GrannyRantsON

2011-03-19T11:54:00.000-04:00

First Nations Claim Dismissed On Legal Loophole

Canada: First Nations Child And Family Caring Society Of Canada To Appeal Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Decision To Dismiss Discrimination Claim For First Nations Children On A Legal Loophole

http://indigenouspeoplesissues.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9416:canada-first-nations-child-and-family-caring-society-of-canada-to-appeal-canadian-human-rights-tribunal-decision-to-dismiss-discrimination-claim-for-first-nations-children-on-a-legal-loophole&catid=52:north-america-indigenous-peoples&Itemid=74

Tuesday, 15 March 2011 23:08

The First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada is deeply concerned with the ruling today from Shirish Chotalia, Chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, to dismiss the complaint filed by the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada and the Assembly of First Nations in 2007 alleging that the Federal Government is racially discriminating against First Nations children by providing less child welfare benefit on reserve. Chair Chotalia dismissed the case on a preliminary motion brought by the Federal Government even though the Federal Government had tried, and failed, to get the case dismissed on similar grounds in Federal Court on two previous occasions. Chair Shirish Chotalia did not address the overwhelming evidence of the inequity and harm experienced by First Nations children on reserves even though she was in possession of numerous reports confirming the problems such as the Auditor General of Canada (2008), the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (2009) and internal documents from the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. Instead, Chair Shirish Chotalia dismissed the case on a legal technicality suggesting that the Federal Government can provide a different, and inequitable, level of service to First Nations children so long as the Provinces/Territories provide the service to all other children. In issuing this ruling, Chair Shirish Chotalia, in effect legalized racial discrimination against vulnerable children on reserve by the Federal Government.

The First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada will immediately appeal Chair Shirish Chotalia's decision to Federal Court. This case is being followed by over 7200 Canadians and organizations making it the most formally watched court case in Canadian history. Cindy Blackstock, Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, says that "the Government of Canada should not be immune from human rights laws and obligations to First Nations children because of a legal technicality and we will take all necessary measures to ensure that this case is decided in a public forum on the full set of facts - the children deserve nothing less." The appeal will be filed in Federal Court in the next 30 days.

Source: First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada

2011-03-19T11:44:00.001-04:00

Canada’s Struggle to Extinguish Aboriginal Title

http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/03/certainty-canadas-struggle-to-extinguish-aboriginal-title/

Certainty

by Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs / March 12th, 2011

Our connection to the Land is Sacred, it defines who we are as Peoples, it is our Aboriginal Title. Our laws and teachings bid us to honour and protect our connection to the Land. In the roots which bind our Peoples to the Land there is a life and a future for our Peoples.

Canada cannot understand our Sacred connection to the Land, our Aboriginal Title. It is “uncertain,” because it prevents Indigenous Peoples from viewing the Land as a commodity to be bought, sold or traded. From Canada’s perspective, our Aboriginal Title has to be changed, altered, and defined in a treaty so that it fits with Canadian laws and ideas about Land.

Canada’s strive for certainty reflects a desire that Indigenous Peoples assimilate into Canada, that we sever our connection to the Land. Canada asks that we dig up the roots connecting us to the Land and replant them through treaties. This lack of understanding and fear about our connection to the Land is what Canada strives to address through certainty.

For Indigenous Peoples, our Aboriginal Title and connection to the Land is certain, it is in the bones of our grandmothers buried in the earth, and in the blood which beats in our hearts:
Our Sacred connection to the Land is certain.

Our relationship with the Land, our Title, rests over every square inch of our traditional territories: Every rock, mountain top, stream, valley and tidal swell. This is certain.

Indigenous Peoples have the jurisdiction and responsibility to protect, access and use the Land and resources upon the Land for the benefit of our Peoples. This is certain.

Our own traditional laws and teachings grant us this certainty: As long as we maintain our Sacred connection to the Land we will continue to exist as Peoples.

Canada and B.C. have said that the purpose of treaties or modern land claims agreements is to achieve “certainty”. This booklet discusses the certainty provisions that have been suggested. In particular, a confidential document, “Certainty Summary”, which was drafted by the province.

