Indigenous Peoples: The Poster Children of Quebec?

 
Just as child labor has preoccupied and focused attention at many global forums in the past few years, the role of indigenous peoples and the rural poor seems likely to be a strong focus of the groups protesting the Quebec Summit. The treatment given to this issue on the websites of the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA) and other groups will be an active component of the parallel events and protests surrounding the official Summit meeting.

Clearly, Mexico's Zapatista movement played a leading role in raising awareness of the injustices suffered by indigenous peoples. The Ecuadorian indigenous uprising also occupies important space on the HSA website, and in Brazil the Movimento Sem Terra has grown to symbolize the problem of growing social inequity. Throughout the region, the question of the rights of rural and indigenous peoples dominates the growing opposition to the US-supported Plan Colombia.

In months past, AmericasNet has highlighted cases in which indigenous movements have coalesced in Central America and even in Chile. These groups are linking up with stronger, more organized indigenous movements in the United States and Canada. Consider the following example:

"CROSSING, ON MOHAWK RESERVE, TO LINK ISSUES OF GLOBALIZATION WITH NATIVE AMERICAN RIGHTS"

BURLINGTON, VT -- Hundreds of activists, from Washington state to Maine, departed from Burlington at 9 this morning for a historic rendezvous with traditional Mohawk families from Ontario's Akwesasne reserve. After a fish-fry and social, the Mohawks will escort activists through the Cornwall border crossing as they head for Quebec City and the upcoming protests against the Summit of the Americas, where the Free Trade Area of the Americas will be discussed.

Organizers expect the gathering, on Route 37 near the St Regis reservation on the US side, to be the initiation of a new relationship between the growing movement against corporate globalization and the movement for Native American rights. "This is more than just a border-crossing," said MacDonald Scott, a member of the New York City Direct Action Network, one of the groups organizing the caravan. "It is a chance to build solidarity with indigenous peoples and expose the legacy of colonialism and the implications it still has on native communities now in the form of free trade globalization. The FTAA will further erode indigenous rights throughout the hemisphere."

The fish fry will begin at noon, and will include talks and dialogue between Mohawks and US activists. The border crossing will begin at 4 p.m., after which the activists will rendezvous with a larger caravan of protesters coming from Kingston, Ontario. Activists wish to emphasize that the crossing will be peaceful and will be organized to prevent any disruption of services or routine for the Mohawk community.

"We've affirmed that we'll extend the honor that's required upon people who are going to Quebec City to legitimately dissuade governments from further free trade negotiations," said Shawn Brant, an organizer and member of the Mohawk community. Activists say that the border crossing and new ties with the Mohawks underscore their desire to expose the harmful effects of the Free Trade Area of the Americas - the agreement to be negotiated at the Summit - on indigenous peoples' lives, cultures and resources.

The seven-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement was intended to destroy barriers to "free trade." Laws that protect native peoples' sovereignty are considered to be barriers to trade. Before Mexico could enter NAFTA, they were forced to overturn an indigenous rights law, which granted indigenous people the right to own communal land. NAFTA has led directly to the erosion of First Nation sovereignty and the environmental degradation of native peoples' lands. The FTAA will extend and intensify these trends.

[Source: Anne Petermann, Vermont Mobilization for Global Justice, (612) 840-6322 , or Eric Laursen, New York City Direct Action Network, (917) 806-6452.]

As this case suggest, one of the unforeseen results of Summit "rage" might just be an additional impact on the growing awareness of the relation between the problems of indigenous peoples and the rural poor in general.