Solidarity with Wet’suwet’en Indigenous Land Defenders

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Willie Dunn – I Pity the Country

You’re listening to Back in the USSR on CFRU 93.3 FM in Guelph.  I am Siegfried, and this is stolen native land.  I’d like to take this time tonight to express my solidarity with the indigenous land defenders of sovereign Wet’suwet’en traditional territory in the region known by the colonial name of British Columbia, as they face down an act of war, an armed invasion, perpetrated against their nation by the Government of Canada.

Last week I discussed the act of war perpetrated by the American Empire against the sovereign nation of Iran, this week I’ll be discussing an act of war much closer to home, but no less egregious in that it is an imperialist action that targets a sovereign people and their way of life for destruction.  While the Iranian military was able to strike back against American bases in Iraq last week with missiles and, for the time being at least, deter the United States from further aggression, the Canadian colonial state looks set to mount a full-scale invasion of sovereign indigenous land in northern B.C.  The Wet’suwet’en land defenders are currently facing an imminent assault by the RCMP that would clear the way for a liquefied natural gas pipeline to be built across their land without their consent.  Just as the United States and its brazen refusal to withdraw its troops from the sovereign country of Iraq, after the entire Iraqi parliament voted unanimously to expel them, constitutes a flagrant violation of the principle of self-determination, so does the RCMP’s threatened invasion of unceded indigenous land.

The people of the Wet’suwet’en indigenous nation never signed treaties with the British Empire or with the Canadian Government after 1867.  They never signed away any of their territory or rights.  They effectively remain a sovereign nation and in 1997 the Supreme Court of Canada recognized this fact, ruling that aboriginal land ownership had never been given up across the Wet’suwet’en’s 22,000 km sq of territory.  But that landmark court decision in favor of their traditional rights on their land didn’t stop the fossil fuel industry from trampling on everything that the Wet’suwet’en held dear in the name of profit.

In December 2018 the Wet’suwet’en people set up the Gidimt’en checkpoint to block construction of the proposed 670 km Coastal GasLink pipeline (CGL) across their territory, thereby exercising their right as a sovereign people to deny access to something that would damage their land and way of life.

On January 7, 2019 the RCMP committed its first large-scale act of aggression against the Wet’suwet’en when heavily armed officers raided the Gidimt’en checkpoint and arrested 14 indigenous land defenders.  The police established a “media exclusion zone”, blocking reporters from accessing the area and covering this hostile action which led to large-scale protests across Canada.

On December 20, 2019, leaked internal RCMP documents published by the Guardian revealed that police were prepared to use lethal force against indigenous land defenders in the Gidimt’en raid earlier that year: “The RCMP commanders also instructed officers to ‘use as much violence toward the gate as you want’.  The RCMP were prepared to arrest children and grandparents: ‘no exception, everyone will be arrested in the injunction area’.”

On January 4, 2020, House Chiefs representing all five of the Wet’suwet’en clans exercised their sovereign rights in evicting Coastal GasLink (CGL) employees from Unist’ot’en and Gidimt’en territories.  An eviction letter stated that workers were not to return to the territory without the consent of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs. 

On January 7, just last week, Coastal GasLink posted an injunction order giving the land defenders 72 hours to clear the way to its work site and allow access.  The RCMP began mobilizing in the area to enforce the injunction.  The land defenders put out a call for solidarity actions and demonstrations across Canada.

On January 9, the United Nations called for the immediate withdraw of the RCMP from Wet’suwet’en territory and for a complete suspension of work on the Coastal GasLink pipeline until “free, prior and informed consent” is obtained from the Wet’suwet’en people.  The RCMP has declared a no-fly zone over Wet’suwet’en territory, set up an "exclusion zone" at 27km and are blocking media, Wet'suwet'en people, and food from getting up to the territory.

This is where things stand now.  There were rallies in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en all across Canada last week, with indigenous peoples and their allies organizing to stop this illegal colonial invasion of sovereign native land.  I myself participated in one of these rallies in downtown Guelph, just yesterday on January 12.  I wish more people had shown up, but we still managed to shut shit down and make our voices heard.  But there’s so much more that needs to be done, and time is running out.  This is the interview that the Real News Network conducted with indigenous activist Kanahus Manuel on January 10, emphasizing the truth that this flagrant aggression by the RCMP against Wet’suwet’en is part of Canada’s long colonial legacy.

