On February 9, 2021, members of Birch Narrows First Nation issued a cease and desist order to James Sykes, CEO of Baselode Energy Corporation, a Toronto-based uranium company who had been conducting mineral exploration on unoccupied Crown land near the band's territory without their consent. On February 10, Baselode workers were seen on the territory again, and members set up a checkpoint, blockading access and monitoring the area. Baselode had been issued a permit by the province of Saskatchewan prior to any meaningful consultation with the community. Birch Narrows Dene Elder-advisor and trapper Ron Desjardin said it felt like an invasion. “We are fighting for our cultural survival. That’s what we’re doing right now and that’s why we feel so strongly about this. Do we want a uranium mine in the middle of that knowing the possible consequences if anything ever happened with our watershed? Of course not. Do we really want something that’s going to lead to the demise and extinction of our caribou in that area? No, we don’t,” Desjardin said

A wave of unrest across Palestine begins when demonstrators from the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank, protesting the siege of the Palestinian Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon by the Amal Movement, clash with Israeli soldiers, who escalate their response with live fire, injuring demonstrators and sparking solidarity actions by Palestinians in other parts of the occupied territories. Israel temporarily shuts down Palestinian university campuses as part of its retaliation. Another wave of unrest begins in March of 1987, culminating in the First Intifada, which broke out in December of that year.