socialismartnature:

The State Department, still with “egg on its face” from its statement that Keystone XL would have little impact on climate change, sunk a little lower today as the most respected elders, and chiefs of 10 sovereign nations turned their backs on State Department representatives and walked out during a meeting.

The statement released by the tribal elders is below:

On this historic day of May 16, 2013, ten sovereign Indigenous nations maintain that the proposed TransCanada/Keystone XL pipeline does not serve the national interest and in fact would be detrimental not only to the collected sovereigns but all future generations on planet earth. This morning the following sovereigns informed the Department of State Tribal Consultation effort at the Hilton Garden Inn in Rapid City, SD, that the gathering was not recognized as a valid consultation on a “nation to nation” level:

Southern Ponca
Pawnee Nation
Nez Perce Nation

And the following Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires People):

Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate
Ihanktonwan Dakota (Yankton Sioux)
Rosebud Sioux Tribe
Oglala Sioux Tribe
Standing Rock Tribe
Lower Brule Sioux Tribe
Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe
Crow Creek Sioux Tribe

The Great Plains Tribal Chairmans Association supports this position, which is in solidarity with elected leaders, Treaty Councils and the grassroots community, and is guided by spiritual leaders. On Saturday, May 18, the Sacred Pipe Bundle of the Oceti Sakowin will be brought out to pray with the people to stop the KXL pipeline, and other tribal nation prayer circles will gather to do the same.

Pursuant to Executive Order 13175, the above sovereigns directed the DOS to invite President Obama to engage in “true Nation to Nation” consultation with them at the nearest date, at a designated location to be communicated by each of the above sovereigns. After delivering that message, the large contingent of tribal people walked out of the DOS meeting and asked the other tribal people present to support this effort and to leave the meeting. Eventually all remaining tribal representatives and Tribal Historic Preservation Officers left the meeting at the direct urging of the grassroots organization Owe Aku. Owe Aku, Moccasins on the Ground, and Protect the Sacred are preparing communities to resist the Keystone XL pipeline through Keystone Blockade Training.

This unprecedented unity of tribes against the desecration of Ina Maka (Mother Earth) was motivated by the signing on January 25, 2013, of the historic International Treaty to Protect the Sacred Against the Tar Sands. Signatories were the Pawnee Nation, the Ponca Nation, the Ihanktonwan Dakota and the Oglala Lakota. Since then ten First Nations Chiefs in Canada have signed the Treaty to protect themselves against tar sands development in Canada.

The above sovereigns notify President Obama to consult with each of them because of the following:

The nations have had no direct role in identifying and evaluating cultural resources.

The nations question the status of the programmatic agreement and how it may or may not be amended.

The nations are deeply concerned about potential pipeline impacts on natural resources, especially our water: potential spills and leaks, groundwater and surface water contamination.

The nations have no desire to contribute to climate change, to which the pipeline will directly contribute.

The nations recognize that the pipeline will increase environmental injustice, disproportionately impacting native communities.

The nations deplore the environmental impacts of tar sands mining being endured by tribes in Canada. The pipeline would service the tar sands extractive industry.

The nations insist that their treaty rights be respected⎯the pipeline would violate them.

The nations support an energy policy that promotes renewables and efficiency instead of one that features fossil fuels.

The nations regard the consultation process as flawed in favor of corporate interests.

The sovereigns of these nations contend that it is not in America’s interest to facilitate and contribute to environmental devastation on the scale caused by the extraction of tar sands in Canada. America would be better served by a comprehensive program to reduce its reliance on oil, and to invest in the development and deployment of sustainable energy technologies, such as electric vehicles that are charged using solar and wind power.

If the Keystone XL pipeline is allowed to be built, TransCanada, a Canadian corporation, would be occupying sacred treaty lands as reserved in the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties. It will be stopped by unified resistance.

(via redplebeian)

canadian-communist:

Speaking before an intergovernmental forum Wednesday on the future of the Arctic, Canadian officials vowed “unprecedented industrial development” of the pristine and fragile polar region.

The comments came as the North American country took over chairmanship of the Arctic Council during the group’s biennial gathering in Sweden this week.

The circumpolar states—which hold full membership on the council and include Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States—are convening to “promote cooperation on environmental protection” and discuss such issues as oil and mineral exploitation, shipping, tourism and fishing in the northern region.

Shifting global temperatures and unprecedented melting in the polar region have “boosted international interest,” AFP reports, “as melting ice opens up shipping routes and makes hitherto inaccessible mineral resources easier to exploit.”

“We will not stand by and let the Harper government use the next two years to advance its destructive industrial agenda at the Arctic Council,” said Christy Ferguson of Greenpeace, which staged a concurrent demonstration outside of Canada’s parliament Wednesday calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government to ban oil and gas drilling in the Arctic.

“The Arctic Council should be a forum for preventing environmental disasters like oil spills and fighting climate change—not facilitating them,” she added.

The prospect of development in the Arctic region has brought renewed and widespread interest in the council. This year “observer status” was extended to a number of non-polar countries including China, India, Japan, Singapore and South Korea and Italy.

Speaking before the council, Canadian Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, representing the Harper government, “wasted no time” in her announcement of a pan-Arctic business forum to be launched by Canada later this year as a major initiative to “spur trade and development” among the Arctic states, The Globe and Mail reports.

They continue:

The focus, she said, of Canada’s two years [as] the chair [of the Arctic council] – to be followed by the United States – will be on “creating economic development.” That shift will dismay environmental activists, who fear the race to extract resources from an ice-free Arctic would ravish and destroy a fragile ecosystem already under stress from climate change. By some estimates, 90 billion barrels of oil and one-fifth of the planet’s untapped natural gas lie beneath the Arctic Ocean.

At a news conference in Kiruna, Sweden, site of the world’s biggest iron-ore mine, Ms. Aglukkaq also promised “big change” at the Arctic Council. Gone will be the focus on science for its own sake. Instead, research to develop the North for the benefit of northerners – such as her own Inuit and other indigenous peoples in Russia, Alaska and the Nordic countries – will take priority, she said.

Despite Aglukkaq’s emphasis on the support and benefit of indigenous people under her proposed development plan, a number of those indigenous groups present are siding against oil development in the fragile Arctic ecosystem by signing the Joint Statement of Indigenous Solidarity for Arctic Protection (pdf), which was drafted last August at the first annual Arctic Indigenous Peoples’ conference.

Reacting to the growing rejection of the industrial push and “greenwashed” policies, Greenpeace writes:

Many of these people, who have an inherent right to the lands of the Arctic, are experiencing the difficulties caused by a changing Arctic.

When these eight foreign ministers gather this morning to meet and greet and sign a greenwashed agreement on oil spill response and claim that they have done all they could — they will do it in the shadow of this conference and these statements. Then they will go back home and continue to allow oil companies to continue their destructive rampage in the fragile Arctic.

But the beacon of hope shines through the voices of those Indigenous Peoples who over the weekend, took a step toward rejecting Arctic oil.

The movement is growing, and it is getting more and more difficult for the toothless governments in the Arctic Council to ignore.