Embedded Files
Check out Highlights from our Community Showcase and Virtual Gallery!
Session Objective: to evaluate governmental options and responsibilities with regard to environmental policymaking
Last week, we kicked off Unit 4 by playing a ‘Whodunit’ simulation of environmental abuses, exploring possibilities for civic engagement in decision-making and legal redress. This week, we will examine what happened in that game in light of our theoretical understandings and existing knowledge of environmental policy. What does productive public participation look like? What are best practices? What are existing gaps?
Review: last week’s materials about “Advocating Systems” for public participation and environmental justice. In particular, read this article about anti-gold mining movements in Esquel and Pascua-Lama by Urkidi and Walter if you haven’t already.
Leire Urkidi is a Basque researcher, journalist, and professor. Leire’s work explores ecology and economics, with a focus on the capitalistic exploitation of the environment.
For Leire, the conflict around the Pascua-Lama mining project in Chile is a strong example of the conflicts that arise from corporate action against the environment. Urkidi is interested in how the movement – which began with the defence of endangered glaciers – has become ‘glocal’, with both international attention and locally-led action.
Mariana Walter is a researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). She is an environmental scientist working on ecological economics and political ecology. Mariana is interested in social metabolism, resource extraction conflicts, environmental justice, knowledge co-production and institutional change.
Welter is part of ENVJUST, a project mapping environmental conflicts around the world. She has also served as Scientific Coordinator of the ACKnowl-EJ Project: Academic and Activist Co-production of Knowledge for Environmental Justice.
Consider: how ‘participation’ is understood in the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean (the Escazú Agreement). You can read the text in both English and Spanish in the PDF below.
Hint: Pay special attention to Articles 5, 6, 7, and 10.
Escazú Agreement.pdfWatch: the 20th Anniversary Message of the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (the Aarhus Convention), which governs ‘environmental democracy’ in forty-six countries around Europe and Central Asia. Like the Escazú Agreement, the Aarhus Convention grants rights for access to information, public participation and access to justice; however, it does not have the same explicit protections for environmental defenders.
Salina Abraham should be Salina Abraha...but a Dutch immigration officer convinced her Eritrean father that Abraham was a better name. Salina is a passionate advocate for youth involvement in solutions to environmental challenges. She is currently pursuing a Masters in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and serves as a strategic advisor to the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF), where she works to enhance community action towards the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
Salina’s academic work explores the impact of corporate social responsibility programs on Eritrea’s rural development, as well as the role of female leadership in economics and finance sectors across Africa. She is the former President of the International Forestry Students’ Association (IFSA) and coordinator of the Youth in Landscapes Initiative.
Compare: approaches in the Escazú Agreement and the Aarhus Convention with the way ‘participation’ is evoked in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Note: Unlike the Escazú Agreement and Aarhus Convention, the UNDRIP is not legally binding...even so, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States each voted against the Resolution at the UN General Assembly.
UNDRIP.pdfListen: to this Indigenous poet’s call out to Justin Trudeau and the Canadian settler government about broken promises, environmental marginalisation, and sovereignty infringements.
read transcript
Hi, my name is Helen and I’m Dane Zaa and Nehiyaw from Prophet River First Nations, living in Fort St. John, B.C., and I wrote a poem for Justin Trudeau. Here you go:
Hey Justin,
There’s some words that I’ve been meaning to get off my chest.
I’ve even traveled twice to Parliament steps.
I’ve heard some of your MPs say that ‘this new relationship is based off of give-and-take’, and ‘we can’t have everything that we’re asking for’.
We have 500 years of giving behind us, but hold up, let me check: Are you good? Or can I get you anything more?
Because your Cabinet Ministers and Departments are sitting behind desks and signing off on permits, while you’re in the public eye paying lip service to Indigenous populations.
Well, y’all are making decisions that are going to be impacting the next seven generations, doing so in spite of Section 35 violations; signing off in light of supposed ‘consultation’.
And now, you are the head of the paternalistic patriarchal structures that be.
