a href="https://enb.iisd.org/un-biodiversity-conference-oewg5-cbd-cop15-19Dec2022">Congo later agreed to the framework</a>, the tension during the meeting was high. The delegate from Namibia summarized it saying colonial injustice underlies all problems encountered in the CBD.</p>
<p>These concerns — regarding colonialism, global injustice and human rights violations — informed the negotiations of the Framework at COP15. </p>
<p>One sticking point was whether Indigenous and traditional territories should be included in Target 3 as a distinct category of conservation, separate from protected areas. The <a href="https://iifb-indigenous.org/2022/12/18/iifb-statement-plenary-171222/">International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity</a> argued that incorporating Indigenous and traditional territories into existing conservation policies, like government-led protected areas, undermines Indigenous self-determination. </p>
<p>Ultimately, the <a href="https://www.cbd.int/doc/c/e6d3/cd1d/daf663719a03902a9b116c34/cop-15-l-25-en.pdf">final framework</a> fell short of recognizing Indigenous territories as a distinct category of protection. </p>
<p>Some organizations are concerned this will put Indigenous Peoples at <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/12/biodiversity-cop15-biodiversity-deal-a-missed-opportunity-to-protect-indigenous-peoples-rights/">greater risk of human rights violations</a>, while others welcomed the <a href="https://iifb-indigenous.org/2022/12/19/indigenous-peoples-and-local-communities-celebrate-cop15-deal-on-nature-and-welcome-the-opportunity-of-working-together-with-states-to-implement-the-framework/">strong language in the framework</a> regarding respect for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. </p>
<h2>Canada’s role in 30x30</h2>
<p>Despite the concerns raised, the Global Biodiversity Framework creates opportunities to further Indigenous-led conservation. For example, following <a href="https://www.iucn.org/news/protected-areas/201911/iucn-publishes-new-guidance-recognising-reporting-and-supporting-other-effective-area-based-conservation-measures">international guidelines</a>, the creation and management of Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) can count towards the 30 per cent target. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas are Indigenous-led, represent a long-term commitment to conservation and elevate Indigenous rights and responsibilities.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to the <a href="https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2018/pc/R62-548-2018-eng.pdf">Indigenous Circle of Experts,</a> IPCAs are Indigenous-led, represent a long-term commitment to conservation and elevate Indigenous rights and responsibilities.</p>
<p>In Canada, there is growing recognition of <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/land8010010">the role of IPCAs in meeting conservation goals while also supporting reconciliation efforts</a>. In August 2021, for example, the Government of Canada <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/news/2021/08/government-of-canada-announces-340-million-to-support-indigenous-led-conservation.html">announced an investment of up to $340 million</a> in new funding over five years to support Indigenous leadership in nature conservation. Over $166 million of this will be dedicated to supporting IPCAs. </p>
<p>During the opening ceremony of COP15, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced funding of up to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/indigenous-conservation-protetion-cree-inuit-firstnations-1.6677350">$800 million to support Indigenous-led conservation initiatives over seven years</a>. Later in the summit, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/news/2022/12/introducing-the-new-first-nations-guardians-network.html">jointly announced</a> a new First Nations National Guardians Network with Valérie Courtois, the Director of <a href="https://www.ilinationhood.ca/">the Indigenous Leadership Initiative</a>. </p>
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<img alt="A man in a suit at a podium" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502062/original/file-20221220-18-87nitv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502062/original/file-20221220-18-87nitv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502062/original/file-20221220-18-87nitv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502062/original/file-20221220-18-87nitv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502062/original/file-20221220-18-87nitv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502062/original/file-20221220-18-87nitv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502062/original/file-20221220-18-87nitv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Prime Minister Trudeau announced funding of up to $800 million to support Indigenous-led conservation initiatives over seven years during the opening ceremony of COP15 on Dec. 6, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The federal, provincial, territorial and Indigenous governments have also announced work towards establishing new IPCAs, <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/parks-canada/news/2022/12/governments-of-canada-and-manitoba-and-four-first-nations-zero-in-on-a-new-indigenous-protected-area-in-one-of-the-worlds-largest-ecologically-inta.html">including one in the Seal River Watershed in Manitoba</a> and another one around <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/news/2022/12/important-first-step-taken-to-establish-new-indigenous-protected-and-conserved-area-around-great-bear-lake.html">Great Bear Lake (Tsá Tué) in the Northwest Territories</a>. </p>
<p>These investments demonstrate a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0100-6">growing recognition</a> that Indigenous-led stewardship has equal or better conservation outcomes than government-led conservation efforts. It also shows <a href="https://theconversation.com/protecting-not-so-wild-places-helps-biodiversity-109168">the need for innovative forms of conservation governance</a> beyond traditional protected areas. IPCAs present an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02041-4">important opportunity</a> for transformative change, where Indigenous Peoples’ rights and responsibilities are upheld, rather than undermined, while working toward global conservation goals.</p>
<h2>Beyond COP15</h2>
<p>In response to the CBD’s previous Aichi targets, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2773-z">the percentage of the Earth’s surface covered by protected areas increased from 14.1 to 15.3 per cent on land and from 2.9 to 7.5 per cent in the marine environment</a> between 2010 and 2019. The implementation of Target 3 could increase protected area coverage much further in the coming years.</p>
<p>According to COP15’s final agreement, the implementation of the Framework must follow a human rights-based approach, acknowledging the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment <a href="https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3983329?ln=en">as recognized by the UN</a>. </p>
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<p>Here in Canada, the federal government only <a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/declaration/index.html">recently passed</a> the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) Act, which recognizes and legally upholds the rights of Indigenous Peoples. The outcome of COP15, therefore, coincides with the national implementation of UNDRIP, informing the role that Indigenous rights will play in Canada’s conservation agenda.</p>
<p>Canada cannot meet its global commitments without <a href="https://thenarwhal.ca/cop15-indigenous-led-conservation/">centring Indigenous leadership</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/cop15-biodiversity-summit-in-montreal-canada-failed-to-meet-its-2020-conservation-targets-will-2030-be-any-better-195347">working in collaboration with Indigenous peoples</a>. </p>
<p>This can be achieved by following the recommendations of the Indigenous Circle of Experts to provide continued — and increased — support for Indigenous-led conservation initiatives, like IPCAs. Supporting Indigenous-led conservation can help improve biodiversity outcomes while upholding our responsibility to human rights and reconciliation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195188/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Noella Gray receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Hodson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). </span></em></p>As protected and conserved areas increase, an equity-based approach that respects Indigenous rights can help bring the transformative changes we need to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.Noella Gray, Associate Professor of Geography, University of GuelphVictoria Hodson, PhD Student, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1967082022-12-19T20:27:08Z2022-12-19T20:27:08ZIn Danielle Smith’s fantasy Alberta, Indigenous struggle is twisted to suit settlers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501624/original/file-20221216-19457-lyg55v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4385%2C2691&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Alberta Premier Danielle Smith appears at a news conference in Edmonton in October 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/in-danielle-smith-s-fantasy-alberta--indigenous-struggle-is-twisted-to-suit-settlers" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>What do a notorious Ku Klux Klan writer, right-wing libertarianism, the Cherokee <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Trail-of-Tears">Trail of Tears</a> and the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/the-lost-causes-long-legacy/613288/">“lost cause”</a> of the American Confederacy have to do with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s recent controversial statements on Indigenous matters? </p>
<p>More than we might imagine. </p>
<p>Smith was <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/danielle-smith-treaty-6-sovereignty-act-legislation-1.6685406">recently forced to backpedal</a> on comments conflating the ugly history of the Indian Act with Alberta’s treatment by Ottawa. </p>
<p>Just a month earlier, her office had to publicly address her <a href="https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/alberta-premier-danielle-smith-says-she-has-cherokee-roots-but-the-records-dont-back-that-up/">solidly debunked claims of distant Cherokee heritage</a>. She also compared the deadly ethnic cleansing of the Cherokee Trail of Tears with Alberta’s anti-Ottawa conflict as though they shared a similar moral significance. </p>
<p>These incidents are more than exasperating examples of studied ignorance or false equivalency. Smith’s grasp on Indigenous issues is untethered from actual history. It seems rooted not in genuine allyship and justice but in the appropriation of Indigenous experiences to advance white grievance politics in Alberta and beyond.</p>
<h2>Justifying false fantasies</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.hcn.org/issues/51.16/tribal-affairs-far-right-extremists-appropriate-indigenous-struggles-for-violent-ends">Right-wing white extremists have long tried to hijack Indigenous rights struggles</a> to justify their own fantasies of being oppressed by overreaching globalist governments and displaced by people of colour. </p>
<p>These attempts graft cleanly onto more popular frontier mythology about the “conquest” of North America, the “savages” who vanish into the sunset and the heroic white settlers, voyageurs, and pioneers who wrested modern Canada from the unspoiled wilderness. </p>
<p>In this self-justifying settler fantasy, Indigenous people become historical symbols of a false past of inevitable disappearance, not the vibrant cultural and political Nations still here today. When reduced entirely to the symbolic — and thus disconnected from actual Indigenous lives and realities — these stereotypes can be put to dangerous ideological uses.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman in an Indigenous headdress speaks into a microphone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501376/original/file-20221215-24-s1d2ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501376/original/file-20221215-24-s1d2ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501376/original/file-20221215-24-s1d2ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501376/original/file-20221215-24-s1d2ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501376/original/file-20221215-24-s1d2ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501376/original/file-20221215-24-s1d2ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501376/original/file-20221215-24-s1d2ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Assembly of First Nations National Chief RoseAnne Archibald says she supports treaty chiefs who are opposing Danielle Smith’s proposed Alberta Sovereignty Act.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Rewriting Cherokee history</h2>
<p>By way of illustration, look to a once bestselling book, <a href="https://www.salon.com/2001/12/20/carter_6/"><em>The Education of Little Tree</em> by Forrest Carter.</a> </p>
<p>First published in 1976, the book was initially presented as the charming autobiographical reflection of a mixed-race orphan raised by his wise Cherokee grandparents in the Tennessee mountains during the 1920s. </p>
<p>Yet Little Tree, his grandparents and family friend Willow John are seemingly the only Indigenous people in the whole of the southeastern United States. There’s no mention of the Eastern Band of Cherokees in North Carolina or other Nations in the east, and the Cherokees forced west on the Trail of Tears are referenced only as a pitiful remnant of a nobler past.</p>
<p>The main antagonists in the book aren’t the local whites and their descendants who profited the most from the policy of Indian Removal, but rather the faraway but intrusive “guv’mint” and its hated northern politicians. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cherokee-nation-wants-to-send-a-delegate-to-the-house-its-an-idea-older-than-congress-itself-191738">Cherokee Nation wants to send a delegate to the House – it's an idea older than Congress itself</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Carter misrepresents history to highlight the violent overreach of the government and arrogant city folk whose economic and social interests it represents. He repeatedly frames white Confederates and their descendants as being equally sympathetic and unfairly oppressed as Little Tree’s Cherokee family and ancestors. </p>
<p>In <em>Little Tree</em>, both white Confederates and Cherokees seek to protect their mutual mountain home from intruders, government agents and cynical politicians. The anger of white Confederate sympathizers and the anguish of dispossessed Cherokees become one, and their identities are wholly united by a single common enemy: guv'mint.</p>
<p>In so doing, Carter ignores the fact that the Cherokee Nation itself was <a href="https://www.history.com/news/civil-war-native-american-indian-territory-cherokee-home-guard">violently divided by the Civil War</a> and that many Cherokees supported the Union or neutrality over alliance with the Confederacy. </p>
<p>He also erases the inconvenient reality that it was the South’s white citizens, not the federal government, who most enthusiastically supported the Indian Removal Act and who benefited the most when Cherokees and other Indigenous nations were driven from the region.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Cars travel along a highway. A sign in the foreground reads Trail of Tears Auto Tour Route." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501623/original/file-20221216-27-nug7s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501623/original/file-20221216-27-nug7s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501623/original/file-20221216-27-nug7s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501623/original/file-20221216-27-nug7s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501623/original/file-20221216-27-nug7s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501623/original/file-20221216-27-nug7s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501623/original/file-20221216-27-nug7s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cars travel along an Illinois highway on the Trail of Tears Auto Tour Route. Cherokee were forced westward to Oklahoma along the infamous trail, where many died and are buried.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/James A. Finley)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Insidious rhetoric</h2>
<p>As might already be expected, Forrest Carter was neither Little Tree nor Cherokee. His real name was Asa Earl Carter, a violent segregationist, white supremacist and Ku Klux Klan leader who wrote the notorious 1963 <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/01/14/169080969/segregation-forever-a-fiery-pledge-forgiven-but-not-forgotten">“segregation now, segregation forever” speech for Alabama Gov. George Wallace</a>.</p>
<p>In the 1970s, he <a href="http://reconstructionofasacarter.com">refashioned himself</a> as “Forrest,” a genial, half-Cherokee fiction writer with a big moustache and folksy southern charm. Although he was more subtly libertarian in his fiction, <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/the-real-education-of-little-tree/">his commitment to anti-Blackness and pro-Confederacy propaganda never wavered</a>. </p>
