It has not been re­port­ed in the lo­cal me­dia, but in Cana­da, Chief There­sa Spence is cur­rent­ly on the 23rd day of a hunger strike. Sim­i­lar to Wayne Kublals­ingh, she wants to meet with the coun­try's prime min­is­ter in or­der to dis­cuss en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues re­lat­ing to land us­age.

As I have fol­lowed the 'Idle no more' cam­paign, I have no­ticed a dis­tinct dif­fer­ence in the ap­proach of both the cam­paign or­gan­is­ers and the me­dia in Cana­da. For the most part the dis­cus­sion has not fo­cused on Chief Spence, the way that we have fo­cused on Dr Kublals­ingh.

The Idle no more or­gan­is­ers took ad­van­tage of the Christ­mas shop­ping sea­son to stage 'teach ins' at malls. This al­lowed the gen­er­al pub­lic to be­come in­formed about the is­sues re­lat­ing to the dis­pute. The track record of the di­a­mond min­ing com­pa­ny which was grant­ed a con­ces­sion on the At­tawapiskat re­serve, in deal­ing with both work­ers and in­hab­i­tants near their mines has been clear­ly high­light­ed.

The poor liv­ing con­di­tions and pol­lu­tion on the re­serve have al­so been well doc­u­ment­ed. In­deed, I am cer­tain many Trinida­di­ans live in bet­ter con­di­tions de­spite third world sta­tus of the coun­try and Cana­da's first world sta­tus. And most im­por­tant­ly, they have clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed a mes­sage for which sup­port­ers would be able to find res­o­nance.

"I am an al­ly. I am not In­di­an, or Na­tive Amer­i­can, or First Na­tions, or Metis, or Inu­it, or in­dige­nous. I am not even Cana­di­an. But I sup­port hu­man rights, the pro­tec­tion of the en­vi­ron­ment and democ­ra­cy, and the no­tion that elect­ed gov­ern­ments should act hon­est­ly and ho­n­ourably in car­ry­ing out their oblig­a­tions to all their peo­ple."

Lystra Ko Chin

Cas­cade