Emergency Marker 6: Centre Indigenous Rights & Leadership (w/ Janelle Lapointe, Serena Mendizabal & Seth Klein)

Our special series concludes with a marker that grounds all the others: centring Indigenous rights, title, and leadership. Erin Blondeau speaks with Janelle Lapointe, Serena Mendizabal, and Seth Klein about the transformative potential of Indigenous-led climate action. They discuss energy and food sovereignty, cultural revitalization, and the community-driven projects already charting a different future. They also examine how governments and industry continue to prioritize extraction over Indigenous-led solutions, and what a genuine emergency response rooted in Indigenous sovereignty would require. It’s a powerful closing conversation about justice, leadership, and the pathways we must follow to confront the crisis honestly.

Links & references:

• ‘Economic reconciliation’ is a false promise for Indigenous peoples - Janelle Lapointe
• Canada’s new fast-track laws double down on false promise of ‘economic reconciliation’ - Janelle Lapointe
• Sacred Earth website: www.sacredearth.solar 
• Yellowhead Institute website: yellowheadinstitute.org 
• Why Ksi Lisims LNG Must Be Stopped - Seth Klein (video)
• The next big LNG proposal - Ksi Lisims - may be the sleeper climate issue of 2024 - Seth Klein
• Indigenous Resistance Against Carbon - Report by Indigenous Environmental Network & Oil Change International on how Indigenous resistance disrupts billions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually

More on the 6 Markers of the Climate Emergency:

• Watch our video: 6 Markers of Climate Emergency Action  
• Listen to all 6 episodes of our special series & the 6-marker overview episode from March 2025.
• Learn more about the 6 markers at www.davidsuzukiinstitute.ca/6-markers-of-climate-emergency

Credits:
Produced by Erin Blondeau and Doug Hamilton-Evans. Written and hosted by Erin Blondeau. Music by Anjali Appadurai. Audio editing by Blue Light Studios. Artwork by Geoff Smith.

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to breaking case of emergency, a podcast about mobilizing Canada for the climate crisis with audacious solutions rooted in justice and workers' rights. I'm your host, Erin Blondeau, and this episode is part of a special series of breaking case of emergency. Over the course of six episodes, we've been breaking down the climate emergency units, guiding framework our six markers of climate emergency. We've been exploring what it means when our governments shift into genuine emergency mode, and what it looks like when our leaders truly understand crises to be the emergencies that they are and act accordingly. In today's episode, we are digging into marker number six, which is indigenous rights, title and leadership are essential. And for our conversation today, we are very excited to be joined by special guests, Janelle Lapointe and Serena Mendizabal. So Janelle, I would love to pass the mic on to you to introduce yourself.

Okay, thanks. Erin zenhun tsu, Good Day to everyone listening. Hadith, CNA spoozi, Janelle Lapointe, salaton, in case, Luxeuil. My name is Janelle Lapointe. I am from salaton, First Nation. I'm a senior advisor at the David Suzuki foundation. I'm a grassroots organizer at the intersection of climate justice and indigenous rights. But most importantly, I'm a young woman from Salat and First Nation, a small indigenous community in the north central part of so called BC, and represent my family and my clan, the caribou clan.

Thank you so much. Janelle, it's so good to have you here. And Serena, I would love to pass the mic to you now.

Scan, oh. Sereni Naga, so guy, cono ni gay, shout. De Hi everyone. My name is Serena Mendizabal. I am Cayuga Wolf Clan from Six Nations of the Grand River. So we're a Haudenosaunee community, and we're actually the only Haudenosaunee community that has all six nations living together. I currently live here with my partner and our two cats, and really, all of the work that I've done for the last decade around climate justice and indigenous rights is heavily influenced from the Haudenosaunee peoples and women who have done this work long before me. I'm currently managing director at Sacred Earth indigenous woman led nonprofit focused on supporting frontline indigenous communities with climate solutions. And I am really excited today to always be in conversation with the climate emergency unit and Janelle Lapointe as well. Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much, Serena. And we also have Seth Klein rejoining us today. Seth is the team lead with the climate emergency unit and the author of the book a good war mobilizing Canada for the climate emergency and very relevant to our discussion today. Seth's book has a chapter that discusses the role of indigenous people in the Second World War and the role of indigenous leadership in confronting the climate emergency today. Hey, Seth,

Hey, Erin, good to be back with you and thrilled to be here with Janelle and Serena to get a little bit more context about the six markers of climate emergency. We suggest that our listeners go back to marker number one of this series to get a background or listening to an overview episode that we did on March 15, 2025 there will be links to both of those in the show notes. But as a quick synopsis, we believe that it's not too late to change course on the climate emergency, but only if we embrace the type of transformational change we haven't seen since the Second World War and to a lesser extent, the pandemic. We need extraordinary measures to confront fascism, and we need audacious change now to confront the climate crisis. Our six markers of emergency framework is a way to understand if an institution or government is acting in genuine emergency mode, and today we are discussing marker number six, which is indigenous rights, title and leadership are essential to winning. So let's jump in Seth, I wanted to start with a little bit of context about what this is all about. So the six markers framework draws from Canada's Second World War mobilization, but marker number six, which again is indigenous rights and leadership, represents something that wasn't a part of that historical precedent, and it's honestly it's always de legitimized or ignored within Canada's colonial system. So Seth, why is this marker especially critical as a principle in an emergency response?

