Honouring indigenous treaty rights for climate justice

Energy extraction in western Canada has impacts on global climate, local ecologies, human health and indigenous cultures, causing an increasingly controversial public profile. More than 100 protests objecting to the extraction of bitumen from oil sands and the construction of pipelines for transporting this bitumen to domestic and world markets have been held in various First Nations and cities across Canada (for example, Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg, Victoria, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto and Saint John; see Fig. 1). More than half demanded climate change action. Oil sands development is Canada's fastest growing source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and is responsible for the country's most significant set of environmental issues in recent history1, 2, 3. Pressing social issues have also accompanied oil sands development, such as infringements of treaty and Aboriginal rights, inequalities in economic benefits, health care, housing shortages, substance abuse, food insecurity and high suicide rate