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NEWS
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18 2020
Divest McGill holds rally protesting invasion of Wet’suwet’en territory Protest part of International Fossil Fuel Divestment Day
Kate Addison Staff Writer A small crowd of demonstrators braved the cold on Feb. 13 and gathered outside the James Administration building for a Divest McGill rally. The group called on the university to withdraw their investments in Coastal Gaslink and Teck Mining. In the midst of the ongoing conflict between Wet’suwet’en land defenders and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) over the construction of the Coastal Gaslink pipeline in British Columbia (BC), the rally was intended to draw attention to the social consequences of the fossil fuel industry. Following a land acknowledgment and a performance by the activist group The Montreal Raging Grannies, the rally hosted several speakers from different groups within the McGill community. First to address the crowd was Morgen Bertheussen, a member of Divest McGill, who emphasized the important role that Indigenous communities have played in climate activism. “As students and activists at this university fighting for climate justice, we stand on the shoulders of many Indigenous land defenders before us,” Bertheussen said. “Here, the Kanien’kehá:ka and Mohawk have laid the foundation for resistance to oppressive and destructive colonial powers for the past four centuries.” The tone of the rally, which was held on International Fossil Fuel Divestment Day, was set by recent friction between the BC government and the Wet’suwet’en Nation, located on unceded territory in Northern BC. RCMP arrests of Wet’suwet’en members protesting the construction of TC Energy’s Coastal Gaslink pipeline, a company in which McGill has substantial investments, has sparked outrage across Canada, prompting other protestors to blockade nationally-owned railways in Quebec and Ontario.
“The Canadian government is siding with TC Energy and is calling the RCMP to violently raid and remove people from their land,” said Bertheussen. “McGill’s endowment [in TC energy] is directly complicit with this violence.” In December 2019, the McGill BoG announced its decision to not divest McGill’s $148 million dollar endowments in the fossil fuel industry based on a report by the Committee to Advise on Matters of Social Responsibility (CAMSR). The committee’s report found that the activities of fossil fuel companies failed to meet the criterion of creating ‘social injury’ and thus did not recommend divestment to the Board of Governors. For Heleena De Oliveira, U2 Arts and member of the McGill Black Students Network (BSN), climate and social justice issues are inextricably linked. “Most people at this protest, myself included, [...] will not be the ones feeling the most severe impacts of the global climate crisis,” De Oliveira said. “The worst effects of climate change will be felt by people whose race, gender, and class puts them at a politically condemned position [...] as I see it the intersectionality between race, gender, sexuality, class, and the environment is quite clear.” On-campus support for the divestment movement has generated increasingly public actions in the previous year. In April 2019, Derek Nystrom and Darin Barney, two academic staff representatives on the BoG, resigned from their positions due to the university’s continued investment in fossil fuels. Similarly in January, following the CAMSR report, tenured professor Gregory Mikkelson announced his resignation. Ehab Lotayef, a current member of the BoG and a supporter of divestment, praised the actions of those staff members who had come out in opposition to divestment and called on the university to reconsider the
Four speakers addressed a crowd outside the James Administration building. (Divest McGill / Instagram) issue. “It is very disappointing to see McGill falling back behind other Canadian and Quebec universities,” Lotayef said. “I believe it is the time for McGill to take [the] position [of divestment]. It is never too late, now is the time to do it.” Principal and Vice-Chancellor Suzanne Fortier’s office was contacted regarding the rally. She did not respond to a request for comment as of press time.
SSMU Indigenous Affairs hosts Have A Heart Day for Indigenous youth Director of Montreal’s Native Women’s Shelter recounted intergenerational trauma Tasmin Chu Staff Writer Content warning: Mentions of racialized and colonial violence. The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Indigenous Affairs hosted Have A Heart Day, a reconciliationbased event held at the First Peoples’ House on Feb. 14. At the event, some participants wrote Valentine’s Day letters with messages of support to Indigenous youth, while others wrote cards addressed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demanding action. According to SSMU Indigenous Affairs Commissioner (IAC) Tomas Jirousek, Have A Heart Day provides a vital chance for participants to reflect on reconciliation more deeply. “Valentine’s Day is very commercialized, but I think at its core, it is centred on love, empathy, [and] caring,” Jirousek said. “[Have a Heart Day is an] outreach to First Nations kids who’ve been apprehended by the child welfare system or the foster care system, [and the idea is] kind of wrapping those kids in love and showing that there are people, First Nations and non–First Nations around the country, who really do care about them.” The event featured the Executive Director of Montreal’s Native Women’s Shelter, Nakuset, who spoke about intergenerational trauma and the continued separation of Indigenous families in Canada. Nakuset revealed that she was a survivor of the Sixties Scoop, a period in Canadian history when around 20,000 Indigenous children were removed from their families and placed into foster care or put up for adoption. “So, when I was taken, the government felt that it would
An estimated 20,000 Indigenous children were removed from their families during the Sixties Scoop. (Tasmin Chu / The McGill Tribune) be better that [they adopt me] into a Jewish family than to put me with [one of my] family members,” Nakuset said. “I had family members that were willing and able to take care of me, but that was the whole idea [of] assimilation.” In the 20 years that Nakuset has worked at the shelter, she has noticed an increase in the number of separated families. In particular, she became concerned by the frequency with which children were apprehended or taken away by Batshaw Youth and Family Centres, one of the provincially-funded organizations responsible for child welfare in Montreal. “When I went to meet the director [of Batshaw] back in 2004 [...] I told her there’s a problem here,” Nakuset said. “There’s a problem with the amount of kids that you have in care and the fact that the number is growing. She didn’t think it was a problem. [...] I started to notice that there was this thing where the women would have a child, [their] child
would get apprehended [...] and they would never be able to get the child back.” In an attempt to keep Indigenous families together, Nakuset developed a collaboration agreement between Batshaw and the Native Women’s Shelter in 2013 that would allow Indigenous women to access support at the shelter before child separation was considered. However, according to Nakuset, Batshaw continually failed to honour the agreement. “I [had] said, ‘All right, let’s sign a collaboration agreement, let’s say that Batshaw and the Native Women’s Shelter are going to work side by side,’” Nakuset said. “And so a couple of weeks after I signed the agreement, a mother called the shelter complaining, ‘Look, [Batshaw] took my child away. I told [them] that I wanted to come to the shelter, and they said, ‘We don’t know what you’re talking about. We never heard of such an agreement.’” Following this conversation, Nakuset worked with Dr. Elizabeth Fast at Concordia University to publish a study called “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back” in Nov. 2019, about Batshaw’s practices of apprehending Indigenous children. “We published the report and we went to the media with it,” Nakuset said. “And now they won’t talk to us. They’re refusing to meet with us [....] Throughout all this, our women are still suffering.” After her talk, participants wrote their Valentine’s Day cards. Hamza Bensouda, an exchange student who attended the event, addressed his Valentine Day’s Card to Justin Trudeau demanding justice. “[Justin Trudeau] said [...] that [the federal government] can always do better,” Bensouda said. “That’s exactly the sentence from his mouth, and [so] the question that I’m asking is about giving respect to people [in the spirit of that statement].”