Central Executive Committe, January 2019

The work of communist historian Stanley Bréhaut Ryerson clearly shows how Canada was built on Indigenous land and on the exploitation of the working class. In this regard, little has changed since then.

Indigenous lands remain coveted by gas companies and other resource extraction corporations. Wet’suwet’en are targets of this drive to profits and corporate greed. Despite a clear court ruling maintaining indigenous sovereignty over their land over 20 years ago, corporate interests continue to violate land these land rights in pursuit of globalization.

Nevertheless, Wet’suwet’en are determined to safeguard their land as the RCMP attempts to invade their sovereign territory, setting up checkpoints to ensure that corporations won’t enter their land without consent. This angered capitalists, but served as the foundation for a strong resistance. As an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist youth organisation, the YCL-LJC stands with those who oppose the interests of profiteers. We express unwavering solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en nation’s resistance against the same corporations that destroy our environment and spur global war. Those corporations that seek to dispossess Indigenous peoples of their lands and territory in Canada also play a role in the plunder of Latin America, Africa and throughout the world in the interest of their shareholders.

Furthermore, the YCL-LJC stands in full solidarity with indigenous resistance movements and recognizes that Indigenous nations (First Nations, Métis and Inuit) have an unquestionable right to their land, territories and resources. For “reconciliation” between nations in Canada to be meaningful, the Canadian state must fundamentally recognize and respect Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, up to and including the right to secede.

Therefore, we demand the Canadian state recognize the national rights of all nations, including the Acadian people, Quebec, First Nations, the Métis, and the Inuit nations. Furthermore, we call for the protection and expansion of the rights of national minorities, such as French-speaking communities in English-speaking Canada.

All nations should be free to associate as sovereign nations within this land, and have the right to self-determination up to and including secession. Only through such an agreement can we reach equality between all the nations composing Canada. This equality is fundamental to the class unity necessary to build socialism in our country.

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