Cultural Survival condemns the murder of the Purépecha environmental activist Guadalupe Campanur Tapia, whose body was found on January 16, 2018 in the municipality of Checrán, Michocán, Mexico. She was strangled to death by two unidentified killers. Investigators have not indicated that Campanur’s death was due to her activism, but they have not ruled it out either.
Threats of violence and violent acts against Indigenous human rights and environmental defenders, particularly women, is an increasingly widespread problem. Frontline Defenders reported that in 2017 they received reports on the murder of 312 defenders in 27 countries.
67% of the total number of activists killed were defending land, environmental and Indigenous peoples’ rights, nearly always in the context of mega projects, extractive industry and big business.
84% of murdered defenders received at least one targeted death threat prior to their killing.
Femicides, sadly common in the Mexico, have ended the life of a talented and passionate woman: a defender for women’s rights, Indigenous Peoples, and the environment. Campanur’s work earned her the admiration and respect from many in her Purépecha community, but she posed a threat to others.
Campanur died at a young age of 32 years old, leaving a legacy of courageous work that will continue to inspire her generation and future generations. In April 2011, she was among Indigenous leaders of Cherán, who rung the bell calling on people to defend their forests against against illegal and merciless logging. Organized crime groups had been operating in the area destroying the municipality’s natural resources with the aid of the corrupt local officials. Campanur was the only female member of the founding team of the Forest Rangers of Cherán, a community initiative that held community patrols in defense of the life in the forest. Her fellow rangers praised her bravery and dedication.
In the midst of the struggle to defend their lands and resources, the community of Cherán decided to claim their rights as Indigenous Peoples in self-government by electing representatives directly and independently from the costly and corrupt conventional elections, expelling politicians, policies and other state and organized crime authorities involved in corruption from their territory. Campanur contributed to creating one of the best functioning examples of self-government in Mexico. These changes also successfully reduced violence in the area, with the last murder occurring in 2012.
Friends of Campanur reported that she had stopped patrolling the forests, but remained involved in the reconstruction of Cherán’s communal territory and culture as well as social work. Campanur became a member of the community’s Concejo Mayor or “Great Council” which aims regulate and aid public life. Her work for seniors, children, and workers made her an icon in her community.
The Attorney General of the State of Michoacán has announced that a investigation is in process in coordination with the Federal Mechanism for the Protection of Journalists and Human Rights Defenders through the Secretariat of State Government.
On the heels of Iowa and Ohio, Wyoming has become the third state to introduce a bill criminalizing the type of activities undertaken by past oil and gas pipeline protesters.
One of the Wyoming bill’s co-sponsors even says it was inspired by the protests led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against the Dakota Access pipeline, and a sheriff involved in policing those protests testified in support of the bill at a recent hearing. Wyoming’s bill is essentially a copy-paste version of template legislation produced by the conservative, corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Like the ALEC version, Wyoming’s Senate File 74 makes “impeding critical infrastructure … a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than ten (10) years, a fine of not more than one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000.00), or both.” Two of the bill sponsors of SF 74, Republican Sens. Eli Bebout and Nathan Winters, are ALEC members. SF 74 has passed unanimously out of its Senate Judiciary Committee and now moves onto the full floor.
ALEC‘s model bill, in turn, was based on two Oklahoma bills, HB 1123 and HB 2128. The Sooner State bills, now official state law, likewise impose felony sentencing, 10 years in prison, and/or a $100,000 fine on individuals who “willfully damage, destroy, vandalize, deface, or tamper with equipment in a critical infrastructure facility.” As DeSmog has reported, the Iowa bill has the lobbying support of Energy Transfer Partners — the owner of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) which runs through the state — as well as that of the American Petroleum Institute and other oil and gas industry companies.
ALEC brings together primarily Republican Party state legislators and lobbyists to enact and vote on “model” legislation at its meetings, which take place several times a year. Within different task forces at these meetings, corporate lobbyists can voice their support or critiques of bills, while also getting a vote. Those bills often then are introduced as legislation in statehouses nationwide, as in this latest example in Wyoming.
Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in Wyoming has helped the state vastly increase its natural gas production and spurred pipeline build-out. However, multiple studies in recent years have also linked fracking-related activities around the small town of Pavilion to groundwater contamination.
Image: Center for Media and Democracy
Targeting ‘Ecoterrorism’
Wyoming’s bill, like the ALEC model bill and one of the Oklahoma bills, includes language implicating any organization “found to be a conspirator” and lobbing a $1 million fine on any group which “aids, abets, solicits, encourages, hires, conspires, commands, or procures a person to commit the crime of impeding critical infrastructure.”
State Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Leland Christensen, a Republican and one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said when he introduced the bill that legislative language was needed to hold accountable those “organizations that sponsor this kind of ecoterrorism.”
The fiscal note for the Wyoming bill says that the “fiscal impact to the judicial system is indeterminable,” while also discussing the prospective costs of incarcerating people under the auspices of the legislation.
“The Department of Corrections states that the impact of the bill is indeterminable as there is currently no way to accurately estimate the number of offenders that will be sentenced pursuant to the bill,” reads the fiscal note. “Each year of incarceration currently costs the state approximately $41,537 per inmate, including medical costs. Each year of community supervision costs the state approximately $2,000 per inmate.”
ALEC Model Confirmed
One co-sponsor of the Wyoming bill, its sole Democratic supporter, Rep. Stan Black, told WyoFile.com that the bill was inspired by what took place at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and that SF 74 was based on the ALEC model bill.
One of the state legislative officials sitting on CSG‘s Committee on Shared State Legislation, North Dakota’s Republican Rep. Kim Koppelman, has a long history of involvement with ALEC, and throughout 2017 he spoke critically of the Indigenous-led movement against the Dakota Access pipeline.
