Enemies of the State: How spying on Indigenous activists became a priority at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service

• In-person event
• RC 4400, SJC Resource Centre, Richcraft Hall, Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6

Space will be limited for this event. Please register using the form at the bottom of the page.

Event Description: 

How much time and effort has Canada spent spying on Indigenous activists?  In 2022, Brett Forester of CBC Indigenous in Ottawa set out to answer that question. It proved easy enough to ask but nearly impossible to answer. It took three years, four formal access to information requests, one informal request, three complaints to the federal information commissioner and one court challenge, but after all this wrangling we can begin to confirm the long-suspected truth: Snooping on Indigenous peoples has been a priority for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service almost since its inception.

After reviewing more than 1,000 pages of declassified documents, Forester found surveillance that began in Labrador in 1988 with Cold War paranoia about Soviet meddling had by 1998 evolved into a national counterterrorism project monitoring Indigenous dissent as a form of domestic extremism. In this talk, Forester will explain why and how this came to be, as he offers a behind-the-scenes look at his investigation into more than a decade of CSIS’s self-styled “Native extremism” operations.

This event is co-sponsored with Law and Legal Students, NPSIA, Journalism and Communications, and Indigenous Studies.

Bios:

Ellen Gabriel, also known as Katsi’tsakwas, is a Mohawk activist and artist from Kanehsatà:ke Nation (Kanehsatà:ke Quebec). 

A graduate from the New York Film Academy in documentary film making in December 2021, provided Ellen with new tools in her advocacy to reclaim the narrative of stories of Indigenous peoples. In May of 1990 Ms. Gabriel graduated from Concordia University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, major visual arts.

Ms. Gabriel was well-known to the public when she was chosen by the People of the Longhouse and her community of Kanehsatà:ke to be their spokesperson during the 1990 “Oka” Crisis; to protect the Pines from the expansion of a 9-hole golf course in Kanehsatà:ke, the colonial imposed name of “OKA”.

Ms. Gabriel is a Steering Committee member with Indigenous Climate Action addressing the needs and solutions to the violations of Indigenous peoples’ human rights, the climate crisis and environmental rights.

In 2004, Ellen Gabriel was elected president of the Quebec Native Women’s Association a position which she held for 6 ½ years, until December 2010.

In June 2024, Ms. Gabriel received an honorary doctorate from the Université de Québec à Montreal for her work in human rights.

Brett Forester is an Anishinaabe journalist with the CBC News Indigenous unit in Ottawa. Brett is an experienced broadcaster who worked previously as host and producer of APTN’s weekly political talk show Nation to Nation. He has also occasionally guest hosted CBC’s Power & Politics since joining the public broadcaster in 2022. He is a proud member of the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation in southern Ontario. His visual storytelling and written reporting focuses on politics, national affairs, human rights and the law.