SooToday has received the following open letter to Sault Ste. Marie MP Terry Sheehan from local activists Geo McLean, Kathleen Brosemer and Sara McCleary:
Open letter to Mr. Terry Sheehan, Member of Parliament for Sault Ste. Marie:
We listened as you spoke during your campaign for re-election about reconciliation, the success you’ve had building relationships with indigenous peoples, and your hopes for making reparations for acts of genocide done by the Canadian government against Turtle Island's indigenous people. Many of us were in the audience as you said you want to see fulfilled the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the United Nations Declaration on the Right of Indigenous Peoples. You have pledged your service, your position, your power to these ends in exchange for our votes.
This is why we now call upon you to condemn the RCMP raids of the unceded, traditional territory of the Wet’suwet’en people. Please stand up to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and your fellow Members of Parliament, and do what is right. Support your constituents, and indigenous people everywhere by not toeing the party line on such a crucial issue.
Some have said that the village councils approved of the Coastal GasLink pipeline through the territory. To that, we point out that the village council governance system is itself a tool of colonization. These governance structures were set up by the Department of Indian Affairs, in opposition to the governance structures that are indigenous to the people of this land, that have successfully governed these peoples and their relationships with their lands since time immemorial. Furthermore, village councils have political authority over municipal matters, not over the entire territory of unceded lands and waters.
And they are unceded. These lands were never sold and never ceded in a treaty to fall under Canada’s jurisdiction. They are literally not Canada’s to rule. The only prerogative Canada enjoys over this territory is the right to negotiate and exclude other nation-states from negotiating with the peoples of this territory. This principle was established in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and Canada inherited this from the Crown in establishing its Constitution.
After a civil injunction, the RCMP was directed to arrest the land protectors of Wet’suwet’en in order to make way for TC Energy’s Coastal GasLink. Despite being provided an alternate route acceptable to the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, TC Energy and the Canadian government chose to forcefully remove indigenous people from their land in yet another act of colonial violence.
The RCMP are the trespassers in Wet’suwet’en territory. They must leave peacefully and immediately, or else be known internationally as invaders in lands over which they have no rightful jurisdiction.
Please use your position to help make amends for this act of genocide. It has been clear that the Liberal government will go to great lengths to support and protect corporations in the name of jobs and economic growth. Where is the support and protection for the rights of indigenous people to self-determination and self-governance? For ancestral and delicate ecosystems? Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women?
If we are to have any confidence that you will protect the fundamental rights of people indigenous to Sault Ste. Marie, take a stand now, and call for the raids to stop, and for the gas line to be diverted from Wet’suwet’en territory.
Wet’suwet’en matriarchs have said that reconciliation in Canada is dead because of these raids. Many others have picked up this call, as can be seen with the railroad shut down protests. If you do as you promised electors, you may be able to help resuscitate reconciliation and guide our country down a path of sustainable unity.
Signed,
Geo McLean
Kathleen Brosemer
Sara McCleary