ND Rep. Kim Koppelman; Photo Credit: North Dakota Legislature
“One of the major issues we dealt with was several bills introduced in response to the violent protests at the site of the Dakota Access pipeline,” Koppelman wrote in a February 2017 article halfway through the North Dakota Legislature’s session. “As you may know, peaceful protests led by Native American tribes began this summer but they attracted others from throughout the nation and deteriorated into illegal occupation of sites on federal land, trespassing on private land, blocking of roadways and some incidents of violence.”
At the beginning of 2017, Koppelman co-sponsored threepieces of North Dakota legislation, which crack down on pipeline protests. Two of them passed and are now state law.
The bills “struck a good balance to ensure everyone’s constitutional right to peacefully protest, which we cherish, but to provide for appropriate consequences when anyone crosses the line into anarchy, terrorizing or destruction of property,” wrote Koppelman in his article. “These bills have been fast tracked to give law enforcement the tools they need.”
After DeSmog filed an open records request pertaining to Koppelman’s ALEC and CSG efforts in this area, he told DeSmog, “I have no documents or records concerning the subject of your request but, even if I did, you should be aware that, under North Dakota Century Code Section 44-04-18.6, communications and records of a member of the North Dakota Legislative Assembly are not subject to disclosure.”
In a follow-up email exchange, Koppelman told DeSmog that he “had no role in bringing the bill” to CSG and does not know who did so.
“Frankly, I don’t even specifically recall the bill you’ve inquired about, without going back to review it,” Koppelman told DeSmog. “I also don’t recall who may have supported or opposed it at that meeting, either on the Committee or among the members of the public in the audience.”
For the ALEC bill, Koppelman also said he could not speak to its origins as a model or who has pushed it at the state-level since becoming a model. When asked by DeSmog if CSG records the Shared State Legislation meetings or keeps minutes, Koppelman said that he does not believe so “because the result of meetings and the committee’s work is in the published volume” of Shared State Legislation which CSG disseminates annually.
CSG has in the past, though, kept meeting minutes of its SSL voting sessions, doing so as recently as 2014. Those minutes included an attendance list, which listed nearly three times the number of lobbyists present as state legislators and showed industry attendees representing both the American Gas Association and the Consumer Energy Alliance.
According to a follow-up story by WyoFile.com, the Wyoming Senate Judiciary Committee had Wyoming Business Alliance lobbyist Cindy DeLancey, rather than the lead sponsor, Sen. Christensen, introduce the bill in front of the committee.
Before taking over as head of the Wyoming Business Alliance, DeLancey worked as a director of government and public affairs for BP, where she did “government and public affairs support for the Leadership Team of the Lower 48 North Business Unit,” according to her LinkedIn profile. DeLancey’s Wyoming Business Alliance biography also shows that she formerly served as the chair of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming’s Government and Public Relations Committee. She did not respond to a request for comment.
Wyoming Business Alliance steering committee members include representatives from the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, Chesapeake Energy, Devon Energy, and Jonah Energy. Petroleum Association of Wyoming leadership committees consist of representatives from companies such as Devon Energy, Chesapeake Energy, BP, Anadarko Petroleum, and other companies, while its board of directors lists officials from those companies, plus ExxonMobil, EOG Resources, Halliburton, Williams Companies, and others.
WyoFile.com has reported that, according to a document received from Sen. Christensen, the Petroleum Association and other oil and gas companies have also come out as official supporters of the bill, along with law enforcement representatives. The Wyoming bill’s official backers include the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police, the Wyoming Business Alliance, the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, the Wyoming Petroleum Marketers Association, American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), Holly Frontier Corporation, Anadarko Petroleum, and ONEOK.
According to a special events calendar obtained by DeSmog, the Wyoming Business Alliance hosted a reception at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens on February 12, just days after Wyoming bill SF 74 was introduced on February 9.
On March 1, ALEC will also host a reception at the Nagle-Warren Mansion Cheyenne, according to that calendar, with invited guests asked to RSVP to Wendy Lowe or David Picard. Picard currently has no oil and gas industry lobbying clients, according to his lobbying disclosures, but his lobbying firm’s website says he formerly did so for companies such as Shell, BP, and Marathon. He did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
According to lobbying disclosure forms, Lowe works as a lobbyist for Williams Companies, a major pipeline company with over 3,700 miles of pipeline laid in Wyoming. Lowe also formerly served as associate director of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, according to her LinkedIn Profile.
Credit: Wyoming State Legislature
Lowe, the private sector chairwoman for ALEC in Wyoming as of 2014, won the state chair of the year award from ALEC in 2012. She has also previously received corporate-funded “scholarship” gifts to attend ALEC meetings as an official Wyoming representative, according to a 2013 report published by the nonprofit watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy.
An ALEC newsletter from May 2011 shows that, at an ALEC event Lowe co-hosted in 2011 in Wyoming, she praised the organization for “creating a unique environment in which state legislators and private sector leaders can come together, share ideas, and cooperate in developing effective policy solutions.”
At a state Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Wyoming bill, Laramie County Sheriff Danny Glick also came out in support of the legislation, warning that a situation similar to Standing Rock could happen in Wyoming.
“One of our Niobrara county commissioners already has graffiti going up — ‘No DAPL’ — in that area up there,” Glick said at the hearing, referring to the shorthand for the Dakota Access pipeline. Glick, an Executive Committee member and Immediate Past President of the National Sheriffs’ Association, was one of the most supportive sheriffs pushing what has been characterized as a heavy-handed and militaristic reaction by law enforcement to the activism at Standing Rock.
Under the direction of Glick, Laramie County sent officers to the Dakota Access protests under the auspices of the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC), triggered after North Dakota’s Republican Governor Jack Dalrymple issued an emergency order on August 19, 2016. Glick too, spent time at Standing Rock and spoke at a press conferencealongside Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier on October 6, 2016.
Laramie County Sheriff Glick. Credit: National Sheriffs’ Association Facebook Page
Glick, who attended a roundtable meeting at the White House in February 2017 with President Donald Trump and other sheriffs, was also previously CC‘d on a set of emails obtained by DeSmog and Muckrock in which the National Sheriffs’ Association and public relations firms it had hired wrote talking points in an attempt to discredit those who participated at Standing Rock. Those talking points said to describe the anti-pipeline movement as rife with “anarchists” and “Palestinian activists” who used violence and possessed “guns, knives, etc.”
