In this recent interview, Secwepemc land defender Kanahus Manuel shared with Ojibway artist Isaac Murdoch the need for security for land defenders:

“I really like what Amnesty International and some of those international organizations do by providing security for Native land defenders in South America. They don’t have that here, but we need to be able to provide it for our own land defenders to be able to have security for women and people, Elders who do want to go out and defend land, but they don’t have the security needed to do it because violence comes to us. We’re not asking for it, but it’s coming from the police, it’s coming from the Crown, it’s coming from the corporation, their workers, it’s also coming from just regular civilians that are just white supremacists who want to come with their hate.”

Manuel is a land defender who has mobilized to have Tiny Houses situated on unceded Secwepemc territory in British Columbia to block the construction of the 890,000 barrel per day Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline that would cross 518 kilometres of that territory without free, prior and informed consent.

By asserting Secwepemc territory, Manuel and other land defenders have experienced criminalization, judicialization, threats and harassment.

Most recently, a large swath of forest and blueberry fields was clearcut directly across from the Tiny House Warriors village at Blue River for the construction of the Blue River Camp Community, a man camp for up to 550 men working on the pipeline.

Manuel has tweeted about harassment and intimidation by those involved in the pre-construction phase of the Blue River camp. She has also drawn attention to the fact that one of the company security officers at the Blue River site is a former RCMP police officer.

Accompaniment in Canada

Last year, Peace Brigades International was able to carry out 505 physical accompaniments of defenders in Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, but does not yet have the capacity to provide physical accompaniments for defenders of territories in Canada.

We received inquiries in January 2020 about a possible presence on Wet’suwet’en territories in British Columbia prior to the RCMP raid against land defenders opposed to the TC Energy Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline, as well as in May 2020 at the time of settler mob violence against Mi’kmaq lobster fishers who were asserting their Treaty and inherent rights in New Brunswick.

Over the past two years, PBI-Canada has been exploring ways to expand our capacity to do more in Canada, as well as highlighting the similarities faced by land defenders in Latin America and Turtle Island, amplifying Indigenous land defence struggles in this country, and seeing if it might be possible to have people with experience in Latin America provide security trainings for land defenders here.

We will continue to work on this.

To watch the 1-hour conversation between Manuel and Murdoch on the Secwepemc land defence struggle, please click here.

Please note this upcoming event. It is also possible, as mentioned in the conversation linked above, that some of these sessions could be available online.

An example of PBI’s physical accompaniment of Indigenous water protectors in Honduras.

Indigenous land defender Dudley George was killed on this day in 1995.

George’s family was one of 18 families displaced from the Stony Point First Nation (about 75 kilometres north-west of London, Ontario) in 1942 when the federal government expropriated the land to build a military base. The government had promised to return the land after World War II, but at the time of George’s death, 53 years after that dispossession, the land was still occupied by the military.

George’s family moved back to Stony Point, then known as Camp Ipperwash, in 1993. After decades of writing letters, meetings and signing petitions, 35 land defenders began a reoccupation of Ipperwash Provincial Park on September 4, 1995.

Notably, the park contained burial grounds that the land defenders said were not being respected or protected.

On September 5, Ontario Premier Mike Harris met with several government officials. The provincial Attorney General later testified that Harris shouted: “I want the fucking Indians out of the park.” A recording also emerged of police officers discussing the premier’s view that the government had “tried to pacify and pander to these people far too long.”

The following day George was killed by an Ontario Provincial Police sniper.

The reoccupation of the park continued and by September 9 the provincial police, further escalating the situation, requested assistance from the Canadian Forces, including two Huey helicopters to be placed on standby.

On September 10, the Peace Brigades International-North America Project (PBI-NAP) was invited to “be observers for First Nations people if needed [and] do accompaniment for anyone fearing further violence on the part of the police.”

By the following year, PBI-NAP had made at least four visits to the area.

Camp Ipperwash is now closed, but the federal government still “owns” the land. The Department of National Defence says it will take 25 years to clear the unexploded grenades and artillery shells and to decontaminate the land.

