On November 30th, the Inuit community of Clyde River and organizations representing Inuit across the Canadian Arctic will head to the Supreme Court of Canada to defend their rights to meaningfully participate in decisions about extractive industries in their homelands. The Mining Injustice Solidarity Network stands in solidarity with the community of Clyde River and all Inuit whose rights hang in the balance as this case moves forward.
We also stand in solidarity with Chippewas of the Thames First Nation, whose case will be heard in conjunction with Clyde River as they defend Indigenous rights in the face of the Line 9 pipeline reversal project, which would transport tar sands dilbit through southern Ontario.
The Clyde River case centers around the National Energy Board approval of a proposal to conduct seismic surveys off the coast of Baffin Island, a preliminary stage in oil and gas exploration. Inuit communities and representative organizations have clearly articulated their opposition to the project in consultation sessions, political resolutions, petitions, letters, public protests, on social media, and in the courts. We are deeply concerned that their efforts have been effectively ignored by the National Energy Board and Federal Government.
We recognize the right of Inuit across the Arctic to provide or withhold consent from development projects on their land, including the current proposal. We affirm that Inuit have a right to continue to hunt sea mammals and to fish as they have for time immemorial, and to protect that right from development projects that stand to harm the environment. As Inuit have repeatedly articulated, this right is critical to protect an important food source where groceries are astronomically expensive and food insecurity is widespread, as well as to protect Inuit culture, identity, knowledge, and skills surrounding the hunt.
We also affirm the right of Inuit not only to protect traditional culture and food systems, but to exercise control over all economic development on their lands in order to ensure their interests are respected. In this case, Inuit have asserted time and time again that the project offers next to no benefit to local communities in exchange for the burden of risk, whether in terms of badly needed jobs, infrastructural development, or financial compensation. Further, it threatens other economic opportunities, such as Nunavut’s commercial fishing industry which supports a growing number of companies owned by Inuit organizations.
As an organization that works primarily in solidarity with communities impacted by mining, we recognize that it is a tendency of the extractive industries to take without giving. We recognize that they are able to do so particularly where communities are denied control over the extraction of profit from their lands, and are then left to cope with economic and environmental fallout. This is a risk inherent in the current project, any oil development that may follow it, and for Indigenous peoples interfacing with the expanding extractive sector across the Arctic and Canada. It is therefore vital that Inuit and other Indigenous communities have full access to accurate information and decision-making power.
The Prime Minister of Canada campaigned on the promise to respect the right of Indigenous communities to withhold consent from development projects affecting them, and a commitment to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, the Federal Government’s submissions to the Supreme Court in this case demonstrate a clear lack of commitment from the Liberal Party of Canada to uphold its election promises.
Therefore, we are hopeful that the Supreme Court will accomplish what Trudeau’s government has failed to achieve — a clearly articulated framework to implement Indigenous rights and nation-to-nation relationships.
We are honoured to stand in solidarity with Clyde River and the Inuit organizations leading this case, and with Chippewas of the Thames First Nation. We commit to continued support of their struggle.
Mining Injustice Solidarity Network
Member of the Clyde River Solidarity Network