The New Brunswick Tribune reported that a peaceful protest started last Wednesday night at the welcome sign on the Quebec side of the J. C. Van Horne Bridge. The bridge is the border crossing between Campbellton, N.B., and Pointe-aux-Croix, Quebec. The land belongs to the Listuguj First Nation, and protest spokesman Alex Morrison said they are reclaiming Mi'kmaq land. Morrison alleged that the lease with the province was not properly signed because there wasn't quorum at the band council meeting which approved it, and a relation of a band councillor got compensation for a land deal which put the councillor in a conflict of interest. Protesters want a teepee erected on the land, as there once was, to welcome people to Listuguj.

For artists, songwriters, storytellers, and dreamers that are reading this, you are in luck. Creativity has won out against the darkness and monotony of neoliberalism. Imagination is revolutionary. The world has good reason to hope. The affirmative and liberatory project of the Zapatistas has spread its message around the globe: un otro mundo es posible. This credo can guide our imaginations onto new terrains, but the work of building and constructing worlds remains in front of us, daunting and formidable. How do we move forward, and what weapons will our creativity arm us with? Alex Khasnabish gives us some guidance in his book, but choices remain to be taken, and we will measure our success only from the viewpoint of the end of a lifetime of imaginative struggle.

Zapatismo Beyond Borders: New Imaginations of Political Possibility (Alex Khasnabish, University of Toronto Press, 2008) explores the transnational resonance of Zapatismo - the guiding principles, tactics and beliefs of the Zapatistas - that has invigorated and inspired social activism and anti-capitalist struggles in North America. Khasnabish is a professor of sociology and anthropology at Mount St. Vincent University and Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The book comes on the heels of his recent papers “A Tear in the Fabric of the Present” in the Journal for the Study of Radicalism (2009) and “Insurgent Imaginations” in Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization (2007), among other essays. Khasnabish's style reads like an academic thesis: rigorously documented, lengthy citations, and careful argumentation. Most accessible to academics, readers may find themselves wishing for a more palatable and digestible read.

Zapatismo takes the reader back to the Zapatista rebellion of January 1, 1994, in the jungles of Chiapas, Mexico, the same date that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) became official policy in Mexico, Canada and the United States. Across the world, diverse socio-political realities responded to the Zapatista’s call for a global struggle against neoliberalism and for humanity. The theory that drives Zapatismo will not be lost on readers of Richard Day (Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements, 2005), Guy Debord (Society of the Spectacle, 1994) or Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1987). What Khasnabish asserts is the ‘rhizomatic’ quality of the resonance of...

Criminalizing Indigenous Rights in Canada
David Parker
September 8th, 2008.

HALIFAX - In September of 2007, the United Nations adopted the non-binding Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Four high profile countries notably voted against the declaration - namely Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.[1] All four countries are states that were established by white settlers on indigenous lands, and all four are currently in disputes with indigenous peoples over land and sovereignty.

The Canadian state, built on the theft and occupation of indigenous lands, continues to benefit from its unjustly acquired assets. Equipped with an ultra-security state apparatus, Canada's repressive and suppressive anti-terrorist and security measures have historically struck hardest against those that have the most to gain, namely aboriginal nations and their legitimate claims for their rights to land and dignity.

Recent cases of indigenous protest in Ontario have been in opposition to government authorized resource extraction on native lands. Despite legitimate demands for sovereignty and decision-making power over their traditional lands, native protesters have been incarcerated: Robert Lovelace and the KI-6 (6 council members of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation) have received harsh fines and 6 months in jail for peacefully protesting against mineral exploration on the lands of KI and Ardoch Algonquin First Nation (AAFN).

The province of British Columbia was settled and colonized without treaties between the indigenous inhabitants and settlers. Large areas of BC still remain unceded, and the indigenous populations claim sovereignty over these lands.[2] In the BC southern interior, the Secwepemc people have been in a long standing dispute with Sun Peaks mega ski resort Northeast of Kamloops. In August and September of 2004, 200 aboriginals and supporters rallied against the expansion of Sun Peaks. The BC Supreme Court granted Sun Peaks an injunction excluding Aboriginal people from using 846 hectares of their traditional territory, and on September 21st, the RCMP dismantled the camp, arresting three indigenous protesters.[3]

The continued denial of sovereignty for First Nations by the settler state is an injustice and a violation of the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, attempts by First Nations to redress this injustice is met with state, police, and at...