Roseau River video posted to the Internet
A 16-minute video commissioned by Roseau River First Nation Chief Terry Nelson has been posted to the Internet. The video entitled A Long Train of Abuses traces the history of disputes over land claims and treaty rights between indigenous people and Canada.
The video is available for viewing here at WFP LIVE and has also been posted to You Tube.
"We are at a crossroads and the direction we take will determine the future of our children and our grandchildren," Nelson said in an e-mail that explains why the video is significant.
It is being distributed internationally this week, with copies to be mailed to foreign embassies in Ottawa and United States senators in Washington D.C.
Nelson gained notoriety in Canada this spring by his hard-line tactics to put pressure on the federal government to settle treaty related disputes. He is part of a emerging group of aboriginal leaders who believe Canada owes aboriginal people a share of the country's wealth through its resource revenues.
Nelson hopes to startle the United States into applying its own pressure for treaty settlements in Canada through the video by warning them that indigenous people will shut off the tape by blocking rail lines that supply raw materials.
The argument there is that the Americans are Canada's biggest trading partner. The United States's economic engine depends Canada's resources, from its oil and gas exports to most of the its other raw resources, from lumber to ore. If the rail lines are blockaded.
"The effort as we said is we want to wake up the Americans ...to view some news from Canada. The situation between the indigenous people and the rest of Canada is dangerously close to confrontation. . . it's our duty to ensure that people do not ignore the consequences of inaction (on unresolved treaty settlements).
"It's not as if nobody warned them." Nelson said, referring to government inaction to settle treaty disputes that date back a century or more.. Aboriginal leaders have been warning about their peoples' rising levels of frustration and the possibility it could boil over into violence at one blockade after another for the past 20 years, he said.
■ alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
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