<p>There’s nothing remotely Cherokee about the novel, but Carter was a masterful storyteller who exploited entrenched white stereotypes to lasting effect. Even though his true identity became widely known in 1991, <em>The Education of Little Tree</em> remains in print today. </p>
<p>It’s no great imaginative leap to see how Carter and Smith draw on similar ideas that, for all their differences, lead them in similar directions. </p>
<p>Smith, too, has cited <a href="https://timeline.com/part-cherokee-elizabeth-warren-cf6be035967e">mythical Cherokee heritage</a> as a reason for her distrust of government. She too has misrepresented Cherokee history to conflate the Trail of Tears and its thousands of deaths with Alberta outrage against an increasingly intrusive federal government. She too has tried to link the horrors of Indigenous genocide with entitled grievance narratives long tied to far-right white nationalism. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501610/original/file-20221216-27-65hba4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=168%2C51%2C4714%2C3272&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A dark-haired woman in profile." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501610/original/file-20221216-27-65hba4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=168%2C51%2C4714%2C3272&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501610/original/file-20221216-27-65hba4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501610/original/file-20221216-27-65hba4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501610/original/file-20221216-27-65hba4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501610/original/file-20221216-27-65hba4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501610/original/file-20221216-27-65hba4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501610/original/file-20221216-27-65hba4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alberta Premier Danielle Smith in November.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This doesn’t mean that Smith has read Carter’s book, knows his story or supports the Confederacy or white nationalism. She may be sincerely invested in her unsubstantiated family story and her belief that Alberta and Indigenous Nations share the same struggles and the same singular oppressor in Ottawa. </p>
<p>The appropriation of Indigenous struggles has a long history in libertarian circles on both the left and right. </p>
<p>The rhetoric that informed Carter’s work and energizes white resentment in the United States and Canada is an unmistakable undercurrent in Smith’s own political vision. Regardless of stated intent, both distort and weaponize Cherokee history to ugly ends. </p>
<p>Smith’s heritage claims are core to this problem. She’s invoked her supposed Cherokee ancestor and the Trail of Tears on multiple occasions to link Indigenous oppression with her Alberta-first libertarianism.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1592875777997012997"}"></div></p>
<p>She draws on this dodgy connection to assert insight and shared struggle while pushing a provincial sovereignty bill that’s on a <a href="https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/national-news/alberta-chief-critical-of-premier-danielle-smiths-claim-of-indigenous-roots-6126686">direct collision course</a> with First Nations’ treaty rights. </p>
<h2>Dangerous by design</h2>
<p>The disconnect is inevitable. And as <a href="https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2022/02/18/Convoy-Appropriations-Attack-Indigenous-People/">this year’s so-called freedom convoy protests</a> demonstrated, language around Indigenous rights is increasingly being appropriated by the same people who are quick to condemn Indigenous land and water protectors. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-every-canadian-should-remember-about-the-freedom-convoy-crisis-178296">What every Canadian should remember about the 'freedom convoy' crisis</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It’s happening elsewhere in Canada, too. Some of the more controversial “eastern Métis” groups in Canada were founded by <a href="https://maisonneuve.org/article/2018/11/1/self-made-metis/">explicitly anti-Indigenous white people</a> who now <a href="https://theconversation.com/becoming-indigenous-the-rise-of-eastern-metis-in-canada-80794">use bogus Indigenous heritage claims</a> to access the treaty rights they long railed against. </p>
<p>In Carter’s fantasy Appalachia — as in Smith’s fantasy Alberta — centuries of righteous Indigenous struggle are twisted into self-serving settler stereotypes that ignore actual Indigenous history, kinship and basic reality. </p>
<p>Reactionary white populism is hostile to Indigenous rights by design, as it’s ultimately about unilateral settler control of land and resources. But this remains unspoken in these circles. To speak of it would be to firmly dispel the false but convenient illusion of common struggle.</p>
<p>Whether intentional or not, Smith’s rhetoric is fundamentally anti-Indigenous. She’s distorting Indigenous histories and issues to dangerous ends and Canadians would do well to pay attention.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196708/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Heath Justice has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>Danielle Smith’s grasp of Indigenous issues seems rooted not in genuine allyship and justice but in the appropriation of Indigenous experiences to advance white grievance politics.Daniel Heath Justice, Cherokee Nation citizen, Professor of Critical Indigenous Studies and English, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1942232022-11-09T18:56:25Z2022-11-09T18:56:25ZViews from COP27: How the climate conference could confront colonialism by centring Indigenous rights<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494201/original/file-20221108-24-cp3shq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=61%2C45%2C3333%2C2208&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Co-author of this article, Chief Ninawa, hereditary Chief of the Huni Kui Indigenous people of the Amazon, holds a sign that says: 'Amazon is life, petroleum and gas is death' outside a hotel in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/views-from-cop27--how-the-climate-conference-could-confront-colonialism-by-centring-indigenous-rights" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The Huni Kui Indigenous people are an integral part of the Amazon Rainforest. They don’t differentiate between humans and nature. For them, there is only “nature” and humans are part of it. </p>
<p>They have historically put their lives on the line to protect the Amazon <a href="https://www.biologyonline.com/dictionary/biome">biome</a> and, like other Indigenous land- and water-protectors, many of their leaders have <a href="https://grist.org/international/land-defenders-face-violence-and-repression-clean-energy-could-make-it-worse/">lost their lives</a> in the fight against logging, mining and land grabbing. The Huni Kui also face the effects of pollution and climate destabilization. </p>
<p>As a hereditary Chief and elected President of the Huni Kui People of Acre, in the Amazon region in Brazil, I (Chief Ninawa Huni Kui) chose to participate at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) because the Amazon is crying out for help and my people represent the voice of this biome.</p>
<p>Sadly, as my co-author Vanessa Andreotti and I attend the meetings at the conference in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, it so far has confirmed my experiences at other COP conferences. </p>
<p>The vast majority of the discussions reproduce colonial patterns of unsustainable economic growth, ecological destruction and Indigenous dispossession that have been responsible for climate destabilization in the first place. </p>
<p>Despite extensive participation of diverse peoples and communities this year, there are fewer critical perspectives at the table. The consensus seems to be that <a href="https://theloop.ecpr.eu/cop27-in-egypt-an-archipelago-of-political-and-environmental-lies/">green multicultural capitalism</a>, a carbon neutral and more “inclusive” version of capitalism, will prevent further climate catastrophe. </p>
<p>However, we believe that COP27 could still be an important space to co-ordinate accountable climate action for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. To do so, organizers need to emphasize critical engagement with historical, systemic and on-going harm, centre Indigenous voices and rights, and do the difficult work of repairing and rebuilding relations. </p>
<h2>Deforestation largely benefits rich countries</h2>
<p>In the Amazon today, temperatures are rising dangerously and atypical floods, droughts and heat domes risk food and water security. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494353/original/file-20221109-15-jbbx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A forest area with smoke bellowing on one side and logging activities on the other." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494353/original/file-20221109-15-jbbx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494353/original/file-20221109-15-jbbx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494353/original/file-20221109-15-jbbx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494353/original/file-20221109-15-jbbx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494353/original/file-20221109-15-jbbx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494353/original/file-20221109-15-jbbx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494353/original/file-20221109-15-jbbx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The world’s largest rainforest — The Amazon — can turn from being a carbon sink to becoming a carbon source.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Edmar Barros)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, land grabbers take advantage of the severe droughts by <a href="https://phys.org/news/2022-11-amazon-agricultural-deforestation-drought.html">starting arson fires</a> and destroying large areas of the Amazon rainforest to make way for <a href="https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2022/01/14/agribusiness-giant-cargill-amazon-deforestation/">large-scale agribusiness</a>. These land grabs are aimed at producing <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00968-8">exports to meet the demand of rich countries</a>. </p>
<p>All of this happens at the expense of the life of the forest and the Indigenous Peoples who are part of it, and creates ripple effects around the world.</p>
<p>The Amazon biome, also called Amazonia, hosts the Earth’s largest tropical forests and the second largest river in the world. However, over the past 40 years, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03629-6">these forests have been subjected to deforestation, warming and moisture stress</a>.</p>
<p>Today, the Amazon biome is close to a <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amazon-rain-forest-nears-dangerous-tipping-point/">tipping point</a> where the forest can turn from being a carbon sink to becoming a carbon source. </p>
<h2>False solutions and green capitalism</h2>
<p>Most governments and multinational corporations funding and attending COP27 seem to want to turn the climate crisis into a business opportunity, to generate profit. This commodification and commercialization of nature is what has put us in a catastrophic situation.</p>
<p>Most of the celebrated climate solutions, such as <a href="https://www.landgap.org">land-based carbon removal</a>, <a href="https://archive.discoversociety.org/2020/07/01/viewpoint-biofuels-another-story-of-neo-colonialism/">biofuels</a> and many forms of so-called <a href="https://longreads.tni.org/an-unjust-transition">green energy</a>, are in fact forms of “CO2lonialism” — a term coined by the <a href="https://www.ienearth.org">Indigenous Environmental Network</a>. Indigenous Peoples are expected to pay the highest price for climate change mitigation, despite having the lowest levels of carbon emissions because of this CO2lonialism. At COP27, CO2lonialism is not the “elephant in the room,” it is “the room.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Smoke arises from power planst." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494256/original/file-20221108-12-sjt79k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494256/original/file-20221108-12-sjt79k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494256/original/file-20221108-12-sjt79k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494256/original/file-20221108-12-sjt79k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494256/original/file-20221108-12-sjt79k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494256/original/file-20221108-12-sjt79k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494256/original/file-20221108-12-sjt79k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carbon trading is a false solution that enables the Global North to continue with the polluting that has destabilized the climate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The “green” solutions presented by government leaders and heads of corporations represent more violations of Indigenous rights and more impositions on Indigenous territories, without consultation and without consent. </p>
<p>For example, take the case of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/8/1/green-colonialism-is-ruining-indigenous-lives-in-norway">wind farms on the Saami land in Norway</a> and the mining of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/14/electric-cost-lithium-mining-decarbonasation-salt-flats-chile">lithium</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/09/copper-mining-reveals-clean-energy-dark-side">copper</a>, <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/nickel-tesla-and-two-decades-of-environmental-activism-qa-with-leader-rapheal-mapou/">nickel</a> and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/31/the-dark-side-of-congos-cobalt-rush">cobalt</a> for the energy transition of the Global North. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.3898/136266210792307050">Carbon trading</a> and <a href="https://climatesociety.ei.columbia.edu/news/carbon-offsets-new-form-neocolonialism">offseting</a> are also false solutions that enable and encourage the Global North to continue the same system of unsustainable growth and overconsumption that has destabilized the climate. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsaa052">Carbon trading and offsetting</a> are mobilized by governments in the Global South to further dispossess Indigenous Peoples of their lands and livelihoods. </p>
<h2>Human extinction in slow motion</h2>
<p>Even though Indigenous Peoples are most <a href="https://theconversation.com/colonialism-why-leading-climate-scientists-have-finally-acknowledged-its-link-with-climate-change-181642">affected by climate change,</a> there are very few spaces where they can tell a wide audience about the challenges posed by adapting to climate change and mitigating its effects.</p>
<p>With <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-70-of-animal-populations-wiped-out-since-1970-report-reveals-aoe">climate destabilization and loss of biodiversity</a>, we are facing mass extinction in slow motion, including the <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-doomed-to-go-extinct/">possibility of human extinction</a>. Until we wake up to the magnitude of this threat, the world will continue to desire the same economic model that steals the future of generations to come. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494358/original/file-20221109-15-77qqxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A stall with banners demanding climate reparations." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494358/original/file-20221109-15-77qqxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494358/original/file-20221109-15-77qqxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494358/original/file-20221109-15-77qqxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494358/original/file-20221109-15-77qqxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494358/original/file-20221109-15-77qqxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494358/original/file-20221109-15-77qqxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494358/original/file-20221109-15-77qqxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples put up a stall at COP27 demanding climate reparations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Vanessa Andreotti)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The genuine process of decarbonization is a profound process of reparation of our relationship with the Earth and our relationship with and between ourselves. We need to recognize the repeated mistakes we have made and work with humility towards a new form of coexistence, a new form of relationship with the planet. </p>
<p>Without <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.603">repairing relationships</a>, we will not achieve the necessary co-ordination for local or global decarbonization. This is not an easy or painless process for those attached to the comforts and illusions of modern life. </p>
