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Indigenous rights advocate and Academy Award winning actor Jane Fonda will join Indigenous leaders on Jan. 11 in Edmonton to discuss how recently approved pipelines and tar sands expansion projects conflict with commitments to Indigenous rights and reconciliation. Fonda was vocal in the fight against the Dakota access pipeline at Standing Rock
Other participants on the panel, entitled From Standing Rock To the Salish Seas To the Alberta Tar Sands: We Stand United, include Union of BC Indian Chiefs President Grand Chief Stewart Phillip; Chas Jewett, Women's Leadership Council in the #NoDAPL Oceti Sakowin Camp and member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe; Eriel Deranger, of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation; and Melina Laboucan Massimo, Greenpeace Canada campaigner and member of the Lubicon Cree First Nation. Invited, but as of yet unconfirmed, is Grand Chief Derek Nepinak of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.
More than 120 First Nations and Tribes have signed the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion. The treaty officially states their opposition to the expansion of the tar sands and against new tar sands pipelines or rail traffic through their traditional territory.
A prime tenet of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, endorsed by both the Canadian and Albertan governments, is the right for free, prior and informed consent to proposed projects that may affect the lands Indigenous peoples customarily own, occupy or otherwise use.
The panel discussion will take place at the University of Alberta main campus in Edmonton on Wednesday afternoon.