The ones that change their names over time from “Indian Affairs” to “Indigenous Affairs”...as if a name change would change the fact that y’all are still operating on the bones of the Indian Act: trying to govern how your ‘Indians’ act.
Or when it comes to sightsee the mega hydro dam that they want to build in this territory, you’d rather we not react. Rather we take your silence for fact, your approval for law, and your blind eyes as reasons for your wrongs.
Well I thought you should know: I’m delivering this poem from within the proposed flood zone, and this land has been my people’s home since time immemorial.
I don’t come from a placeless people.
I come from spines that were made sturdy while sleeping on spruce boughs
From legs that grew strong by scaling the sides of these mountains
And from arms that were taught to navigate these waters that span out like arteries all across this territory.
This land is my ancestors’ living memory.
But do you even understand this concept?
I think that you like to pretend to. Especially when you’re donning headdresses and sporting Indigenous-inspired tattoos. But when we say ‘places have no monetary value’, we actually mean it. Take our ‘nos’ for what they are, because we can't just head south when everything heads south.
We are the ones who have to stay behind and clean up your mess; our children the ones who are gonna have to suffer from your regrets.
So if you want real change you can’t give half measures and only ‘kind of oppress’ only ‘kinda’ continue to violate treaties only ‘kinda’ continue to colonise.
So please don’t promise anything if you’re not even willing to try.
As for me and mine? We’re gonna continue to fight. We’re gonna continue to rise up like sage smoke carrying valley and prairie prayers just like we have done for the past five hundred years.
Because in case you haven’t noticed...in spite of everything...we are still here.
Helen Knott is of Dane Zaa, Nehiyaw, and Euro descent from Prophet River First Nations, living in Northeastern B.C. Helen is a graduate student in First Nations Studies at UNBC. She holds a Bachelors Degree in Social Work.
Helen writes and speaks to share what lessons, insights, and challenges she has experienced. She was once taught that teachings are not yours until you give them away, so her words are a part of her offering back to the people. She has published in a number of places, including a compendium entitled Surviving Canada: Indigenous People Celebrate 150 Years of Betrayal. She recently published her first book, In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience, and is currently writing Taking Back the Bones, an “Indigenous female manifesto”.
Honour: the spirit and memory of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls through this painting by Ioyan Mani. Indigenous women and girls are overrepresented by a factor of four among female homicides in Canada, and Native American women are more than twice as likely to experience violence as any other demographic in the US.
“Not Forgotten”
Ioyan Mani – ‘To Walk Beyond’ – is Maxine Noel’s Sioux name. Maxine is Oglala Sioux, born on the Birdtail Reservation in Manitoba. The eldest of eleven children, she learned to draw among a loving family on a quiet reserve. In residential school she experienced the struggles of submersion of the native spirituality and culture, which brought her strength and enrichment.
“Our mothers and daughters, sisters and aunties and grandmothers. Our women are our heart and our spirit, always honoured, never forgotten. I am Dakota Sioux, a woman and mother, and an artist, These are inseparable facets of who I am and how I live in the world. That world, the world we all live and move in, is a place of great and terrible beauty, of wonder and tragedy.
“In this painting, Not Forgotten, I speak to that wonder and beauty and tragedy. To capture both the wonder and the tragedy, I wanted to include motifs which connect with all the places and our peoples live.
“Turning first to the West Coast peoples, I am honoured to have been allowed to include the moon image of my friend, artist and visionary Roy Henry Vickers, an image I first encountered in his illustrations for Dave Bouchard’s The Elders Are Watching.
“From the North, I incorporated the image of Sedna, the source of all the creatures of the sea. I have always been drawn to the shell and bead work of the Maliseet and other East Coast peoples and in this painting, have echoed the fluidity and grace of their compelling designs.
“The two feathers acknowledge the Metis and the people of the grasslands and woodlands of the plains and forests.
“Finally, the floating figures throughout the painting are the spirits and the presence of the missing and murdered women.
“Missing but never lost, Always present, always remembered.”
Complete: your Learning Log for this session via the form below.
Google Sites
Report abuse