<p>A different future will not be possible without reverence, respect, reciprocity and responsibility towards the Earth and, on this issue, <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-the-amazon-indigenous-peoples-offer-new-compass-to-navigate-climate-change-167768">Indigenous Peoples have a lot to share</a>. </p>
<p>COP27 is still an important space for exchange of knowledge among Indigenous Peoples. It could also be a learning space for non-Indigenous people if Indigenous voices and rights were placed at the centre of climate destabilization discussions, and if reparations were on the table. </p>
<p><em>Sharon Stein, Assistant Professor of Higher Education at UBC, contributed to this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194223/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chief Ninawa Huni Kui receives research funding from the Rare and Musagetes Foundation. He is the elected president of the Federation of the Huni Kui Indigenous people of Acre. He is also a member of the Indigenous Environmental Network and the Global Alliance against Redd+.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vanessa Andreotti receives funding from SSHRC and is a co-founder of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial futures (GTDF) collective.</span></em></p>A different future will not be possible without reverence, respect, reciprocity and responsibility towards the Earth. On this issue, Indigenous Peoples have a lot to share.Chief Ninawa Huni Kui, Wall International Indigenous Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies (PWIAS), University of British ColumbiaVanessa Andreotti, Professor, Department of Educational Studies. CRC in Race, Inequalities and Global Change and David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1930722022-11-07T13:34:38Z2022-11-07T13:34:38ZWhat makes someone Indigenous?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492590/original/file-20221031-12-kfy9ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C11%2C3976%2C2646&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Participants in the Indigenous Peoples Of the Americas Parade in New York City, Oct. 15, 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-participate-in-the-first-annual-indigenous-peoples-news-photo/1434017560">Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/curious-kids-us-74795">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">curiouskidsus@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>What makes someone Indigenous? – Artie, age 9, Astoria, New York</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” </p>
<p>You may have heard that in school. The rhyme makes it easier to remember that 1492 was the year when an Italian explorer named Christopher Columbus <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christopher-Columbus/The-first-voyage">set sail from Spain</a> and landed in a chain of islands near modern-day Florida called the “West Indies.”</p>
<p>Europeans called the enormous land mass that we now know as North and South America the “New World” because, before the very late 15th century, nobody on the east side of the Atlantic Ocean even knew it existed. A few Viking explorers had reached the Americas hundreds of years earlier, but <a href="https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/early-exploration-of-the-Americas/543490">little is known</a> about their visits.</p>
<p>From Europeans’ standpoint, Columbus had discovered something new. But for millions of Native, or Indigenous, people who already lived there, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/1492/america.html">the “New World” wasn’t new at all</a>. </p>
<h2>Connected to place</h2>
<p>In the most basic terms, whether a person or a group of people is Indigenous comes down to <a href="https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/5session_factsheet1.pdf">where their ancestors lived and how long they lived there</a>. </p>
<p>People are considered Indigenous to a certain place when their ancestors existed and thrived in that place since time immemorial – basically, for longer than anyone can remember, or before people started keeping written historical records. </p>
<p>Indigenous peoples are the original inhabitants of a certain area. Their villages and territories were the first ones to be established in a particular place and were around long before modern cities, states or countries existed. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yhw5Ko0o5xE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In 2007, the United Nations adopted the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to help ensure the survival, dignity and well-being of Indigenous peoples around the world.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cultural identity</h2>
<p>There are an estimated <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/indigenous-peoples/#">476 million Indigenous people</a> in about 5,000 Indigenous groups spread out all over the world. They live in almost every corner of the globe, including the frozen Arctic in <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-people-arctic">northern Canada</a> and <a href="https://www.nativefederation.org/alaska-native-peoples/">Alaska</a>, the <a href="https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/native-people-of-the-american-great-plains">plains of the U.S.</a>, the mountains and rain forests of <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/region/lac/brief/indigenous-latin-america-in-the-twenty-first-century-brief-report-page">Latin America</a>, the <a href="https://lcipp.unfccc.int/about-lcipp/un-indigenous-sociocultural-regions/pacific">islands of the Pacific Ocean</a>, and throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, <a href="https://www.newzealand.com/int/maori-culture/">New Zealand</a> and just about anywhere else that people live – including major cities. </p>
<p>Each of those unique groups has deep, historical connections to a particular part of the world. And their experiences have produced just as many unique cultures.</p>
<p>Where you live – especially if your family has lived there for centuries – can have a huge impact on your way of life. It shapes things like the type of home you live in, the food you eat, how you cook and even things like how and who you worship in your religion.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1447565076349718528"}"></div></p>
<p>For instance, my father’s Indigenous ancestry comes from the <a href="https://comanchenation.com/">Comanche</a>, <a href="https://kiowatribe.org/">Kiowa</a> and <a href="https://www.cherokee.org/">Cherokee</a> tribes. The Comanches traveled around a lot, across a wide expanse of land from Canada in the north all the way down to the jungles of South America. </p>
<p>They learned to follow the migration of <a href="https://theconversation.com/bison-are-back-and-that-benefits-many-other-species-on-the-great-plains-107588">buffalo</a>, which was their main source of food. And they developed techniques that made traveling easier, such as creating mobile shelters called <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/tepee">tepees</a> that could be easily set up, broken down and carried from place to place.</p>
<p>My mother grew up in an Indigenous community known as <a href="https://taospueblo.com/">Taos Pueblo</a>. The people of Taos Pueblo stayed year-round in the same area of northern New Mexico, which was home to vast mountain ranges and flowing rivers. Since the people of Taos Pueblo did not have to move around as much, they built large buildings out of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/adobe">adobe</a>, or baked mud bricks, that were several stories tall and could not be moved.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492601/original/file-20221031-15-zornp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Adobe homes with mountains in the background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492601/original/file-20221031-15-zornp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492601/original/file-20221031-15-zornp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492601/original/file-20221031-15-zornp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492601/original/file-20221031-15-zornp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492601/original/file-20221031-15-zornp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492601/original/file-20221031-15-zornp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492601/original/file-20221031-15-zornp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Taos Pueblo in Taos, New Mexico, is a living Native American community that has been designated both a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and a National Historic Landmark.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/trees-with-fall-colors-at-the-taos-pueblo-which-is-the-only-news-photo/909633522">Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While being Indigenous is a matter of ancestry and place, different Indigenous groups have their own cultures, traditions, languages and religions, much as these things may differ from country to country, state to state or even city to city today.</p>
<h2>Political identity</h2>
<p>Today, being Indigenous does not necessarily mean that your ancestors lived in the same place where you live right now. In fact, throughout history many Indigenous groups were <a href="https://www.wri.org/insights/indigenous-peoples-losing-land-can-mean-losing-lives">removed from their traditional homelands</a> and forced to live somewhere else. </p>
<p>Most Indigenous groups who were forced off their lands did not want to leave. But settlers from elsewhere saw the lands and resources where Indigenous peoples lived and wanted them for their own countries. Often they used <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html">military force</a> to make Indigenous peoples leave their homes. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492605/original/file-20221031-16-2z90cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Interior Secretary Deb Haaland speaks at a news briefing, April 23, 2021." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492605/original/file-20221031-16-2z90cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492605/original/file-20221031-16-2z90cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492605/original/file-20221031-16-2z90cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492605/original/file-20221031-16-2z90cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492605/original/file-20221031-16-2z90cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492605/original/file-20221031-16-2z90cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492605/original/file-20221031-16-2z90cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, is the first Native American to serve as a U.S. cabinet secretary. She oversees millions of acres of public lands, as well as the nation’s trust responsibility to American Indians and Alaska Natives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/InteriorNativeVoices/b0e913e52cfc4bb1a903a2170c3b3b9c/photo">AP Photo/Evan Vucci</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many of those groups exist today as a type of government known as a tribe or Native nation. There are at least <a href="https://www.usa.gov/tribes#">574 tribes in the U.S. alone</a>. Like any other government, tribal governments make laws about how to live together peacefully, decide what it means to be a good citizen and plan for the future. </p>
<p>Together, those laws form a political community – an understanding about how all members of a Native nation agree to live and treat each other as part of the same Indigenous community.</p>
<p>So while being Indigenous has always been tied very closely to place, today it is also a matter of cultural and political identity. It helps to shape a person’s connection to their community and enables them to understand their place in history.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com</a>. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.</em></p>
<p><em>And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193072/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Torivio Fodder is an enrolled member of the Taos Pueblo, and of Comanche, Kiowa and Cherokee descent. </span></em></p>Geographic, cultural and political identity are all part of being Indigenous.Torivio Fodder, Indigenous Governance Program Manager and Professor of Practice, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1923302022-10-30T12:21:16Z2022-10-30T12:21:16ZAn attack of Indigenous rights is an attack on nature conservation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492199/original/file-20221027-1498-o2d4ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=27%2C88%2C2017%2C1404&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Establishing Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas, like the Thaidene Nëné National Park Reserve in the Northwest Territories, while respecting original treaties can help Canada meet its international conservation commitments.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Iris Catholique)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Oct. 24, the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/lutsel-ke-culture-camp-warrant-quashed-1.6627472?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar">Northwest Territories Supreme Court quashed a search warrant</a> that allowed wildlife officers to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/lutsel-k-e-culture-camp-raid-1.6583814">raid a Łutsël K’é Dene First Nation culture camp</a> in Thaidene Nëné National Park Reserve based on allegations of illegal hunting.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Two wildlife officers enter a tent" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492351/original/file-20221028-13-gn6xu5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492351/original/file-20221028-13-gn6xu5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492351/original/file-20221028-13-gn6xu5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492351/original/file-20221028-13-gn6xu5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492351/original/file-20221028-13-gn6xu5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492351/original/file-20221028-13-gn6xu5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492351/original/file-20221028-13-gn6xu5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wildlife officers conducted an extensive tent-by-tent search of the cultural camp of more than 80 people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Chase East Arm Adventures)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The raid, which took place last month, has been described by the Dene Nation as a <a href="https://nationtalk.ca/story/dene-nation-condemns-forceful-invasion-of-dene-cultural-camp">“clear breach and direct violation of Aboriginal rights.”</a> It also violated their right to be free from unreasonable searches by law enforcement officers under the <a href="https://bccla.org/privacy-handbook/main-menu/privacy7contents/privacy7-1-5.html#:%7E:text=">Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms</a>.</p>
<p>Łutsël K’é Dene First Nation has <a href="https://ipcaknowledgebasket.ca/ipca-knowledge-basket/stories/thaidene-nene-land-of-the-ancestors#Origin-Story">protected Thaidene Nëné (the land of our ancestors)</a> under their own law since time immemorial. They invited the government to establish the <a href="https://thenarwhal.ca/thaidene-nene-heralds-new-era-parks/">Thaidene Nëné National Park Reserve</a> in 2019 and protect it under the National Parks Act and the Protected Area Legislation of the Northwest Territories. </p>
<p>This is a prominent example of how the federal, territorial and First Nations governments have been <a href="https://ipcaknowledgebasket.ca/">working together to protect a culturally and ecologically significant landscape</a>. However, the raid on the Łutsël K’é Dene culture camp last month undermines these relationships and emphasizes the importance of Indigenous rights and community leadership for biodiversity conservation. An attack of Indigenous rights is an attack on nature conservation.</p>
<h2>Momentum towards Indigenous-led conservation</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.landoftheancestors.ca/">Thaidene Nëné</a> was established as an <a href="https://conservation-reconciliation.ca/about-ipcas">Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA)</a> by the Łutsël K’é Dene First Nation in 2019 after decades of negotiations with Parks Canada and the government of Northwest Territories. It is also a National Park Reserve and a Territorial Protected Area.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A map of Thaidene Nene National Park Reserve" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492305/original/file-20221028-62410-lwyx09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492305/original/file-20221028-62410-lwyx09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492305/original/file-20221028-62410-lwyx09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492305/original/file-20221028-62410-lwyx09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492305/original/file-20221028-62410-lwyx09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492305/original/file-20221028-62410-lwyx09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492305/original/file-20221028-62410-lwyx09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Established in 2019, the Thaidene Nëné National Park Reserve is an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Parks Canada)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In March 2018, the <a href="https://www.conservation2020canada.ca/who-we-are">Indigenous Circle of Experts</a>, who coined the term IPCA, tabled a report titled <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a2f1db1c027d842f876e280/t/5fc69253a97599144edea656/1606849123220/We+Rise+Together+ICE+Report.pdf"><em>We Rise Together</em></a>, which traces how protected areas <a href="https://thewalrus.ca/canadas-national-parks-are-colonial-crime-scenes/">historically resulted in the displacement of Indigenous Peoples</a>. </p>