‘Worst Instincts of Power’
Critics say the Wyoming bill could have far-reaching and negative impacts, if it becomes law, both in terms of criminal sentencing and for First Amendment rights. The American Civil Liberties Union of Wyoming, for example, has come out against the bill on both grounds.
The Sierra Club in Wyoming agreed, saying in an email blast that the bill is “explicitly designed to crush public opposition to projects like the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines, by preventing the kind of protests that occurred at Standing Rock.”
Even people representing industry interests and within the Republican Party have come out against the bill as it currently reads.
“This bill appeals to the absolute worst instincts of power,” Larry Wolfe, a Wyoming attorney who represents the oil and gas industry, said at a hearing about the bill, according to WyoFile.com. “We the powerful must protect things that are already protected under existing law.”
Republican Senator Cale Case largely echoed the concerns put forward by Wolfe.
“This country has been through WWII, civil unrest in the 1960s and a heck of a lot more, but we didn’t need legislation like this,” Case conveyed in an email to WyoFile.com. “Good laws already exist to protect property without this chilling impact on free speech.”
Featured image: Protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline Protest Camp. Image: Michael Nigro/SIPA USA/PA Images. Labeling Native American journalists as “activists” simply because of their heritage helps to further diminish the Indigenous narrative.
I get approached frequently to discuss my time spent reporting from Standing Rock, the Indigenous-led movement that sought to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. But what’s funny about these invitations is that they almost always incorporate some notion that I was there as an activist – and without even asking me if that was, indeed, the case.
It’s one of these common assumptions: Native American journalist equals Native American campaigner. To be sure, there are many Indigenous folks I know who call themselves journalists as well as activists in the same breath, and that’s awesome – we need positive and powerful messaging out there. From their headlines, these writers call out today’s problems from tribal community and prompt a call to action. And it works for a lot of different audiences. Indigenous Peoples get a boost, allies get to show their support and outsiders trying to grasp at a world unknown get an introduction to root causes and agendas. Combined, it makes for an easy narrative because of what little critical thinking is required.
But here’s the thing: Indian Country can be a complicated wonder at times, and to routinely simplify the narrative perhaps perpetuates situations like we saw at Standing Rock, where major media presence was uneven at best. It was a stark absence, the lack of journalists on the ground during some of the most critical moments of the movement. It took a harrowing night of police weaponizing water on protesters before major newsrooms ultimately sent crews to the standoff. If it hadn’t been for water protectors themselves live-streaming the episode on Facebook, many would have been led to believe what had been written by the regional Associated Press reporter, who called the sub-freezing night of police-led violence “skirmishes.” But even though citizen journalism corrected where mainstream under-performed, we need to recognize the relationship between the two – and start to scrutinize all newsfeeds that come across our screens.
Since that sub-freezing night of 20 November 2016, we’ve seen an unraveling of documentation proving that the North Dakota police used military-style tactics, guided by a former CIA operative behind the for-hire security firm, TigerSwan. From revelations by DeSmogBlog, The Intercept and other bottom-up revelations, it’s clear that North Dakota police targeted demonstrators, treating them not unlike “jihadists;” they were profiled as “terrorists,” and some were even formally charged with such allegations.
Again, it’s easy to see how a Native American journalist could be seen as an activist with so much stacked up against people demanding clean water.
As I type these words on 4 December 2017, I reflect back to a year ago on this day, when roughly 12,000 people stood in unity on the borderlands of the Standing Rock reservation on the day the Obama Administration called to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Those who were there turned out to resist, not just an energy project, but the many other strands of injustices that the months-long demonstration represented: systemic and historic military-led violence, environmental racism, deliberate political marginalization and segregation. The response to these circumstances at Standing Rock was ultimately a resistance to these trends, and also a place for Indigenous Peoples to heal from generations of trauma.
At Standing Rock on this day, 4 December 2016, there were also teams of mainstream journalists literally scrambling to get the story that they had missed for months. I know because I spoke to many of them as they frantically searched for travel directions, quotable sources and facts, so many essential facts. Satellite trucks lined up along Highway 1806, overlooking the sprawling resistance camps. From their perches, reporters went live on the air, quoting Lakota prophecy, and explaining the “black snake,” the symbolic reference that water protectors, or protesters, had called the pipeline.
As the major media parachuted in, predictably, they hired Indigenous “fixers” to get at the story fast and quick; they featured images of the most colorful “Indians” dressed in regalia and face-paint; and they explained treaties and consultation, the cornerstone of these agreements, as if understanding these concepts for the first time – because they were.
But it was bottom-up journalism that helped shape a story that outsiders finally understood from Standing Rock. It’s why when we call Native American journalists “activists” in the same sentence, without thinking otherwise, it automatically diminishes the Indigenous narrative that is already burdened by a chronic, routine ignoring. It’s an injustice in and of itself and something that I often confronted when reporting from Standing Rock, including my own arrest.
On 1 February 2017, I was arrested while gathering interviews and taking photos of a demonstration near the main Oceti Sakowin camp, where water protectors had been camped out in the North Dakota winter. Despite showing my press pass when asked, and leaving the scene when police requested, I was detained for 30 hours, in which five were spent in a freezing garage where I was verbally accosted by the jail captain. I was denied my right to a phone call for more than a day, and while detained I learned that my white cellmates were spared the humiliation of being strip-searched but that Native American women like myself were not. When I was released from jail, I read that police had lied to the Bismarck Tribune about whether I had presented my press pass to officers at the scene of the demonstration. I did, even though they said I did not. Months later, I still face charges of criminal trespassing and engaging in a riot which could result in fines and up to a year in jail.
