Carney's Bogus "First Nations Summit" in Gatineau
First Nations leaders take part in meetings with Carney government at the
Museum of History, Gatineau, July 17, 2025
One of the goals recent governments of Canada have set for themselves is how to swindle the Indigenous Peoples of what belongs to them by right, beginning with their consent on what happens on their territories. As governments have done since Confederation, this is mostly engineered through the band council system and Indian Act which are illegitimate instruments of the state. They were imposed to dispossess the Indigenous Peoples of all hereditary rights, commit cultural genocide against them and justify what cannot be justified. The rule of first the British colonialists and then the Anglo-Canadian oligarchy made Indigenous Peoples wards of an alien state. Having failed time and time again to get the Indigenous Peoples to acquiesce, first the Harper and then the Trudeau governments started making deals with business interests, using them to override Indigenous consent. The Trudeau government tried to do this surreptitiously in various ways, using the armed brutal interventions of the RCMP and political police in the case of the Wet'suwet'en in BC. The Carney government is doing it openly with no sense of shame whatsoever.
The two-day meeting organized by the Carney government on July 16 and 17 at the Museum of History in Gatineau showed that Carney thinks he can get away with attacking Indigenous sovereignty no matter how conspicuously bad it is. Carney called it the First Nations "major projects consultation summit."
The second day began with a presentation by Prime Minister Mark Carney followed by the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak.
Though Carney insisted throughout his speech that he was there to "listen," the way the meeting was organized left little or no space for an actual exchange or for participants to give their views. Many felt they were being talked to, not listened to.
Carney called the event a major project summit, referring throughout his speech to ports, corridors, critical minerals, and the like. He gave as a model of partnership with First Nations the Cedar Natural Liquid Gas processing facility and export terminal in BC. Despite this, he insisted at the end of his speech that there is "no list of those projects." He suggested that the First Nations will be the ones deciding on these projects.
Carney's speech was a blatant example of how bankers and
financial oligarchs speak about matters the peoples hold sacred in
the name that it makes economic sense and if they oppose them,
then they only have themselves to blame for the desperate plight
they face as a result of the relations of oppression and
exploitation imposed on them.
Sounding like the big bad wolf dressed up as a granny all the better to eat Little Red Riding Hood, Carney spoke of "building a new chapter in the relationship between the government of Canada and the First Nations." He said the law is "the first federal legislation to put Indigenous economic growth at its core."
As if words mean whatever he wants them to mean, Carney said that
respecting the rights of the Indigenous Peoples is a fundamental
purpose of the Building Canada Act. "The Act requires
meaningful consultation with Indigenous Peoples both in the
process of determining which projects are in our collective
interests and of developing conditions
for the projects going forward, Carney said, profoundly and
fundamentally distorting the meaning of the word consultation as
enshrined in international laws Canada is duty-bound to uphold.
"This is a legal requirement in the Act which honours Section 35
of our Constitution, the duty to consult. It upholds the
government's commitment to implement the UN Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including free, prior and informed
consent," Carney said.
As the Indigenous Peoples have clearly pointed out, this government is insisting on giving the interpretation of the Canadian state for the duty to consult which is that, at the end of the day, the executive power decides. This is how the Canadian state has interpreted Indigenous treaties since it was constituted in 1867. The role of the Indigenous Peoples is to comply with a smile on their faces, or be damned. In this country, everything is a privilege, not a right.
It is therefore no surprise that Carney has made it very clear that this consultation process is subject to the limits imposed by his new "Indigenous Advisory Council."
Chiefs have raised concerns about the independence of this council, and have pointed out that they want a say in who is appointed. They are also worried the government will use advice provided by that body as "consulting" with rights-holders while bypassing direct engagement with affected communities.
AFN National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak addresses the meeting.
After Carney's remarks, media were escorted out of the room and barred from hearing AFN National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak address the hundreds of chiefs gathered.
The AFN advocated for the entire meeting to be made public, and Woodhouse Nepinak later apologized for having to hold a press conference outside of the museum.
"You should have been in there, and you should have been able to hear my speech," she said. She repeated this sentiment later in the day to a group of youth who travelled to Ottawa to protest the new law.
Expressing his dissatisfaction with the event at the press conference called by the chiefs after the meeting with Carney, Trevor Mercredi, Grand Chief of Alberta Treaty 8, stated:
"We came out here to assert our rights. We didn't come out here to ask questions. We didn't come out here to put our hands out. We simply came here to assert our rights and make sure that each and every person understands what they're in for if they're coming for our resources."
Chief Jeff Copenace of Ojibways of Onigaming said: "If Canada wants to build, we want to build too," said Copenace. "We want to build youth infrastructure. We want to build youth crisis centres. We want to build youth rec centres [...] That's the type of projects that the youth are looking for, not necessarily the types of major projects that they're discussing here."
Attawapiskat First Nation youth leader Jeronimo Kataquapit led a group of 20 First Nation youth who, along with others, held actions at the entrance of the meeting and on Parliament Hill, where they spoke defiantly. At the Museum of History, they were met by RCMP officers who denied them entry.
"When people come into your home, you don't stand by and watch them do whatever they want. You protect it," Kataquapit told reporters outside the meeting.
"These current bills are a continuation of the doctrine of discovery, a document that does not consider us human," Cedar Aisipi from Attawapiskat First Nation said of the federal government's Bill C-5 and Ontario's Bill 5. "That is what these bills are. As a treaty rights holder, as someone with inherent rights, I reject Bill C-5 and Bill 5."
"We all understand we can't be silent, silence has never gotten us anything as First Nation people," said Cohen Chisel, from Lac Seul First Nation. "So we will take the stand and fight for the land and fight for our rights and our way and we'll make ourselves heard."
The youth protesters represented several youth-led movements, including Youth Rising Together, Urban Youth of Timmins, Mushkegowuk Youth Council and Assembly of 7 Generations.
Their protest is part of a larger movement of youth that now includes Mahmo Inninuwuk Wiibuseego-stamok, a protest group of young First Nation walkers who journeyed by foot the 700 kilometres from Timmins to Toronto to protest Bill 5 and Bill C-5. The 22-day walk culminated in a rally at Queen's Park there on August 8.
Jeronimo Kataquapit has been leading a wilderness protest on the Attawapiskat River with his brother Jonathan and their parents James Kataquapit and Monique Edwards since mid-June.
He initiated this protest, "Here We Stand" against Ontario's Bill 5 and Canada's Bill C-5 as a way to help his community and members show the government and developers that their people still actively occupy, live on and use the land.
They travelled 400 kilometres on the Attawapiskat River to set up a permanent camp near the site of a planned bridge for the Ring of Fire mining development in this region.
(With files from APTN, CBC, Canadian Press; Photos: Treaty 8 Alberta, AFN.)
This article was published in
Volume 55 Number 7 - July-August 2025
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2025/Articles/M550073.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca