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Thanks!
Happy New Year... and thank you!
We are rocketing into 2012 - with court dates almost upon already, and things to plan for in the coming months. Before things get too hectic, RAVEN would like to thank all its donors, supporters, friends, activists, and colleagues. All our successes are because of you. And we keep building our program support and our reach, because of you. So, thanks. This promises to be an exciting year, and we hope you will stay with us for the ride!
It starts Monday, January 9th, when the Beaver Lake Cree chief and members of the band are in court with their legal team to appeal the decision that refused them the ability to have free legal representation by UK barrister Michael Mansfield. This is a one-day hearing and it is hoped the decision will be rendered quickly. Because three weeks later, on January 30th, the pre-trial hearing on Alberta and Canada's motion to strike (i.e. kill) the Beaver Lake Cree's legal action will be heard in Edmonton court for five days. The court has no deadline on delivering that ruling, so we will all be waiting to find out if the case launched in 2008 will get a trial.
In the meantime, there is the preparation, planning and fundraising for the second round of the effort to protect and preserve Teztan Biny (Fish Lake). The experts and legal team are working with the Tsilhqot'in to determine what is needed. We will most certainly need to raise funds for scientific reports, expert witnesses, legal arguments and even to help get the members of the Xeni Gwet'in to attend the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) hearing. That is likely to take place in June 2012.
And that is just the first half of the year!
Once again, the Board of RAVEN would like to thank everyone who helped out in 2011, and we all look forward to working together in this new year to continue to reach for our goal of levelling the playing field and ensuring that our legal system should first and foremost dispense justice based on the best evidence available regardless of wealth and power imbalances. As RAVEN's President David Williams wrote, "The R.A.V.E.N. board has observed that the struggles worldwide for the rights of indigenous peoples are frequently closely related to the effort to prevent environmental degradation through inappropriate industrial development. By obtaining financial support for these inter-mixed native rights and environmental causes we hope to bring balance into the game."
You can help - your donations still go directly to the program you choose to support. And now we have 10 limited edition Robert Bateman lithographs available as a special thank you for donations over $1000.
Here's to 2012! Game on.
Posted by Sue Smitten Friday Jan 06, 2012 16:32
Categories: Beaver Lake Cree, Environment , Fish Lake, RAVEN General | Tags: Aboriginal, Alberta, Beaver Lake Cree, British Columbia, caribou, climate, donors, environment, First Nations, fish, gold, indigenous, law, mining, oil sands, Prosperity, SAGD, tar sands, Taseko, Tsilhqot'in, water, Xeni Gwet'in
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I am an ecologist who has worked for the Tsilhqotin and other indigenous peoples. You may recall that I contributed a piece to your blog on the Fish Lake mining proposal. I'd like to shift my attention to helping with the tar sands and northern pipeline crises facing First Nations and all of us who care about healthy ecosystems. I was a pioneer in the development of environmental impact assessment methodology in the 1970s, writing a thesis on this topic for a MSc in Ecology. Please let me know who I could communicate with in the Raven Trust group and hopefully be of some help in addressing governance as well as technical issues. Have a winning New Year ~ Josef.