Founders of Idle No More, from left, Sheelah McLean, Nina Wilson, Sylvia McAdam, Jessica Gordon. Photo by Marcel Petit.

The four founders of Idle No More didn’t start out famous. Until flash-mob round dances, prayer circles, and blockades spread across Canada, few people knew Jessica Gordon, Sylvia McAdam, Sheelah McLean, and Nina Wilson.

But today, Idle No More is emerging as a powerful movement for the rights of native peoples to protect the lands and waters.

The stakes extend far beyond First Nations’ land. Bill C-45, which sparked the movement, paves the way for expansion of tar sands mining and for building a pipeline to carry some of the Earth’s most polluting, carbon-intensive oil from Alberta to the Pacific coast for shipment to overseas markets. NASA climate scientist James Hansen says burning large quantities of tar sands oil would mean “game over for the planet.”

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Bill C-45 outraged First Nations people across Canada; after the bill was signed into law, many joined the four founders in declaring that they, too, would be idle no more. Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence began a hunger strike on December 11 to press for a meeting with the prime minister and the representative of the Queen. Round dances, and other demonstrations continue, along with solidarity actions in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere—coverage can be found at www.yesmagazine.org.

YES! Magazine Executive Editor Sarah van Gelder spoke with two of the founders on January 13: Sylvia McAdam, an author and educator from the Nehiyaw (Cree) Nation, and Sheelah McLean, an instructor at the University of Saskatchewan whose ancestors were European settlers.

Sarah van Gelder: Sylvia and Sheelah, how did you each come to be involved in the founding of Idle No More?

Sylvia McAdam: After I graduated from law school, I returned to my father’s traditional land near the Whitefish reserve and to the waters that I had been to when I was a child, and they were gone. The waters had dried up! It was a terrible thing to witness.

When my father and I went back to his traditional hunting lands, his cabin was gone. There was just a huge burn mark on the ground. When my father saw it, he just stood there, so quiet, so upset. It was terrible to watch.

"It's so clear what the government is doing: the bill opens up the land for resource development, for oil pipelines."

I started investigating, and I learned that the conservation officers had blocked hunting roads to keep the traditional indigenous hunters away, and the lands were being logged. I felt intensely protective of the land and the water, so I went around nailing boards on trees, saying, “No Trespassing. Treaty 6 Territory!”

When I read Bill C-45, I was horrified. I got into a chat on Facebook with Jessica and Nina, and I started explaining to them the implications of C-45 for the environment, for the waters. I told them there’s something in law called acquiescence. That means that if you’re silent, then your silence is taken as consent. All of us agreed that we couldn’t be silent, that grassroots people have a right to know.

And then I told them, “I know this phenomenal white woman,” and I pulled Sheelah in.
When we first did our teach-in, we were literally laughed at. People did not take it seriously, and we were so poor—we had nothing.

Sheelah McLean: I’m a third generation white settler. I taught native studies in high school, and my aboriginal students kept talking about the racism they experienced in school and in the community.

I wanted to understand more, so I did a Master’s degree in what’s called anti-racist, anti-oppressive education. I had amazing mentors­—all indigenous women—who taught me about the impact of colonialism on indigenous people worldwide. I did a lot of research on capitalism, globalization, and how racism is used to justify unequal relationships between settler societies and indigenous peoples.

van Gelder: Where did the name Idle No More come from?

McAdam: Jessica said, “We’re all being far too idle. We’re going to be idle no more!” And that became the name of our Facebook chat. It was not intended to dishonor the hard work of phenomenal, passionate, determined activists and lovers of the land. When we said “Idle No More,” we meant we had been idle, and we didn’t want to be anymore.

Photo by Sarah van Gelder.

McAdam: Bill C-45 is an omnibus budget bill. It lumps a slew of bills under one name. There are two that are especially detrimental. One removes much of the protection under the Navigable Waters Protection Act and, in some cases, totally removes that protection. It gives major corporations direct and easy access to our waters and to our land.

