Canadian Quakers and First Nations' Peoples

Canadian Yearly Meeting this year occurs in Eastern Ontario and we are sad that we cannot attend.  So we decided to have friends visit us here on the farm in the Touchwood Hills.

Quaker meetings from across Canada were reminded that CFSC is encouraging discernment on two important topics, one of which is called “Repudiating the doctrine of Discovery”. (The other is on biological engineering.)  In light of the work that CFSC has done over the years, a statement on this is long over-due.

Quakers were at the stand-offs at Grassy Narrows over mercury poisoning, have been dedicated to the plight of the Lubicon in Alberta over oil exploration, concerned with the tar sands effect on people who live there, have tried on both sides of the 49th to get Leonard Peltier out of prison, annually attended the Working Group on Indigenous Peoples as the charter of rights was developed (were able to persistently tackle governments especially Canadian) and stood with the Anishnabe at their latest standoffs.  (Facetiously I wonder if the connection was all due to the awareness by Quaker women that women of the Five Nations Confederency had more rights and status and white women!)

If you are interested in some of what's coming down, here's a start:

Please find:

Draft statement and resource package on the Doctrine of Discovery:

http://shar.es/JbvDP

Joint statements from United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

(http://social.un.org/index/IndigenousPeoples.aspx)

Jennifer Preston, program associate for Quaker Aboriginal Affairs Committee attended the Forum in New York, 20-31 May 2013, which brought together more than 2,000

Indigenous participants from all over the world.

CFSC supported a number of partners in making the following joint statements:

Culture http://bit.ly/175rg5B

Study on the extent of violence against

Indigenous women and girls http://bit.ly/18zftKL

Implementation of the UN Declaration on

the Rights of Indigenous Peoples http://bit.ly/13Z3B3z

However, we will try to put into action the very proposals made by Quakers - we will have a day, August 21st, when we will talk about why the Doctrine of Discovery was so unjust.

(If you are on facebook, the Idle No More site has links to a multitude of First Nations' activist sites.)