And so it’s important that we acknowledge that they arrested a journalist that day, on 1 Febuary 2017, not an activist. And it’s important that society respects and sees the difference between the two. My statement is not meant to throw a shade on activism. We need more resistance fighters in this world. It’s just not in my DNA to take to the streets, pump fists and chant politicised slogans. What is in my being is to observe carefully and think critically about these current events shaping our lives and to frame ideas backed by facts that can have the farthest reach with the most integrity.
Image: Becker1999 (Paul and Cathy)/Flickr.
We’re living in a day where judicial systems in towns like Mandan, North Dakota, work to discredit journalists by arresting them and labeling them “activists.” These are women like Amy Goodman, an unflappable field reporter and media businesswoman whose work has been recognised around the world. And so to enable this way of thinking isn’t just a disservice to the people who are teetering the fine line between credible narratives and nuance, but it’s a burden to the very democracy that journalism brings and the reason why I believe it is one our noblest professions.
And so as the resistance movement across America spreads, much of it inspired by the people power that came together at Standing Rock, we must also realise that there is a war on journalism happening in America and around the world. Until late November, the mega-chain Wal-Mart was selling a t-shirt that used off-colored humour suggesting hanging journalists. Store executives only agreed to pull the item from its racks following intense scrutiny from the American journalism community. Meantime, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, there have been reported attacks on at least three dozen journalists in the country alone.
Accountability journalism is becoming one of the most important professions of our time. We must respect this role in this time of resistance, and think twice before using the label “activist.”
Jenni Monet is an award-winning journalist and tribal member of the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico. She’s also executive producer and host of the podcast Still Here. @jennimonet
This article was originally published at openDemocracy as a part of Right to Protest, a partnership project with human rights organizations CELS and INCLO, with support from the ACLU, examining the power of protest and its fundamental role in democratic society. It has been re-published at Deep Green Resistance News Service under a Creative Commons License.
Featured image: Woodland Cree Tribe Walk protest, January 2017. By Joel Angel Juarez/Zuma Press/PA Images. Indigenous nations have emerged as vocal defenders of land and water, but state surveillance of these groups is disproportionate, and speaks of the broad criminalisation of Indigenous peoples.
Researchers and journalists have begun to reveal the extent to which Indigenous activists and organisations in Canada are subject to surveillance by police, military, national security intelligence agencies and other government bodies. While security agencies have long looked beyond ‘traditional’ national security threats and set their sights on activists – even in the absence of evidence linking these individuals or organisations to any violent criminal activity – this reality is increasingly the subject of media and public scrutiny. As Jeffrey Monaghan and Kevin Walby have written, the language of “aboriginal and multi-issue extremists” in security discourse blurs the line between threats to national security, matters of ordinary law enforcement, and lawful, democratic advocacy.
In this piece, we summarise some of what is known about the surveillance practices employed to keep tabs on Indigenous leaders and activists, and describe their impact on Charter-protected and internationally recognised human rights and freedoms.
Indigenous nations and peoples have emerged, worldwide, as vocal defenders of land and water, organising to protect ancestral territories and ways of life. In Canada, while aboriginal and treaty rights are constitutionally recognised and affirmed, the interpretation of those rights is highly contested and a matter frequently before the country’s highest court. Indigenous activists and organisations in Canada have led popular resistance to the development of new oil and gas pipelines, hydroelectric dams, mining operations, and other extractive industries that have significant environmental impact and which frequently encroach on Indigenous territories.
This resistance – with tactics ranging from peaceful protest and strategic litigation to the establishment of creative action camps and blockades – has frequently been met with a forceful police response. Through diligent research and investigative reporting, a pattern of extensive surveillance of these activities has also emerged – implicating law enforcement, intelligence agencies and numerous other government bodies.
The pattern of surveillance against Indigenous activists and organisations… can be characterised as disproportionate and alienating
Both freedom of expression and assembly are guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which forms part of the Canadian constitution. The freedom from unreasonable search and seizure – which provides constitutional protection for privacy – is also guaranteed. The law recognises certain limits to these rights, provided they further a compelling government objective and are proportionate to that objective. However, the pattern of surveillance against Indigenous activists and organisations that has emerged in Canada is one that can clearly be characterised as disproportionate and alienating, with no evidence that it is necessary. Though these operations are inherently covert, Indigenous activists, researchers and human rights advocates have begun – largely through access-to-information requests – to piece together a clearer picture of the ways in which this surveillance takes place. Below, we discuss surveillance of individual leaders, surveillance of communities and movements, and how the agencies and departments that gather information use and share it.
Idle No More protest. Image: Daniela Kantorova/Flickr. Some rights reserved.
Surveillance of Indigenous leaders
Government agencies have engaged in surveillance and information-gathering activities focused on Indigenous leaders and activists. Take for example the case of Dr. Cindy Blackstock, who is a Gitksan activist for child welfare, the Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, and a Professor of Social Work at McGill University. Dr. Blackstock’s organisation (along with the Assembly of First Nations) had sought justice at Canada’s Human Rights Tribunal regarding the federal government’s failure to provide equal funding for services for First Nations children, youth and families living on First Nations reserves. Access to information requests revealed that between 2009 and 2011, Dr. Blackstock was subject to extensive monitoring by Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) – the government department responsible for Indigenous issues — and the Department of Justice. Officials monitored her personal and professional activities on Facebook and attended between 75 and 100 of her public speaking engagements, taking detailed notes and widely distributing reports on her activities. In 2013, Canada’s Privacy Commissioner found that by engaging in this personal monitoring – which was unrelated to her professional activities or her organisation’s case against the government – the Department of Justice and INAC had violated Dr. Blackstock’s privacy rights.
Similarly, Dr. Pamela Palmater is a Mi’kmaq lawyer, member of the Eel River Bar First Nation, and an Associate Professor and Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University. Following public revelations that Dr. Cindy Blackstock was being monitored by the government, Dr. Palmater made access to information requests to INAC, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS – Canada’s national spy agency), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP – Canada’s national police force), and the federal Department of National Defence (DND). While many of the records sought were legally exempt from disclosure, Dr. Palmater noted that some portions of her request to CSIS were exempt under section 15(1)(c) of the Access to Information Act as relating “to the efforts of Canada towards detecting, preventing or suppressing subversive or hostile activities.” In a statement to the Public Safety Committeeof the House of Commons related to its study of Bill C-51 (Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015) Dr. Palmater stated that INAC also admitted to having 750 pages of documentation on her activities and whereabouts, but had destroyed the files before they had the opportunity to give them to her.
