A young woman with roots in the Nuu-chah-nulth and Kwakwaka'wakw communities took part in a four-day demonstration in Ottawa to demand that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau take bold action on climate change, including committing to a freeze on tar sands expansion.
Researcher and motivational speaker Valeen Jules, 19, is a descendant of Kyuquot-Checklesaht Ha’wiih through her father. Each day from Nov. 5 through Nov. 8, she joined hundreds of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in a march to 24 Sussex Drive, where they staged a sit-in and presented “welcome gifts” to the newly-elected PM.
Those gifts were intended to reinforce the “moral, economic, scientific and Indigenous rights reasons” for freezing tar sands expansion.
“People from across Canada gathered to deliver scientific studies, economic reports, [broken] Indigenous treaties, messages from their communities and samples of water affected by [tar sands development],” Jules said.
The BC delegation, the West Coast Women Warriors, was composed of First Nations and non-Indigenous women ages 19 through 30.
Trudeau had announced prior to his swearing in on Nov. 4 that he and his family would not move into the official Prime Minister’s residence until renovations have been completed. Jules said the demonstrators offered a gift of solar panels for the project “in hopes of influencing him to move towards a clean, justice-based economy and a future worth living for.”
Jules said a representative of the PM accepted the many studies, reports and petitions, but would not accept the solar panels. Trudeau himself declined to meet with participants.
During the demonstrations, Trudeau caused a media sensation by rescinding a controversial gag order on federal scientists imposed by the former Harper Government, including scientists’ statements on climate, fisheries and the environment.
“We were aware of that,” Jules said. “We were also aware that he is taking Harper’s Climate Plan to the COP21 [United Nations Climate Change Conference] in Paris coming up at the end of this month.”
In another disappointing move, on the second day of the Climate Welcome, Trudeau supported the Keystone XL pipeline that would transport Alberta tar sands oil to U.S. refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.
“That’s what he was busy doing while we were carrying the message that proved these projects that have been deemed ‘critical infrastructure’ are actually destroying the lands and the waters, and that there are more risks than there are benefits.”
Jules said the solar panels were delivered by Indigenous leaders, including Melina Laboucan-Massimo from the Lubicon Cree First Nation.
“That community is in the heart of the tar sands, and they have just completed a solar panel project. Now their community runs off of solar panels. She came to speak about that project.”
The solar panels were delivered the day after the water samples contaminated by oilsands/pipeline development, to show that there is a way forward, Jules said.
After being officially declined by the PM, the donors decided to investigate whether there was a “back-channel” way to deliver the solar panels to the 24 Sussex Drive renovation project without official acknowledgement.
“Otherwise, they will provide the panels to a community that is resisting pipelines.”
For the past year, Jules has dedicated herself to a project she has dubbed The Indigenous Revolution.
“It includes the cultural, spiritual and political revolution that Indigenous peoples across the globe are partaking in,” she explained. “My research project, ‘Decolonization and the Indigenous Revolution,’ is going to be released in the next few weeks in the form of a presentation. Pretty much everything I have been working on, all of the experiences I have had and all the stories I have heard.”
The project incorporates a formal research paper in conjunction with a series of workshops with storytelling and poetry.
“I am hoping to travel to as many communities as I can, to present the research I have been working on for just over a year.”
