By, Clayton Thomas-Müller (Pukatawagan Cree, Author, Organizer)
Everybody feels the suffering of displaced climate refugees. It’s been difficult on our family, because our entire nation, Pukatawagan, is one of the communities that was evacuated 100% here to the City of Winnipeg and to communities like Sagkeeng Anishinaabe Nation. These community members don’t know how long it’s going to be until they return home. For members of Pukatawagan, this is the second time in under three years we have been under full evacuation, which is deeply traumatic.
Right now, tens of thousands of climate refugees from northern communities are spread out over multiple cities across these lands they call Canada. The vast majority of those climate refugees are Indigenous. Development that is responsible for driving climate change— carbon-intensive and toxic, water destroying, climate disrupting industries—are disproportionately adjacent to First Nations, Métis settlements or Inuit hamlets compared to any other population. So when we think about environmental racism in this country, by far and away, Indigenous people suffer the most because of the food and water insecurity caused by pollution, costs displaced onto local communities by the energy, mining and forestry sectors, because they never clean up their mess.
And then we’re further impacted because our land-based culture is threatened by our rapidly destabilizing climate. It’s sundance season right now, and powwow season. Just the other day, a powwow was cancelled here in the City of Winnipeg because of the smoke. So many sundances have and will be disrupted over the summer fire season, And this is where Native peoples are going to heal, pray, decolonize, and do something positive for the future.
Blood memory and displacement
There’s a lot of pressure right now in the midst of these evacuations, and everybody’s feeling raw. It’s scary being taken away from your home, it brings up a lot of issues for Indigenous peoples that are unique to us as residential school survivors and their children, still recovering from 150 years of Indian Residential School genocide.
There’s a lot of blood memory in our genetics. So when we get displaced, like what’s happening right now, it brings up a lot of historical, complex, post-traumatic stress that many in the psychology sector have referred to as intergenerational Indian Residential School Syndrome.
Climate change is very disruptive, it’s violent; even more so every day that we continue to go forward without a meaningful response. Canada and First Nations need to respond to climate change at the scale of the crisis.
Premier pushing oil and gas expansion
Our culture is being disrupted by these wildfires and by the big oil companies responsible, by the politicians who are in bed with these big oil companies. And unfortunately, here in Manitoba, our premier Wab Kinew and the NDP government is engaging in a very dangerous dance with some of the conservative economies in Canada. Doug Ford and Wab Kinew just announced a trade deal. I’ve got grave concerns, considering Doug Ford and the racist Ford nation passed Bill 5, which completely guts any kind of environmental review, any kind of endangered species protection and any kind of fiduciary legal obligation to consult with First Nations. It removes those obligations and opens a clear and direct pathway to fast-track the development of the “Ring of Fire,” which is a mining sector equivalent in terms of scale to the Canadian tar sands. The federal government wants to develop and exploit the port of Churchill and the newly ice-free Arctic shipping lanes. The reason behind this lustful ambition is that the route reduces shipping distances by thousands of kilometres. This is a massive and very lucrative geopolitical pressure that is squarely on the shoulders of Indigenous northern leaders from First Nations and other Indigenous communities and rural municipalities.
Wab Kinew talking about a potential pipeline and calling for more extractivism while his NDP government grapples with the Carney Liberals, and with other provincial and territorial economies, is an act of violence against Indigenous communities. It’s an act of violence against Indigenous culture, and more directly, is extremely disrespectful in light of the circumstances of my people being under evacuation.
First Nations communities in northern Manitoba are vulnerable as they do not have the big tax base of big cities in the south. They’re under pressure to engage in extractivism, and we’ve got to do something to stop that. Because if we don’t change the system that accommodates this type of racist economic development in this country, we’ll continue to have the same issues that the 94 Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are calling to address.
Communities of care not extraction
Indigenous climate refugees need to be supported and taken care of. These climate refugees are more vulnerable than most people realize.
So this is a very significant time where we need everybody to come together and take care of the most vulnerable in our communities, to make sure that they’re safe and that they get home after the fires have run their course. We also need to expose any special interests that are trying to profit from this current ecological and economic crisis.
I think that our governments are right now in a very reactionary, knee-jerk position. I believe our Premier, Wab Kinew, has been keeping his cool in the wake of the combined pressure of Danielle Smith and Doug Ford. Wab is doing a delicate dance of trying to protect his image as a Sundance chief, as a member of Midewin, as a father, pipe carrier, and so on. But the rhetoric coming from the NDP about choices that we’ve got to make in the national interest are very troubling and concerning, especially because it’s my peoples land, Pukatawagan, Treaty Six, High Rock and Jetait, but also Treaty Five, that this leader is talking about developing so brashly, while we are in a state of emergency.
Recently, Premier Kinew announced a transmission line from Manitoba to Nunavut. I don’t recall any kind of province-wide consultation, let alone First Nations consultation. I don’t remember hearing about any negotiations with the Indigenous Peoples about the right way of that massive project, which goes through our treaty lands. In the future, the right-of-way will likely turn into a freeway to Nunavut. These are times of geopolitical pressure both domestically and internationally. It’s a lot of the same right now, not just with my government here in Manitoba, but with the incredible co-optation of so many Chiefs. Many are already sold out and ready to open the back door to resource extraction, to the fast-tracking of resource projects.
Connecting the dots
We’ve got a big cabal of collaboration happening right now pushing the neoliberal agenda, at the top of it all, my concern is the militarization of Nunavut, and the pathway to Nunavut, this trade corridor that Canada is trying to establish out of the Hudson Bay will impact Indigenous Peoples tremendously, because we’re already criminalized in our economy. As land defenders, they call us eco-terrorists. It’s not the truth. Water protectors and land defenders are well within their rights as sovereign peoples, part of sovereign nations, protected under Treaty, Section 35 and UNDRIP. We are responsible to protect and speak for the ones that cannot speak for themselves.
To connect the dots internationally, for every one of those missiles, to Gaza, to Ukraine, East Africa or North Africa, and in every conflict region around the planet that is in war. Every missile and bomb that’s dropped contains “critical minerals” in each of its missile guidance systems. People, citizens need to be not complacent with this idea of “critical minerals” or mining, it’s just as bad as the oil industry. It’s tied to the military-industrial complex as the oil industry. We need system change, not climate change, and that’s going to require a tremendous amount of work organizing, building power and expanding our political base of resistance.