by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 10, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Lobbying, Mining & Drilling
By Tanya Talaga / Toronto Star
When members of Wahgoshig First Nation spotted a drilling crew on what they say is a sacred burial site, they demanded to know who the strangers were and what they were doing.
The Wahgoshig, whose Algonquin reserve of 19,239 acres is 113 km east of Timmins, running south from Lake Abitibi near the Quebec border, say they were met with silence.
But what was happening on the land was anything but silent, according to court records.
The prospecting work involves clearing 25 sq. metre pads, clearing forest, bulldozing access routes to the drilling sites and the transportation and storage of fuel and equipment.
The workers were with Solid Gold Resources Inc., a junior mining firm that has a 200-square-kilometre prospect at Lake Abitibi near the Porcupine Fault zone. The land they were on, says Wahgoshig band chief David Babin, is not part of the reserve itself but does include the traditional lands the Algonquins have lived on for thousands of years.
“Through history, Wahgoshig First Nation had developed homes around Lake Abitibi. When we died, we buried our people around the rivers and lakes — we didn’t have cemeteries,” Babin says.
Wahgoshig, a community of 250 people, protested to the Ontario government, which in turn told Solid Gold on Nov. 8, 2011, that before any more drilling occurs they must adequately consult with the band.
Solid Gold responded by bringing in a second drilling rig, court documents say.
Last month, Ontario Judge Carole Brown ordered Solid Gold to stop its activity on the site for 120 days. The injunction expires in May. Brown ordered Solid Gold and the government to use that time to properly consult and accommodate the concerns of Wahgoshig.
The ruling has implications for other resource projects on First Nations traditional land — including the $5.5 billion Northern Gateway Pipeline, a high-stakes bid to ship Alberta tar sands oil to China via a new pipeline across B.C. to the coast.
Many B.C. aboriginal groups are lined up against that pipeline. Last Saturday, 600 people took to the streets in Prince Rupert to support Hartley Bay First Nation’s opposition to oil tankers coming in to their coastal community near Kitimat, the proposed destination of the pipeline.
Judge Brown ruled she is mindful of Wahgoshig’s position that refusing to enjoin Solid Gold from its drilling will “send a message that aboriginal and treaty rights, including the rights to consultation and accommodation, can be ignored by exploration companies, rendering the First Nations’ constitutionally recognized rights meaningless.”
“This would not be in the public interest. It is in the public interest to ensure the Constitution is honoured and respected,” she wrote.
Solid Gold is seeking leave to appeal the decision. A hearing is scheduled for Feb. 29 at divisional court in Toronto.
Read more from the Toronto Star here: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1129591–ontario-first-nation-wins-injunction-to-stop-gold-drilling
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 10, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Lobbying
By Survival International
Judges in Brazil have allowed a Guarani community to stay on its ancestral land, which it reoccupied having been forced to live in a makeshift camp for over a year and a half.
The judges have suspended an eviction order which threatened to force the Indians to leave their land and face appalling living conditions on the side of a road or in an overcrowded reserve.
The 170 Guarani of Laranjeira Nanderu community can now remain on a small patch of their land, until further land studies are carried out. Their territory is currently being occupied by a ranch.
Ten Guarani representatives traveled to São Paulo to attend the meeting where the judges made their decision.
A Guarani man from Laranjeira Nanderu said, ‘This is our dream, nothing else. Just for the studies to be done to show that we have the right to our ancestral lands’.
The ruling follows interventions from the Guarani, as well as Survival International, Brazilian NGO CIMI, and other organizations.
The Brazilian authorities are responsible for mapping out and protecting all Guarani land for the Indians’ exclusive use.
Watch a Guarani man from Laranjeira Nanderu speaking about the Guarani’s need to live on their ancestral land.
From Survival International: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/8088
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 9, 2012 | Lobbying, Male Violence, Rape Culture
By Melissa McEwan
A judge in Florida has sentenced a man charged with domestic battery to take his wife, and victim, on a date. Or as MSNBC puts it in their disgusting lede: “Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a Florida judge ruled on Tuesday that a man involved in a scuffle with his wife treat her to an evening at a local bowling alley and a romantic meal at Red Lobster.”
Judge John Hurley [who also ordered that Joseph Bray, 47 and his wife Sonja, 39, get marriage counseling] handed down this ruling instead of setting bond or slapping Bray with a prison sentence after he deemed domestic violence charges leveled by Bray’s wife to be “very, very minor.”
According to Bray’s arrest affidavit, Bray and his wife got embroiled in a spat after he failed to wish her a happy birthday. Bray’s wife claims that her husband shoved her against a sofa and grabbed her neck.
The judge, citing Bray’s otherwise clean record and the incident’s apparent lack of serious violence, did not consider Bray’s behavior a major offense. However, Bray must follow the stipulations of Hurley’s ruling very closely if he wants to avoid potential jail time.
“He’s going to stop by somewhere and he’s going to get some flowers,” Hurley said at a hearing, according to Florida newspaper Sun Sentinel. “And then he’s going to go home, pick up his wife, get dressed, take her to Red Lobster. And then after they have Red Lobster, they’re going to go bowling.”
Hurley noted that he would not typically treat a domestic violence charge in a similarly jocular or light-hearted manner.
“The court would not normally [make this ruling] if the court felt there was some violence but this is very, very minor and the court felt that that was a better resolution than the other alternatives,” Hurley said.
And to add to the rib-tickling tone of this whimsical domestic violence sentencing, Daniel Arkin of NBC Miami, who filed the story, amusingly wraps it up with a review of the local Red Lobster: “Fortunately for Bray and his wife, the Plantation Red Lobster receives high marks in Google Maps’ Review section.”
According to this Sun-Sentinel article on the outrageous sentencing, Hurley handed down his sentence after asking Sonja Bray, in front of her violent husband in court for abusing her, if “she was hurt or in any fear of her husband,” to which, in front of her violent husband in court for abusing her, she answered no.
After she said she wasn’t, and Hurley confirmed that Bray had no prior arrests, the judge continued his questioning with a lighter tone.
“Do you have something you like to go to?” he asked. “Is there a restaurant you like to go to?”
The woman answered that she enjoyed bowling and eating at Red Lobster. And so the judge made his decision accordingly.
“Flowers, birthday card, Red Lobster, bowling,” Hurley said.
I was, as a teenager, locked in a room with my rapist by school administrators and told, “Don’t come out until you’ve worked out your differences.” He spent the entire time threatening to kill me, my family, and my dogs, if I ever reported anything he ever did to me again. When the head counselor eventually came back to that room, I was asked if we’d managed to work things out, and I confirmed that we had.
Because I would have said anything to get the fuck out of that room.
He raped me again and again over the next three years.
I desperately hope that Sonja Bray is safe. And I hope that Judge Ha Ha Chuckles is removed from the bench immediately. He literally facilitated what could very well be part of a pattern of escalating abuse: Violence, elaborate display of romance, violence. No one who thinks that sentence is appropriate, no one who fails to recognize how it fits into a recognized abuse cycle, has any fucking business presiding over domestic abuse cases.
From AlterNet: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/777478/unbelievable:_man_beats_wife,_judge_orders_him_to_take_her_out_to_red_lobster_and_the_bowling_alley/
