Talking about Indigenous Sovereignty and No One Is Illegal

Dispossession Displacement and Division

My name is Tracey Jastinder Mann. I am an member of No One is Illegal, a grassroots collective focusing on migrant justice. I come here with great respect and admiration for the resistance that is being shown here today. I also express gratitude to the Tslei-watuth, Burarrd, Musqueum and Squamish nations whose unceded territories we stand on today. I see this action as another step towards building a broader movement that resists the dispossession, displacement and division that is promoted by the Canadian state’s neo-liberal agenda. I am so excited to see groups that are often siloed or divided stand here together to resist the Enbridge Pipeline. My hope is that we continue to see how our struggles intersect and continue to find ways to work together effectively and with integrity.

Today, I want to highlight how migrant justice, environmental justice and indigenous sovereignty movements are all resisting the dispossession, displacement and division that the Enbridge pipeline symbolizes. Dispossession, displacement and division of communities, people and territories are not new, as these are the tactics were used to establish the Canadian state through its colonial nation building process. Denial of climate change, environmental destruction and the impacts of neo-colonialism on communities create the conditions for projects like Enbridge to become a reality.

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Ruling puts two Tamil cases in limbo

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2013/01/14/bc-human-smuggling-tamils.html

A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has taken the bluster out of the Conservative’s campaign against illegal migrants by striking down a section of the law targeting human smuggling, putting at least two high-profile prosecutions in limbo.
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Bureaucrats forced into last-minute pitch to save some refugee health benefits

Reports of exploited foreign temps have grown as fast as the federal program. First in a series from the Tyee.
By Krystle Alarcon

http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/01/07/Canada-Migrant-Workers/
They hand you a soothing cup of Tim Hortons, pack frozen beef in factories, pick blueberries and apples on Abbotsford farms, serve fast-food meals and wipe tables, excavate mines and drill for oil in Western Canada, and raise your kids as if they were their own. Typically paid far less than Canadians, unprotected by labour laws, and disposed of when their contracts end, these migrant labourers have become ubiquitous while remaining all but invisible.
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