The Asian Canadian Labour Alliance (ACLA) stands in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en peoples and allies currently resisting the attempts by the Canadian colonial state to extract natural resources and to infringe on the aspirations and desires of the Wet’suwet’en people’s on their unceded territory by poisoning their land, their water and destroying their way of life.

As labour and community activists, it’s critical and essential to undertake the necessary consciousness raising in our workplaces, communities and unions to engage in difficult conversations regarding Indigenous-Settler relations but also how to build solidarity and community that is based not on exploitative practices but on mutual reciprocity, respect and friendship.

The extractive resource economy has and will continue to have devastating and deadly consequences for us all. We share a collective burden of responsibility to protect our earth so that future generations will not pay the price for our failures.

We urge labour leaders to debunk the myth of the rule of law. ACLA takes this opportunity to remind our comrades in the house of labour of the numerous instances in our rich and often bloody history where the rights of workers and OUR rights to protest, association, collectively bargain and the right to strike were violently suppressed by the same state agents today that aim to silence and suppress the rights of Indigenous protesters and their allies to engage in their peaceful and democratic right to protect Mother Earth. ACLA denounces the hypocritical and racist role of the rule of law to protect the interests of industrialists rather than respect the decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada like Delgamuukw v British Columbia, [1997] 3 SCR 1010.

We encourage other labour organizations and community groups to undertake similar statements of solidarity, support direct action and civil disobedience initiatives, aid in fundraising for legal defence funds, and provide additional-resources as requested. In our affiliates, we take direction from our Indigenous caucuses, and racialized/workers of colour committees should provide additional resources and support as needed.

We all must collectively work together to end Canada’s colonial relationship with Indigenous communities and come to terms with the ongoing role of genocide that we as a colonial state have undertaken against the original peoples of these lands.