Indigenous Canadian protests over squalid living conditions on reserves ramped up across Canada on Wednesday, including hundreds of natives disrupting Canada-US trade at a key bridge crossing.
The escalation of demonstrations amid threats of bringing the economy “to its knees” and fears of violence comes after emergency talks between native leaders and Prime Minister Stephen Harper last week failed to stem growing native unrest.
In addition to complaints of severe poverty, natives also blasted changes last month to environmental and other laws they say impact their hunting and fishing rights, and allow tribes to lease reserve lands to non-natives.
Although the government insists the latter was meant to boost economic development, some fear it will result in a loss of native control of reserve lands and eventually lead to the end of aboriginal communities.
On Wednesday, as many as 300 demonstrators slowed traffic over the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario and Detroit.
The Detroit River span is the busiest crossing in North America. It is used by an average of 28,000 trucks daily, with $120 billion worth of trade, or almost one fifth of annual commerce between Canada and the United States, driving over it annually.
A dozen protests were also staged or planned in cities nationwide, blocking rail and roadways, including the TransCanada Highway, as well as targeting oil sands mining in Western Canada.
Organizers vowed to hold peaceful protests, but elders urging calm highlighted at least the possibility of violence erupting, recalling Ipperwash and Oka clashes decades ago that resulted in deaths.
The aboriginal rights movement, Idle No More, encapsulates frustrations of 1.2 million aboriginals over the slow pace of efforts aimed at improving their lot. Part of the reason is a lack of consensus on how to proceed.
What is clear is that many aboriginal communities have fallen far behind the Canadian average in terms of education, health and other benchmarks.
Anthropologist Pierre Trudel noted that natives’ “capacity for nuisance” is huge, with several traffic routes, including two international bridges, crossing native reserves.
Even if the protesters remain non-violent, it does not guarantee that others will too, he added.
Though widely sympathetic of the aboriginals’ plight, only 31 percent of Canadians surveyed by Ipsos Reid for Postmedia News back traffic disruptions as a legitimate form of protest.
Public disapproval of such actions has put pressure on police to crack down.
Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Chris Lewis was forced on Tuesday to take the unusual step of responding in a YouTube video to criticism of his force’s plans for hands-off management of the protests.
He said police would not take “unnecessary aggressive action that undoubtedly” would result in lives being taken or lost.
A twist in all of this is an ongoing hunger strike by Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence from northern Ontario.
She has refused since December 11 to eat until concrete measures are taken to improve living conditions on reserves.
Calls have intensified for her to end her hunger strike after Harper committed on Friday to ongoing “high level dialogue.”
“You’re better off alive to carry out this whole struggle,” former governor general Michaelle Jean, now a UN special envoy to Haiti, told Canada’s public broadcaster.
But Spence, appearing visibly thinner after four weeks of fasting, would not relent.
Observers say if she dies, it could trigger widespread violence.
Indigenous Canadians ramp up protests
