Making Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Canada Visible

Anastasia-Maria Ntalakosta

doi:10.12681/hapscpbs.29487

Abstract

Although the United Nations have established mechanisms to exercise political authority and influence states’ policies and the global civil society puts pressure on their actions, indigenous peoples continue to face discrimination and violations of their rights. Canada constitutes a great example of a democratic country that is supposed to respect and protect human rights but violates the aboriginal rights extensively. The massive energy projects, Coastal GasLink pipeline, Trans Mountain pipeline and Site C dam, being developed in North and West Canada, do not respect the traditional lands and resources of the indigenous populations that live in the region and have been strongly condemned by the First Nations, the actors of the global civil society and the UN. Nonetheless, the Canadian government continues to fully support their construction. This paper aims to analyse the violations conducted against indigenous populations’ lands by the Canadian government and the reaction of the UN and global civil society, using a series of qualitative and quantitative data based on papers, analyses and reports of Institutes, Study Centers and Organizations.

Highlights

There was “an alarming increase in attacks, killings and the criminalization of the activities of indigenous human rights defenders” according to the annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the rights of indigenous peoples published on 14 July 2020 (OHCHR, 2020: 15)
This paper focuses on the violation of their land rights correlated to the infrastructure development of North and West Canada and concentrates on the action of the United Nations (UN) and major actors of the global civil society, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch
In the context of the UNDRIP, James Anaya had already recommended in his 2014 report that resource extraction should not take place “on lands subject to aboriginal claims without adequate consultations [...]”, regarding the indigenous peoples’ concerns over Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) and the Site C dam (Anaya, 2014: 18, 22)

Summary

Introduction

There was “an alarming increase in attacks, killings and the criminalization of the activities of indigenous human rights defenders” according to the annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the rights of indigenous peoples published on 14 July 2020 (OHCHR, 2020: 15). The case of Canada is being selected to be analysed, because even though the state of Canada is considered to be one of the freest countries in the world, based on Freedom House (2021), in recent years great concerns have been raised regarding the challenges that indigenous peoples face in the country. The Canadian legal framework safeguards the aboriginal rights to a certain extent, according to the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya (2014: 23), the country encounters a chronic crisis. In 2019, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed its concerns over the prolongation in the construction procedure of large-

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The Legal Framework

The UN and the global civil society

Conclusions