By the time this issue makes it to your table, President Donald Trump will once again be President of the United States.
Never one to ignore an opportunity to throw his weight around, Trump is threatening to use economic violence to force Canada into US statehood. Likewise, for some unknown reason he wants to annex Greenland (governed by Denmark) and the Panama Canal. And just for fun, he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, because, he says, “it’s ours anyway.”
Oh yes, he’s also a convicted felon who didn’t have to serve time or even pay a fine for his crimes. Must be nice to talk about justice and illegal immigrants, most of whom he falsely claims are “criminals” who want to eat your pets.
Despite all these hallucinations, we should look at Trump’s relationship with Native Americans to see how we may be impacted.
Trump’s first term gives us an idea of how things could play out. You may remember the Indigenous-led movement at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline project. The Sioux won a delay on that one with the help of the US Army Corps of Engineers. But on his fourth day in office, January 24, 2017, Trump overturned that decision with an executive order and fast-tracked the pipeline construction.
Former President Barack Obama had created an annual White House Tribal Nations Conference. However, this eight-year-old event was given a death blow during Trump’s first reign. Leading positions in the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs were never vetted by the US Senate or left empty.
More telling were his policy directives that reduced environmental protections in the US. Especially weakened were the Clean Water Act (think boil-water advisories in Canada), the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. These laws and others were used to give a voice to local tribes on large-scale projects and traditional lands.
Agencies such as the US Fish and Wildlife Service joined the host of agencies fast-tracking projects left and right. Trump also opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas leasing despite heavy opposition from Alaska Native tribes and the Gwich’n Steering Committee.
Then there’s Trump and Covid. While at first denying it was real, and then offering the worst medical advice ever since people were told cigarettes were good for them, Tribal Nations were not included in the first Covid relief package. Later, money was allocated to assist in vaccinating US tribes, but it would be months before any concrete measures were delivered even as thousands were dying.
Nothing rang truer than when Tom Udall, a former Vice-chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, said, “The truth is the White House is actively undermining Tribal sovereignty across the country….”
We know there are Trump supporters in the Cree communities. Please take the time to search the web and look at how Trump deals with First Nations. Then ask yourself: the 51st what? Can we afford to support becoming the newest state (and by far the largest – meaning with very little political representation)?
We have everything to lose. There is more to work on, but with Trump lording over us we would be taking 10 steps back for each half step forward.