One should not underestimate the political importance of the fasting of the aboriginal leader of Attawispiskat as an expression of the movement “Idle no more.” It does not attract the attention of major Anglo-Canadian media for nothing. An op-ed of the Toronto Star below explains its importance from a “Canadian” perspective [1]. The comment by Naomi Klein in The Globe and Mail [2], the newspaper “par excellence” of the Canadian bourgeoisie, unmasks the reactionary scope of the rentier crudity of the Canadian bourgeoisie’s insertion in the neoliberal globalization. From the perspective of the Quebec people, the political relevance is increased tenfold since it is also most clearly a matter of national oppression which multiplies the obvious issues of social and ecological justices. It is the responsibility of the major political and social organizations of Quebec, which claim to be from the left, feminist and for our national independence, to take on urgently the immensely courageous struggle of this aboriginal woman. We must seize the opportuneness of the situation.

By backing publicly the “Idle no more” movement and by calling for mobilizations, the independentist left, of which Québec solidaire is the political expression, would be able to secure aboriginal peoples and the left Canadian people to support or sympathize with the struggle for the independence of Quebec. For the Quebec national question, as demonstrated by the 1995 referendum and the hysteria in reaction to the recent electoral victory of the PQ, remains the weakest link and the great fear of the Canadian bourgeoisie and its state. But their economic plan is “Canada R3” (rentier, reactionary and repressive) which requires to seize Aboriginal land where is to be found oil sands, mines of every kind and rivers to harness. There is a historic rendezvous between Aboriginal interests, those of the people of Quebec and those of the proletariat of the Canadian state whose interest is “ecological full employment” and not the polluting and the looting of the small labor intensive exploitation of natural resources.

However, the struggle for independence must appear for what it is, a struggle to liberate ourselves from both the federal government control against our constitutional and our linguistic rights, and of the control of the banks and transnationals, the bulwark of federalism, against social and ecological justice.

Marc Bonhomme, December 26, 2012

www.marcbonhomme.com; bonmarc videotron.ca