February 21, 2020

Solidarity Statement

We at Aksyon Ng Ating Kabataan (ANAK) Inc., a community-based organization in support of Filipino-Canadian youth, stand in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en. As immigrants and descendants of immigrants from the Philippines, it is our responsibility to learn and understand the histories of the peoples on whose lands we now live.

Our journey to Winnipeg has come through the exploitation and destruction caused by neoliberalism and capitalism. The effects of large scale multinational mining, deforestation, and militarization has forever altered our homeland. Precarious work and displacement has urged thousands of Filipinos to now find work abroad. The Philippines has been a strong exporter of migrant labour in the world for many decades.

When migrant families are able to reunite, they arrive to build their lives anew in settler colonial spaces like Winnipeg. The north and western areas of this city is home to Canada’s largest urban Indigenous population where we too, as the largest immigrant population in Manitoba, come home to work, organize and together build bridges of knowledges and activism. We find solidarity in these urban neighbourhoods.

We call on immigrant and youth serving organizations to speak to their membership and families on the collective struggle we share against the greed and destruction of neoliberalism and capitalism. We stand alongside the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination statement that Canada immediately suspend work on the Coastal GasLink pipeline, the Trans Mountain pipeline and the Site C dam until free, prior, and informed consent is given from the Indigenous peoples of these areas.

ANAK Inc. stands in solidarity with the Gitdumt’en and Unist’ot’en resistance to the illegal encroachment on Wet’suwet’en territory. We support the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs as they protect their sovereignty and ancestral lands and encourage our networks to sign the Pledge to Stand with Unist’ot’en:
[click here]