Yeah, thanks, Erin, well, it absolutely needs to be part of our emergency response. You're right that it certainly wasn't during the Second World War. Just Just to clarify, indigenous people had an important role to play in the war, but their rights were certainly not respected, and their lands were not respected. Um. Well, first of all, I think this is important, because a huge amount of leadership in confronting the climate emergency is happening under indigenous leadership, and I'm sure we're going to hear more about that from from both of our guests. But maybe to answer your question, the easiest thing to do would be to open with a little bit of a story to illustrate the point from the Second World War. You know, one morning when I was writing in 2019 this news item came across the radio about the death of Louis Levi Oakes, the last of the Mohawk Code Talkers from the community of Akwesasne. Interestingly, you know, people might remember that from their high school history classes that it was really important to the Canadian government that they would independently declare war on Germany in World War Two. But interestingly, Serena's people, the Haudenosaunee, also independently declared war on Germany, which resulted in many Mohawk men enlisting, and so Oakes was one of them. He died at the age of 94 and the code talkers were indigenous soldiers who were tasked with using their own languages to communicate secret military information among the Allied Forces. When When news reports came out about oakes's death, his daughter revealed that incredibly, he hadn't told his own family what he did during the war for seven decades, because they'd been sworn to secrecy. And only in his late 80s, when stories of the code talkers were made more public did he finally reveal what he had done, and then he get, got all these special awards from the Assembly First Nations and the House of Commons, but he was one of many code talkers. The code talkers were, well, what, what ended up happening in the war is the the Allied codes kept getting broken by the Japanese and the Nazis, until the Americans discovered that if two Navajo guys were talking, no one understood what they were saying. And ultimately, they recruited Indigenous men from 33 indigenous language groups to various branches of the allied forces and but, but as you learn about the story of the code talkers, it struck me that there's in this piece of wartime history this tragic irony, like Canada and the United States had spent generations trying to erase indigenous languages from the earth, you know, beating them out of children in residential schools, only to then discover that these languages were the unbreakable code. That's what they were dubbed in the war, credited as having been vital to victory in certain battles. And I think if you fast forward to today, the same can be said about indigenous rights and title, which, similarly, our two countries have spent generations systematically abusing and violating and ignoring and yet, as our mainstream politics dithers and dodges on meaningful and coherent climate action over and over and over again, it's the assertion of indigenous title and rights that keeps buying us time slowing and blocking fossil fuel projects. That assertion of title, I think as we confront the climate emergency is a game changer. It's a fundamental threat to the power of the fossil fuel industry. And I don't think it's any coincidence that we're seeing the far right in North America and in Canada, here in British Columbia, where I am the same far right that is denying climate science also has indigenous rights and title in their sight, because these are very much connected.

Wow, I had no idea that the Haudenosaunee declared war independently.

Yeah, yeah. Actually, their war declaration is quite moving, interesting.

Oh, I can't wait to look that up after so on this topic of language, I thought that we could go a little bit further and talk about the language that's being used today when we when we think about this problem. So a few decades ago, it was global warming. That was the phrase. That was the phrase used, but it wasn't broad enough to describe what was actually going on. And now the accepted term is climate emergency, or climate crisis. And so I wanted to take just a minute, and maybe we can talk about that framing in general, in that term, and ask Janelle and Serena what, what does that mean to you? And do you think that this framing of climate emergency is leaving anything out, or is it problematic? Janelle, maybe I can pass the mic to you first. Sure.

Yeah, I definitely think climate emergency is an improvement. I mean, I'm from a northern, very cold community, and if I have to hear. If global warming is real, why is it so cold this winter that drives me a bit bonkers. What I think is really powerful about the framing of climate emergency is I think it breaks through the apathy. It really shows that the impacts of climate change are here and now they have deadly and costly consequences to everyday people, and I think it has jolted a lot of people into that understanding that we're living in the crisis now. So I think it does a really good job of framing the crisis, but not necessarily the root causes of the problem. And I also it makes me think about, you know, when we made the shift to this language, calling it a climate emergency, really, in a time when the impacts of climate change started affecting wealthier and wider populations in the Global North, which are consequences that indigenous people worldwide, people in the Global South, had been warning about. And so for us, it's not a sudden emergency. It's centuries long, and relates directly to dispossession, the extraction and the imposed vulnerability of our of our communities. And so I like the term with that, that nuance that can really identify the emergency we're living in, but also talk about that longer timeline and how it's directly tied to colonialism and capitalism. And I know that none of us here think this way, but I also worry that the word emergency suggests a temporary state, and that emergency is something to be managed, and once we stabilize, we return to normal. And it's important for me to acknowledge that what we consider normal is what caused the crisis. And for many indigenous people, the work ahead is not just returning to normal, but really generational repair, healing our relationship with land to and reviving our governance systems, rebuilding local economies and really creating a whole, a whole new system, rather than returning to the one that Put us in this this crisis to begin with.

Yeah, that's such a good point. And it also makes me think about the way that many people responded to the pandemic as well. You know, there was kind of this talk about, oh, when we get to return to the way things were before. And then there was another talk like, No, we don't want to return to the way things were before. We want to be able to have stronger communities. And, you know, the pandemic, the pandemic response was so fracturing because of the status quo. So, yeah, Serena, I would love to turn to you now.