The Certainty Summary gives a fairly clear indication of the certainty language Canada and the province will insist upon having in any treaties or land claims agreements they negotiate.

The purpose of “certainty” on the part of the federal and provincial governments is to “exhaustively and completely set forth” all aboriginal and treaty rights. Rather than simply accepting the existence of Aboriginal Title as ownership and jurisdiction over Land and resources, certainty limits and defines Aboriginal Title and Rights.

Aboriginal Title to lands and resources existed at the time that the Crown asserted sovereignty. This Title was never extinguished. This is why Crown title is uncertain and remains subject to Aboriginal Title.

There is an air of illegality about any transactions which the Crown makes or authorizes with respect to Lands and Resources. These transactions do not acknowledge that Indigenous Peoples own the Lands, and therefore violate the legal principle that “You cannot give that which you do not own.”

The Crown’s willingness to negotiate land claims requires a promise on the part of Indigenous Peoples that they will not fully practice their rights. Canada’s negotiating stance is: “We will recognize your rights, but only if you first tell us how you will exercise them, and only if you promise that your rights will not interfere with our interests.” This is certainty.

Canada’s sovereignty or ownership of Land and resources is not challenged, Canada does not have to “prove” its title. Indigenous Peoples do not get an equal promise that Canada will tell us how they will practice their rights, or that their rights will not interfere with our interests. Quite the opposite.

A modern land claim agreement is a contract between Indigenous People, Canada and the Province. Each party gives something in exchange for something. In order to gain “certainty” Canada and the Province are willing to grant a limited recognition of aboriginal title to a reduced portion of an Indigenous group’s traditional territory, in exchange for the release of all aboriginal title and rights not specifically set out in the Agreement.

Convert, Modify and Transform
The intent of the parties in achieving certainty is evident in the language proposed. Instead of the traditional “extinguishment” language (which used such phrases as “cede, release and surrender”) the language of treaties will be finessed so that it is not so blunt. Aboriginal title and rights will not be extinguished outright; Instead, they will be defined and limited out of existence. Achieving certainty will require that Aboriginal Title and Rights be “converted/modified/transformed/etc.” into treaty rights set forth in the Agreement.

Compare these definitions of the words used, all from Websters dictionary:

Extinguish, definitions include
1. “to bring to an end: to make an end of”;
2. “to reduce to silence or ineffectiveness”;
3. “to cause to be void: NULLIFY”; and
4. “to get rid of usually by payment”

Convert, definitions include
1. “to bring over from one belief, view, or party to another”;
2. “to change from one form or function to another”;
3. “to alter for more effective utilization”; and
4. “to appropriate without right”

Modify, definitions include
1. “to make less extreme: MODERATE”;
2. “to limit or restrict the meaning of…and”;
3. “to make basic or fundamental changes in often to give new orientation to or to serve a new end”

Transform, definitions include
1. “to change in composition and structure”; and
2. “to change in character or condition: CONVERT”
Certainty provisions will change all rights which aboriginal peoples have into contractual rights which have been reduced to writing, limited and defined. The impact of the proposed certainty provisions is to capture and tame aboriginal title and rights, and then place them in a cage constructed of words and legal provisions.
Certainty involves the re-definition and re-creation of aboriginal rights. This is done through clauses which
Ø convert and reduce all existing aboriginal or title rights of Indigenous Peoples’ into those contained within the Agreement;
Ø ensure that the Agreement will be the “full and final settlement” of all aboriginal title or rights;
Ø release all rights not listed in the Agreement to Canada; and
Ø exhaustively set forth all the Section 35 rights of the Indigenous group, including the manner of their exercise, and all the limitations to those rights on which the Parties have agreed.