Clayton Thomas-Muller’s case provides another example. Mr. Thomas-Muller is a member of the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation and a former Idle No Moreorganiser. The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) National News obtained documents from criminology professor Dr. Jeffrey Monaghan demonstrating that in 2010 and 2011, information about Thomas-Muller (who was at the time a member of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN)) had made its way into the RCMP’s Suspicious Incidents Report (SIR) despite acknowledgement that there was no specific criminal threat at issue: Thomas-Muller was simply planning a trip to the Wet’suwet’en action camp against the Northern Gateway pipeline. The report was referred for inclusion in the SIR on the basis that IEN was an ‘extremist’ group, although the basis for this characterisation, or how the group was designated as such, is not known.
Surveillance of communities and movements
The records detailing monitoring of individual activists and leaders speak to a larger pattern of surveillance against non-violent dissent, Indigenous-led social movements and their allies. As APTN reported in relation to the documents referring to Thomas-Muller, RCMP records also listed a number of groups as “involved persons,” including “the Defenders of the Land, Direct Action in Canada for Climate Justice, Ontario Public Interest Research Group, Ruckus Society, Global Justice Ecology Project, Sea to Sands Conservation Alliance, Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, the Indigenous Action Movement and the Wet’suwet’en Direct Action Camp.” In 2014, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) filed complaints against both the RCMP and CSIS, alleging unlawful surveillance against opponents of Northern Gateway that included many of the same organisations. While the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP launched an independent investigation, the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) (the body responsible for CSIS oversight) instead held a series of secret hearings. They issued a decision in 2015, but barred the BCCLA from speaking about the outcome. The BCCLA has since applied for judicial review of this decision.
Just last month, documents obtained by VICE News demonstrate that the RCMP surveilled Indigenous activists who constructed a Tipi on Parliament Hill as part of Idle No More’s Unsettling Canada 150, a campaign coinciding with 150 years since Canadian confederation. Idle No More has come under government scrutiny on other occasions: in 2015 documents obtained by APTNconfirmed that Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development (AAND, now INAC) shared information about peaceful protests led by the group with Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), and passed on information about meetings between government and First Nations leaders to the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre (ITAC), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and others.
The Government Operations Centre (GOC) called an emergency teleconference… and widely circulated a spreadsheet detailing these solidarity events
In 2013, an RCMP raid on a Mi’kmaq-led anti-fracking camp in Elsipogtog, New Brunswick triggered a heated confrontation and dozens of arrests. Documents revealed that the Canadian Forces National Counter-Intelligence Unit was also involved in monitoring the situation at Elsipogtog. In response to the raid, activists took to social media, calling for peaceful solidarity actions to take place in the following days. APTN revealed that the Government Operations Centre (GOC) called an emergency teleconference with a long list of federal departments and widely circulated a spreadsheet detailing these solidarity events. It included such events as “a jingle-dress healing dance in Kenora, Ont., a prayer ceremony in Edmonton and an Idle No More ‘taco fundraiser, raffle and jam session’ planned at the Native Friendship Centre in Barrie.”
Image: Brendan Bombaci/Flickr. Some rights reserved.
Sharing and using the fruits of surveillance
The surveillance and monitoring of Indigenous communities and movements is in no way confined to the examples noted above. In 2011, the Toronto Starreported that a distinct Joint Intelligence Group (JIG) of the RCMP was formed specifically to monitor the activities of Aboriginal groups in 2007. While the unit was “dismantled” in 2010, the RCMP would not confirm whether the same activities were taking place under another name or program. Documents revealed that as of 2009, their activities focused on 18 “communities of concern,” flagged largely for their opposition to logging, mining or pipeline projects.
Journalists noted that the JIG reported on a weekly basis to approximately 450 recipients, including “unnamed ‘industry partners’ in the energy and private sector,” highlighting a potentially troubling information-sharing relationship between government and private corporations. The Dominion and a summary of these issues by Voices-Voix reported that intelligence sharing between government and private sector actors has regularly taken place through classified briefings, raising concern among Indigenous and environmental activists. As Clayton Thomas-Muller reflected in an interview with APTN National News following revelations that he had been under surveillance:
“We are challenging the most powerful corporate entities on the planet … What we have on our side is endless human resources. We have the power of our ancestors and traditions fueling us. We are intimately aware of the domestic surveillance that is happening as well as the agenda to criminalise Indigenous dissent.”
VICE News has also obtained documents demonstrating that Canada’s spy agency has taken a keen interest in the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline, led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe at the Oceti Sakowin Camp. In a 2016 CSIS document, the spy agency noted that “there is strong Canadian Aboriginal support for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe as many see similarities to their own struggles against proposed pipeline construction in Canada (Northern Gateway, Pacific Trails, Energy East, etc.).”
In 2015, the federal government passed legislation (Bill C-51, the Anti-Terrorism Act 2015) that enabled even greater information-sharing practices amongst government agencies about “threats to critical infrastructure” or “the economic and financial stability of Canada”, both of which may provide an excuse to share information in a manner that chills and thereby threatens the constitutionally recognised right to protest. The same legislation afforded dramatic new “disruption” powers to CSIS. Over 100 Canadian legal academics wrote a lengthy analysis in opposition to the bill. Melina Laboucan-Massimo described the chilling effects of the legislation for openDemocracy in 2015:
“It is legislation like this that makes it difficult for people to not be scared into silence, and for people like me who believe that we need a just transition to renewable energy and engage in peaceful protests that may be seen as criminal in the eyes of the Canadian government. But this history is not new for us as Indigenous peoples here in Canada. It is the continuation of neo colonialism seen now in the form of resource extraction, environmental and cultural genocide.”