Yeah, I It's funny, because I'm just coming from being in a northern Alberta community last week, where we were working on energy education and climate literacy. And it's quite interesting, because a lot of and we're working with young people, and a lot of those young people see it just as emergency, without having like the prior background on climate change and energy justice like this is an emergency within their communities in a crisis that many are dealing with. And so I definitely think there is a major gap between what governments, academics, NGOs, are communicating and understanding the climate crisis to be and what communities are actually experiencing on the ground, or even like our understanding of how this crisis is playing out in front of us, and so for many. And this comes back to this language the crisis has been filtered down to into this like quantification, commodification of our lands and waters, and this emphasis on the reduction of greenhouse and gas emissions to be able to reach what many are calling net zero, which on Google, is actually defined, and it's kind of an ick, but a target of completely negating the amount of greenhouse gasses produced by human activity to be achieved by reducing emissions and implementing methods of absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So that definition, with all its wordiness and density, is what people are trying to achieve. And right there, like you can just tell me how disconnected that is from our communities. And so I think when we think of this, we need to take a step back to the communities, and Janelle has already touched base on it, who have historically faced environmental racism in the impacts of environmental degradation. So we can talk in these big terms, like reaching net zero, but coming where I come from, coming where Janelle comes from, where many communities we work with that sacred Earth are coming from, this framing, with this disconnection of focusing solely on climate, leaves out environmental degradation and industrial impacts we've been facing for decades. Is, if not a century in my community of six nations, since 1924 when the RCMP came and took out a hereditary governance. And with all of this being said, we can talk about the climate. And people think in general terms of like something that is happening to us, but not something that we are doing. And at the core of that is extractivism. And we somehow think we're going to reach these Net Zero targets without taking in account the root causes of the climate crisis, which our communities know so intimately. And we can talk that the climate crisis is this long term shift in weather and climate patterns, but we have consistently been seeing these shifts in our local Ecosystems and Biodiversity long before, due to extractivism and specifically linked to fossil fuels. And so we say climate emergency, but this is a fossil fuel induced emergency that is happening, and I think that's where that disconnect happens, because for me, the EJ environmental justice and the climate justice movement are completely interwoven, but a lot of the times we see through government and academia and NGOs that they're talked about separately, and right now, we're really at this crisis point in our communities where those who are creating the least impact are carrying the largest burden. And what we're seeing in our communities, again, is just crisis from we were just in that community last week. They were evacuated this summer due to wildfires, to major erosion that's limiting our access to neighboring communities, to floods in our own basements. My house was flooded this past summer, and I got a drought in our well, and these impacts are now impacting our access to water, to food, to showering, personal hygiene, to access our jobs, and we flooded this past year in six nations this past summer, and our elders Lodge was flooded and evacuated, and now our elderly have to live in a community outside of six nations to be able to get their basic necessities until we build a whole new facility, because it's condemned. So we're not only now facing the environmental and the industrial impact, and now we're facing the climate impact. We're also facing the impact around having access to basic necessities such as water, food and shelter, and to end at this, to even go beyond this, which I don't think people really understand, the climate crisis, is going to impact our governance, our culture and our knowledge as unway hue, original peoples, as you saw Janelle introduce herself, like she is representing her clan. This is what the climate crisis is going to impact, is our clan systems. And for Haudenosaunee, our ceremonial cycles, we're following the seasons and the planting cycles. And last year we didn't get the freeze we wanted. And to tap our maple trees. We need a deep freeze. So without it, many people were not able to tap their trees. And therefore now this is impacting ceremonies, which in turn impacts our governance. And if we can't do ceremony, if we can't govern ourselves through the land, or if the land is unable to govern us, then who are we? So I think this fight is much larger than reducing emissions. And I think when we talk about climate change, people right away associate it with this, like GHG reduction, but in reality, is protecting ourselves, our identities, and all other human and non human can impact it by the crisis and impact it by the very industries that the government is pushing forward, which I think disconnects when we just negate to climate. And we need to look back at environmental degradation, industrial impacts and extractivism.

Thank you. Yeah, that is such a good point that even the way that we think about reducing emissions, it's detaching the land, it's detaching animals, it's detaching us from the narrative. And that is just, yeah, I is such a good point about how problematic that that framing can be, and you were touching on this a little bit, so maybe we can come back to this, which is, you know, before we get into all of the barriers and the problems that are going on, I want to talk about the work and the solutions that are already happening. What indigenous led climate work. Are you a part of or are you witnessing that excites you and that shows what's possible? Janelle, maybe I can pass the mic to you.

Yeah. I mean, there's, there's so much. I think the the work that sacred or solar does inspires me a lot. So I can't wait for Serena to share. But what really excites me is when I see communities looking at the problem holistically and and to me, that is like, yeah, they're taking the climate emergency in the in the nuanced way that Serena described, where it's not just about emissions, it's not just about people, it's about land and animals and waters and culture and ceremony like I'm actually seeing my community wake up to that reality and respond to the climate emergency that way, in an area of the province that has been heavily impacted by resource extraction from the first. Trade to forestry to mining to now liquid natural natural gas, like my community has had countless major industrial projects impact our land, waters and peoples. And for the first time, our community was awarded a wind project, and so people are now working on this clean energy project. We have our youth and our elders involved in the process, walking the land to design this historic wind project in our community. And alongside of it, we resolve we have also done initiatives like expanded our community garden. We now have this massive, beautiful greenhouse where we can grow fresh, healthy produce year round. And this is a community where I grew up driving two hours to the nearest city to get fresh produce. And I'm also seeing initiatives like our language program, I'm now enrolled with 59 other students from our community to learn our language. Our people are looking at building a clan house so that our clan leaders can raise children that have been historically taken into foster care. And to me, is no coincidence that, like all these solutions are like happening in a time where resource extraction is paused and we're looking at new forms. And so when I think about, yeah, just what it looks like as to transition away from fossil fuels, like it's more than just a project, I feel like through a clean energy project, we're able to look at our whole way of being in community differently. And when you can turn on that imagination switch to see, okay, what's possible in the circumstances, and to feel like we actually have agency over what happens our communities like that's where the creativity around food sovereignty and taking care of our children and reclaiming our language has been able to happen. And so that's what really inspires me, is like people kind of holistically waking up to the climate emergency and using it to improve so many aspects of our lives and way of being without government in position,

yeah, even just hearing it is like so inspiring and makes me feel really creative. So thank you for sharing that Janelle and Serena. What about you?

