APTN National News
OTTAWA–Greenpeace is using Aboriginal people for the organization’s own aims in its fight against the tar sands, according to Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau.
Brazeau, an Aboriginal Senator, said that he found Greenpeace’s use of Aboriginal people in its campaigns “problematic.”
Several prominent Aboriginal leaders participated in a protest this week in Ottawa against the tar sands. Greenpeace was one of the organizers of the event, along with the Indigenous Environmental Network and the Council of Canadians.
About 117 people were arrested Monday during the protest which saw at least 400 people turn out to chant and wave signs condemning the expansion of the tar sands.
“What is really problematic is when you have organizations like Greenpeace…who use Aboriginal leaders and communities to basically ask them to support their message,” said Brazeau, during APTN National News’ weekly political panel. “For organizations like that to use Aboriginal people when it is creating jobs and when it’s good for the economy and good for the country, I find it very hypocritical.”
Brazeau said the tar sands employed about 1,600 Aboriginal people, making it the largest employer of Aboriginal people in the country.
Brazeau also said some of the companies working in the tar sands were Aboriginal owned and managed.
“Those are the hard, cold facts,” said Brazeau.
NDP Aboriginal affairs critic Linda Duncan said Brazeau was forgetting that the Dene, Mikisew Cree, Fort McKay First Nation and the Athabasca Chipewyan were at the front and centre of opposition to the tar sand’s expansion.
“They are the very people who have been intervening in hearing after hearing on the expansion or further development of the oil sands,” said Duncan. “They are the ones front and centre who are calling for a slow-down of this industry because the only source of income they are being given…is to work in the very industry that is destroying their health and their environment.”