Bill C-51 is currently subject to a constitutional challenge led by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. Despite promises to correct the unconstitutional aspects of Bill C-51, the current government’s proposed reform to national security law (Bill C-59) fails to address many of the concerns raised in that Charter challenge. The notion that peaceful resistance – such as opposition to pipeline projects or other private development – constitutes a meaningful threat to “critical infrastructure” encourages the profiling of Indigenous groups by Canada’s national security bodies.
The consequences of criminalisation
The Canadian government is only beginning to confront its history of violence and colonialism against Indigenous peoples. As Pam Palmater testified to the House of Commons in 2015:
“Every aspect of our identity has been criminalised, both historically and into the present day. In every single instance, we’ve had to resist all of these laws, keeping in mind that these were all validly enacted laws. It was legal to take Mi’kmaq scalps; it was legal to confine us to reserves; it was legal to deny us legal representation. All of these things were law in Canada. We had to be criminals, in that we had to break the law in order to preserve our lives, our physical security, and our identities.”
A systemic pattern of over-policing and over-incarceration of Indigenous peoples by the Canadian government remains a core feature of our legal system
Sixty percent of First Nations children on reserve continue to live in poverty and there are over 70 First Nations communities where drinking water advisories have been in effect for one year or more. A systemic pattern of over-policing and over-incarceration of Indigenous peoples by the Canadian government remains a core feature of our legal system. Though First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples comprise about 4% of the Canadian population, they make up over 23% of the federal inmate population, leading commentators to describe Canada’s prisons as “the new residential schools.” This pattern of criminalisation means that Indigenous people in Canada are more likely to be disproportionately subject to the kinds of “everyday surveillance” associated with poverty, urbanisation and incarceration, alongside the enhanced surveillance threats faced by those who are active on issues of land and water. The surveillance of Indigenous activists and organisations in Canada must be understood as part of this larger context.
The CCLA is concerned about the long-term impacts of government surveillance of individuals and communities in Canada generally, and of Indigenous activists in particular. While surveillance is most often discussed in terms of privacy rights – and while it is doubtlessly true that many forms of state surveillance are deeply invasive intrusions into the private lives of individuals and communities – privacy is not the only right at stake. In fact, the kind of government surveillance that Indigenous activists and groups have been subject to has the potential to affect a wide range of rights and freedoms protected by the Charter, as well as jeopardise many of our most deeply held democratic values. Pervasive surveillance creates a climate of insecurity, with the potential to discourage legitimate democratic participation, curtail peaceful assembly, and chill freedom of speech, of religious expression and of the press. When these consequences are disproportionately aimed at those engaged with the democratic process through their activism and political work, democracy, and the public interest as a whole, suffer.
This article was originally published at openDemocracy as a part of Right to Protest, a partnership project with human rights organizations CELS and INCLO, with support from the ACLU, examining the power of protest and its fundamental role in democratic society. It has been re-published at DGR News Service under a Creative Commons License.
Featured image: Aymara people outside the courthouse in Puno on June 28, 2017, during final hearings of the trial. Walter Aduviri was sentenced to seven years for protesting against a Canadian mining project.
This past month, eighteen Aymara community leaders endured the final stages of a trial that had them facing up to 28 years in prison and massive fines for their alleged roles in the 2011 ‘Aymarazo’ protests against the Santa Ana silver mine on the Peru-Bolivia border. The group of Aymara leaders stood accused of obstructing public services, disturbing the peace, and committing aggravated extortion against the state.
Seventeen of the accused were acquitted of all charges; however, on July 18, Walter Aduviri was sentenced to 7 years in prison and ordered to pay a 2 million sol fine (over $600,000). His lawyer, Martín Ticona, speaking to the crowds in Puno after final sentencing, indicated irregularities in the judicial process and said that they will appeal Aduviri’s sentencing. The prosecutor, Juan Monzón Mamani, also intends to appeal the decision for reasons that are not yet clear.
Aymara Branded as Criminals for Resistance against Mining
Initially, 100 Aymara had criminal investigations brought against them after the ‘Aymarazo’ protests in the southeastern region of Puno. The investigations were dropped against 82 of the Aymara, leaving just eighteen to stand trial. They had all been equally charged with obstruction of public services, disturbing the peace, and aggravated extortion. On June 28, the accusations were withdrawn against eight leaders—including Francisca Sarmiento, the only woman charged—due to lack of evidence. Ten went on to face sentencing; but only Aduviri was found guilty, for the charge of disturbing the peace.
Photo: DHUMA
“They say that the Aymarazo is an emblematic case, and that should mean justice for our leaders, and compliance with the law of prior consultation,” an Aymara man explains in a video by PUNO organization Human Rights and Environment (DHUMA, its acronym in Spanish). “And the government has decided that because of the protest they must prosecute our leaders, so what is our response? That we must organize ourselves as Aymara communities and indigenous and rural communities in general.”
The accused have paid a heavy price over the past six years – not only in terms of time and money spent to attend numerous court hearings and the heavy threat of 28-year prison sentences. They have also had to cope with the psychological trauma of criminalization, and the Aymara population at large have struggled with a dominant public narrative stigmatizing the Aymara population as alleged “criminals” or with labels such as “anti-development,” according to local organizations and activists.
The ‘Aymarazo’ protests in 2011
Rumors of the proposed mine began to circulate as early as 2004. Communities were immediately concerned about the proposed mine because of its sensitive location. Mining operations are inherently water-intensive and Santa Ana could also contaminate drinking water, affecting agriculture, livelihoods and food security for hundreds.
“We’ve come here today to say clearly that the Santa Ana Mine was going to operate in an area where there are many rivers,” a woman at a recent demonstration reiterated to DHUMA. The Callacami River runs through the area and if it’s contaminated, the pollution could even reach the town of Desaguadero, [near] Lake Titicaca, and the whole lake could be polluted, affecting the entire region and even Bolivia.”
