CRIAW Statement of Solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux

The Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW-ICREF) supports the Standing Rock Sioux and the many water protectors from across Turtle Island who have gathered at Standing Rock to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. The construction of this pipeline violates the 1851, 1859, and 1868 Treaties of Fort Laramie and is a direct threat to the water and thus to life all along the Missouri River.

CRIAW-ICREF sees this historic struggle as part of larger Indigenous sovereignty movements across Turtle Island to protect their rights as well as water, air, land, and our non-human relations. CRIAW-ICREF also recognizes that the negative effects of government-supported corporate resource extraction disproportionately affect members of historically marginalized groups – specifically, Indigenous women and peoples, people living with disabilities, racialized people, and people living in poverty. Our struggles for environmental and political justice are interconnected. Thus, CRIAW-ICREF also voices its solidarity with Indigenous Peoples protecting their rights and the environment on this side of the colonial border: the Inuit and Innu in their opposition to the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric dam in Labrador, the Algonquin of Barriere Lake in their ongoing stand against illegal and dangerous mining in their territory in northern Québec, the Chippewa of the Thames First Nation in their challenge to Enbridge’s Line 9, the Prophet River and West Moberly First Nations in their stand against the Site C dam in Northern British Columbia, and many more.

CRIAW-ICREF recognizes the central role of Indigenous women in all of these struggles as well as at Standing Rock. CRIAW-ICREF calls on all peoples to support the water protectors at Standing Rock, as well as Indigenous sovereignty movements across Turtle Island, and to take collective responsibility to defend the water, land, air, and our non-human relations.

For more information contact:

Cherry Smiley, CRIAW-ICREF Board Member (778) 886-8839
Cindy Hanson, CRIAW-ICREF President (306) 381-8631