<p>The report advised the Canadian government on how to meet its international conservation commitments under the UN Convention of Biological Diversity by, in part, establishing these IPCAs in the spirit of the original treaties. It argued that all IPCAs should be Indigenous-led, but supported by others. It reflected the growing body of <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-12625-260319">scientific evidence that shows that Indigenous Peoples have knowledge and governance systems</a> which, when allowed to operate, result in higher levels of biodiversity than state-run parks and protected areas.</p>
<p>Indigenous-led organizations like the <a href="https://www.ilinationhood.ca/">Indigenous Leadership Initiative</a> and <a href="https://iisaakolam.ca/">Iisaak Olam Foundation</a> have build on the momentum and brought about significant progress toward Indigenous-led conservation in Canada through initiatives like <a href="https://www.ilinationhood.ca/blog/guardianswildfirestrategy">strengthening wildfire management through Indigenous knowledge</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1550503182232592386"}"></div></p>
<p>In fact, the federal government recently announced an additional <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/news/2022/09/up-to-40-million-in-indigenous-led-area-based-conservation-funding-now-available.html">$40 million</a> for the establishment of IPCAs, making the federal contribution toward Indigenous leadership in conservation upwards of about $520 million to date. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://conservation-reconciliation.ca/">Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership</a> — a program hosted by the Indigenous Leadership Initiative and Iisaak Olam Foundation and the University of Guelph — has witnessed a rise in the number of new and emerging IPCAs. There are more than 70 declared IPCAs today.</p>
<h2>Broken trust</h2>
<p>The raid on the Łutsël K’é culture camps on Sept. 13 showed that there is still a long road ahead for conservation and reconciliation.</p>
<p>When Northwest Territories wildlife officers received a complaint about illegal hunting of the Bathurst Caribou Herd, they did not approach the <a href="http://www.landoftheancestors.ca/ni-hatni-dene.html">Ni Hatni Dene land guardians, who are the stewards of Thaidene Nëné</a>, for assistance and advice. </p>
<p>Instead, they obtained a warrant to conduct an extensive tent-by-tent search of a cultural camp of more than 80 people there. <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/lutsel-k-e-culture-camp-raid-1.6583814">On Sept. 13</a>, wildlife officers flew in to the culture camp at Timber Bay and spent three hours conducting their search.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A sea plane on the lake near a forested coast with a few people around." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492352/original/file-20221028-44561-naukmp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492352/original/file-20221028-44561-naukmp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492352/original/file-20221028-44561-naukmp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492352/original/file-20221028-44561-naukmp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492352/original/file-20221028-44561-naukmp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492352/original/file-20221028-44561-naukmp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492352/original/file-20221028-44561-naukmp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wildlife officers violated the inherent and treaty rights of the Łutsël K’é Dene First Nation when they raided the culture camp at Timber Bay, Thaidene Nëné on Sept. 13.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Chase East Arm Adventures)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These actions violated the Łutsël K’é Dene First Nation’s <a href="https://denenation.com/about/history/">inherent and treaty rights</a> to self-government.</p>
<p>This incident emphasizes that the colonial conservation model, which focused on the assertion of control over Indigenous territory, is still alive and well, even in places like Thaidene Nëné. The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.160">principles of co-governance for nature conservation</a> dictate that no one entity is “in charge,” but rather collaboration to protect the area is paramount. </p>
<p>In the words of the local <a href="https://cabinradio.ca/105305/news/politics/apologize-for-camp-search-dene-nation-and-mla-tell-gnwt/">Member of the Legislative Assembly Richard Edjericon</a>, this incident “runs the risk of setting Indigenous relations back another 150 years.”</p>
<h2>Making amends</h2>
<p>As other Indigenous governments and First Nations contemplate whether they want to work with federal, provincial or territorial governments to strengthen Canada’s collective efforts towards nature conservation, this incident at the Thaidene Nëné National Park Reserve might make them second guess such partnerships.</p>
<p>If Crown governments cannot respect and uphold Indigenous conservation leadership, many conservation initiatives will not see the light of day, disrupting the bits of progress made so far.</p>
<p>There is much work to be done to repair the relationship amongst the three governments committed to conserving Thaidene Nëné.</p>
<p>Public officials must stop criminalizing Indigenous Peoples and start upholding their rights to exercise their responsibilities on their traditional territories. Only then can we move forward in our collective goal of addressing the climate and biodiversity crises.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192330/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robin J. Roth receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>To address the climate and biodiversity crises, we must stop criminalizing Indigenous Peoples for exercising their treaty rights and start upholding them instead.Robin J. Roth, Professor, Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1903462022-10-05T19:02:22Z2022-10-05T19:02:22ZNZ police need better training in privacy and human rights law – here is what should happen<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486932/original/file-20220927-26-4evj6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1571%2C673%2C4419%2C3314&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The New Zealand Police were recently found to have been routinely and illegally photographing young people and adults in public. Many might have expected this to see an end to the practice – but apparently not. </p>
<p>Despite the findings of the <a href="https://www.privacy.org.nz/assets/New-order/Resources-/Publications/Commissioner-inquiries/8-SEPTEMBER-2022-IPCA-AND-OPC-Joint-Inquiry-into-Police-photographing-of-members-of-the-public.pdf">joint inquiry</a> by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) and Office of the Privacy Commission (OPC), police have not been directed to stop photographing adults. And Police Commissioner Andrew Coster has said the police “don’t necessarily accept entirely the implications of the report we received.”</p>
<p>At the heart of this issue, and more recent questions about the use of <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/475898/privacy-commissioner-requests-police-clarity-over-use-of-surveillance-cameras">traffic surveillance cameras</a> and <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/475851/privacy-commissioner-to-monitor-police-over-deleting-unlawful-photos">facial recognition technology</a>, is how the right to privacy is administered. Privacy is a fundamental but not an absolute right. The state – of which the police are a powerful arm – is allowed to collect information on people within its borders. </p>
<p>However there are rules governing the collection of information, with protecting privacy a key requirement. The IPCA-OPC report revealed that the police did not follow relevant privacy rules. </p>
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<h2>Police resistance</h2>
<p>Firstly, police photographed rangatahi (young people) without a lawful purpose. Police did not explain why the photography was necessary or seek proper consent from the rangatahi or their whānau (family). These were not isolated incidents.</p>
<p>Secondly, this demonstrated that the police don’t fully understand New Zealand’s privacy principles. </p>
<p>The joint inquiry recommended significant revising and enhancing of police policy, procedures and training to conform with the provisions of the Privacy Act. But this was <a href="https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2022/09/police-association-wants-damning-report-into-police-practices-when-photographing-public-to-be-thrown-out.html">rejected</a> by the Police Association on the grounds that it went too far and would hamper effective policing.</p>
<p>That view was in turn <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/474711/police-must-change-practices-around-photo-taking-deputy-privacy-commissioner">rejected</a> by the Deputy Privacy Commissioner. But despite the Privacy Commissioner issuing a compliance notice nine months ago, the police <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/474582/police-not-directed-to-stop-taking-photos-of-adults-despite-inquiry">continue</a> to photograph adults in public.</p>
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<h2>Trust-based policing</h2>
<p>Police failure to follow established rules – in privacy law or otherwise – has wider implications. Effective policing relies on a wide measure of public support and confidence. Trust is a key element of this.</p>
<p>In the past, trust in the police has been damaged by mistakes and poor management, including the politicisation of their role. As the 2007 <a href="https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/nz-police/commission-inquiry">Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct</a> recorded, there have also been instances of disgraceful conduct by police officers and associates involving the exploitation of vulnerable people.</p>
<p>Various attempts to rebuild trust have been made through provisions within the <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2008/0072/latest/whole.html">Policing Act</a>, an <a href="https://www.ipca.govt.nz/">Independent Police Complaints Authority</a>, public <a href="https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/m%C4%81ori-and-police/m%C4%81ori-and-police-working-together#:%7E:text=Treaty%20of%20Waitangi%20commitment,as%20New%20Zealand's%20founding%20document.">commitments to Māori</a> and formal <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/251999/police-apologise-to-tuhoe-over-raids">apologies</a> for wrongful actions that caused hurt and loss to innocent people.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/avoiding-a-surveillance-society-how-better-rules-can-rein-in-facial-recognition-tech-191075">Avoiding a surveillance society: how better rules can rein in facial recognition tech</a>
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<p>However, levels of trust vary by community, despite police claims (citing <a href="https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/publication/citizens-satisfaction-survey-reports">independent surveys</a>) that <a href="https://www.police.govt.nz/news/release/police-maintains-high-level-public-trust-and-confidence-1">public trust is high</a>. And the findings of the recent joint inquiry are another example of Māori being targeted by and <a href="https://www.police.govt.nz/sites/default/files/publications/annual-tactical-options-research-report-9-print.pdf">disproportionately represented</a> in police actions. </p>
<p>The report’s findings can be seen as further evidence of <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/108675NCJRS.pdf">institutionalised racism</a> within New Zealand’s justice system, for which the police are gatekeepers. For young people, the consequences of such breaches, and the resulting distrust of police, can last their entire lives and have intergenerational effects.</p>
<h2>Updating the law</h2>
<p>It is clear police education, training and legislation must change.</p>
<p>Currently, the principles of the Policing Act require police to do their work in a manner that respects human rights, including the right to be free from discrimination. </p>
<p>These principles should be amended to ensure that policing also accords with <a href="https://waitangitribunal.govt.nz/treaty-of-waitangi/meaning-of-the-treaty/">Te Tiriti o Waitangi</a>, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the Privacy Act and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-zealand-needs-a-new-gang-strategy-political-consensus-would-be-a-good-start-185677">New Zealand needs a new gang strategy – political consensus would be a good start</a>
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<p>Given the joint inquiry stems originally from complaints about the photographing of rangatahi, the policing principles should also accord with the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child">United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child</a>, prioritising the child’s best interests, their right to be free from discrimination, and their right to be heard.</p>
<p>Determining their best interests must then involve kaumātua (elders) and their communities in culturally appropriate ways. We must remember that what is in the best interests of tamariki and rangatahi Māori is multifaceted: they are tangata whenua (people of the land), they are <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/diagram/13162/harakeke-plant">te rito o te harakeke</a>. </p>
<h2>Respecting the law</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1989/0024/latest/DLM149440.html">Oranga Tamariki Act 1989</a> incorporates internationally recognised rights and principles concerning young people and children in domestic law. It also incorporates and supplements the longstanding tikanga notion of “<a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1989/0024/latest/DLM147094.html">mana tamaiti</a>”, defined in the law as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the intrinsic value and inherent dignity derived from a child’s or young person’s whakapapa (genealogy) and their belonging to a whānau, hapū, iwi, or family group, in accordance with tikanga Māori.</p>
</blockquote>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/laws-governing-police-use-of-dna-are-changing-are-the-proposals-fair-for-all-new-zealanders-158422">Laws governing police use of DNA are changing: are the proposals fair for all New Zealanders?</a>
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<p>Police taking unlawful photographs of rangatahi seems out of step with such a definition, as well as the act’s <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1989/0024/latest/DLM149440.html">general principles</a> and its <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1989/0024/latest/DLM152193.html">principles concerning youth justice</a>.</p>
<p>The protection of all communities and the prevention of crime are central goals of policing. But the police themselves must follow the rules and be accountable if they are to build the trust, support and confidence of the communities they serve.</p>
<p>Updating the Policing Act to better protect privacy will support necessary changes to police education and training, and meaningfully reflect the needs and aspirations of those at the flax roots of the community.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190346/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Questions about illegal surveillance photography and powerful facial recognition technology suggest updating the police training manual and the Policing Act itself should be a priority.Claire Breen, Professor of Law, University of WaikatoAlexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of WaikatoEdmond Thomas Carrucan, Lecturer in Law, University of WaikatoValmaine Toki, Professor of Law, University of WaikatoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1893892022-08-30T06:04:32Z2022-08-30T06:04:32Z‘One of the most progressive and environmentally conscious legal texts on the planet’: Chile’s proposed constitution and its lessons for Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481707/original/file-20220830-8728-ot2pey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C23%2C4000%2C2634&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Olga Stalska/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Chile may soon be the second country in the world to grant constitutional rights to nature, under astoundingly progressive reforms proposed by the government. If approved in the national referendum on 4 September, <a href="https://www.chileconvencion.cl/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Texto-Definitivo-CPR-2022-Tapas.pdf">the new constitution</a> would deliver profound changes to the country. </p>