While communities had found out about the mine through rumors in 2004, it was not until 2007 that the news became official when the government authorized the Santa Ana mine. Communities began to carry out a series of public petitions, administrative complaints and procedures directed at local and regional government and environmental authorities. When their concerns remained unaddressed, demonstrations began to be organized in communities and towns all along the shores of Lake Titicaca, near the border with Bolivia, and in the city of Puno, where this steady resistance came to a head with the events known as the Aymarazo in March to June of 2011.
Those protests culminated over several days in May in a mass mobilization in Puno of more than 15,000 Aymara people from all over the south of Peru, paralyzing parts of the city for days. Communities were calling for not just cancellation of the Santa Ana mine, but cancellation of all mining concessions since 2011, and a moratorium on future concessions, according to Rodrigo Lauracio, a lawyer with DHUMA, in an extensive interview with the authors. Indigenous territory in Puno province has seen a massive increase in permits for extractive projects over the past two decades, he said, consistent with nationwide trends.
“This was a social protest not just by communities in the district of Huacallani [where the concession is] who were directly affected, but by many communities who would be indirectly affected,” said Lauracio. “In the environmental impact study only three communities were considered, but in reality many communities [were affected].”
Bear Creek Mining Corp.’s public presentation of the company’s environmental impact study in February 2011, badly translated into Aymara in an undersized hearing room, only deepened public fears, according to Lauracio.
“It’s important to note that this mining project was proposed in the territory of rural Aymara indigenous communities,” he said. “They had many concerns to do with impacts on their territory, and above all on the water… Many of these concerns were not resolved by the mining company at this time.”
Aftermath of the Mobilizations
The Aymarazo protests forced the government’s hand: They rescinded the controversial Decree 083 that gave Bear Creek authorization to proceed, effectively stopping the project.
Repressive criminal proceedings are just one of the consequences of the Aymarazo mobilizations. But the repeal of the Santa Ana decree is also a factor in another lawsuit. In 2014, the company responded to that move by filing a $1.2 billion case against Peru at the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes. Bear Creek contends that Peru violated the terms of its trade agreement with Canada by not allowing the mine to go forward. The hearings, which are ongoing, take place in a closed court in a highly undemocratic process.
Bear Creek asserts that the Aymarazo protests were politically motivated. However, DHUMA and other supporting organizations say that communities rejected the project in order to protect their water sources, and because neither Bear Creek nor the Peruvian state followed correct legal procedures. The company’s attempt at community outreach manipulated communities and both the state and the corporation implemented their policies and plans with a complete lack of transparency, according to Lauracio, failing to even comply with national and international law on free, prior and informed consent.
Repressive Policies and Multiple Abuses of Power
Peru has seen an increase in free trade agreements and a relaxing of environmental protection in recent years. These policies aim to facilitate the entry of transnational corporations and international investment into Peru, and mining and extractive industries have increased across the country.
There has also been an increase in “… public policies that create new crimes against people who participate in social protests,” observed Lauracio. Peru’s wave of neoliberal and repressive policies not only gives extractive industry a helping hand but creates further mechanisms to criminalize resistance to extractivism in the courts. These mechanisms are designed to prevent further protests like the Aymarazo and help pave the way for future extractive projects.
Police stand on guard outside the courthouse. Photo: DHUMA
The repressive tactics of criminal proceedings go along with other forms of state criminalization. These are also present in the Aymarazo – such as the smear campaigns against social protests and those who organize and participate in them as violent criminals or “backwards” or “against development.” The state also intervened in Aymarazo protests in ways that sparked violence, such as the declaration of a state of emergency, which allowed increased repressive tactics and violence on the part of the armed forces and caused trauma, injuries and death.
These dynamics are not just playing out in Puno, but across Peru, which currently has 39 mining conflicts registered by the Observatory of Mining Conflicts in Latin America. In the same week as the Aymarazo sentence, three community leaders from Espinar, Cusco, also faced sentencing in a trial for charges relating to protests calling for mining company compliance with environmental and health regulations. The criminal charges are related to protests over mining in 2012 in which five people were killed by Peruvian police during a declared state of emergency. The three have been acquitted—but they’ve gone through five years of unfair criminal proceedings.
In another example of policies that criminalize and harm people, Peru modified its laws in 2014 to create a loophole that allows police officers to kill people in situations of social protests. The police are also permitted to contract with corporations to provide private security services.
On one side, Bear Creek still has Santa Ana mine featured on its website (no doubt in the hope that its share price doesn’t drop, as it did after the 2011 protests) and the Peruvian state may be forced to pay $1.2 billion to Bear Creek, and could reissue the Santa Ana permit. On the other side, the Peruvian state seeks to jail Walter Aduviri and criminalize anti-mining resistance in a bid to silence future protests. Furthermore, they are demanding exaggerated fines, with an initial demand against the 18 for over $2 million, and Aduviri now sentenced to pay $600,000. To put that amount into context, the monthly minimum wage in Peru is around $270 – it would take 185 years of minimum wages to pay Aduviri’s fine.
The Politics of the Guilty Verdict against Aduviri
Aduviri has said that the trial is politically motivated, and that he is the target of political persecution. He ran for governor of the Puno province in 2014 on a platform many said was controversial, and has been branded as using the movement as a leadership platform to gain votes, by those seeking to discredit the demands of the 2011 protests.
Walter Aduviri campaigning in 2014. Source: YouTube
While he may be acquitted of the charge of extorting the state, he is charged with being the ringleader of not only the protest, but acts of destruction of state property that happened during the Aymarazo in 2011: his guilty verdict for the charge of disturbances labels him as autor mediato— indirect perpetrator or perpetrator-by-means. His being part of the leadership of a movement, his politics, and the widespread support he receives in Puno, seem to be included in the condemning judgment.
