I know too little about First Nations' roles in this country historically and currently, but I do know that First Nations principles, historically and culturally, are based on respect for the land, which translates into environmentalism. I know a little about residential schools-based genocide and related forms of genocide as well. But I think I learned all one really needs to know last week at the Frontenac County Court House, where Justice Douglas Cunningham concluded that Robert Lovelace and Paula Sherman, leaders of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, should be sentenced to six months in prison and fined more than $35,000 for trying to protect their (and our) land from environmental disaster.
Those two, as well as Chief Doreen Davis of the Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nation and a considerable number of stakeholders in the area, have worked for months to see that Ontario's legal duty to consult with First Nations about mining activity - in this case, uranium mining activity - takes place before allowing mining that would turn the subject lands north of Sharbot Lake into a toxic ruin.
Justice Cunningham ignored Ontario's failure to consult, ignored the Canadian right to non-violent protest, ignored the Crown's refusal to acknowledge environmental challenges to the dangerously outdated Canada Mining Act and ignored implied threats by Frontenac Ventures to enlist armed (and therefore potentially violent) security to deal with First Nations peoples and their supporters.
Worst of all, he ignored Algonquin law, which has enacted a moratorium on uranium mining, and thus he ignored the right of First Nations people to obey their laws.
Anyone is welcome to read the transcripts of this hearing, but having witnessed this travesty of law and moral responsibility, I can only say that Justice Cunningham's apparent indifference to Ontario's failure to consult taught me everything I need to know about colonization, land genocide and the iniquity of white corporate power.
Valerie Ashford
Kingston