There will be no aboriginal title or rights which survive their exclusion from the written Agreement. All aboriginal rights and title will be transformed to those of contractual or treaty-rights. Any stray rights which are not listed (for example, because of oversight, or because they were not thought of at the time of the Treaty) will not survive their exclusion from the Agreement. This means that if Canadian courts recognize new rights in the future (for example, a right to water or a commercial interest in wildlife) Indigenous groups who treaty will not be able to benefit from these rights.

Land claims agreements will be the Noah’s Arc of Aboriginal Rights: Any title or rights not on the arc and nailed down with words in the Agreement, at the time of the treaty will not survive. Aboriginal title and rights flow from the land and the historic relationship that Indigenous Peoples have had with our Lands. The legal language proposed for certainty will flood the land with Crown title and forever dam the flow of rights from the Land to the people. Crown title will replace aboriginal title. No title or rights will ever flow from the Land again. Instead, all rights will flow from the written Agreement.

Modern land claims agreements will create a double standard in which the interests of the federal and provincial Crowns and third parties are recognized. These rights will simply continue to exist, they will change and adapt over time, they will continue to live. There is no provision which releases all undefined rights or interests of Canada, B.C. or third parties to the Indigenous group. The rights of the Indigenous Peoples’, on the other hand, will be frozen and will not grow and adapt. If these rights are not written into the Agreement, they will no longer exist, they will be dead.

This is an example of how double standards will be cemented in modern land claims agreements. Crown title is perfected and recognized over all Lands, while Indigenous Title is extinguished from all areas not in the agreement.

These agreements are not fair or equal: there is no sharing. The Crown gets complete recognition of its sovereignty, its underlying title to our lands and the supremacy of its laws over our governments and People. Indigenous groups get limited recognition of title to reduced pieces of land, the right to co-manage resources (along with government and third parties interests) and self-government which is subject to Canadian and provincial laws.

Land claims agreements will explicitly contain recognition of all “third party” interests and that these are not impacted by aboriginal rights.

Interpretation: A different species of Section 35 rights
Although modern land claims will be acknowledged as treaty rights under Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 which “recognizes and affirms” existing aboriginal and treaty rights, they will be a different species of Section 35 right. The benefit of having rights recognized under Section 35 is that Canadian Courts have read Section 35 to protect Aboriginal peoples and their rights.

At present, under Section 35, courts interpret treaties so that
Ø ambiguous expressions in treaties are resolved in favour of the Indians;
Ø treaty provisions are given a fair, liberal and large interpretation;
Ø the honour of the Crown is assumed when interpreting treaties (Courts assume that the Crown intended to act honourably toward aboriginal peoples and with the best interests of the aboriginal peoples in mind, while entering treaties); and
Ø any suggestion of “sharp dealing” (unfair bargaining) is not sanctioned.
These principles of interpretation will be removed from modern treaties and therefore the protective features of Section 35 will not operate. Any common law rules with respect to aboriginal or treaty rights will be replaced by the provisions of the Agreement and it is anticipated that the federal government will need to pass legislation in order to override the common law rules.
Provisions in the new treaties which will remove common law protection may include:
Ø There will be no presumption that doubtful or ambiguous expressions or terms are to be interpreted in favour of any particular Party or Parties.

Ø The Indigenous group will agree that the Crown has no consultation obligations respecting the Section 35 rights of the Indigenous group other than those obligations set out in the Treaty.

Ø The Section 35 rights set out in the Treaty will be interpreted solely on the basis of the rights set out in the treaty, without any distinction based on whether the right is a [converted/modified/transformed/etc.] aboriginal right or a new treaty right.

Any common law rules which arise from aboriginal rights cases which impose a duty on the Crown to treat aboriginal rights in a certain way, will not apply if they are not set out in the Agreement. In Delgamuukw the Supreme Court suggested that the consent of the aboriginal peoples with title would be required before certain actions or measures could be taken if these actions would have the impact of interfering with aboriginal title and the traditional uses to which the Indigenous Peoples have put their lands.

The consent of an aboriginal group to actions regarding lands over which they have aboriginal title will not apply to the new treaties unless this is specifically set out in the agreement. And, in any case, the consent, or even involvement, of the aboriginal group will only apply to those specific tracts of lands identified in the Agreement. Under Delgamuukw, consultation, compensation and, possibly consent, are required for all lands which comprise the traditional territory and title lands of the Indigenous Peoples.