<p>It’s no surprise that 50 of the 387 constitutional provisions concern the environment. Like Australia, Chile is facing mounting environmental pressures. This includes an escalating water crisis made significantly more challenging by the mining industry, long seen as a key pillar of the economy.</p>
<p>The proposed constitution seeks to rapidly pivot Chile toward ecological democracy, one that can transition an economy long dependent on mineral extraction toward cleaner, less resource-intensive, and more socially just forms of living – <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0094582X211009242"><em>buen vivir</em></a>.</p>
<p>While the votes aren’t yet in, there are valuable lessons in this process for Australia and other countries grappling with similar concerns.</p>
<h2>An era of change</h2>
<p>This era of constitutional change began in 2019, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03349-y">when over one million Chileans took to the streets</a> to voice their discontent over economic and social conditions in the country. </p>
<p>Initially unstructured and spontaneous, the protests were sparked by an increase in public transport costs, but <a href="https://theconversation.com/chile-protests-escalate-as-widespread-dissatisfaction-shakes-foundations-of-countrys-economic-success-story-125628">quickly coalesced</a> into a widespread constitutional crisis. </p>
<p>This crisis was an outcry against the deeply entrenched socio-economic inequalities seen as rooted in and perpetuated by the country’s legal framework. This is a legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), which saw <a href="https://theconversation.com/chiles-political-crisis-is-another-brutal-legacy-of-long-dead-dictator-pinochet-126305">soaring wealth inequalities</a> and power concentrated in the hands of business elites and private corporations.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/chiles-political-crisis-is-another-brutal-legacy-of-long-dead-dictator-pinochet-126305">Chile's political crisis is another brutal legacy of long-dead dictator Pinochet</a>
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<p>In the face of both social and ecological breakdown, further intensified by the arrival of COVID-19, over 80% of Chileans voted in favour of re-writing the constitution in 2020. </p>
<p>In May 2021, a constitutional convention was elected, formed by 155 representatives from across the country. Notably, 50% of them were women, and it was led by Mapuche linguist and Indigenous rights activist <a href="https://theconversation.com/chile-election-of-progressive-indigenous-academic-to-oversee-constitutional-reform-is-a-blow-to-right-wing-establishment-164088">Elisa Loncón</a>.</p>
<p>In July 2022, the convention delivered the much-anticipated draft constitution, which was immediately heralded by <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02069-0">supporters as</a> an “ecological constitution”.</p>
<h2>What are the reforms?</h2>
<p>Over the last decade, both Ecuador and Bolivia have been at the global forefront of advocating for the “rights of nature” or “the rights of Mother Earth”. These rights have made it possible to bring cases <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/02/plan-to-mine-in-ecuador-forest-violate-rights-of-nature-court-rules-aoe">on behalf of ecosystems into courts</a>, and to challenge the extractive imperatives of state ministries.</p>
<p>The proposed changes to Chile’s constitution build on these experiments, but take them considerably further. </p>
<p>Not only would Chile become the second nation after Ecuador to grant nature constitutional rights, they would also create an “ombudsman for nature” tasked with monitoring and enforcing them. According to the draft text, it would be the duty of the “state and society to protect and respect these rights”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481710/original/file-20220830-21491-owd2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481710/original/file-20220830-21491-owd2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481710/original/file-20220830-21491-owd2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481710/original/file-20220830-21491-owd2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481710/original/file-20220830-21491-owd2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481710/original/file-20220830-21491-owd2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481710/original/file-20220830-21491-owd2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481710/original/file-20220830-21491-owd2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Chile has vast reserves of lithium deposits.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>Citizens would also be empowered to bring environmental lawsuits, even before an environmental impact assessment has been approved. The monitoring of these rights would extend all the way down to the local level, decentralising environmental regulatory authority that has historically been concentrated in the capital of Santiago.</p>
<p>But perhaps even more significant are the proposals aiming to reverse another legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship: Chile’s decades-long privatisation of water.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/01/chiles-water-crisis-megadrought-reaching-breaking-point">Chile is in an unprecedented water crisis</a>, with over half of its 19 million people living in areas of severe water scarcity. Communities have fought numerous legal battles against extractive companies over a water allocation system that’s <a href="https://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/all-abs/285-a8-2-8/file">strongly biased toward industry</a>. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/chile-election-of-progressive-indigenous-academic-to-oversee-constitutional-reform-is-a-blow-to-right-wing-establishment-164088">Chile: election of progressive indigenous academic to oversee constitutional reform is a blow to right-wing establishment</a>
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<p>Articles in the proposed constitution concerning water rights, the human rights of water, and the protection of glaciers and wetlands significantly roll back these trends. They declare that water is not a commodity but, instead, incomerciable or “unsellable”.</p>
<p>Overturning this decades-long controversial <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214790X22000429">market mechanism</a> is the direct result of involving social and Indigenous movements in the constitutional process. It reflects and affirms their often-repeated recognition that <em>Agua es vida</em>, or “water is life”.</p>
<p>Beyond enshrining water protection measures, the draft constitution represents a renewed effort to bolster Chile’s natural resources governance, a move with significant impacts on the mining industry. It specifies that exploration and exploitation of mineral resources should ensure environmental protection and the interest of future generations. </p>
<p>There are also requirements to ensure sustainable management of land sites after a mine has closed, and for the promotion of value chain linkages (where mineral processing occurs in the country and benefits its people). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-need-lithium-for-clean-energy-but-rio-tintos-planned-serbian-mine-reminds-us-it-shouldnt-come-at-any-cost-167902">We need lithium for clean energy, but Rio Tinto's planned Serbian mine reminds us it shouldn't come at any cost</a>
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<p>Such considerations are particularly crucial for the global transition towards renewable energy, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-27/transcript-what-a-new-chilean-constitution-would-mean-for-mining#xj4y7vzkg">which poses high demands</a> on Chile’s copper and lithium industry, minerals used for energy storage.</p>
<p>The global rush for these minerals is <a href="https://transparency.org.au/corruption-minerals-energy-transition-risk/%22%22">increasing governance challenges and putting pressure</a> on communities already under environmental and water stress. Strong legal support for a more equitable, fair and sustainable governance framework is imperative.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1563584450721501184"}"></div></p>
<h2>Lessons for the world</h2>
<p>Many questions remain about how these reforms would be put into practice. Nevertheless, they represent the culmination of dialogue between sectors that have historically been excluded from political power. </p>
<p>Australia has much to learn from this process. Most important, perhaps, is that despite the resistance of pro-market sectors, including the mining industry, sweeping and rapid transformations are indeed imaginable in the climate crisis. Other worlds are possible. <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/pluriversal-politics">Other forms</a> of democratic practices are possible.</p>
<p>Addressing climate change while ensuring a sustainable energy transition with inter-generational and inter-cultural equity means prioritising the voices of those who have been systematically excluded – particularly Indigenous communities. Australia would do well to heed this lesson.</p>
<p>And the lessons aren’t just for Australia. While many countries have reluctantly acknowledged the climate emergency that continues to engulf us, Chile is nearly alone globally in acting with the sense of urgency required. What it has already achieved is historic. </p>
<p>From an outcry in the streets to the election of an outstandingly diverse constitutional convention, Chile has crafted one of the most progressive and environmentally conscious legal texts on the planet. Chile’s experience demonstrates that bold, just, and democratic action is not only possible, but necessary.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/chile-abolishes-its-dictatorship-era-constitution-in-groundbreaking-vote-for-a-more-inclusive-democracy-148844">Chile abolishes its dictatorship-era constitution in groundbreaking vote for a more inclusive democracy</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189389/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ana Estefanía Carballo is a Research and Programme Manager, Accountable Mining, Transparency International Australia. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erin Fitz-Henry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Like Australia, Chile is facing mounting environmental pressures, such as an escalating water crisis. If the constitution is approved in September it’ll deliver profound changes to the country.Ana Estefanía Carballo, Honorary Research Fellow in Mining and Society, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of MelbourneErin Fitz-Henry, Deputy Coordinator - Anthropology, Development Studies & Social Theory, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1848162022-06-29T12:11:35Z2022-06-29T12:11:35ZThis Canada Day, settler Canadians should think about ‘land back’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472334/original/file-20220704-14-u28g1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C0%2C3583%2C2392&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A bus blocks Argyle Street South in Caledonia, Ont., as a group of labour councils and unions delivered food and support to land defenders at a land reclamation camp known as 1492 Land Back Lane in October 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Carlos Osorio</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/this-canada-day--settler-canadians-should-think-about--land-back-" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Last Canada Day, Parliament Hill teemed with orange as thousands marched in response to the <a href="https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/shame-on-canada-thousands-attend-cancel-canada-day-rally-on-parliament-hill-1.5493234">unmarked graves of Indigenous children being found at</a> former residential school sites. #CancelCanadaDay <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/cancel-canada-day-canadian-voices-1.6076022">trended on social media</a> while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau <a href="https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/shame-on-canada-thousands-attend-cancel-canada-day-rally-on-parliament-hill-1.5493234">urged Canadians</a> to reflect on the country’s failures.</p>
<p>As in-person festivities return to Ottawa for the first time since 2019, it appears to be <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/canada-day.html">business as usual</a>. But should it be?</p>
<p>For most settler Canadians — myself included — July 1 is a day to celebrate the rights, freedoms and privileges that come with being Canadian. Privileges, however, come with responsibilities. A crucial one for settler Canadians is to build meaningful relationships with Indigenous people and nations.</p>
<p>Many <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/27/what-makes-me-canadian-settler/">Canadians dislike</a> being labelled “settlers.” The term refers to <a href="https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/beyondlecture/chapter/imagining-a-better-future-an-introduction-to-teaching-and-learning-about-settler-colonialism-in-canada/">non-Indigenous people who, or whose ancestors, settled on Indigenous land</a>, although recent debates question the inclusion of <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/gyajj4/who-is-a-settler-according-to-indigenous-and-black-scholars">descendants of slaves</a> and <a href="https://www.academia.edu/424977/Are_People_of_Colour_Settlers_Too">non-white immigrants</a>.</p>
<p>As a white scholar studying territorial rights, I see my status as a settler as part of being Canadian. It is not an accusation, but a reality of living on <a href="https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/01/24/analysis/what-we-mean-when-we-say-indigenous-land-unceded">unceded Indigenous lands</a>. It is a recognition that the benefits Canadians enjoy are built on the denial of <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-rights">Indigenous Peoples’ rights</a> to self-determination of their land according to their laws. </p>
<p>Settler Canadians have a responsibility to build respectful, reciprocal relationships with Indigenous nations on our shared geographic space. This relationship starts with land restitution. </p>
<h2>What is land restitution?</h2>
<p>For many settler Canadians, “land back” discussions generate anxiety and discomfort. Contrary to people’s perceptions, however, land back does not mean the removal of all non-Indigenous people from North America. Instead, as many <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/wolastoqey-name-forestry-companies-in-land-claim-1.6267718">Indigenous leaders have argued</a>, it is about restitution: the return of jurisdictional control to Indigenous nations.</p>
<p>In legal and political philosophy, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/territorial-rights/">jurisdiction</a> is the right to make and enforce laws over a geographic area. It also often includes control over the extraction and development of natural resources. </p>
<p>When we talk about restitution in Canada, we are talking about <a href="https://breachmedia.ca/land-back/">Crown land</a> — land owned by federal and provincial governments. <a href="https://redpaper.yellowheadinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/red-paper-report-final.pdf">Eighty-nine per cent of Canada’s land</a> is Crown land, while the other 11 per cent is privately owned. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two women kayak in a blue and yellow kayak on a lake with trees in the background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471186/original/file-20220627-23-2u3y8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471186/original/file-20220627-23-2u3y8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471186/original/file-20220627-23-2u3y8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471186/original/file-20220627-23-2u3y8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471186/original/file-20220627-23-2u3y8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471186/original/file-20220627-23-2u3y8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471186/original/file-20220627-23-2u3y8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Two women kayak on a waterway called the sanctuary located on Crown land north of Bobcaygeon, Ont.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Thornhill</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Indigenous land rights in Canada are protected under Section 35 of the Constitution as <a href="https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/aboriginal_title/">Aboriginal title</a>. These are special rights that flow from Indigenous nations’ political sovereignty. </p>
<p>Aboriginal title, however, is not the same as restitution. This is because Canada has ultimate legal authority — or “<a href="https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1569/index.do">Crown sovereignty</a>” — over all land within its borders.</p>
