Migratory birds legally protected under Canadian, US laws

Dear President Obama and Prime Minister Harper
RE: The environmental disaster in the Gulf Coast and its harm to the Aboriginal people of James Bay, Canada.
I am writing on behalf of my people, the Mushkegowuk Cree Indians, to express our sadness and deep concern about the recent oil spill and environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and about how it will affect the First Peoples of this continent.
As the Grand Chief of Mushkegowuk Council, I am speaking for the Mushkegowuk First Nations, whose traditional territories and homeland encompass the western coast of James Bay in northern Ontario, Canada.
Our people have lived off the land, hunting and fishing as a means of life. Hunting and fishing continue to be a central part of our modern lives and culture and of who we are.
We have a deep foreboding that the recent disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, although thousands of miles away, will bring great harm to our beloved and sacred homeland, some of the wildlife with whom we share it and the hunting and fishing that helps define us.
We fear and dread the likelihood the oil catastrophe will harm many different types of migratory birds which either nest near to or pass through the Gulf of Mexico during their yearly migration.
Although the oil spill will be extremely lethal in the short-run, it will also have serious sub-lethal effects for many years, when, for example, fish and birds eat contaminated food in the Gulf. The people in our communities believe that many of our migratory birds will not return from the Gulf of Mexico this year, or will return contaminated, causing disease and birth defects amongst them, and perhaps us.
We especially fear that the oil spill will sicken and kill the native migrating goose population of our homelands. The yearly goose hunt is one of the essential features of our culture, lives, communities and spirituality. Like many of our people, I myself go onto the land every year to hunt geese. I eat the geese I catch throughout the year, and share it with my family and Elders and other people in the community.
Will there be fewer geese this year because of the oil spill in the Gulf? Will it be safe for my family and I to eat what we catch? After seeing images of oil-soaked birds and fish in newspapers and on the television, these are the kinds of questions our people are asking, with dread in our hearts.
When our First Nations agreed to share our land with the newcomers from abroad, the Canadian government promised our ancestors we could continue to hunt and fish where we pleased, as we pleased as we always had done. Our right to hunt and fish has now been recognised and affirmed by Canada’s constitution. These fundamental rights are being stolen from us as the migratory birds which are our life and spirit are killed or contaminated by the Gulf oil spill.
I have addressed this letter to yourselves, the President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister of Canada, because both countries are signatories to the international and legally binding Convention for the protection of migratory birds in Canada and the United States. According to the Convention, each party is required to take appropriate measures to preserve and enhance the environment of migratory birds and to prevent damage to such birds and their environments, including damage resulting from pollution.
President Obama, we respectfully urge your government to live up to this commitment by doing everything in its power to reduce the harm to migratory birds caused by the Gulf oil spill and by ensuring a disaster such as this never occurs again.
Prime Minister Harper, we ask that your government use all its powers under the Convention to take specific steps to the greatest extent possible to protect Canada’s migratory birds and our treaty and inherent Aboriginal rights, in these difficult circumstances.
We are the First Peoples of this land, and it saddens us that those who have joined us here have allowed such a disaster in the waters and on the land, which we should all be able to share with each other and with our children.
Your laws now require your governments to act. We respectfully ask you do so.
Grand Chief Stan Louttit
Mushkegowuk Council
CC:
Felipe Calderon Hinojosa
President
United Mexican States
Tony Hayward
Chief Executive Officer
BP PLC
Jim Prentice
Environment Minister
Rowan Gould
Acting Director
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada Secretario de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales
Council of Chiefs
Linda Jeffrey
Ministry of Natural Resources
Dalton McGuinty
Ontario Premier
Shawn Atleo
AFN National Chief
Stan Beardy
NAN Grand Chief