action at all, is to withdraw their collaboration in the mining boom.
The collaboration of airports, fuel, winter roads, hotels, line
cutters, cooks and agreements granting general access to their
territory.
Let's face it all these junior mining companies rely on remote
First Nations to either actively collaborate by signing mous and
letters of intent or at least politely look the other way when the
companies use their airports, hotels and a few community members to
carry out their projects.
In a remote and roadless area it's simply too expensive to explore without using First Nation airports and infrastructure.
It's not rocket science to recognize that remote First Nations cannot
easily defy institutions to which they have no access, and to which
they make no contribution—the Ontario government comes to mind.
A trip out to lobby a politician will cost at least $1200 a person.
First Nations remain virtually invisible in the centres of Canadian
power. Appearing only in the latest degradation stories of guns and
gangs, suicides and disasters.
It seems to me that a crowd of First Nations outside the Ontario
legislature or in Ottawa is more easily ignored than the same crowd
evicting a mining company from their territory or airport especially if
a lot of First Nation crowds evict a lot of mining companies in a short
period of time.
What First Nations can do is to disrupt the boom where it is actually
happening-at their airports, on their territory- and rely on the
political reverberations of their disruption.
As Henry Kissinger once advised, make the Ontario mining exploration economy
scream until the government says uncle.
In short create an economic crisis and wait for the inevitable
political concessions.
A method guaranteed to involve the First Nations grassroots and produce
change.
And that's why it will likely never happen. Better to set up a
bilateral table, distract the First nations political elite, pacify
their lawyers and consultants and contain the threat of real First
Nations power.
