Legal Support for Anishinaabe Kwe Land Defender
Donation protected
UPDATE: On Wednesday, March 30th, Canadian Pacific Railway Police Service Charges Have Been Dropped Against Land Defender Vanessa Gray
Anishinaabe Kwe Land Defender, Vanessa Gray (she/her), was detained and charged by the Toronto and Canadian Pacific Police Services following a solidarity rally on November 21 in response to the violent arrests and RCMP raids on Wet’suwet’en Territory. For more than a decade, clan members of the Wet’suwet’en nation have been re-occupying their ancestral territory and resisting the development of oil and gas pipelines, with a growing solidarity movement across Turtle Island. While hundreds of people attended the solidarity rally in Toronto, Vanessa is the only person known to have been charged in connection to it.
Anishinaabe Kwe Land Defender, Vanessa Gray (she/her), was detained and charged by the Toronto and Canadian Pacific Police Services following a solidarity rally on November 21 in response to the violent arrests and RCMP raids on Wet’suwet’en Territory. For more than a decade, clan members of the Wet’suwet’en nation have been re-occupying their ancestral territory and resisting the development of oil and gas pipelines, with a growing solidarity movement across Turtle Island. While hundreds of people attended the solidarity rally in Toronto, Vanessa is the only person known to have been charged in connection to it.
Vanessa Gray is a respected water protector, community researcher, and organizer in the Great Lakes region. She is known for her environmental justice work concerning pollution in Ontario’s Chemical Valley, which is on the territory of her community of Aamjiwnaang First Nation. Chemical Valley is the largest complex of petrochemical industry in Canada, and Aamjiwnaang community members’ constant exposure to harmful emissions results in some of the highest mortality rates for cancers and respiratory diseases in Ontario. Vanessa has dedicated her life to challenging colonial violence and the related impacts on environmental health.
In addition to experiencing surveillance and harassment, Vanessa has been wrongfully charged with three counts of mischief, interference with property, causing disturbance, loitering, unlawful assembly, trespassing, and failure to give way. The charges have been issued by the Canadian Pacific Police Service, a company that has directly benefited from dispossessing Indigenous peoples from millions of acres of land through the Dominion Lands Act of 1872. Supporters and colleagues of Vanessa see these charges as part of a larger pattern of seeking to silence Indigenous land defenders and suppress Indigenous organizing around controversial projects such as the Coastal GasLink Pipeline.
This fundraiser aims to help cover costs associated with the legal proceedings for Vanessa Gray’s charges. Any additional funds raised will go towards additional legal support for Vanessa, who is currently suing the Liberal Party of Canada after she was assaulted at a Liberal Party Climate Rally in front of Prime Minister Trudeau.
Vanessa works to decolonize environmental justice research by linking scholarly findings to traditional teachings. Her leadership and research with the Technoscience Research Unit at the University of Toronto has already been developed into an App called Pollution Reporter.
She is a passionate grassroots organizer and educator who has dedicated more than a decade to frontline organizing against environmental racism. She is a co-founder of Aamjiwnaang & Sarnia Against Pipelines (ASAP), host of the annual Toxic Tour of Canada’s Chemical Valley and Aamjiwnaang Water Gathering, and has collaborated with numerous organizations and movements, such as Idle No More,the Native Youth Sexual Health Network, and the Indigenous Environmental Network. She is currently represented by Ecojustice with status at the Ontario Land Tribunal hearing about penalties levied against Imperial Oil for its excessive releases of sulphur dioxide. She boldly envisions a world in which corporations do not have more rights than Indigenous peoples under Canadian law, and police forces do not operate under the orders of corporations.
"Growing up in Aamjiwnaang surrounded by petrochemical refineries has always made me question my relationship to the environment. Being Indigenous in Canada continues to be the struggle to uphold my responsibility to the Anishinaabek Territory. Education and understanding our interconnected struggles is essential to our ever-growing movement, but we must take risks for a sustainable and just future."
The time is now to support Indigenous land defenders everywhere!
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Miigwetch
Organizer
Vanessa Gray
Organizer
Toronto, ON