TRNN – Canada’s Cops Were Ready to Shoot Indigenous Anti-Pipeline Activists

Willie Dunn – The Ballad of Crowfoot

Comrades and friends, as you know, settler-colonialism in Canada is something that I’ve discussed and made a deliberate point of discussing with my students in China whenever I’ve taught ESL there.  I’ve talked about Louis Riel and the North-West Rebellion, I’ve talked about the Oka Crisis, and I’ve talked about Wet’suwet’en.  And let me tell you, it’s not hard for young students in an ancient country that suffered under colonialism for 100 years, from the Opium Wars in the 1840s until the final victory of the Chinese communists in 1949, to understand what the indigenous peoples of this land are going through.  Some Canadian ESL teachers go abroad full of kitschy stories about maple syrup and hockey and might as well be propagandists for the Canadian Government, but I’m not like that.  I talk about the real history and the current reality in this country.  I show my students things that are not pretty about this country.  And I talk to them about two extremely important English words that not enough Canadians know or understand: “self-determination” and “internationalism”.  Self-determination concerns the right of every people and nation to determine their own destinies free from colonialism, empire or capitalist globalization.  Internationalism is the solidarity of different peoples across borders to support one another in the fight for liberation from colonialism, capitalism and empire.  And I want to emphasize to the settlers who stand in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en that what we are engaged in is internationalist solidarity, because the Wet’suwet’en are themselves a sovereign nation that refuses to submit to the colonial dictates of the Government of Canada and the multi-national corporations whose interests it is protecting when it sends out the RCMP to beat up, arrest or shoot indigenous land defenders.  The Wet’suwet’en might not have an army or a state, but ultimately, they are as sovereign as the Iraqis or the Iranians, and their self-determination must be respected and defended.  Self-determination and internationalism.  Two very, very, important words that are very, very important to understand.  This is an invasion that we are fighting to stop when we go out into the streets to protest and demonstrate in support of indigenous land defenders struggling to end the ongoing colonial genocide against their people and nations.  The Canadian Government might speak of reconciliation, but there can be no reconciliation without self-determination and a complete and total end to colonial rule across Turtle Island, so-called North America, and the Land of the Condor, so-called South America – where indigenous peoples from Bolivia to Brazil to Colombia to Guatemala are fighting for their lives and sovereignty in the face of outright fascism in many cases.  And I’m not even going to talk about how climate change ties into this, I think most people listening to this show already grasp that kind of stuff, but pardon me if I doubt that so many of you truly understand concepts like self-determination and internationalism.  Like me, you grew up in a racist settler-colonial society built on genocide and, like me, you took so many things for granted.  And it’s a long and hard road to unlearn all the bullshit you’ve been fed, let me tell you.

Midnight Oil - Truganini 

Paul Robeson - March of the Volunteers

NO WAR AGAINST IRAN

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Midnight Oil – US Forces
Mike Prysner - No War on Iran! Troops Out of Iraq!

You’re listening to Back in the USSR on CFRU 93.3 FM.  I am Siegfried, and while I want to welcome you to our first show of 2020 and once again wish you a happy new year, a certain individual by the name of Donald J. Trump has made it rather difficult for me to do so.  2020 began with an act of war.  On January 3^rd, under personal instructions from the U.S. President, an American reaper drone launched a missile strike on Baghdad Airport that assassinated Major General Qasem Soleimani, leader of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second in command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces.  This blatant act of aggression by the US Empire followed the slaughter, earlier in the week, of at least 25 members of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces in a series of American airstrikes across Iraq.  In response to those airstrikes, the carnage they left behind, and the naked violation of Iraqi sovereignty that they represented, Iraqi protestors stormed the fortified US Embassy in Baghdad, a widely hated symbol of imperial domination ever since the US-led invasion in 2003 led to the utter devastation of what was once among the wealthiest nations in the Middle East.  That prompted Trump to send hundreds of American marines into Iraq and, it seems, to take the unprecedented and criminal step of assassinating Qasem Soleimani, a military leader of a sovereign state, who was in fact on an official mission of diplomacy to the Iraqi President when he was killed.  So, the U.S. just slaughtered an Iranian diplomat as well as a general, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who, given that the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (which were originally created to fight ISIS) are an official part of the Iraqi Armed Forces, was himself a high-ranking member of the Iraqi Army.  This is serious.  Not to mention that it breaks just about every international law in the book.