McLean: It’s so clear what the government is doing: The bill opens the land for resource development, for oil pipelines.

People have been socialized to believe that an economy that relies on nonrenewable resource extraction creates jobs and brings money to our communities. But look at what’s happening to communities in Alberta’s tar sands region, which has one of the highest debts of any province in Canada. What about the poisoned land and water, and the fact that there are many aboriginal communities around the tar sands with very high rates of cancer, and types of cancer that have never been seen before? This is the time to say, “Enough is enough.”

McAdam: There’s also an amendment to the Indian Act in the bill that allows for surrender of reserve land without proper consent of all Indian people affected and makes it easier for land to be redesignated to allow, for example, nuclear waste to be stored.

McLean: These attacks are directed at indigenous peoples because the government is very aware that First Nations people can stop development on their land. These attacks are coming because multinational corporations want nonrenewable resource extraction.

So everything is at stake. We know about climate change and that it’s already affecting many species and also our communities. We can’t live in a world that doesn’t have clean air and land and water.

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van Gelder: Watching from a distance, it’s extraordinary to see how quickly Idle No More took hold.

McLean: A key element is that it speaks the truth. The truth is that this continent, Turtle Island, was supposed to be built on nation-to-nation relationships with indigenous people. We’re just trying to rebuild that. The second truth is that we all need healthy air, water, and land. alThe other thing is that there’s a spirit and a heart to this movement. It’s about love, about honoring human dignity, and about honoring our relationship with the land.

McAdam: I believe it was that spirituality—the combination of many prayers—that has been the biggest support to this movement. As we moved out into the communities with our teachings, I would approach elders and give them tobacco and a gift as a way of asking for their support in a sacred way. It was so beautiful to hear them speak about how this movement has a sense of liberation, a sense of freedom, a sense of empowerment for all people.

van Gelder: Do you have children?

McLean: We’re all moms, all four of us.

McAdam: I think one of our strongest motivations is our children. We want them to witness that we weren’t silent about Bill C-45, and we want them to be able to be a part of our resistance.

van Gelder: How does it feel to see people across Canada, the United States, and all over supporting you?

McAdam: I can’t tell you how many times we’ve wept.

van Gelder: How do you see the role of non-natives in this movement?

"The government is not acting in the best interests of Canadian citizens, so we have to defend them as well. This is what the elders have directed."

McAdam: When Nina, Jessica, and I began to realize that we had a real chance of becoming self-determining because of this movement, we were high-fiving each other—we were so happy, so full of joy. Then we saw Sheela, and she was quietly looking at us, and we realized that we could not leave her behind.

The Canadian government is not acting in the best interests of Canadian citizens, so we have to defend them as well. This is what the elders have directed us. The treaty informs us that we adopted the Europeans and the subsequent descendents; they’ve become a part of our family, so they must be protected.

McLean: For settlers, I think it’s important to support indigenous sovereignty because our humanity is tied up together. Attacks on one group hurt us all. Allies play an important role in this movement; there are lots of us at those rallies and round dances. I think people should just join in.

McAdam: Yeah, Sheelah, remember the Raging Grannies?

There’s something happening in Calgary, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the flash mobs. Some grassroots allies built a symbolic little coffin, and they put “Racism” on the side of it, and they’re going to have people send letters, and poems, and songs, or whatever, saying goodbye to racism. I thought that was so cool!

van Gelder: Let me ask you about Chief Spence, who is on a hunger strike as we speak, and the other chiefs. Are they part of your movement?

McAdam: The face of Idle No More is the face of all grassroots people, not specifically one person. It’s the face of the many who have fasted, and walked, and been part of rallies, who have been organizing from the very beginning.

van Gelder: What’s your view about the blockade of railroads, highways, and border crossings?