Yeah, honestly, seeing the work of other indigenous people in climate, in land rights, in food like this is what brought me into the movement. I have been working in this field for about 10 years, and personally, like I started with a focus on impact assessments. So how can we stop these large industrial projects through impact assessment? And so for a lot of my time, I was focusing on the impacts and what we are facing. And then I think it finally came to a point of, okay, what am I going to do about it so I can talk about all of these impacts, but where is that going to lead me? And it actually led me to sacred Earth. For the last three years, I've been working at Sacred Earth, and I like, I believe in sacred Earth's mission. And I like sacred Earth, and I'm and I'll be stuck here probably for a while, because I believe in the vision so so deeply. But in sacred Earth, we really work at that intersection of indigenous sovereignty and climate solutions, really with the core focus of land back with as of health and of sovereignty. And so for me, coming to sacred Earth, we had already done projects, supporting the tiny house warriors, against trans mountain pipeline, supporting the wet'suwet'en, against coastal gaslink, supporting ferry Creek, against old growth logging like this is the work I want to do, right and how do we sustain those movements? And so sacred earth provides solar or other climate infrastructure to be able to sustain these movements of land back much longer, because through oil change, international indigenous climate action, they did that study that really said it was over a span of 10 years that indigenous land defenders, both in Canada and the US, they actually stopped one quarter of annual US Canada missions over a span of 10 years. So it's written in the numbers of what land back movements are actually doing, and that's what's really inspired me, from my own community, to do this work at Sacred Earth. We're really we're at a really busy time right now, so we're working on multiple different projects, but one that I really wanted to touch on is in from my own community, and something that I've worked on for the last three years has been creating a sustainable restoration of our ceremonial longhouse. So the sour swings long house, it's our place of governance, language, ceremony, harvest, even we hold our funerals and have our own graveyard there. So like this, is the place of our people. People and in six nations, and I'll talk about this a little after but we have the largest clean energy portfolio of any First Nation in the country, and my community doesn't feel seen, doesn't feel represented within that. And so over the span of 10 years, I think really what would make my community proud, what would provide us hope and what would give us agency. And it was a project that was completely defined by our community, by our long house, because so much of the time we're seeing these First Nations own projects, when proponents or developers are coming in, they need their check mark on indigenous participation, and we get like 10% of equity within it. This was different. I didn't want that for community. I wanted this to come from the ground up. And so we ended up. And so we ended up working on energy efficient retrofits so that we were using less energy all together. Then we went into solar PV for the energy we did need for our like our game and our seeds. And so we have a 24 kilowatt solar PV hybrid micro grid system on in the community for the four and five buildings that will come within the Long House. And then lastly, that fifth building that isn't there right now, we're building a seed storage and it was okay, we can talk about clean energy, but what actually is a just transition, and for us as Haudenosaunee, it's our seeds. And so we'll be building this centralized space to store our seeds, basically creating a bank or sanctuary to be able to create long term food sovereignty and ceremonial seeds in place for us. And so this has really been for me, seeing and being able to implement a project that the community actually wants. And when I get to work with our people, and I get to be in long house and see that we did this, and that came from us like that's what inspires me, is when our people can be sovereign. And this is happening all across the country. We have 200 medium to large Gen renewable energy projects. We have almost 3000 small scale, indigenous led clean energy projects. And it's also happening around the world. Janelle and I were lucky enough to go to Brazil in April to be able to connect with so many other people who are implementing indigenous led solutions. And we could see in Ecuador with car solar, they created solar river transportation that basically would be able to transport their community across their river spanning 1000s kilometers per year, really focusing on technological independence and that reduction of diesel and propane to be able to support their clean transportation. And now they're going to be working with many other communities in different countries. We also saw Casa Pueblo in Puerto Rico, and with Hurricane Maria, much of the island was cut off of power, but in Casa Pueblo, the community center, the lights stayed on, and it's because they created the first community owned micro grid in the country, which is 187 kilowatts. It's a solar micro grid powering 13 small businesses with 1.1 megawatts of storage so it can support 10 days of off grid energy access. These are the solutions that are thinking about what the people need, what the land needs, what the waters need. And I think I wanted to end off that when I look at indigenous like climate work, it's not just like building solutions, it's also reversing the harm that's already been done. And I think we can see that with the decommission of the Klamath dam down south. And in 2024 we saw indigenous peoples engineers in California, Oregon, carry out the largest dam removal project in history on the Klamath River. And that really is owed to a lot of the Hoopa and Yurok organizers, who have dedicated decades and decades of doing, of decommissioning this, projecting and restoring the river for their salmon. And so I think this is what's really powerful, is not only implementing solutions, but also reversing the damage that has been done. And to me, like so many people, are doing this all across and it honestly is what keeps me in the movement of knowing you're not alone, and you have this community of everyone else who is doing these really amazing projects. But what it comes back to is sovereignty, and I think that's really where people get skewed away from from doing things with a good mind and doing things the right way, is because we actually are still trying to figure out what sovereignty looks like for us, but for the communities that are exerting that right and are and are growing and believing in this understanding of their sovereignty, and know what that feels like that's where real work happens, as you can see with Janelle, when she was speaking to the language and to the culture and to their big house and and a clan house for their families. Like that is sovereignty, and that is the work that inspires me, because I know at the end of the day, if our people keep exerting that right, like we will build healthier communities. We will build solutions that will benefit us in the end, and we will build the future we want

Serena that is just like what Janelle was talking about. Like that gets my creativity flowing, and it makes me it gives me hope when. I oftentimes talking about this topic, I mostly just feel mad and upset. But hearing these stories is just like, yeah, it brings me hope. And there was one thing that you that stood out to me that I did want to bring Seth into the conversation about, and it's kind of on the topic of like, you know, industry or government or whatever, coming in indigenous communities. And it's like a check mark for them, you know, they're like, Oh, we've done this. And so Seth, I wanted to kind of bring you in and ask you, so some people might say, like, yeah, we need to move fast on climate, but we don't have time to navigate questions of indigenous rights or talk about land back, or any of this stuff, and I know that moving decisively is a part of the philosophy of the climate emergency unit. So I wanted to ask you, how do you hold that tension? Why is there actually no path to confronting the climate, the climate crisis that bypasses indigenous sovereignty?

Yeah, well, thanks for naming that. First of all, Erin,

yeah, there are these inherent tensions in the framework that we employ this emergency framework. So one of them is around time like doing this right, undoing the racism of society, undoing the legacy of colonization like decolonization isn't quick, and engaging in these profound transformations takes time, and yet, time in The Climate emergency context is in very short supply, and we talk about moving at speed and scale. And the other tension is that the very idea of emergency action, like the reality is for a lot of indigenous communities, their experience of emergency has been very negative, like it's it's a time when the power and centralization of the state occurs and a lot of harm is done. That was true, by the way, in the world war two story that I that I talk about, like in the war, a lot of indigenous land was expropriated and stripped away. A lot of land was poisoned, like Dene land in Northwest Territories was left with radioactive waste, and Ojibwe land around Sarnia was left a toxic mess. And all of that happened in the context of emergency, all of which is to say, like we have to go fast, and we also have to do it right, and we have to not repeat the sins and the screw ups of the past. Like Being aware of those tensions isn't a reason not to invoke emergency and move fast. It's just a warning that we have to do it right. And I do think it can be navigated. It really just comes down to a question of well, as Serena said around sovereignty, it really depends about who declares emergency and how

Thank you. Seth, and so I'm thinking, maybe we can shift gears a little bit and talk about some of the confusing narratives that we hear about, like what the government is saying versus what's actually going on. And so Janelle, I wanted to ask you governments say that they're taking climate change seriously and honoring indigenous rights, although maybe they're not even saying that anymore. It seems like things are just getting more explicitly racist, like all the time. But it doesn't, it doesn't. So is there a gap between what the government and even industry is saying and doing versus what's actually happening on the ground?