<h2>Why does restitution matter?</h2>
<p>Indigenous nations’ jurisdictional rights are recognized in the <a href="https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/royal_proclamation_1763/">Royal Proclamation of 1763</a> and the United Nations’ <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf">Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</a>. They are also <a href="https://www.queensu.ca/iigr/sites/webpublish.queensu.ca.iigrwww/files/files/pub/SOTF%202017/AAPrelim%20of%20SOTF%202017.pdf">recognized in treaties</a>.</p>
<p>Canada has <a href="https://www.ubcic.bc.ca/canadafailingindigenouspeoples">ignored many of its treaty obligations</a>, but treaties are integral to land restitution. They recognize Indigenous nations as “separate but equal” with <a href="https://www.queensu.ca/iigr/sites/webpublish.queensu.ca.iigrwww/files/files/pub/SOTF%202017/AAPrelim%20of%20SOTF%202017.pdf">their own constitutional orders and governance structures</a> who share land with the Canadian state. </p>
<p>Land restitution also has larger, positive implications. A 2019 <a href="https://ipbes.net/global-assessment">United Nations Report on biodiversity</a> found that Indigenous jurisdictions can mitigate biodiversity loss. This is because Indigenous practices emphasize land restoration and sustainability. Land restitution, then, is also crucial in stopping the climate crisis. </p>
<p>It is important to note that Indigenous nations do not need settler consent to exercise their jurisdiction over land, and many do so, <a href="https://www.aptnnews.ca/ourstories/cirg/">despite violent resistance from the Canadian state</a>. Ending this violence requires settlers to recognize their responsibility to support restitution.</p>
<h2>How are settlers responsible?</h2>
<p>Colonialism is perceived as a “<a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1571589171655">sad chapter</a>” in Canada’s history, for which settlers must make amends. But <a href="https://theconversation.com/not-in-the-past-colonialism-is-rooted-in-the-present-157395">colonialism is not in the past: it continues in the present</a> through government policies and institutions and the denial of Indigenous Peoples’ rights.</p>
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<img alt="A woman holds a sign that reads 'I stand on stolen land'." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471185/original/file-20220627-14-6sk75e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471185/original/file-20220627-14-6sk75e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471185/original/file-20220627-14-6sk75e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471185/original/file-20220627-14-6sk75e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471185/original/file-20220627-14-6sk75e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471185/original/file-20220627-14-6sk75e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471185/original/file-20220627-14-6sk75e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">It’s important to acknowledge Canada is on stolen land.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We often think of responsibility in terms of liability — someone is responsible when they cause or fail to prevent harm. Responsibility, however, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195392388.001.0001">can also be political</a>: people can be responsible because they benefit from unjust institutions. They can also be responsible by virtue of their <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199548439.003.0028">membership in a political collective</a>, like the Canadian state. </p>
<p>So settler Canadians have a collective responsibility as Canadians to support land restitution — regardless of our individual actions. This is because land restitution is required for building <a href="https://redpaper.yellowheadinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/red-paper-report-final.pdf">just relations with Indigenous people and nations</a>. </p>
<p>The first step is to critically engage with the meaning of being settler Canadian. One way to do this is to learn about <a href="https://native-land.ca">whose land you live on</a> and the history of that land. If you live on treaty land, what are your responsibilities? Another is to hold your elected representatives accountable: How are they advancing justice for Indigenous Peoples? Are they working to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s <a href="https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf">94 Calls to Action</a> or the <a href="https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/">Calls for Justice</a> from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls?</p>
<p>Canada Day can be a day to celebrate the privileges we enjoy as Canadians. However, we must also acknowledge that we enjoy these privileges as settlers. This Canada Day, settler Canadians should take time to reflect on our responsibilities to build a better future: one that all sovereign nations on this land can celebrate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184816/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kaitie Jourdeuil receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>Settler Canadians have a responsibility to build respectful, reciprocal relationships with Indigenous nations on our shared geographic space. This relationship starts with land restitution.Kaitie Jourdeuil, PhD Candidate in Political Theory, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1850852022-06-19T12:51:09Z2022-06-19T12:51:09ZThe Amazon rainforest is disappearing quickly — and threatening Indigenous people who live there<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468841/original/file-20220614-12-40vasd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C23%2C3970%2C2670&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A child from the Mayuruna ethnic group stands on a pier on the banks of the Atalaia do Norte River in Amazonas state, Brazil, on June 12, 2022. Federal police and military forces are searching and investigating the disappearance of British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous affairs expert Bruno Araujo Pereira. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Edmar Barros)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Forests throughout the world are shrinking year after year — and Brazil is the epicentre. According to the <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/what-animals-live-in-the-amazon-and-8-other-amazon-facts">World Wildlife Fund</a>, more than a quarter of the Amazon rainforest will be devoid of trees by 2030 if <a href="https://time.com/amazon-rainforest-disappearing/">cutting continues at the same speed</a>.</p>
<p>If nothing is done to stop it, an estimated <a href="https://www.wwf.org.uk/sites/default/files/2021-12/WWF%20briefing%20-%20Westminster%20Hall%20debate%20on%20Amazon%20deforestation%205%20January%202022.pdf">40 per cent of this unique forest</a> will be razed by 2050.</p>
<p>Beyond the material and environmental consequences, this deforestation also <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/ClimateChange/COP21.pdf">threatens human rights</a>, including the rights of marginalized communities to life, physical integrity, a reasonable quality of life and dignity. Brazil is one of the most worrying cases in this regard.</p>
<p>As a PhD student in political science, my research interests include climate justice, the energy transition, the green economy and international environmental politics.</p>
<h2>Chainsaw massacre</h2>
<p>Article 25 of the <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf">United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</a> rules that these communities fully possess “the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources.”</p>
<p>This article is not being respected by the Brazilian government in the Amazon.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468265/original/file-20220610-28106-bfsenj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C1%2C985%2C745&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Aerial drone view of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Trees illegally cut and burned to open up land for agriculture and livestock in the Jamanxim National Forest, Para, Brazil" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468265/original/file-20220610-28106-bfsenj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C1%2C985%2C745&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468265/original/file-20220610-28106-bfsenj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468265/original/file-20220610-28106-bfsenj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468265/original/file-20220610-28106-bfsenj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468265/original/file-20220610-28106-bfsenj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468265/original/file-20220610-28106-bfsenj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468265/original/file-20220610-28106-bfsenj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Jair Bolsonaro’s government has contributed to the acceleration of deforestation in the Amazon, threatening various Indigenous peoples in the region.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although the country had pledged to significantly reduce deforestation and limit clear-cutting to 3,925 square kilometres, data from Human Rights Watch shows that chainsaws <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/brazil#74d7dc">have razed nearly 13,000 square kilometres of tropical forests</a>, making communities of Indigenous peoples even more vulnerable.</p>
<p>The rate of deforestation in these territories increased by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-01368-x">34 per cent between 2018 and 2019, despite Brazil’s commitment in 2009 to reduce it by 80 per cent</a>. This has led to the forced displacement of communities over hundreds of kilometres, as well as major health problems and a loss of reference points. According to Human Rights Watch, nearly <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/19/crisis-brazilian-amazon">13,235 square kilometres of the Amazon rainforest</a> was clear cut between August 2020 and July 2021, an 22 per cent increase, compared to the same period in the previous year.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/elections-in-brazil-lula-faces-many-challenges-running-against-jair-bolsonaro-183494">This coincides</a> with Jair Bolsonaro’s accession to power. In the month of January 2022 alone, 430 square kilometres of tropical forest was destroyed, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60333422">five times more than in January 2021</a>.</p>
<h2>Threats and assassinations</h2>
<p>Multiple abuses have been documented in Brazil since the beginning of colonization, including <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/09/17/rainforest-mafias/how-violence-and-impunity-fuel-deforestation-brazils-amazon">the illegal encroachment of the Brazilian state</a> on Indigenous territories. Under Bolsonaro, the number of criminal networks contributing to the deforestation of the Amazon has multiplied. Organized crime views the large timber and agriculture industries as opportunities to move and launder money. The groups illegally exploit forest land, then <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90698713/a-hidden-major-cause-of-global-deforestation-organized-crime">hide drugs</a> in timber shipments destined for Europe or Asia.</p>
<p>Experts qualify this illegal activity as “<a href="https://dialogo-americas.com/articles/narcotrafficking-in-brazil-speeds-up-amazon-rainforest-destruction-and-increases-violence/#.Yp6lTi3pNN0">narco-deforestation</a>.” Numerous illegal gold and mineral extraction sites are also operating in the Amazon, and the companies running them often make threats to the <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/munduruku-fight-save-amazon-indigenous-world-deforestation/">Munduruku that live there</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/11/02/cop26-dont-be-fooled-bolsonaros-pledges">People and activists who have protested the ongoing deforestation</a> have been threatened, harassed and killed. In 2019, the NGO Global Witness recorded <a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en/all-countries-and-regions/brazil/">24 deaths of environmental activists and land defenders</a>, almost all occurring in the Amazon. This puts Brazil in third place among the countries with the highest number of deaths of environmental defenders, after <a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/defending-tomorrow/">Colombia and the Philippines</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr19/5694/2022/en/">There are reminders of this in the news</a>. Bruno Araujo Pereira, a defender of environmental and Indigenous rights, and British journalist Dom Phillips have been missing since June 5, in an area called the Javari Valley, which has a reputation of being “<a href="https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2022/06/dom-phillips-and-bruno-araujo-pereira-brazil/">lawless</a>.”</p>
<p>According to a local organization, the two had received death threats shortly before disappearing. Brazilian police first said <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/belongings-found-journalist-indigenous-expert-amazon-brazil-1.6486476">search teams had discovered their belongings</a> and later <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/13/dom-phillips-bruno-pereira-bodies-found-brazil">that bodies were spotted in the area of their disappearance</a>. Police reported on June 15 they had <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/suspects-confess-killing-british-journalist-brazilian-guide-band-news-2022-06-15/">found human remains while searching for the pair</a> and that a fisherman who had fought with the pair had confessed to their killing.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468517/original/file-20220613-16-4qip2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="boat on a river in amazon" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468517/original/file-20220613-16-4qip2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468517/original/file-20220613-16-4qip2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468517/original/file-20220613-16-4qip2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468517/original/file-20220613-16-4qip2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468517/original/file-20220613-16-4qip2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468517/original/file-20220613-16-4qip2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468517/original/file-20220613-16-4qip2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Police navigate the Itaquai River during the search for British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous affairs expert Bruno Araujo Pereira in the Indigenous territory of the Javari Valley in Atalaia do Norte, Amazonas state, Brazil, on June 10, 2022. Phillips and Pereira were last seen on June 5.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Edmar Barros)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The number of deaths of people involved in environmental and territorial defence may be greatly underestimated, as data are not available and transparent for all countries.</p>
<h2>Women and children, the main victims of deforestation</h2>
<p>A recent <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/ClimateChange/COP21.pdf">United Nations report</a> reveals a strong correlation between worsening climate change and deteriorating human rights around the world.</p>
<p>Deforestation disproportionately affects <a href="https://www.fern.org/publications-insight/forest-loss-affects-women-and-children-disproportionally-1966/">Indigenous communities</a>, especially women and children. It increases the pressure already placed on women to feed their children and families, while limiting their access to essential goods, including medicine. </p>
<p>Indeed, the health of these communities depends on access to natural medicinal products found in biodiversity. The Amazon is a major reservoir of substances used in the manufacture of several pharmaceutical products available on the South American continent. </p>
<p><a href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/53/6/573/224740">Nearly 80 per cent of the population</a> in developing countries relies on natural medicinal products for their primary health care. In the majority of communities, it is also women who are responsible for cultivating the land and providing transportation and water treatment.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468518/original/file-20220613-21-qpn2f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="indigenous people on steps" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468518/original/file-20220613-21-qpn2f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468518/original/file-20220613-21-qpn2f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468518/original/file-20220613-21-qpn2f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468518/original/file-20220613-21-qpn2f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468518/original/file-20220613-21-qpn2f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468518/original/file-20220613-21-qpn2f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468518/original/file-20220613-21-qpn2f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People watch police activities during the search for British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous affairs expert Bruno Araujo Pereira. Deforestation disproportionately affects Indigenous people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Edmar Barros)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Children are equally at risk. For example, a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2018.03.002">study conducted in sub-Saharan African countries</a> shows a link between the loss of forest cover and the deterioration of health conditions of the youngest. Malnutrition, caused by reduced availability of fruits, vegetables and nuts, can affect children’s growth. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-environment-wildfire-who-idUSKCN1VK1FM">The exposure to smoke</a> from the multiple fires in the Amazon is also likely to cause respiratory problems and even more serious conditions in children.</p>