An Ontario Provincial Police officer bearing a weapon rushes toward Tina George, who was carrying one of her daughters, at Ipperwash Provincial Park a day after her cousin, Dudley George, was shot to death by an OPP officer on September 6, 1995. Photo from Toronto Star/Ipperwash Inquiry.

Grand Council Chief Reg Niganobe’s statement on the 26th anniversary of the shooting death of unarmed land defender Dudley George.

The founding statement of Peace Brigades International was released on September 4, 1981. Eleven people wrote that statement, including Daniel N. Clark. He was at the first meeting that began on August 31 that year on Grindstone Island, Ontario that discussed our purpose, structure, key principles, and name.

PBI-Canada executive director Brent Patterson recently met with Daniel, and we share excerpts from their talk as part of the recognition of PBI’s 40^th anniversary.

The discussion began with a reflection on our founding statement that highlights: “We are forming an organization with the capability to mobilize and provide trained units of volunteers. If hostile clashes occur, a brigade may establish and monitor a cease-fire, offer mediatory services, or carry on works of reconstruction and reconciliation.”

Daniel notes this original vision soon evolved into protective accompaniment: “It was out of our work in Central America where we were interposing our bodies between potential assassins and kidnappers and government forces and people without guns in their hands just trying to speak their mind and make their request about information about disappeared family members and economic justice. It became very clear we could provide a service by interposing ourselves as internationals who had some spotlights and credibility between these out-of-control armies to protect people.”

In terms of PBI’s continuing core principles of non-hierarchical, consensus-based decision-making, Daniel recalls: “That definitely has its roots in Quakerism that had also made its way into the general peace movement in the 1960s and 1970s.”

On PBI’s principle of non-partisanship, Daniel says: “If it’s only about who has the most guns, or the most people to bear them, none of us are safe, but if we can stand up for truth and justice, while not cutting the humanity of the opponent, we could be of greater use as the world tries to resolve its conflicts.”

He also highlights: “At the same time, we are agents for justice. We place our folks in situations where we are animating and strengthening popular movements. PBI does work to balance power and to animate popular movements because that’s where the need is and that’s where we put our volunteers.”

Daniel further comments: “We are partisans for justice. In a way we are like the street arm of Amnesty International. They don’t do onsite actions; they investigate and publicize. We are trying to make a system that is just.”

Daniel also spoke about PBI’s early decision not to criticize armed resistance movements.

He says: “There are many ways up the mountain. Even Gandhi said to the consternation of many that if the only way to achieve liberty and justice were armed, he would use violence. But he said that isn’t the only way. We weren’t going to go in and tell people suffering under oppressive situations that they were wrong, rather we wanted to animate and enable people who didn’t want to use violence or couldn’t use violence. The different approaches of violence and non-violence don’t mix well, but it was a reality.”

Forty years after the founding meeting, Daniel says: “I’m very impressed where PBI has gone over the years. PBI is quite amazing to me thinking about our original time when $5,000 was a lot and back when we didn’t even have internet or email. I’m very pleased and a little bit proud where this has all gone.”

And looking ahead to the coming years, he notes: “I would like us to see us move from adopting treaties on human rights and the environment to enforcing them. The US has clearly violated the Nuremberg principles when it dropped nuclear bombs on non-combatants. I would like to see if there is capacity for PBI to have a presence when there are governmental leaders violating international law. That is a potential broadening area.”

For more on 40 years of PBI solidarity, please see our Anniversary Timeline.

And to watch a 55-minute video of Daniel speaking in 2001 about the founding of Peace Brigades International and our core principles, please click here.

Photo: Kayah George speaks with APTN News on August 30 about the Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline and insurance companies.

Tulalip and Tsleil-Waututh water protector Kayah George ‘Halth-Leah’ writes:

“My people are descended from the sea. That is the meaning of our name: Tsleil-Waututh, “people of the inlet.”

Our creation story tells us that we were created from the sediment in the Burrard Inlet in Vancouver, Canada. The inlet is our grandmother, our oldest relative. The lands along this inlet have been my peoples’ home since time immemorial.

At 22 years old, I have spent over half my life fighting alongside my family, for our home and for all of your homes and this land that is slowly eroding along with the climate. The Trans Mountain pipeline has threatened our land and our livelihoods since it was built in 1953, with 84 reported oil spills to date.