Oh, absolutely. And, I mean, they did. They didn't wait long. To give us an example of that, the hypocrisy. You know, we had our former Liberal government declare a climate emergency and then by the trans mountain pipeline like that, took mere hours to show their hand, and since then, we've seen them to continue to invest in pipelines, continue to log old growth forests and to criminalize the indigenous people who are rightfully defending their land against this extraction. And so this, this also points to, you know, another gripe I have with the term climate emergency, and it's that an emergency requires accountability, and without accountability, it's really easy for for these declarations to become deeply performative. And yeah, right now, I think, like you. Said, I don't even think they're really even saying these things anymore. I think we've moved into territory where environmental concerns and even indigenous rights are treated as special interests that the government has already decided they are happy to ignore in the name of fast tracking projects and economic growth and standing up to Donald Trump. So the narratives are quickly changing, and I've been concerned about, yeah, the ways that government and industry have been adopting, first, green washing narratives, like we know that the fossil fuel industry is has been very tricky at covering their own mess and has adopted a strategy of green washing. We see this as they declare liquid natural gas, clean energy, safe energy better for our health, and they are now adopting a tactic with which many called Red washing, and I call, you know, the weaponization of state manufactured indigenous poverty, the impoverishing of our communities. You know, the wealth in this country has been built off of extraction from indigenous lands and extraction of labor, and if, if indigenous sovereignty and rights were respected, that would make indigenous communities very wealthy, if we were accounting for how much money has been made off of their lands. But instead of any form of reparations, instead of any form of addressing the question of indigenous sovereignty and investing in land back, they're now using a term called economic reconciliation. We see that in every form of government, from for many different political parties, here in Ontario, we no longer have a ministry of Indigenous Affairs. It's a Ministry of Economic reconciliation. And so what I see is really an offloading of responsibility to reconcile, to reparate, and instead, are allowing private interests and private corporations fill the gap and say that, well, if indigenous communities want to make some money and survive poverty, they need to partner on these major projects that come alongside environmental and health impacts and is often A sacrifice of our our cultural values and what these this new fast tracking legislation also means that we don't have time to engage in these projects through our governance systems and through our cultural systems, which is a choice like I think the government is making A choice to to do things in a way where, yeah, indigenous people won't have the opportunity to exert their sovereignty, and in a terrain where there is a lot of economic anxiety from all Canadians, coast to coast to coast, and there has been a lot of anxiety about the threat of America and the threat of Donald Trump, this means that indigenous people are really targeted for being barriers to progress and so called weakening the Canadian economy, which reinforces the racism against indigenous people, which You know Seth mentioned in his opening has been a tactic of the right to not just deny climate change, but to have an attack on indigenous rights and the potential of land back. So yeah, we're in a we're in a mess. The narrative train is changing quickly, and the government seem to really abandon their commitments on climate, indigenous rights, all for this economy that doesn't seem to be working for anyone.

Yeah, thank you, Janelle, thank you for bringing economic reconciliation into the conversation too. And yeah, it definitely is a tactic that we see a lot of our governments here in Canada taking on is like, you know, just delegitimizing indigenous rights exactly like you said, because they want to push through industry, they want to push through projects, and they're not going to use the fancy language anymore to pretend like they are. They're just going to do it and repackage it as economic reconciliation. And Serena, I wanted to ask you the same question, like, is there a gap between what the government and industry is saying and doing and what's actually happening?

Oh, 100% and all in the name of Canadian sovereignty, right? What the government they're trying to get to a reduction of 40 to 45 Percent by 2035 but we have indigenous communities all across the country who have projects coming from the communities, and they're not being given the same same emphasis. As we can see. What's happening over in the major projects office, you see this announcement of what we're being referred to for MPO, for consideration being the LNG phase two Darlington, all new nuclear we are seeing major copper mines all in the name of energy transition being pushed forward to MPO. But where is the indigenous led projects? And instead the indigenous led projects are come that are coming from community aren't said fighting with each other for sub some for the little bit of funding that there is towards indigenous clean energy or indigenous energy efficiency projects. And we can see this currently, right now, is everyone, probably this week, is waiting for the smart renewables electrification program. Many communities, I don't know the number. But everyone I've talked to within indigenous clean energy is waiting for this funding announcement to happen this week, and many of our projects are dependent on it, and we're having to basically fight over, oh, the indigenous leadership fund or wahala twos or Clean Fuels fund or s rep. And if you actually talk to anyone who is doing these, like major utility scale projects, they're most likely having to go to the Canada infrastructure bank to create some sort of capital to create backing. And I think for me, what I see in these major gaps around what they're trying to do and what actually resourcing they're putting behind it is that, once again, communities are left out of the national narrative of this energy transition, when at the end of the day, I'm pretty sure indigenous communities, outside of utilities, are the second largest asset owners of renewable energy in the country, and we're still not going to give them the proper resourcing, like we have been building The capacity, we have been building the funding up, and once again, we're we're left fighting with each other through this divide and conquer narrative, because that's all there is to really fund these projects, because many of our land claims aren't settled. Six Nations, we've been doing this since 1970s and I don't think they're going to litigation next year, but we'll see if that actually happens. And so then to see this on this major front of these, like major projects, where Canada's unleashing its economy. And then you come back to community. And over the summer, after the fast track of this legislation, my people were scared. My people, we met every Sunday out near the community hall or at gun estado. What are we going to do about it? And it's almost to the point that we have no other option but to shut Canada down, because we have tried every other mechanism to try and create a nation to nation relationship, and we're just not there yet. And we can see this, we're playing their games. We're creating utility scale projects. And why were none of them mentioned the MPO, we have a major critical transmission linkage happening over in mcmaggie, between the two province. Why aren't we giving the same kind of capacity and resourcing to projects like that? And so I think there is a major gap with what's happening. I think we are looking at what will create profit and capital even within indigenous clean energy projects, because we're missing a whole other area of work, which is energy efficiency. In on November 4, when they release the budget, will indigenous led energy efficiency, even have money towards it. When we have over 20 communities who are doing this work to reduce the amount of energy and conserve, is there going to be 20 million for those projects? And I think this is the thing that we just have to we're having to deal with, is we know what we need to meet their targets, but they don't know what they need, and this is why it's so essential that indigenous peoples in our communities and our nations are given the grounding and are firmed in our sovereignty, so that we can create our own climate targets, so that we can create our own climate action strategies, so that we can create our own community energy plans, because right now, all the government sees is money and not people, not land, not water, not everything that we need, that Mother Earth has gifted us to be able to create a good life. And so there, yeah, there's major gaps, one of them being we don't have the capital we need to push forward a transition. We're talking billions of dollars from the government to push forward a transition that we're seeing, that we need, and that's not happening. Instead, it's going to pipelines and mining projects.