McAdam: We don’t support really dramatic actions because our children and our elders are there, and their safety is a priority. As this movement goes global, we’re concerned that those types of actions will give people reason to use further violence against indigenous people. And I think a lot of people would agree that our peaceful actions have worked.

van Gelder: When you think of people sitting on train tracks, for example, do you consider that a violent act?

McAdam: Suppose a community were to come to us as Idle No More asking if they could blockade a road leading to where there’s going to be devastation to land—say, fracking. We would ask that they do ceremony and prayers, and that grassroots people—like the elders—be spoken to and their direction be asked. I think then Idle No More would support those types of blockades.

van Gelder: When you imagine the sort of world you’re hoping your children will grow up into, what are some of the features of that world?

Indigenous Women Take the Lead in Idle No More
Motivated by ancient traditions of female leadership as well as their need for improved legal rights, First Nations women are stepping to the forefront of the Idle No More movement.

McLean: I have visions of tackling inequality; we’re one of the richest countries in the world off indigenous lands and resources, and yet they are some of the poorest communities. And I’d like to see sustainable communities. What’s beautiful is that sustainable energy and technologies are absolutely in line with everything that Sylvia talks about in terms of indigenous laws on how to live with the land.

McAdam: It’s absolutely that, yeah. For me it’s also self-determination for my people. And I would like that young people no longer utilize suicide as an option.

van Gelder: How do you see things going from here?

McLean: We’re starting to connect to the global community, to the United Nations, to solidarity groups around the world. Indigenous peoples worldwide are facing these same issues of having their land taken away, their resources extracted, and their land and water poisoned.

As more and more people come on board, it will take the shape that it needs to take. Each community has to decide how they’re going to tackle the issues of sovereignty and rethinking what it means to live with the land and water. It is going to continue to grow, there’s no doubt about that. And it will take various forms of resistance and building.

McAdam: Indigenous self-determination, sovereignty, protection of land and water, and however that looks, I think those are critical at this point, and we’ll keep working toward that, until those things are in place.

Sarah van Gelder interviewed Sylvia McAdam and Sheelah McLean for How Cooperatives Are Driving the New Economy, the Spring 2013 issue of YES! Magazine. Sarah is executive editor of YES!

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Participants in the Idle No More movement play drums and sing on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Photo by Matthew Black.

Flash mobs are commonly associated with marketing stunts and pillow fights, not with Native American treaty rights and solemn prayers. But that was all turned upside down at a "flash mob prayer circle" in Seattle on Saturday, January 11.

“You’re carrying your weapons but you’re not carrying your pipes,” Old Coyote recalled the Chief saying. “You’re not carrying your whistles. You’re not carrying your drums.”

The gathering was organized in support of the First-Nations-led Idle No More movement, which began as a protest against Bill C-45 in Canada in late 2012 and has since spread around the world. Somewhere between two and three hundred people gathered in grassy Victor Steinbrueck Park, which overlooks Puget Sound, many of them holding round drums that they played during the day’s many songs and chants.

The event made clear the key role that spirituality is playing in Idle No More events, especially when compared to relatively secular movements such as Occupy Wall Street. The prayer circle began with an invocation by Marilyn Wandrey, an elder of the Suquamish tribe, who drew connections between spiritual and political issues.

Members of the Tlingit tribe dance in Seattle at the “Flash Mob Prayer Circle.” Photo by Alex Garland.

"I know that our creator is looking down on us," Ms. Wandry said. "He knows what we have gone through, through all these years of having to fight for our rights, having to fight for our treaties, that they be honored, that we as a people be honored. So my prayer today will be for all of us. Each and every one of us who has come here today are warriors."

Those assembled stood silently, many with heads bowed. Other speakers encouraged a more relaxed atmosphere but made the same connection between spiritual roots and political liberation.

"We will survive," said Steve Old Coyote, who put things into perspective with stories of native rights organizing that happened decades ago. "I started fighting for this very cause that we're fighting for today back in 1964 and I think it's a damn shame that we still got those things to face,” he said. :But we do, and we'll keep fighting as long as we have to."