Outside the courthouse on July 6, the day of provisional sentencing, hundreds of Aymara mobilized in support of Aduviri, crying, “If there’s no solution, Quechuazo y Aymarazo! [more protests].” Aduviri declared his innocence in a press conference on July 7. On July 18, the day of the final sentencing, he addressed crowds in Puno in a fiery speech, interrupted by shouts of slogans denouncing the prosecutors and judges as biased. Aduviri is not in jail because the sentence can’t be executed while his appeal is ongoing.
With the verdict in the ICSID case due in September of this year, and Aduviri’s harsh sentence, the situation is a confluence of the state’s policy to criminalize anti-mining protests, and the toxic impacts of the tools of corporate power, like free trade agreements, when protests cause a mining project to be halted.
Featured image: A Miskito elder stands watch in what has become a daily vigil – awaiting the promised return of armed Colonos who recently attacked her village with sophisticated weaponry, covering her home in bullet holes and terrorizing the Miskito community. Courtney Parker, 2016
Recently published statistics from watchdog group, Global Witness, have confirmed what Indigenous Nicaraguans have been trying to tell the world for years – the battle to protect Indigenous land rights in Nicaragua is not just one of the most dangerous…it is the most deadly.
Faced with such mounting evidence, however, the global human rights community continues to shrug its shoulders.
A recent article lauding a new partnership between The Guardian and Global Witness – aimed at increasing surveillance and reporting on land activists’ deaths worldwide – bizarrely blacks out a single mention of Nicaragua, which emerged from recent analysis as the deadliest nation in the world for land rights struggles, per capita.
The Guardian’s omission is glaring, as the authors specifically call out conditions in countries such as Colombia, the United States, Brazil, Honduras, and Mexico. They avoided even naming Nicaragua, which has a higher death rate for land activists than any of these regions. Even more disturbing, such deaths in Nicaragua remain grossly underreported still, due to the relative isolation of high conflict zones such as the northern Caribbean coast.
Women from the community of Santa Clara gather to denounce the violence inflicted by the encroaching illegal land settlers. The woman in the center describes the unthinkable; her daughter (in the yellow shirt) was shot in the head by colonos during one such horrific attack. Photo: Courtney Parker, 2016
There are hints the authors sought to, by excluding the socialist country, frame the escalating crisis in a thematic, but ultimately myopic, critique of capitalism – which could perpetuate a popular (sometimes populist) false narrative that socialism (or Marxism) is some sort of vaccine against environmental exploitation. Regardless of intent, such implications could not be less true.
A few cases in point…
The great socialist nation of Canada – even with human rights superstar, Justin Trudeau, now at the reigns – continues its deadly, imperialist, extractivism activity in Latin America, and remains a driving force behind the controversial and potentially devastating oil pipelines to the north. An imperialist Chinese mining operative has waged violent attacks against Indigenous community defenders with direct support from the military in Ecuador – a country once famous for their groundbreaking constitution codifying the ‘Rights of Nature’. Nicaragua, meanwhile, is busy destroying the second largest tropical rainforest in the western hemisphere in attempts to sustain the oft praised ‘era of economic growth’ under Daniel Ortega.
Subhabrata ‘Bobby’ Banjeree’, a professor of the University of London’s Cass Business School, provided some insight about media inconsistencies on land rights struggles through a statement to the Thomas Reuters Foundation (concerning the Global Witness report.)
“Right now there are more than 2,000 reported hotspots around the world. The reality is that there are probably three times that number which are not reported because they are not as sexy and don’t make TV news.”
As The Guardian attempts to take the lead on resolving the disparities in coverage, it has somehow found cause to preemptively omit the deadliest case. One is left to wonder if calling out so-called capitalist nations is in fact sexy, and hard evidence which might dilute this motif is somehow…not.
The tombs of two community heroes in Santa Clara – acclaimed Miskitu warriors who sacrificed their lives attempting to shield their families and friends from encroaching violence – are displayed in reverence at a central point in the village.. Photo: Courtney Parker, 2016
In an insight especially relevant to Nicaragua, Banjeree also noted to Reuters how the role of the state is often compromised by conflicting responsibilities in encouraging economic development for a given nation and protecting the citizens who live there. The ostensibly ‘Christian-socialist’ government of President Ortega seems to be repeatedly and incomprehensively erring on the side of violence and neoliberal economics.
Global Witness itself has emerged as a truly objective watchdog group in an ideologically tainted atmosphere of human rights activism, in which various struggles are routinely ennobled or suppressed according to how well they fit into ongoing narratives supporting capitalist or anti-capitalist fervor. In their own statement about the new Guardian partnership, Global Witness conveyed:
“We’re hoping this will help break the silence that fuels this rising tide of violence. Many activists who are murdered live in remote villages deep within rainforests or mountain ranges, and their deaths pass under journalists’ radars. Without the exposure that comes from media coverage, governments and businesses have fewer incentives to protect people under threat, or to punish perpetrators. “
Their clearly defined goal gives cause to remain optimistic that commitment to truth and transparency will guide and reorient coverage generated through their partnership with The Guardian – though things are not off to an encouraging start.
To their credit, The Guardian has featured other coverage on the struggle for Indigenous land rights in Nicaragua, such as this piece from March of this year. While fairly comprehensive, the article still preserves a certain aura of credulity, a benefit of the doubt, in regard to the underlying intentions of Daniel Ortega and the ruling party of the FSLN – a credulity, that is facing regional extinction in Moskitia with the escalating murders of Indigenous Miskitos at the hands of ‘Colonos’ (armed invaders who have placed the autonomous Indigenous nation of Moskitia under a violent siege while FSLN militarized police routinely look the other way.)
It is high time to embrace, what is for many, a painful and perhaps counterintuitive truth. The differences between socialism and capitalism, regarding environmental justice and environmental exploitation, have proven slim to none. And nowhere is this demonstrated more clearly than in the nation of Nicaragua, currently under socialist rule by the once dogmatically Marxist Sandinista. Quasi-intellectual dogma and calcified political ideologies are not going to save the Earth or protect its most dedicated defenders. Hence, it is time we get realistic in attempting to discern what will.
