People who oppose the Wet’suwet’s struggle often bring back the same opinions, which do not always reflect reality. The purpose of this article is to provide a rationale for addressing these opinions.

The struggle for self-determination of the Wetsu’wet’en people is not a new one. Since the late 1990s, the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan peoples have been waging a legal and political battle for recognition of their territorial rights. In 1997, these two peoples obtained recognition from the colonial legal system that their territory had never been ceded, and that their hereditary system of governance had never been extinguished.

Another big protest for climate, what's the point?

Of course it'll be nice to have as many people as there was in 2019, but in the end, even Greta couldn't make our governments change their policies. Well, ok, it falls a few days after the federal election, and we can hope that it can put some pressure on the bewly elected officials... But we know it won't: whoever is in power after the elections, nothing significant will be done, nothing significant has ever been done for climate in so-called Canada. Since the beginning of colonization, the State steals, exploits and destroys the land on which we live and which, ironically, ensure our survival.

• MayDay 2021: We don’t want this world they are trying to sell us!
• Meet up at 4PM at Jarry park, at the corner of Gary-Carter and St-Laurent.

The pandemic we are mired in precarize everyone and highlights serious injustices. The stimulus wished by the leaders is an economic stimulus which is not addressed to us. It is not addressed to the artists and other people who don’t make enough profit to merit the right to exist. It does not concern sex workers, whose existence itself is still criminalized. This stimulus ignores handicapped people, the marginalized, those with mental health issues. The stimulus they talk about, it is for the oil companies, the Bombardier corporations, the party friends like Guzzo, but it is not for us. To let the governments save us from the crisis they created themselves through the constant cuts to healthcare and through their "snowbird" lives, would be to accept death. What we need to stimulate is not the economy, but the struggles for our rights and the end of capitalist exploitation.

This text was originally written in French

Intersectionality is mentioned in about all of social science literature nowadays. Typically, this concept shows the interdependent relation between generic situations and how different domination systems can overlap. Intersectionality is however, as it presents itself historically, an analytical tool developed especially with the aim to build an understandable holistic view of the critics of capitalism, patriarchy and racism. It is why this concept is so important for environmental struggles.

The perception that our consumption is abnormal is always based on comparisons between ourselves and people around us. However, consumption of goods, products and services depends first on transport and communication infrastructures. These infrastructures were built through the spending of billions of dollars each year, each time by stepping on local communities and ecosystems. It is therefore important to think about the colonization steps of the territory in order to put our consumption into context.

I remember the first time I killed a deer. I don’t know why, but before we started skinning or anything, I walked up to that deer and I put my hand on it. I could feel that the deer was still warm. In that moment I knew that he was the same as me. As I had taken his life, now I owed him mine.