Although the rights recognized under the Agreement will be called Section 35 treaty rights, they will not be afforded the same protection as Section 35 rights held by other Indigenous Peoples. These are all eliminated through the wording of the Agreement and instead the legal rules surrounding contract interpretation will apply.

Reliance
The Agreements will set forth a broad number of “reliance” provisions in which the Indigenous group will agree to “indemnify” Canada and the province should any damage come to Canada or the province as a result of stray rights having survived the Agreement. This means that the Indigenous group agree to cover the financial costs to government in the event that they are sued as a result of the Agreement.
Federal and provincial legislation will be passed in order to pass this guarantee along to third parties. Federal legislation may also indemnify the province.

Who can treaty away aboriginal title?
Aboriginal title is a collective interest, which is held in trust by all members of an Indigenous Nation. As a collective interest held by each and every member of an Indigenous Nation, aboriginal title cannot be bargained or treatied away by anything less than the full consent of all the Indigenous Peoples who collectively hold this title. A majority vote (no matter how high the percentage) cannot give one group the ability to extinguish the title and rights of all of the Indigenous Peoples who hold title.

Canada and the province recognize the illegality of negotiating an agreement which purports to extinguish aboriginal title without the full consent of all of the Indigenous Peoples’ concerned. The collective nature of aboriginal title means that no Band or group of Bands/communities can treaty for Lands which belong to an entire Nation, or that no group of people within one Nation or Band/community has the right to treaty for the extinguishment of the aboriginal title and rights of those members of their Nation/community who do not give their full consent.

The legal uncertainty of the current process is heightened by the fact that Indigenous citizens are not fully or meaningfully involved or informed in the negotiations of modern land claims agreements. The collective nature of aboriginal title (which means that title is shared by all members of a Nation) creates an area of uncertainty about all treaties entered into without the full consent, knowledge and participation of each and every citizen of the Indigenous Nation. The same legal principle applies: “You cannot give that which you do not own.” No vote or ratification process is valid to authorize any group to enter into a treaty without the full consent of their people.
The province has proposed to deal with this area of uncertainty by exacting a legal promise from the Indigenous group that they have the right to enter into the Agreement on behalf of all of their people.

If individual Indigenous people do not agree with the terms of the Agreement and bring law suits in the future (claiming, for example, that parts of their traditional territories were not included in the settlement land, or that the Indigenous government had no right to extinguish their title over their traditional territory) the Indigenous group will agree that they will cover any costs to Canada and B.C. The result of this clause is that Indigenous peoples will be suing other Indigenous peoples and any dollar settlement will come from the Indigenous peoples themselves,not the government.

Compensation for Past Wrongs
Modern land claims agreements will represent the “full and final settlement” between the parties, including of past wrongs. The Indigenous group will agree not to pursue any legal claims against Canada or B.C. with respect to any past wrongs. The proposed wording is that
The Indigenous group will release Canada and British Columbia from any claims that it may have had prior to the Treaty regarding any interference or infringement of the Indigenous group’s Section 35 rights, and any claims under Canada’s “specific claims” policy.

The Supreme Court of Canada, in Delgamuukw, stated that aboriginal title has an economic component and that government will be liable to provide compensation in the event of an abrogation or breach of aboriginal title. This clause would preclude the Indigenous group from bringing any legal actions relating to compensation for the value of the lands and resources taken from their territories. Canada and the province will not have to pay compensation for their past extraction of resources (which is in the billions of dollars for most areas), or the spoilage of habitat, lands and resources which they have been responsible for. All past claims for compensation, and any future claims for compensation, are all reduced into the terms of the Agreement.

Breach
Modern land claims agreements will contain language in which all parties agree not to challenge the “validity or enforceability” of the Agreement. This means that if the Indigenous group in the future do not think that the Agreement was a fair deal, they have agreed not to go to Court to challenge it.