Yeah, yeah. Seth, does that sound like an emergency response to you spending money on pipelines? Ins and all the nope, nope, yeah. I mean just this incredible gap when it comes to our governments between words and action. But then especially when you hear Serena talk about this, you know that there are so many projects waiting for support and capital to transform our society, going wanting, while we keep having these stupid debates about projects that we should have long ago walked away from. You know, in my writing, I've written a lot about how the core barrier to climate emergency action is what I call the new climate denialism. And by new climate denialism, I'm unlike traditional climate denialism, or just like rejecting it all, the new climate denialism is characterized by governments who say they get it and then go about their business in a way that clearly indicates they do not get it. And the new climate denialism has an evil twin brother, which is indigenous rights and title denialism. And they really operate hand in glove, where, again, governments talk a good game on you know, the UN Declaration and rights and title except when those come up against the interests of the extractivist industry and oil and gas corporations, and then they get jettisoned, you know, and this is where I think that, you know, Janelle's writing has been so helpful in terms of differentiating between so called economic reconciliation versus genuine economic sovereignty, and trying to tease out for us that at the core of the UN declaration is this principle of free, prior and informed consent. And what does free really mean? Free versus forced consent. That when you manufacture poverty by the denial of title and then ask people for their consent, you are asking them in the in the context of forced consent.

Yeah, I think this brings up a really important question that I wanted to come to, which is like, what is the difference between consultation and truly upholding indigenous rights? You know, we often hear governments and industry saying, Oh, we're in consultation with indigenous communities. But you know what? What does that look like? Like? Is that true consultation happening? Or would you even use that term? Maybe Janelle, I can, I can pass the mic to you.

Yeah, I think consultation is the right term for it, but it boggles my mind that they're able to to, to make that seem much more than it is, because we all know what consultation is. When you consult with someone, you give them a set of information, and you ask their opinion, and then you may decide to take that into consideration, or you may not, and and that's what's what's happening. We have industry coming into communities, providing information to the community, and really giving a sales pitch, which sometimes includes empty promises and over emphasis on on jobs and prosperity that will come to community. And I know for me, you know, I was home in my community while coastal gaslink was consulting with my community, and I remember them, you know, describing them drilling under our indaco River, which has already been decimated by the mining industry. And they're talking about it like this beautiful family event that we can all picnic beside and watch the miracle of their drilling technology ruin our river. They were talking about clearing the right of way and promising that they would plant it with Huckleberry bushes and therefore create an accessible berry corridor, like all of these, like fantasies that of course, never happened. You know, I just visited the right of way this summer. It's a desolate piece of land cleared through some of the last remaining old growth on our territory that no one can can go to because it's there's nothing there for us the destruction of food, medicines and critical habitat. So, yeah, the difference is those, those magic words, free, prior and informed consent. And, yeah, I think that question of what what it actually means to get consent, and I would agree, I don't think you can get consent from a community that is under duress from poverty that you the state has have imposed on them. Um, and I think it's really important that we are achieving free power, informed consent through indigenous governance systems, and not the imposed systems of an Indian Act, Chief and Council. And for communities that aren't active in using their governance system, it's often because they don't have access to land and to be able to do their governance system in a way that they have for millennia. And so, yeah, there really is no basis for free, informed consent if we're not talking about monetary reparations to address the poverty and land reparations so that communities can carry out their governance and in an effective way. But the government is is, is very quick to say, well, we'll do free, prior and informed consent, which ultimately just means for them a more thorough consultation. But they're always saying, you know, it's not a veto, it's not a veto. And I think I was trying to placate that a little bit by being like, okay, yeah, it's not a veto. It's all these other things. But I kind of now at the point like, why not? Why not make it a veto? Because I know a veto wouldn't block all development. Like there are communities that have projects ready that do want to develop in a sustainable way, in a way that's in line with their cultural values and that makes their communities healthier and more resilient. I don't think it would block all development, but I think it would force governments to negotiate in good faith and to really respect indigenous defined interests, instead of imposing their own state and corporate interests, because right now, we're in a situation where indigenous governments, indigenous nations, are unable to say no, my community supported coastal gas link because we were sure that if we said no, it would happen without us, because that's what happens to us time and time again. There's many, many communities in face of these projects that say the same thing, you know, if we say no, it's going to happen anyway. So why shouldn't we benefit a little? And communities that do are adamant about saying no, they have no other option than these lengthy, costly legal battles or by physically putting their bodies on the front lines and facing off against militarized police like those are extreme measures that have that are really traumatizing. They have lasting impacts on people. And to you know, we're asking communities that, like I said, are often, often struggling in this forced Canadian economy to use their limited resources to spend years and years and years in court, and then the project's likely already done by then. Like if, if there's no option to say no, then there's no way to get consent. And if no doesn't mean no, then you there's no consent. That's what we teach people about consent. Everyone should. Everyone knows that.

Yeah, it just, you know, Erin, if I can just highlight for our our listeners, something out of what Janelle just said, because often we all, we've all experienced how keen governments and industry is to point to these, you know, these sign ons of mutual benefit agreements. That doesn't mean consent. It just means that a particular community has determined that the problem the project's probably going to happen anyway, and they might as well secure what they can for their community. But it doesn't mean that they have approved the project.

Yeah, and Serena, I'll pass it to you.

