Amnesty Internationals Submits Brief on Grassy Narrows to the United Nations

In a March 27, 2006 briefing to UNESCO, Amnesty International purports that the current resource extraction in Grassy Narrows is a violation of Treaty Rights and International laws that provide for the protection of indigenous peoples' right to self-determination.

The briefing explains that Grassy Narrows falls within the territory covered by the 1873 treaty between the Canadian state and the Chiefs of the Salteaux Tribe of the Ojibway Indians. This treaty, known as Treaty 3, establishes that indigenous peoples have the "right to pursue their avocations of hunting and fishing throughout the tract."

Despite this treaty right, the people of Grassy Narrows have lost access to an increasing part of their traditional resources as a consequence of developments permitted by the provincial government without the consent of the community.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination in its General Recommendation 23 recognizes that the human rights of indigenous peoples require "that no decisions directly relating to their rights and interests are taken without their informed consent."

Amnesty reports that the Grassy Narrows "community has clearly withheld its consent" for current logging operations on their traditional lands. They argue that this logging demonstrates that "substantive elements of the right to self-determination, the right of a people to control its own life and future, and the right of a people to freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources, are not being upheld."

The briefing calls on the Canadian Government to ensure that no resource extraction activities that could impact on the rights of indigenous peoples will be licensed on land to which indigenous peoples have title or use rights, or where title and use rights have not been legally resolved, unless the indigenous peoples concerned give their free, prior informed consent.