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Old Coyote discussed a meeting with Chief Phil Lane Jr. in which Lane had criticized the younger organizers for leaving spirituality out of their movement. "You guys got into this battle and all of this fight but you forgot something," Old Coyote recalled Lane saying. "You're carrying your weapons and all of this but you're not carrying your pipes. You're not carrying your whistles. You're not carrying your drums."

The same thing certainly can't be said of the organizers of Idle No More, who've made native drumming into the "people's mic" of their movement. As speaker after speaker took the floor on Saturday and spoke about the connection between spiritual practice and political unity, it grew increasingly clear that Idle No More will be a different kind of movement, perhaps more similar to the Civil Rights movement than to Occupy Wall Street, with which it is so often compared.

James Trimarco wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. James is the web editor at YES!

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Idle No More Pow-Wow outside the Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on January 7. Photo by Steve McCullough.

I don't claim to know exactly what's going on with #IdleNoMore, the surging movement of indigenous activists that started late last year in Canada and is now spreading across the continent—much of the action, from hunger strikes to road and rail blockades, is in scattered and remote places, and even as people around the world plan for solidarity actions on Friday, the press has done a poor job of bringing it into focus.

But I sense that it's every bit as important as the Occupy movement that transfixed the world a year ago; it feels like it wells up from the same kind of long-postponed and deeply felt passion that powered the Arab Spring. And I know firsthand that many of its organizers are among the most committed and skilled activists I've ever come across.

In fact, if Occupy's weakness was that it lacked roots (it had to take over public places, after all, which proved hard to hold on to), this new movement's great strength is that its roots go back farther than history. More than any other people on this continent, Native Americans know what exploitation and colonization are all about, and so it's natural that at a moment of great need they're leading the resistance to the most profound corporatization we've ever seen. I mean, we've just come off the hottest year ever in America, the year when we broke the Arctic ice cap; the ocean is 30 percent more acidic than it was when I was born.

Thanks to the same fossil fuel industry that's ripping apart aboriginal lands, we're at the very end of our rope as a species; it's time, finally, to listen to the people we've spent the last five centuries shunting to one side.

A tradition of defending the land

Eighteen months ago, when we at the climate campaign 350.org started organizing against the Keystone XL Pipeline, the very first allies we came across were from the Indigenous Environmental Network—people like Tom Goldtooth and Clayton Thomas-Muller. They'd been working for years to alert people to the scale of the devastation in Alberta's tar sands belt, where native lands had been wrecked and poisoned by the immense scale of the push to mine "the dirtiest energy on earth." And they quickly introduced me to many more—heroes like Melina Laboucan-Massimo, a member of the Cree Nation who was traveling the world explaining exactly what was going on.

First Nations are all that stand in the way of Canada’s total exploitation of its vast energy and mineral resources.

When, in late summer 2011, we held what turned into the biggest civil disobedience action in 30 years in the United States, the most overrepresented group were indigenous North Americans—in percentage terms they outnumbered even the hardy band of Guilty Liberals like me. And what organizers! Heather Milton-Lightning, night after night training new waves of arrestees; Gitz Crazyboy of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, absolutely on fire as he described the land he could no longer hunt and fish.

In the year since, the highlights of incessant campaigning have been visits to Canada, always to see native leaders in firm command of the fight—Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus in Yellowknife, or Chief Reuben George along the coast of British Columbia. Young and powerful voices like Caleb Behn, from the province's interior; old and steady leaders in one nation after another. I've never met Chief Theresa Spence, the Attawapiskat leader whose hunger strike has been the galvanizing center of #IdleNoMore, but I have no doubt she's cut of the same cloth.

