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DENISA KRASNA
Council was formed in 1996 "with the purpose of advancing circumpolar
cooperation” in order to protect the arctic environment.™ Both ICC and the
Arctic Council have been at the forefront of many significant international
environmental initiatives, monitoring changes in the Arctic caused by climate
change. Indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic region face environmental
challenges that threaten their way of life and that are destroying their homes.
Trans-national cooperation and united action are crucial in their efforts to
slow down and reduce the impacts of climate change. The nation-state borders
complicate these efforts and stand as a barrier not only to the traditional
way of life of the Arctic peoples whose contacts have been severely limited
but also to potential solutions to the environmental crisis that is increasingly
impacting the whole world. While the ICC and the Arctic Council have found
ways to transcend it, the border still constitutes an unnecessary obstacle.
COAST SALISH CROSS-BORDER COOPERATION
“We depend on the Salish Sea, and our cultural teachings compel us
to protect it.”°°
In the Pacific Northwest, the Coast Salish peoples who comprise dozens of
tribes and bands residing in British Columbia and Western Washington are
re-establishing their contacts and gaining momentum in their trans-border
environmental protest actions. They also organize regular cultural gatherings
that are renewing and strengthening their traditional ties that were weakened
during the residential school era. In his comprehensive study, Michael Marker
showcases the cultural resilience of Coast Salish peoples by outlining how
they resisted assimilationist policies of residential schools. Nevertheless, as
he explains, the different development of these policies in Canada and the
US had a significant impact on traditional ties in the borderlands region and
contributed to the creation of slightly divergent identities on each side of the
border. Distinct “colonizing conditions” also called for different forms of
resistance and strategies for cultural preservation and renewal.*
While the assimilationist educational policies of the 19** and 20" centuries
started off with the same aims in both US and Canada, some of the enforced
54 Boos — McLawsen — Fathali, Canadian Indians, Inuit, Metis, and Metis, 366.
55 Brian Cladoosby — Leonard Forsman — Teri Gobin - Jay Julius, The Trans Mountain pipeline
is a disaster — but Trudeau can make it right, The Guardian (2019), https://www.theguardian.
com/commentisfree/2019/jun/14/trans-mountain-pipeline-expansion-trudeau-indigenous¬
communities (accessed 3 April 2020).
56 Michael Marker, Indigenous resistance and racist schooling on the borders of empires:
Coast Salish cultural survival, International Journal of the History of Education, Vol. 4,
No. 6 (2009), 762, https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230903335678 (accessed 2 April 2020).
+ 280 +