Wolastoqiyik and Mi’kmaq Grandmothers - Land/Water Defenders Sharing and Learning Circle: Generating Knowledge for Action

• Main Authors: Pictou, Sherry, Conway, Janet, Day, Angela
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Schulich Law Scholars 2021
• Subjects: Ecological Justice; Indigenous Rights; Gender Justice; Treaty Rights; Land Defenders; Decolonization; Self-Determination; Administrative Law; Constitutional Law; Environmental Law; Indigenous; Indian; and Aboriginal Law; Land Use Law; Law; Law and Gender; Law and Society; Natural Resources Law; Water Law; Mi’kmaq; Wolastoqiyik
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.schulichlaw.dal.ca/reports/42; https://digitalcommons.schulichlaw.dal.ca/context/reports/article/1042/viewcontent/Pictou_Wolastoqiyik_and_Mi_kmaq_Grandmothers.pdf

This report is a summary of the Grandmothers/Defenders’ stories and are interwoven with corresponding news articles, press releases, and other public documents. This is followed by an overview of some of the critical common issues and importantly, strategies for moving forward proposed by the Grandmothers/Defenders. The Grandmother’s Report is a collection of stories told by Wolastoqiyik Grandmother/Defenders against the Sisson Mine in New Brunswick and Mi’kmaq Grandmothers against the Alton Gas project in Nova Scotia at the event, Indigenous Grandmothers Sharing and Learning Circle: Generating Knowledge for Action, held at the Tatamagouche Centre in Nova Scotia, January 26 to 27, 2020. Like the MMIWG Report’s Calls for Extractive and Development Industries, the Grandmothers’ Report urges further research on environmental approvals and granting permits for resource projects to proceed; however, the Grandmothers’ Report also calls for the restoration of ancestral governance systems that honour women’s leadership, as well as maintaining and building new allied relationships and granting personhood rights to river systems. The Grandmothers/Defenders’ stories give witness to how two worldviews, Indigenous and colonial, intersect and collide. According to Dr. Pictou’s report, the Indigenous worldview is often neglected, excluded from, or distorted in the media and in other forms of knowledge production practices like Environmental Assessment reports.