After the fact, the U.S. government tried to justify this act of war by claiming that Soleimani was planning attacks on US soldiers, an unsubstantiated accusation that was faithfully repeated throughout the American media and even by the majority of Trump’s political opponents, from Nancy Pelosi to Elizabeth Warren, none of whom had a problem with the assassination itself, only with its timing and the fact that they were not consulted first before it happened (the Canadian Government’s position is essentially the same).  Bernie Sanders was one of the few people to really condemn the assassination and to take a firm anti-war stance.  Meanwhile the US corporate media has tried to equate Qasem Soleimani with Osama Bin-Laden, with Vice-President Mike Pence even making the absurd claim that the Iranian general was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks.  The truth is something else.  Qasem Soleimani, along with the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolution Guard, did provide training and weapons to Iraqi resistance fighters fighting against the American occupation forces after the 2003 invasion.  He did support people who were exercising their legitimate rights under international law to resist the invasion of their country by a foreign power.  He did the same thing in Lebanon in 2006 when Iran provided support to the resistance movement Hezbollah which was fighting against the Israeli invasion of the country.  And more recently, Soleimani did more than any other one person probably, in coordinating the battle against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.  In all three of these cases, he stood up against the foreign policy agenda of America and its regional allies, and that’s ultimately why he was targeted and killed.  More than one million people attended his funeral in Tehran today.

We really do stand on the brink of war right now, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends.  Trump has repeatedly threatened to bomb upwards of 52 major Iranian cultural heritage sites if there is any Iranian retaliation against US troops.  Thousands of additional US troops are being dispatched to bases in the Middle East.  And Trump is now threatening the government of Iraq with sanctions so “strong that those imposed on Iran would pale in comparison”, after the Iraqi parliament overwhelmingly passed a motion to expel the more than 5000 US troops present in the country.  So much for the US respecting Iraqi democracy.  For its part, Iran has finally backed out of the 2015 nuclear agreement, in which it agreed to freeze enriched uranium production in exchange for sanction relief.  It’s important to mention that this agreement, signed under the Obama Administration, was basically a dead letter after Trump pulled the US out of it in 2017 and ratcheted up sanctions to truly devastating levels on the people of Iran, in particular crippling their ability to have access to many life-saving medicines.  Unilateral sanctions, such as the ones that the US has imposed on Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and North Korea, constitute an act of war under international law and are illegal under international law. 

Just as disturbing, Iranian-Americans are being targeted by the US Government in the wake of the assassination, with at least 60 Iranians and Iranian-Americans of all ages being detained at length and interrogated for hours at the Peace Arch border crossing in Blaine, Washington this past Sunday.  The Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reported, citing an anonymous source from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), that “the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a national order to CBP to 'report' and detain anyone with Iranian heritage entering the country who is deemed potentially suspicious or 'adversarial,' regardless of citizenship status.” Iranian-Canadians were among those targeted.