Yeah, everything Janelle and Seth have said, and more and I, I wanted to bring in this perspective, because everything Janelle said is what I feel like I've experienced in my community over the last 10 years. And just to provide that like perspective of six nations being this, like, largest, First Nation in the country, largest clean energy portfolio. Created this portfolio when there was a decommissioning in the coal phase out in Ontario. So it's like, okay, indigenous peoples are going to get involved in energy leadership, in the energy mix of Ontario. And so 10 years ago, I was actually working in consultation, funny enough, and that led me on completely to where I am today, because there was this, like, large transmission line that was being proposed from the Ontario government. From Hydro One, it would be able to transmit 800 megawatts of clean energy across southern Ontario. And our people said no, and I was working there, and our people said no. And so from my perspective, and where I've come, no means no, but that wasn't the case. Even coming from our own community, even with renewable energy, they didn't care that the community was saying no, and instead they put an injunction on our people. And one of our chiefs just looked at me last week and he was or not, last. Week a couple months ago, and said we could have fought that and but it comes back to exactly what Janelle is saying. Is there resourcing? Is there capacity? Are we ready for a fight like this? And this is still continuing. That was 10 years ago and just last year. And many people might have heard of this project, the Oneida energy storage project. It's the largest energy storage project in the country, with six nations ownership within it. And you would think it'd be really happy. Everyone would be really happy. This is super exciting. But that is not the case. And I think taking six nations as this case study and what to not, what not to do with renewable energy, because they had what like three to six virtual engagement sessions. They put in person engagement sessions. They did them in every neighboring community except six nations, because they knew our people would say no, and instead, they moved forward with the project because they received major funding from the Ontario government. They've received national and international accolades and recognition. And that day when the project announcement came out, none of our community was invited. It wasn't open to anyone. Doug Ford was going to be in our community after just a couple of years ago, he called us terrorist for the land back movement. And former Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, was also there. This was not an open event. The only way I was able to get in was because I lied and said I was a journalist. The fact that I have to do that for Project announcements in my community, whoa. That are for our people, supposedly. And what did they do? They locked the doors. There was elders, and there was children who had to go to the bathroom, and they wouldn't even let them in to their own community building that we own. And so from this, I was working with the band, and I'm not necessarily, I don't really work for the band, but I was working alongside them because to create these community engagement standards in our community, and they did a gap analysis from with the international standards of community engagement, from inform to empower, and you have, consult, evolve, involve and collaborate in the middle, only two projects ever made it to the full empower. Those two projects were referendum and they were declined. The rest only ever made it to consult, and they were approved. So this right there just shows the level of consent within all of our projects in six nations that they're only ever there to inform and consult, and they will basically do what they need. One as a band, two, as the Ontario government. Three, as the federal government, what are the needs of them? But exactly like who gets to define, who gets to define what the solutions are, we want to see who gets to define consent, because a lot of these projects will say, Oh, we have a BCR. Band Council resolution is a BCR, our definition of consent, because we come from 1000 year old democracy known as the Haudenosaunee confederacy that is built upon our clan system that is consent in six nations. I know, for many other coastal nations too, who have the hereditary systems in place. And I'll just say like these projects are still, are still illegally operating against international law. We have Article Three of untrip that focuses on self determination. We have article four that says we have the right to self govern. We have Article Five that says we have the right to maintain and strengthen our political, legal, economic and cultural institutions. And I just to quote my one of my good friends, Courtney Skye, from protect the tract and a 1492 land back laying land offender. We have the right to our own flawed government. We aren't perfect. We are figuring things out, but we have a right to our flawed government. And I think we also have the right to define what consent looks like for all of us, and it's going to look different from Janelle's community to my community to the next, but we all have that inherent right to define what we want in our communities, and we also have the right to say no. We put a moratorium on development in six nations that basically said no development can happen without the consent of our people. And so that's what true consent looks like when you do have that right to say no, and when you also have the right to implement the solutions that you want to see, which is what the sour springs project was really demonstrating, that this is the kind of development we want to see in our community, one that benefits our people, one that is for the health and well being of our culture, our knowledge, our language. That's what a just transition looks like, and we have the right to define that.

Yeah, I love that quote that you just gave and, yeah, excuse me, it just makes me think too about, yeah, like, whose consent matters, you know, like, in, I live here on cow, it's in land. And there's a big debate going on where there's, like, a little, there's a land back initiative going on with the Cowichan estuary project. Perfect, but still, it's like the farmers consent matters more than the indigenous matters more than the cowards and peoples, apparently, and and, yeah, so we are coming to a close in our conversation today, but Seth, I wanted to turn to you, you know, as we wrap up, I did want to ask you, what have you learned from indigenous leaders and communities and stories about emergency response that you think is important for listeners to understand and leave this conversation with?

Well, first of all, you know, to bring back to my earlier point, we do need emergency but we've got to do it right, eyes wide open to all of the risks and the screw ups of the past, and with a resolve to do it better. And I think we should be taking our cues from a lot of indigenous communities. You know, I started off noting that in the war, the Haudenosaunee independently declared war. A lot of indigenous communities have also declared climate emergency. Past climate emergency motions of their own that are often very compelling. They've demonstrated that leadership through all of the examples that Serena gave of of where indigenous people are leading on particularly on renewables. About 20% of the big renewable projects in Canada are happening under indigenous leadership, far, far in excess of their share of the population. And you know to the point about all of the examples we've seen in recent years where the assertion of indigenous rights and title are buying us time. I just feel incredible gratitude for that. I feel like these, the these are struggles that are not just being waged in defense of indigenous lands. They're also saving my kids. I feel a lot of gratitude for all of the work that Janelle and Serena do. We've also, you've asked about examples we've seen, you know, in an era in which we keep having these summers with these awful wildfires, we've also seen examples of where traditional indigenous practices of wildfire management, again, are pointing to us how to go about this in a way, in a climate changing world that can, that can help protect us. And I think we've just seen lots of examples of what it means to meet our needs without overshoot and resource extractionism, extractivism. You know, maybe I'll just, I'll close. You know, I mentioned that there's many indigenous communities that have declared their own climate emergency motions. One of them is the the winter glitch in community, and old grow in Yukon and and it became a model for a lot of other communities. And it's got some very compelling language in it about climate emergency. But I, but I wanted to note the name of it. And I'm not going to try to re say the name in glitch in because I'm going to make a hash of it, but I will tell you that the name of it translates as after our time, how will the world be? I guess

I'll leave it there.

Thank you, Seth, that's actually the perfect point to end on, because I did want to pass the mic to Janelle and Serena to to ask, you know, what if indigenous leadership was centered in climate action, not just consulted, but leading, what would be different? Like, what would that world look like?