Instead of listening to our cries on this stolen land, the federal government has used public dollars to buy the project and approved an expansion pipeline (TMX) which would triple the flow of oil.

Those who back the pipeline do not see the sea as a living being. But we do, and we fear for the endangered orcas, the fish, the sea itself.

This pipeline is nothing short of genocide against my people. That is why every single member of the nation has opposed Trans Mountain since the beginning. We stand in solidarity on both sides of the border: my mother’s tribe, Tulalip, in the United States, and my father’s, the Tsleil-Waututh, in Canada.”

Her full commentary in the Toronto Star, significantly her call to insurance companies not to provide insurance for the pipeline, can be read at Canada’s Trans Mountain Pipeline is ‘genocide against my people.’ Why it’s ‘climate suicide’ for insurance companies (August 27).

On September 2, Indigenous Climate Action highlighted: “Indigenous, environmental, and climate groups sent an open letter to twenty insurance companies that have failed to rule out insuring the Trans Mountain pipeline network, following the August 31 expiration date of one of Trans Mountain’s key insurance policies.”

They add: “The letter is being sent to insurance companies that have previously been linked to the pipeline project and have not yet ruled out involvement: AIG, Chubb, Energy Insurance Limited, Liberty Mutual, Lloyd’s of London, Markel, Starr, Stewart Specialty Risk Underwriting, and W.R. Berkley. It is also being sent to Lloyd’s syndicates that are likely involved in the project through the Lloyd’s marketplace: Apollo, Arch, Ark, Beazley, Brit, Canopius, CNA Hardy, Hiscox, Inigo, MS Amlin, and Navigators.”

To read their Open Letter, please click here.

Peace Brigades International (PBI) was formed 40 years ago this week (August 31-September 4, 1981) on Grindstone Island just south of Ottawa.

PBI’s first on-the-ground work was in September 1983 in Jalapa, Nicaragua close to the Honduran border where US-backed Contra forces were launching attacks.

JoLeigh Commandant, who became the first director of PBI’s Toronto-based Central America Project around November 1982, was part of our presence there.

A November 1983 Santa Cruz Friends Bulletin includes a story told by Mary Duffield of PBI’s presence in Nicaragua.

Mary wrote:

“As one of four Friends involved in a two-week nonviolent vigil for peace along the Nicaraguan-Honduran border, I truly believe we are nourishing a seed of enormous potential in this Peace Brigades International idea.

The vigils culminated usually in celebrations of song and laughter, the youngsters especially delighting in the Spanish version of ‘Old MacDonald had a Farm’, (as tracer bullets lit up the sky and automatic rifles sounded off in the distance).

The day before we left Jalapa, we attended the funeral of one of the young men killed by mercenaries blowing up a customs station. After the church ceremony (the revolution has not opposed the churches, and many religious officials are in total support of the Sandinistas), Antonio’s army companeros bore the coffin along.

The company commander also was the dead boy’s grandfather. He had lost his son only a little while before. The grandfather ordered the man’s youngsters and related children to scrape the first dirt down over the coffin. The sobbing little ones could not do this.

So, the old man entreated them tearfully: ‘You must … we’re doing this for you, we’re doing this for the children…’

The villagers began to sing their hymns, and we joined in. Then JoLeigh Commandant, impulsively, moved to the woman calling to Antonio to stay, put her arms around her, saying: ‘Yes, we are all doing this for the children. That is why we must have peace, for all the world’s children.’

The old man and the woman turned toward JoLeigh and nodded, with a new awareness in their eyes, and somehow we were all uplifted for a moment of shared hope. We all clasped hands in that sacred awareness.

The morning we left Managua for home we heard the radio broadcasters: ‘This is the morning the Peace Brigadiers are leaving. These are the people who came all the way here to show us that many North Americans care about the people of Central America.’“

For more on our history, please see this Anniversary Timeline.

Photos: JoLeigh at a United Nations Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas in Geneva in September 1977. And JoLeigh in a photo posted on Facebook at the time of her passing in 2013 at 90 years of age.