OTTAWA—Did reconciliation die?

It’s an uncomfortable question that was raised after the Wet’suwet’en rallying cry that sparked blockades and protests across the country over the past month.

The protests started after Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs insisted a natural gas pipeline could not cross their territory, and spiralled into a widespread solidarity movement. Dozens of rail blockades snarled the flow of goods and people. Protesters encircled the British Columbia legislature and staged sit-ins at the offices of federal cabinet ministers. Hundreds marched in major cities under slogans like “#ShutDownCanada” and “Reconciliation is Dead.”

Sidestepping the immediate dispute over the Coastal GasLink pipeline, Ottawa and B.C. made an offer to the Wet’suwet’en chiefs to recognize their nation’s land ownership rights going forward. Days later, the Wet’suwet’en’s staunchest Mohawk allies took down their rail blockade south of Montreal, and companies that had laid off hundreds of employees started bringing them back to work as trains got moving again.

The crisis is abating, at least for now.

But if the intensity of the movement is waning, what has it left behind? What toll did it take on federal politics and the national economy? And how has it shaken the government’s credibility on Indigenous reconciliation, that national project held aloft by Liberals in Ottawa as a moral imperative for Canada’s future?

In the immediate aftermath, polls have suggested many Canadians are not happy with how Ottawa responded to the blockades. Recent surveys from Angus Reid and Ipsos charted dips in approval for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and a Leger poll found 61 per cent of respondents were dissatisfied with his handling of the crisis.

But the longer-term impact is less clear and may not lead to a significant shift in Trudeau’s political fortunes, said David Coletto, chief executive officer of the political research firm Abacus Data. Coletto said the Liberals’ middle-ground approach and the Conservatives’ more aggressive response were not surprising, and are therefore unlikely to shift the entrenched views of their supporters.

“The politics played out like many Canadians would expect,” Coletto said. “It probably doesn’t fundamentally change things.”

The immediate hit on the economy might be similarly small, said Bahman Kashi, a professor at Queen’s University and founder of the firm Limestone Analytics. Shipping costs would have jumped due to the rail blockades, along with the cost of goods being transported, but those increases would be softened by the ability of the trucking industry to pick up the slack, he said.

The impacts of the slower winter train-shipping season and the coronavirus outbreak, which has decreased productivity in China, may also mean fewer goods were available to ship during the crisis anyway, Kashi said.

What the demonstrations underscored, however, was the extent of opposition to natural resource projects and the complexity of construction in areas where the very ownership of the land is disputed, Kashi said.

Last week, the massive global investment firm Berkshire Hathaway reportedly pulled out of a natural gas development proposed in Quebec. The move came after Teck Resources dropped plans for a massive new oilsands project and blamed tensions over Indigenous rights, climate change and resource development for contributing to the decision.

“When (projects) become politicized, all you’re left with is instability, and when there’s instability, investor confidence walks out the door,” said Kashi.

Ry Moran, director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg, said this uncertainty is a consequence of the persisting injustices that flow from Canada’s colonial history — the very things reconciliation is meant to address.

“That’s a problem with Canada itself, and Canada has to get on with the hard work to actually take the steps necessary … to create a stable, healthy, robust country where all citizens are treated equally,” he said.

What Moran and others see in the recent movement is the emergence of a new generation of Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists who are pushing for those questions to be addressed, even if some of them have declared that “reconciliation is dead.”

Hayden King, director of the Yellowhead Institute at Ryerson University, said this burst of “Indigenous resistance” is led by young activists who are less patient with the halting progress of the past, and their movement is centred on the demand for land claimed by the government through colonization to be returned to Indigenous nations.

“There has been this theft, that theft has been the basis of all the socio-economic challenges that Indigenous peoples face today, and we want the land back. And (that is) being acutely manifested right now in the struggle of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs,” he said.

And while the federal government has said it is open to discussing land ownership with Indigenous communities across Canada, including the Wet’suwet’en, King argued these efforts fall short of the more profound political and economic transformation that many activists are calling for.

“We haven’t had an honest conversation from the Liberal government on giving land back to native people, which is fundamentally what the overarching premise of the movement is,” he said.

But while the outstanding question of land title is seen as central to reconciliation, Moran said he is most troubled by racism he has seen in response to the Wet’suwet’en movement in recent weeks. The Canadian Anti-Hate Network told the Star last month that far-right activists and hate-groups were calling for vigilante action against Wet’suwet’en solidarity demonstrations, for example. On Feb. 26, the news website SooToday.com banned reader comments from stories relating to Indigenous issues because of persistent “slurs and hateful stereotypes,” a call for police to shoot protesters, and “several” suggestions that “drivers run down the human beings holding Wet’suwet’en solidarity demonstrations.”

“Let’s take a real hard look at just how racist this country is, and how persistent and widespread that racism is, and how ugly and vicious it continues to be,” Moran said.

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On the flip side, however, Moran said he believes many Canadians are engaging with long-standing grievances about land title and Indigenous rights for the first time. There has been “outstanding reporting” in the media, for instance, on the complexities of Indigenous governance, with elected band councils created on reserves through the colonial-era Indian Act and the resurgent strength of traditional leaders like the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, he said.

“I hope that this is yet another very powerful reminder that these basic human rights are very important to this country, and that our failure to recognize and affirm human rights impacts not just Indigenous peoples but impacts our country as a whole,” said Moran.

“Is reconciliation dead? I still don’t think so. There are still a lot of people fighting for Indigenous rights,” he added. “That’s where I still have a lot of hope.”

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