So, in light of all this, I understand why so many friends of mine are currently lying awake at night dreading the possibility of World War 3 breaking out by sunrise.  I feel that.  I understand the fear.  But I also understand that we need to be in the streets, pushing back, fighting back, and striking fear in the hearts of those politicians, whether north or south of the border, who are directly or indirectly pushing us into a new war that would cost countless thousands of lives and have a devastating impact on the region and the world.  Already there have been protest marches in more than 90 cities across America involving thousands of people.  Codepink, the Answer Coalition, and other progressive groups have mobilized hundreds of people over the weekend in Washington D.C.  On Saturday, there was an anti-war rally in front of the American consulate in Toronto and there are plans for more.  These rallies are not enough.  Nowhere near enough people have showed up to these demonstrations, there’s so much more that needs to be done, and quickly, but the speed with which people responded in the wake of this egregious act of war by Trump is impressive in and of itself.  People realize that this is an emergency and urgent action must be taken to stop the push to war with Iran.  The Empire has to be stopped.  I’m old enough to remember 2003 and the lead up to the invasion of Iraq.  An event which played a massive role in my own radicalization politically.  And I remember learning about the carnage of that imperialist war, the destruction of that country, of America’s blatant attempts to colonize it and seize its resources, and how the neo-conservative politicians in Washington driving that war wanted so badly to expand it into Iran, into Syria and into a whole list of other countries that were on their hit-list.  And their agenda remains the same today.  We have to stop this imperial war machine before it murders more nations in the name of profit and greed.  Some of you might have noticed the share prices of Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, and the other giant arms manufacturers and how they went through the roof right after Trump launched that fatal airstrike.  We know who benefitted from the Iraq War and we know who will benefit from an even bigger and much more bloody war with Iran, a country with 80 million citizens.  We have to stop this, brothers and sisters.

And one more thing.  Some people might criticize me for lamenting the death of someone like Qasem Sulaimani, a religious conservative who would likely be very uncomfortable being in the same room as an openly bi-sexual unapologetic communist like myself.  I think I’ve already explained myself pretty well on this one.  I oppose empire and I oppose imperialist war.  And imperialist war, whether it’s against Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria or now Iran does NOTHING to improve the lives of marginalized people.  In fact, the opposite is true.  Whether its women, religious minorities, racialized people, or LGBTQ people, American military intervention exposes them to greater violence, greater suffering, and greater marginalization.  Just look at what NATO-backed rebel groups did to black people in Libya after NATO started bombing the country and the government was toppled.  Look at what Western-armed and trained militant groups did to Christians and Shia Muslims in Syria…to say nothing of what they did to people accused of being homosexuals.  Look at what US-backed warlords did to women in Afghanistan after the Taliban were overthrown, the violence and oppression only got worse.  The Empire is never your friend as an oppressed person.  EVER.  And war sure as hell isn’t going to improve things for marginalized people in Iran, or in the United States for that matter.

Opposing empire is a noble thing.  Iran’s efforts to oppose the US invasion of Iraq were and are praiseworthy.  Standing in solidarity with a people resisting occupation is praiseworthy, just as Iran’s support for Palestinian resistance is praiseworthy.  The American Empire was stopped in Iraq.  Domestic opposition to the war did grow.  And the warhawks in Washington were unable to fulfill their dreams of imposing hegemony over the entire Middle East.  Internationalist resistance, resistance across borders with diverse people joining together against a common foe, is an effective thing.

Now I said last week in my show honoring the 61st anniversary of the Cuban Revolution that I’d follow up this week by talking about the legacy of that revolution and how it impacted the world.  Obviously, time is much more limited, but I can get into one notable example of how the Cuban Revolution impacted Africa and specifically how Cuba played a major role in the defeat of Apartheid South Africa in the 1980s.  In 1987, the army of Apartheid South Africa invaded the country of Angola to overthrow the socialist anti-colonial government there.  Cuba, which had supported anti-colonial struggles around the world and had supported Angola’s government since its independence from Portugal in the 1970s, sent troops to assist the Angolans in repelling the invasion.   

The decisive battle came at a place called Cuito Cuanavale in 1988, and the forces of Apartheid South Africa were destroyed by an allied army of Cubans, Angolans and Namibians.  The result was liberation for Angola, independence for Namibia (which had formerly been colonized by South Africa), and the steady collapse of Apartheid in South Africa itself.  The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale is still honored as an epic victory for internationalism and anti-colonial struggle in the face of racist imperialism and it set an example that I hope more and more people are able to recall in the present day – for we, like the Cubans and Angolans, will need to join hands across borders if we hope to defeat the monster that we are up against now.  Solidarity, comrades and friends.  As Thomas Sankara used to say, "when the people stand up, imperialism trembles".

NO WAR AGAINST IRAN

Ali Primera - Yankee Go Home

Ernst Busch - Go Home Ami 

Christy Moore - Hey Ronnie Reagan