The stakes couldn't be higher, for Canada and for the world. Much of this uprising began when Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper rammed through Parliament Bill C-45, an omnibus bill gutting environmental reviews and protections. He had no choice but to do so if he wanted to keep developing Canada's tar sands, because there's no way to mine and pipe that sludgy crude without fouling lakes and rivers. (Indeed, a study released a few days ago made clear that carcinogens had now found their way into myriad surrounding lakes). And so, among other things, the omnibus bill simply declared that almost every river, stream and lake in the country was now exempt from federal environmental oversight.

Canada's environmental community protested in all the normal ways—but they had no more luck than, say, America's anti-war community in the run up to Iraq. There's trillions of dollars of oil locked up in Alberta's tarsands, and Harper's fossil-fuel backers won't be denied.

First Nations rush to stop climate change

But there's a stumbling block they hadn't counted on, and that was the resurgent power of the aboriginal nations. Some Canadian tribes have signed treaties with the British Crown, and others haven't, but none have ceded their lands and all  feel their inherent rights are endangered by Harper's power grab. They are, legally and morally, all that stand in the way of Canada's total exploitation of its vast energy and mineral resources, including the tar sands, the world's second largest pool of carbon. NASA's James Hansen has explained that burning that bitumen on top of everything else we're combusting will mean it's "game over for the climate." Which means, in turn, that Canada's First Nations are in some sense standing guard over the planet.

Idle No More Declares January 11 a Global Day of Action
How To learn how you can get involved, please visit www.j11action.com

And, luckily, the sentiment is spreading south. Tribal nations in the U.S., though sometimes with less legal power than their Canadian brethren, are equally effective organizers—later this month, for instance, an international gathering of indigenous peoples and a wide-ranging list of allies on the Yankton Sioux territory in South Dakota may help galvanize continued opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, which would help wreck those tar sands by carrying the oil south (often across reservations) to the Gulf of Mexico. American leaders like Winona LaDuke of the White Earth Indian Reservation have joined in the fight with a vengeance, drawing the connections between local exploitation and global climate change.

Corporations and governments have often discounted the power of native communities—because they were poor and scattered in distant places, they could be ignored or bought off. But in fact their lands contain much of the continent's hydrocarbon wealth—and, happily, much of its wind, solar and geo-thermal resources, as well. The choices that Native people make over the next few years will be crucial to the planet's future—and #IdleNoMore is an awfully good sign that the people who have spent the longest in this place are now rising artfully and forcefully to its defense.

This piece was originally published in the Huffington Post. Bill McKibben is a YES! Magazine contributing editor, founder of 350.org, and Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College. His most recent book is Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

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Idle No More Flash Mob outside of the Vancouver Convention Centre on December 27. Photo by Caelie Frampton.

It took weeks of protests, flash mobs, letters, rallies, and thousands of righteous tweets, but Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper finally caved. He agreed to a meeting with the woman who had been petitioning him for twenty-four days, subsisting on fish broth, camped in a tepee in the frozen midwinter, the hunger striker and Chief of the Attawapiskat Theresa Spence.

The mobilization around Chief Spence’s hunger strike has already grown to encompass broader ideas of colonialism and our relationship to the land.

No, this is not normal parliamentary process. The hunger strike was a final, desperate attempt to get the attention of a government whose relationship with indigenous people has been ambivalent at best and genocidal at worst, and force it to address their rising concerns. The meeting, set for this Friday, January 11, is unlikely to result in any major changes to Canada’s aboriginal policy. Yet the mobilization around Chief Spence’s hunger strike has already grown to encompass broader ideas of colonialism and our collective relationship to the land. The movement has coalesced under one name, one resolution: Idle No More.

Closed-door negotiations spark a movement

The Idle No More movement arose as a response to what organizers call the most recent assault on indigenous rights in Canada: Bill C-45, which passed on December 14. Bill C-45 makes changes to the Indian Act, removes environmental protections, and further erodes the treaties with native peoples through which Canada was created.

Indigenous leaders accuse the Harper administration of “ramming through” legislation without debate or consultation.