Yeah, you know, I love Seth that you brought in that, that figure that 25% of North America's greenhouse gas emissions, and maybe to pull on a thread that's been happening throughout the this conversation, you know, that wasn't what the intention of lowering GHGs like they weren't doing this resistance and the solutions building with that intention. And I think what's so beautiful about indigenous leadership is, yeah, we're looking at the needs of our communities, which there are plenty, and pairing that with with 1000s. Year old, tested and tried indigenous science with these new governance systems that have been perfected over hundreds of years, that are really all about the health of people, the health of land, and then pairing that with this new new age technology, with Western science and with this contemporary context, yeah, to create more resilient, healthy communities that have the side effect of lowering greenhouse gas emissions. And I was getting goose bumps as Serena was recounting our time in Brazil, because it was so amazing to meet people from there was people from over 70 countries, global south and indigenous communities that were living, breathing the just transition, and their whole focus was just on what does our community need? And a lot of them said like they were focused on the well being of their women and children, and through that lens, they were able to just have the most creative projects that were so inspiring. So all that to say is, I think what would be different is that this work would be a lot more fun. It would be a lot more hopeful. We'd be able to live in that creative space. We would be able to rest easy at the end of the day or the end of our lives, knowing that we're like leaving behind more resilient communities that have the well being of land and women and children at the center, and we won't, wouldn't be stuck in policy wonk conversations or finger pointing at other global North nations about greenhouse gas emissions or futuristic carbon capture technology that's ineffective and doesn't is a waste of money, like I just I, for me, it's like it would be more hopeful, more fun, and really allow us to be in that creative space, which is, I think, would be transforming, transformative to so many aspects of our society.

Yeah, Janelle, I everything you say. It's like, what I hope, I honestly, I hope to work myself out of a job. I hope I don't have to to be doing this for the rest of my life. We were in the car, in little Buffalo, and there was, they were like, what would you do if you didn't have to work and climb if we weren't working within this impending emergency in Doom? And it's funny, Molina was like, language. And I was like, Oh, I'd be an actress. And just like thinking of like, whoa, the possibilities that we could have within our world if we were safe, if we were healthy if we were comfortable. And I think for me, I it does come back to that well being, and that's how I came into this work all together, was, is economic development supporting our health? Is renewable energy supporting our health? How is industrial impacts and impacting our health? And so it does come back to that well being, and it does come back to the health of our nations, because I think for a lot of us who are in community, we see that we are under resourced. We see we have lower capacity. We see we don't have access to basic necessities such as social services, access to traditional foods, access to transportation, with if we were to be in a world that centered climate action, we'd also be in a world that centered well being and centered people. And I think that's what we really need to have, that narrative shift within the conversation that it isn't just around this like quantifying and commodification and capitalism. It's about heart and love and care, care for ourselves, care for one another, love for the land and the waters. Before I even hopped on this podcast, it's harvest season back home, and I was harvesting our beans, so I'm starting to store our beans, uh, their straw, ganawaga, strawberry pole beans, like our heritage, Haudenosaunee seed. And I was sitting there, and I was like, imagine this is what I got to do all day. And I think in a world where indigenous leadership is at the forefront, I would be able to do that all day. I would be able to be with our seeds all day. And I think Carol said this perfectly. Carol Montour from indigenous climate action in the Youth Climate corpse, that a climate emergency unit hosted a webinar on the indigenous perspectives on YCC. She said, a YCC, I would just get to be Haudenosaunee. And it's as simple as that, that we would just if really we centered climate action, we would just get to be who we are, as unwei Hui, as Haudenosaunee peoples. And I think that's what we all want. I commend Janelle, who is learning her language, because I see the impact that's had on my own family and my brother, who has is currently in full Mohawk immersion, those pesky Mohawks, and I see how the language creates a deeper relationship to the land and how he. Wants to come. He's at protests now. He's on the land he wants. He's interested in our seeds because of that language. And so when I see of like, what it would look like if we actually if our clan system could be this overarching governance, I see language. I see love. I see ceremony. I see seeds. And I also like open that up to the rest of my community and to the rest of our other nations, of how are they imagining this world, and how can we create that together as a collective and and I see this as a collective approach. And so that's what's really powerful, is it's it's not just all on one of one of our shoulders. It's on all of us to clearly create the world that we want to leave for the coming faces.

Yeah, yeah. That is such a good point to end on. And I love that we just came back, you know, you brought it back to the topic of language, which I think really is just such a huge underlying factor in all of this. It really does determine how we think about these things. So thank you so much. I have so much gratitude for you, Janelle and Serena, and for Seth for joining us in this essential conversation as we explored marker number six, which is indigenous rights and leadership are essential. The Climate emergency cannot be solved without indigenous sovereignty, leadership and knowledge for far too long, environmental movements have reproduced colonial patterns, extracting indigenous knowledge while excluding indigenous peoples from power and decision making. True emergency response means upholding land rights, honoring UNDRIP, supporting energy and food sovereignty and ensuring that indigenous communities lead the solutions and supporting what indigenous communities are already doing, like we talked about today. I'm your host, Erin Blondeau, and this concludes our six markers of climate emergency series. Be sure to check out the other episodes in the series to learn more about how we can meet this civilizational challenge in a way that upholds justice and indigenous rights. If you liked what you heard today, please like, subscribe and share with a friend. Thank you so much for listening. Everyone. Bye. Well, this is it. This is the end of this special series with the break in case of emergency podcast, and it's also the end of the climate emergency unit. When Seth Klein started this project in 2020 and brought together a team of dedicated people from across the country, we wanted to create something that would help people see the climate emergency clearly, to cut through the noise in the climate denial and the false solutions. The six markers framework is what came out of that work, six clear indicators that tell us where we are, how bad things have gotten, and where we need to be to fix it. And now, as we close down this five year project, we want to leave you with this message, this framework doesn't belong to us anymore. It belongs to you, to the movements, to anyone who needs the language to make sense of the civilizational threat that we're facing. So use it, adapt it, make it better. We encourage you to share it with your organizations, your study groups, your classes and your community you can cite it in your research or teach it to your students. You can also critique it and argue with it if you need to. That's how frameworks become useful, and that is our ultimate goal. To everyone who has listened and engaged and pushed back and to everyone who has shared this podcast, thank you to the guests who gave their time and their expertise to the series. Thank you. You made this work possible. And to those of you who are still in this fight, please keep going. The work doesn't end because an organization or a nonprofit closes its doors. The work is what happens on the streets and around kitchen tables. This climate emergency, this climate emergency framework, is yours now, use it well. This is Erin Blondeau signing off from breaking Case of Emergency one last time. Thank you so much for listening. Everyone. Bye. You.