YCL-LJC Central Executive Committee, November 15, 2020

The Young Communist League—Ligue de la jeunesse communiste stands in solidarity with  Indigenous youth and their allies in the struggle for the inalienable Right to Self-Determination of their peoples. In the past weeks, from the Secwepemc nation to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, to Mi’kma’ki and beyond, young people have bravely stood up to the ongoing assault by the State and exploitative resource extraction and land development corporations.

Over the winter of 2019-2020, a series of increasingly successful examples of resistance to Candian imperialist projects exploded into unprecedented large-scale demonstrations of solidarity in nearly every major city.

The COVID-19 Pandemic shuttered the many solidarity blockades and mobilisations; however, it did not stop Capital and its armed apparati from its relentless drive for profit through exploiting both the resources and people. The spontaneous uprising against anti-Black racism and police brutality across North America has forged links in the fight for peace and justice and has brought renewal to the broader solidarity movement.

Currently there are more than 100 drinking water advisories in First Nations across Canada. Further to that, substandard housing and infrastructure for First Nations communities continues to be an ongoing struggle for those living on and away from their community.

Given the history of high rates of infectious disease in First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities, it is very possible that COVID-19 could be devastating, according report from Yellowhead Institute authored by Hayden King, the organization’s executive director, with support from Ryerson student Josephine Slaughter.

The denial of the sovereignty, self-determination, and social and economic well-being of Indigenous peoples in the name of Canadian state and corporate interests began long before the outbreak of COVID-19 — in fact, this “necessity” has expressed itself consistently since Confederation.

The cost of enforcing the Coastal GasLink pipeline construction in Sovereign unceded land between January 2019 and March 2020 was more than $13 million, according to documents obtained by CBC News. However on the east coast, the RCMP has stood by onsite while violent mobs have attacked and attempted to intimidate Mi’kmaq communities from enacting their Sovereign rights.

This is the approach by Canadian capital: resource extraction for private profit enforced at gunpoint.

A 2019 report on Canada to the UN Human Rights Council by the UN Special Rapporteur for Violence Against Women Dubravka Šimonović specifically names high rates of child apprehension by police, the over-incarceration of Indigenous women, and coerced sterilization and sexualized violence by police and corrections officers as issues related to what she refers to as “gendered colonization”.

All attempts to violate the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples must stop. The Federal Government must negotiate with the recognition of the Sovereignty of Indigenous peoples as well as the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Federal Government must negotiate a just and peaceful resolution with all land claims.

There are clear reports with recommendations that are being neglected by the Federal Government, including the 440 recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the 231 Calls for Justice from the Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls, the 94 Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, among numerous other reports. Now is the time for action.

From coast to coast, all young people have one common enemy: the ruling Capitalist Class. This is the basis of unity in the struggle for a Socialist society where the wellbeing of all people and the environment is the priority instead of the private accumulation of property by an exploitative minority. 

The YCL-LJC calls for the broadest possible unity in solidarity with Youth Land Defenders. The YCL-LJC fights for a socialist Canada, based on an equal and voluntary partnership of all nations, including First Nations, Inuit, the Métis, Quebec, English Canada, and Acadia. This can only be achieved through the struggle for the full sovereignty and self-determination of all nations.