On December 4, when representatives of First Nations came to the House of Commons to share their concerns about the proposed bill, they were blocked from entering . A week later, after being repeatedly denied a meeting with Harper, Chief Spence began her hunger strike. Since then, the movement has grown to encompass a hundred years’ worth of grievances against the Canadian government, which is required by Section 35 of the Constitution Act to consult with native people before enacting laws that affect them. Indigenous leaders accuse the Harper administration of “ramming through” legislation without debate or consultation.

Even worse is the bill’s “weakening of environmental assessment and the removal of lakes and rivers from protection,” says Eriel Deranger, Communication Coordinator of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, which is directly downstream from toxic tar sands mining. She knows firsthand the importance of protecting waterways from industrial pollutants. “Indigenous people’s rights,” she says, “are intrinsically linked to the environment.” She adds that the removal of such protections paves the way for resource extraction, bringing Canada closer to its self-stated goal of becoming a global energy superpower. This isn’t just a native thing, Deranger says; this is something that affects everyone.

And so begins the largest indigenous mass mobilization in recent history. Native people and their allies from all over North America have gathered to peacefully voice their support for indigenous rights: they’ve organized rallies, teach-ins, and highway and train blockades, as well as “flash mob” round dances at shopping malls.

With Twitter and Facebook as the major organizing tools, #idlenomore has emerged as the dominant meme in the indigenous rights movement. In addition to events across Canada, a U.S. media blitz tour has inspired solidarity actions all over North America, as well as in Europe, New Zealand, and the Middle East. Mainstream media and the Harper government are taking notice.

Anger at environmental destruction in Canada boils over

But why now? The answer, says Deranger, is that people are ready. Idle No More arose at a moment of growing awareness of environmental justice issues, frustration with lack of governmental consultation, and widespread opposition to resource extraction on indigenous land—like the tar sands in Deranger’s home province of Alberta and the diamond mines in Chief Spence’s Ontario. It comes after years of grassroots organizing around indigenous rights—which are, in the end, basic human rights.

Visit almost any reserve in Canada, and you’re likely to see third world social indicators in a first world country: high incarceration rates, inadequate housing and sanitation, reduced life expectancy—due in part to abnormally frequent suicides—lack of employment and education opportunities, and substance abuse. This, after more than a century of colonization by a government that refuses to acknowledge its identity as a colonial power. Meanwhile, native youth are the fastest-growing segment of Canada’s population, according to Aboriginal Affairs. Is it any surprise that they’re taking on repressive legislation and using social media to organize?

For Canadians—and potentially all North Americans—this is a moment of reckoning. Just as Chief Spence’s hunger strike forced the issue with Harper, Idle No More forces us all to confront the ugliness of our collective colonial history, and to recognize that colonization continues today.

It holds up a mirror to our society, questioning the historical narrative we’re all taught to believe. It asks: On what values was our country founded? And, because identity is created out of that narrative: Who are we, really? And who do we want to be?

Kristin Moe wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. Kristin writes about climate, grassroots movements and social change.

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Organizers with the group Idle No More held a flash mob attended by hundreds of supporters on Dec. 29 at the Mall of America in Minneapolis. The group formed in November 2012 in response to Canada's Bill C45, a budget bill that will amend the country's Indian Act and other laws, allowing the government to modify the voting and approval procedures for proposed land designations. Many members of Canadian First Nations fear that the law will strip them of their existing land rights.

The flash mob at the Mall of America is just one of many actions the group has held while the Canadian Parliament debated and eventually passed the bill.

According to the Idle No More's website, marches, blockades, and other actions will continue until two goals are met: indigenous sovereignty and land and water security. "Once we reach these goals, we will continue to work to protect them," the site explains. "In essence, Idle No More is here to stay."

Opponents of C45 say that the bill will bring changes to land management that will make it easier for government to control reservation land and reduce protection of the country's abundant lakes and rivers.

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