<h2>More farming, more deforestation</h2>
<p>Deforestation in Brazil offers a preview of the impact that climate change will have on human rights, both in Latin America and elsewhere in the world. In addition, due to the war in Ukraine, Brazil is looking to <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2022/04/30/can-brazil-help-with-food-shortages-around-the-world">fill the food gap</a> on world markets with crops such as wheat and grain.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-05-04/world-will-face-a-food-crisis-says-brazilian-minister">Brazil’s contribution</a> is appreciated by countries such as <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2022/sc14894.doc.htm">Sudan, Pakistan and Haiti</a>, which are among those most affected by the food crisis. But increased production may dangerously accelerate deforestation and human rights abuses can be expected to increase.</p>
<p>One thing is certain, one of the lungs of our planet is seriously ill and time is running out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185085/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Félix Bhérer-Magnan ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The deforestation of the Amazon in Brazil is at its peak, with 2022 breaking all records. Deforestation threatens human rights.Félix Bhérer-Magnan, Étudiant au doctorat en science politique, Université LavalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1850932022-06-15T21:03:47Z2022-06-15T21:03:47ZBuilding bridges between scientific and Indigenous knowledge<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469006/original/file-20220615-15-du1m1k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C8%2C2991%2C1886&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Men participate in a demonstration of rope making for dog teams, May 12, 2022, in Inukjuak, Que. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: This story is part of a series that includes live interviews with some of Canada’s top social sciences and humanities academics. It is co-sponsored by The Conversation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Check back later for the video recording of the interview.</em></p>
<p>More than 20 years ago, I participated in the founding of the <a href="https://reseaudialog.ca">Indigenous Peoples’ Research and Knowledge Network (DIALOG)</a>. Its mandate is to develop an ethical, constructive and sustainable dialogue between the academic world and the Indigenous world.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/results-resultats/prizes-prix/2021/connection_levesque-eng.aspx?wbdisable=true">This year the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) awarded us the Connection 2021 Award</a> on behalf of the network’s management team, recognizing the importance of DIALOG’s mission and its major contribution to reconciliation between Québec/Canadian society and Indigenous societies.</p>
<p>As a forum for sharing, meeting and learning, DIALOG connects Indigenous and non-Indigenous academic researchers, knowledge keepers, leaders, Indigenous intellectuals and students who are engaged in updating and renewing scientific and Indigenous research practices and knowledge.</p>
<p>The secret of DIALOG is that we did not try to bring Indigenous people to the university. We went to see them, in their homes.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A hand holding a flower of a plant" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468787/original/file-20220614-24-r12wce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468787/original/file-20220614-24-r12wce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468787/original/file-20220614-24-r12wce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468787/original/file-20220614-24-r12wce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468787/original/file-20220614-24-r12wce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468787/original/file-20220614-24-r12wce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468787/original/file-20220614-24-r12wce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Naskapi community of Kawawachikamach.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(DIALOG)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Renewing relationships</h2>
<p>DIALOG is characterized by its broad understanding of the driving role of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2019.03.011">co-construction in advancing and mobilizing knowledge</a>. Its mode of operation is centred on openness to multiple forms of knowledge, and its existence is rooted in long-term work and international outreach.</p>
<p>DIALOG’s mission has always been to renew the relationship between the university and the Indigenous world. It puts justice at the heart of its actions, as well as a desire to contribute to improving the living conditions of Indigenous people and the recognition of their rights, including the right to self-determination. The relationship between the university and the Indigenous people has for too long been one-sided, related exclusively to knowledge, and bringing about few benefits to Indigenous communities.</p>
<p>By building this space of reconciliation in which Indigenous voices, languages and knowledge can be expressed in their own way, DIALOG has recognized the existence and foundations of Indigenous knowledge systems and documented the contribution of Indigenous cultures to the common heritage of humanity.</p>
<h2>Fieldwork</h2>
<p>I am fortunate to be part of the first generation of Québec anthropologists who wanted, from very early on, not only to learn about Indigenous realities but also to get to know these people by working closely with them. I began working with Indigenous communities some 50 years ago, so I “grew up” working with them. </p>
<p>Being present in Indigenous communities and territories was an essential part of our training. I’m not talking about visits of a week or two, but years of sharing community life, staying with families that welcomed us and learning about the multiple dimensions of local cultures. I will have spent almost seven years living in Indigenous communities.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468786/original/file-20220614-13-bjpzkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468786/original/file-20220614-13-bjpzkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468786/original/file-20220614-13-bjpzkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468786/original/file-20220614-13-bjpzkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468786/original/file-20220614-13-bjpzkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468786/original/file-20220614-13-bjpzkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468786/original/file-20220614-13-bjpzkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kinawit cultural site, Val-d'Or.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(DIALOG)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The main difference between the time I began working as an anthropologist and today lies in the voice of Indigenous people, themselves. The words of Indigenous politicians have been relayed by the media for many years. However, today, other words are being heard, from young people, women and Elders — the words of citizens, carried by people of all ages and all genders who care about identity, education, culture.</p>
<p>Today, we rightly insist on the importance of researchers favouring the co-production of knowledge. Research is done with Indigenous people, not on Indigenous people.</p>
<h2>Respect, equity and sharing</h2>
<p>The values of respect, equity, sharing, reciprocity and trust animate the network members, whoever they may be, according to their respective trajectories and their specific contributions to knowledge. Together, these researchers explore diverse paths of knowledge and draw on Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies to provide new responses to the community challenges their populations are facing.</p>
<p>DIALOG also focuses on the potential for innovation and social transformation within the organizations that work toward the well-being of Indigenous people, whether living on-reserve, off-reserve or in urban areas, where the Indigenous population is growing.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A crowd of protesters wearing orange shirts" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468500/original/file-20220613-14-ecqcbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468500/original/file-20220613-14-ecqcbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468500/original/file-20220613-14-ecqcbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468500/original/file-20220613-14-ecqcbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468500/original/file-20220613-14-ecqcbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468500/original/file-20220613-14-ecqcbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468500/original/file-20220613-14-ecqcbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">March for the first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, on Sept. 30, 2021, in Montréal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Canadian Press/Ryan Remiorz</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Building bridges</h2>
<p>From this perspective, the <a href="https://reseaudialog.ca/la-coconstruction-des-connaissances-en-contexte-autochtone-modalites-contraintes-perspectives/">knowledge co-construction process</a>, which is the source of the bridges that need to be built between scientific and Indigenous knowledge, must be a collective work rooted in relationships, not a predetermined direction dictated by an impersonal, distant, dominant science.</p>
<p>The first characteristic of co-construction in social research is to recognize the essential role proximity plays in uniting people to work towards new ways of understanding and decolonization.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468788/original/file-20220614-12-v59wi2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468788/original/file-20220614-12-v59wi2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468788/original/file-20220614-12-v59wi2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468788/original/file-20220614-12-v59wi2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468788/original/file-20220614-12-v59wi2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468788/original/file-20220614-12-v59wi2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468788/original/file-20220614-12-v59wi2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kinawit cultural site, Val-d'Or.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(DIALOG)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second characteristic is to consider skills and expertise, which are often complementary.</p>
<p>Finally, there can be no co-construction of knowledge without the participation of everyone in the regeneration of cultural and pedagogical legacies, ways of thinking, learning and transmitting, and the social markers that underlie collective life. Indigenous value systems and actions have been badly shaken by colonialism, yet their guiding principles and very essence have transcended time and generations.</p>
<p>I am now a <em>kokom</em> who wishes to learn more about humans in general and Indigenous cultures in particular. I feel privileged to be able to pursue research projects that are as interesting as ever, to work every day with people who inspire me and to continue to spend a great deal of time in Indigenous communities, which is essential to my life as a woman and an anthropologist.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185093/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>During her long career, Carole Lévesque has received funding from a number of organizations including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Fonds de recherche du Québec, government agencies, paragovernmental organizations, Aboriginal organizations and philanthropic organizations.</span></em></p>The DIALOG network forms a bridge between scientific and Indigenous knowledge. It renews the relationship between the university and the Indigenous world, which has for too long been one-sided.Carole Lévesque, Professeure titulaire, INRS, Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1813002022-05-17T12:24:25Z2022-05-17T12:24:25ZWhy Indigenous communities need a seat at the table on climate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462825/original/file-20220512-2142-5mh4l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=251%2C260%2C5479%2C3565&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Drought in Navajo Nation. Indigenous people around the world are dealing with many environmental problems, such as access to water.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/man-overlooks-a-dry-river-bed-on-june-04-2019-in-gallup-new-news-photo/1153762258">Spencer Platt/Getty Images News</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>There’s growing recognition that Indigenous communities are among the most <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-native-tribes-are-taking-the-lead-on-planning-for-climate-change">vulnerable to the effects of climate change</a> and that <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-world-has-a-lot-to-learn-about-conservation-and-trust-from-indigenous-societies-179165">traditional ecological knowledge is vital</a> to <a href="https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/how-indigenous-knowledge-can-help-us-combat-climate-change">adapting to environmental changes</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>As part of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/environment-and-faith-120238">series</a> of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d42L4hVJmrA&list=PL_mJBLBznANyj4fx3WEl13xxPJUQCn3bf&index=5&t=1s">video</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8gAITE7LTI&feature=emb_title">stories</a> on <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-religion-and-faith-combat-eco-despair-173177">faith and the environment</a>, The Conversation spoke to <a href="https://www.theforgivenessproject.com/stories-library/ray-minniecon/">Ray Minniecon</a>, an Anglican Aboriginal pastor based in Australia and an Indigenous elder at NAIITS, an Indigenous learning community. Minniecon shares his perspective on the role Indigenous knowledge can play in environmental protection and on his attendance at the COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in November, 2021.</em></p>
<p><em>The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.</em></p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Indigenous elders predicted environmental destruction and climate changes. Will Native voices finally be heard?</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Within Christianity there’s the notion of <a href="https://www.episcopalchurch.org/ministries/creation-care/">caring for God’s creation</a>. As an Indigenous Christian, how do you view that idea?</h2>
<p>For Indigenous peoples, we want to make sure that we’re the ones who hold the knowledge of our ancestors. So we should be the ones who help our own people come to grips with the things that are important to us as Indigenous peoples. And so we’re building upon our assets, not on our deficits, and the assets that our ancestors have left us are very powerful. We can directly look after and care for our creation and teach people the right way of living in relationship with each other, all of God’s creation and with our creator. We’ve got a lot to learn to achieve that goal today. But we also got a lot to teach others from our ancient wisdom. And I think it comes out of the ministry and message of reconciliation. </p>
<h2>What do you mean by reconciliation in this context?</h2>
<p>It means reconciliation, not with nature, not only with each other and with our past and our histories, but also reconciliation with our environment. Reconciliation with our creator. It is really one of the key agenda items for all of humanity at this particular stage in our human history. </p>
<h2>Do you think that people connected to the Aborginal tradition saw the current state of environmental destruction coming?</h2>
