Update: This news (below) is wrong.  The lawyer for KI and Ardoch has applied for the two cases to be heard as one. The lawyer for the mining companies is probably going to oppose. No dates have yet been set, nor has the court decided on this one way or the other.

News, which I am waiting to confirm, that the Ontario Court of Appeals has agreed to hear the appeals in the conviction of Robert Lovelace of Ardoch Algonquin First Nation and the “KI 6″ of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) as one case. Since I don’t have any more details, I can only speculate as to why: perhaps because the court in Thunder Bay used the Kingston case as precedent, or perhaps because they are treating the underlying issue, namely, Aboriginal rights, the duty to consult, and other constitutional issues. In that case, it would look good for the appelants and bad for the mining companies on the face of it.

Colonization, racism, repression, and expropriation and destruction of the Indigenous land base continue. The draconian sentencing handed out in these cases feels like Jim Crow-type discipline of uppity Indians.

On top of the human rights and colonial dimensions of these cases, there is the ridiculously pro-mining regime of prospecting in Ontario. The Ontario Mining Act is a rotten law and has to be scrapped and done over. Unfortunately the ministries of Mining and Northern Development as well as Finance are completely in the pocket of the mining industry — no matter how many Indians need to be put in jail to get these mines going.

Corvin is an activist and writer based in Toronto. Currently he is working on the Environmental Justice Organizing Initiative to help build an organized movement on climate change rooted in a class, race, anti-colonial, and gender analysis. Read other posts by Corvin Russell.