<p>We did ask ourselves, who gave these people permission to come and invade our country and do all this destruction not only to our land, but also to the people itself? We’ve had to learn their language to say, When are you going to stop your destructive policies and practices and start listening to us and take notice of how we looked after land and how we prevented these big things like bush fires and other kinds of things from the wisdom our elders passed on to us?</p>
<p>We’ve had mitigation strategies embedded in us, because for us the land already has laws. And we’ve abided by those laws that were there. And they are good laws, they’re perfect laws, and they tell us how to look after land. The land is alive. It has spirit and voice. Our brothers, sisters, grandparents – they’re the ones who tell us who we are and how we can look after each other. That’s why I say at COP26, as an Indigenous person, our hopes are shattered by the ways in which these nations actually try to convince us, deceive us into saying that they have the solutions to climate change when they are the ones who are destroying our environment and created this mess. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462851/original/file-20220512-20-7a5euq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Members of the Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change at COP26" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462851/original/file-20220512-20-7a5euq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462851/original/file-20220512-20-7a5euq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462851/original/file-20220512-20-7a5euq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462851/original/file-20220512-20-7a5euq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462851/original/file-20220512-20-7a5euq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462851/original/file-20220512-20-7a5euq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462851/original/file-20220512-20-7a5euq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Indigenous groups from around the world attended the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, which failed to achieve any breakthrough agreement on lowering greenhouse gas emissions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ClimateCOP26Summit/135ee40477434528affea2606d8b4f8c/photo?Query=cop26%20indigenous&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=31&currentItemNo=1">AP Photo/Alastair Grant</a></span>
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<h2>What was your experience at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26), and what did you take away from it?</h2>
<p>The experience left me disillusioned. Indigenous peoples have been at the forefront of climate change destruction, but we don’t have a seat at the table. We’ve tried to make our voices heard to ensure that people realize that the fossil fuel industries and other extractive policies and developments are always harmful to Mother Earth and also harmful to our human existence. </p>
<p>Indigenous people have looked after our country and environment for the last 60,000 years, and we’ve kept it in pristine condition, because we knew what we had to do to protect it. Our Mother provides us with everything we require and everything we need. And it’s only in the last 200 years that we have seen the incredible devastation and degradation and the destruction of our environment in so many powerful ways that it’s left us feeling very sick spiritually, mentally and physically. </p>
<p>But it’s those who have colonized Indigenous nations that have the loudest voices. The Australian Pavilion at COP26 was supported by the fossil fuel industries, the coal mining industries. Those extractive industries say that they are the ones who are going to give us the solutions to climate change. And I just found that what they were saying was so hypocritical and deceitful, and it left me feeling depressed and with a lot of questions in my mind. I just felt like I came away with no hope at all. But I didn’t lose my faith. My faith in God is there.</p>
<h2>What do you think needs to happen for Aboriginal voices to be heard? What would that look like?</h2>
<p>Well, first and foremost, we need an official seat at the table – the G-7, G-20 and these international conferences and gatherings where these issues are debated and discussed. The corporations or nations that come together for events like COP26 invite us, but they’re the ones who really are not listening to our voices. I feel like a token. </p>
<p>The policies and practices based on the wisdom of our elders that we put in place here in our country for the last 60,000 years made sure that we could protect Mother Earth and live in harmony with all creation. If some of those wise strategies from our cultural understandings could be implemented quickly, perhaps we could arrest the damage we are doing to our Mother and make the immediate changes for the better of all humanity before its too late.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.ats.edu/">NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community is a member of the Association of Theological Schools.</a></p>
<footer>The ATS is a funding partner of The Conversation U.S.</footer>
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</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181300/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ray Minniecon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An Anglican Aboriginal pastor who attended the COP26 climate conference shares his perspective on Indigenous knowledge in dealing with climate change.Ray Minniecon, NAIITS Indigenous Elder, NAIITS Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1816422022-04-22T10:41:29Z2022-04-22T10:41:29ZColonialism: why leading climate scientists have finally acknowledged its link with climate change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459297/original/file-20220422-18-oxwv8m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4281%2C2843&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Campaigners have long argued for recognising colonialism as a climate-shaping force.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Climate_March_0241_(34210342272).jpg">Edward Kimmel/Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)‘s <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/">sixth and latest report</a> on the impact of global warming on our planet, published earlier this month, reiterates many of its predecessors’ warnings: chiefly that climate change threatens <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ga12131.doc.htm">global disaster</a> if we do not act to avert it. Yet it contains one key difference. For the first time in the institution’s history, the IPCC has included the term “colonialism” in its report’s summary.</p>
<p>Colonialism, the report asserts, has <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGII_SummaryForPolicymakers.pdf">exacerbated</a> the effects of climate change. In particular, historic and ongoing forms of colonialism have helped to increase the <a href="https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/65708/4/Climate_Colonialism_pre_print.pdf">vulnerability</a> of specific people and places to the effects of climate change.</p>
<p>The IPCC has been producing scientific reports on climate change since 1990. But in its more than 30 years of analysis, it has never yet discussed the connections between climate change and colonialism: until now.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/five-key-points-in-the-ipcc-report-on-climate-change-impacts-and-adaptation-178195">Five key points in the IPCC report on climate change impacts and adaptation</a>
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<p>The addition of one new term to the IPCC’s lexicon might not seem significant. But <a href="https://www.lehigh.edu/%7Eamsp/eng-11-globalization.htm">colonialism</a> is a deeply complex word. Referring to the practice of acquiring full or partial control over another group’s territory, it can include the occupation of that land by settlers as well as the economic exploitation of land to benefit the colonising group.</p>
<p>In Australia, where I come from, British colonists invaded Aboriginal people’s land in the late 18th century and have since worked to establish a permanent settlement there. This was not a peaceful process. It involved violent acts of dispossession including <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2019/mar/04/massacre-map-australia-the-killing-times-frontier-wars">widespread massacres</a> of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/islander-labourers">forced removal</a> of those people from their land, and the <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/bringing-them-home-report-1997">forced separation</a> of children from their families. </p>
<p>Connecting climate change to such acts of colonisation involves recognising that historic injustices are not consigned to history: their legacies are alive in the present. Researchers <a href="https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fee.2395">have shown</a>, for example, that the scale of bushfires in Australia today – including the catastrophic <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666449620300098">fires of 2019-20</a> – is not being exacerbated by climate change alone. It’s also amplified by the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623520601056240">colonial displacement</a> of Indigenous people from their lands and the disruption of their <a href="https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol25/iss4/art11/">land management practices</a> that skilfully used controlled burning to help landscapes flourish.</p>
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<img alt="Fires burn in a forest" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459282/original/file-20220422-15-jv13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459282/original/file-20220422-15-jv13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459282/original/file-20220422-15-jv13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459282/original/file-20220422-15-jv13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459282/original/file-20220422-15-jv13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459282/original/file-20220422-15-jv13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459282/original/file-20220422-15-jv13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The spread of bushfires in Australia has been influenced by preventing Indigenous people from managing their lands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bertknot/8225104985">Bertknot/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>This is why it’s significant that the term colonialism is not only included within the full, more technical part of the latest report. It’s also included within the concise “<a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGII_SummaryForPolicymakers.pdf">summary for policymakers</a>”, the most widely cited and read part of the IPCC’s reports.</p>
<p>By connecting climate change to colonialism in this summary, the IPCC is sending a message to the governments and policymakers of the world that addressing the effects of climate change cannot be achieved without also addressing the legacies of colonialism. It’s a message that also acknowledges how the <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-qa-what-is-climate-justice">climate justice movement</a> has long campaigned for the recognition of the unequal effects of climate change on different groups of people.</p>
<h2>Timely connections</h2>
<p>Several reasons stand out as to why the IPCC has finally chosen to acknowledge this link. The people most impacted by colonisation have campaigned for – and gained greater access to – the IPCC’s process of creating reports. Previous reports were <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2954">critiqued</a> for lacking authors from Indigenous groups and non-Western nations. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/colonialism-was-a-disaster-and-the-facts-prove-it-84496">Colonialism was a disaster and the facts prove it</a>
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<p>In the latest report, by contrast, about <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/04/06/ar6-author-selection/">44% of authors</a> are from “developing countries and countries with economies in transition”, up from 37% in the previous report. Authors also come from <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0309133310373719">more diverse</a> disciplinary <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-key-points-in-the-ipcc-report-on-climate-change-impacts-and-adaptation-178195">backgrounds</a>, including anthropology, history and philosophy as well as science and economics. </p>
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<img alt="Five white people sit behind a table on a stage" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459283/original/file-20220422-26-vlvlv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459283/original/file-20220422-26-vlvlv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459283/original/file-20220422-26-vlvlv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459283/original/file-20220422-26-vlvlv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459283/original/file-20220422-26-vlvlv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459283/original/file-20220422-26-vlvlv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459283/original/file-20220422-26-vlvlv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Previous IPCC working groups have been criticised for their lack of diversity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/takver/10078217474">John Englart/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>There has also been a steadily growing body of literature demonstrating the connections between climate change and colonialism since the IPCC completed its fifth report in 2014. For example, Potawatomi philosopher and climate justice scholar <a href="https://seas.umich.edu/research/faculty/kyle-whyte">Kyle Whyte</a> is cited in the latest report for his research on direct links between dispossessing Indigenous people of their land and environmental damage.</p>
<p>Yet for all the significance of the IPCC’s new acknowledgement, it is only one part of the latest report that develops this connection. IPCC reports are composed of three sections produced by different <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/">working groups</a>. The first section assesses the physical science of climate change; the second covers the impacts of climate change; and the third deals with potential ways to lessen these effects. Only the second section discusses colonialism.</p>
<h2>Climate history</h2>
<p>As a historian of climate knowledge, I’d argue that an analysis of colonialism should also be included in the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/working-group/wg1/">first section</a> covering climate science. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/habsburg-empire-created-modern-climate-science/575068/">Research</a> is increasingly showing that climate science is rooted in imperialism and colonialism. The historian Deborah R. Coen <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo24768042.html">has shown</a> that key elements of contemporary climate change science owe their origins to the <a href="https://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/making-climate-history#:%7E:text=Funded%20by%20the%20Leverhulme%20Trust,physics%20and%20a%20global%20climate.">imperial ambitions</a> of the 19th century <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/austrian-history-yearbook/article/abs/economic-development-in-the-nineteenthcentury-habsburg-empire/7A5B3DD5FAA808EC242CBE4E48D71AE5">Habsburg Empire</a>. It was Habsburg imperialist politics, for example, that helped scientists develop an understanding of the relationship between the development of local storms and atmospheric circulation.</p>
<p>What’s more, much of the historic meteorological data that contemporary climate scientists rely on was produced by colonising powers. Take the data <a href="https://webs.ucm.es/info/cliwoc/intro.htm">extracted by scientists</a> from the logbooks of mid-19th century English ships. This information was recorded as part of an <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26455496?seq=1">effort</a> to better connect territories colonised by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-ways-the-monarchy-has-benefited-from-colonialism-and-slavery-179911">British Empire</a> and speed up the exploitation of other people’s land and water.</p>
<p>How the IPCC will deal with these types of connections between climate change and colonialism remains to be seen, but I hope it will soon acknowledge colonialism in all three of its working groups. What is already clear is that the links between climate change and colonialism are legion, and involve confronting an uncomfortable range of legacies.</p>
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<img alt="Imagine weekly climate newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?</em></strong>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harriet Mercer is a member of the Making Climate History project, which receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust. </span></em></p>The IPCC’s latest climate report discusses how colonialism has shaped climate, a breakthrough for the climate justice movement.Harriet Mercer, Research Associate in Climate History, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.