Certainty language will also require that the parties agree that if one or more parties breaches the agreement and do not keep the promises they made under the Agreement, the other Parties must keep their promises.
A breach of the Treaty by any Party will not relieve any other Party from its obligations under the Treaty.

Indigenous Peoples who have entered into treaties with Canada share the common complaint that Canada has steadfastly refused to honour the terms of the treaty or the promises it has made. Canada maintains that Indigenous Peoples have ceded their aboriginal title through treaties (and therefore that Crown title is absolute over those lands) while not honouring the promises which it made. This clause suggests that the Indigenous group may be forced to honour their agreements (ceding aboriginal title and rights to all areas not included under the Agreement) if Canada and B.C. do not honour the obligations they made. For example, if B.C. decides that it cannot afford to make the payments required under the treaty, or if it minimizes the co-management agreement provisions of the agreement, the Indigenous group will not get their lands and rights back.

Summary
The net impact of the “certainty” provisions sought by Canada and B.C. will be to create a double standard with regard to title and interests in the land. Canada, the province, and third parties have their rights and interests recognized and protected. These rights are not defined or in any way limited by the Agreement. The Indigenous group, on the other hand, have all of their rights reduced to the written word of the Agreement.

These certainty provisions are far more restrictive than any of the “extinguishment language” which has been used in other modern land claims agreements to date.

The goal of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs is to support the work of our people, whether at the community, nation or international level, in our common fight for the recognition of our aboriginal rights and respect for our cultures and societies. Our goal, the goal of the people, has been to give the aboriginal people of BC a voice strong enough to be heard in every corner of the world. Read other articles by Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, or visit Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs's website.

This article was posted on Saturday, March 12th, 2011 at 8:02am

2011-03-17T00:58:00.000-04:00

Haudenosaunee sites of cultural importance damaged in Toronto's largest park

By Catherine Tammaro

| March 11, 2011

http://www.rabble.ca/news/2011/03/haudenosaunee-sites-historical-and-cultural-importance-damaged-torontos-largest-park

Rastia'ta'non:ha, Seneca Nation man; wolf clan and supporters, sit amid a circle of fallen red oaks cradled within the confines of manmade hillocks and valleys on a beautiful High Park afternoon. This sensitive, natural habitat has been stripped of grass, the manmade dips and high points of this once beautiful environment lie barren and desolate. A dead tree stump at the top of the mound stands sentinel to the desecration, large oaks, birch and aspen over arch the place in seeming sadness.
The circle of supporters sits at the lowest point of a valley, on what was known to the ancient First Peoples of the area as Watersnake Mound, in the south end of the park. A red banner tied to a central tree valiantly signifies that this space is now under the protection of the Indigenous People gathered there. The mound is one of 57 purported sites of historical significance within the boundaries of the park.
This mound is, according to Iroquoian oral teachings, a burial site of some 3,000 years, built by people of the Meadowood Culture and is currently an issue of great concern for the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island. For the last 16 years, children and adult BMX bicycle riders have illegally cut into Watersnake Mound, building an unnatural landscape of cycling ramps on the site, possibly having desecrated the tombs of First Peoples buried within.
High Park is the largest park in Toronto. Its 398 acres include recreational areas and wild parkland with varied facilities, gardens, playgrounds and a zoo. One third of the park remains in a natural state, classified as rare oak savannah ecology.
Rastia'ta'non:ha, whose name means "Protector of the Ancestors," has been assigned by Clan Mothers from many fires, on both sides of "The Imaginary Line" (the Canada-U.S. Border), the task of documenting finds there and protecting the mounds and attempting to get Toronto officials to designate this mound and others historically significant sites so that they may be restored and protected.
In order to accomplish these, in his view, sacred and essential tasks, Rastia'ta'non:ha and others have established the Täiäiäkó'n Historical Preservation Society, with the sole mandate of restorating and preserving Thunderbird Mound at Magwood Park, Toronto, and those burial mounds and sites of significance in High Park.
In the society of the Iroquois, or Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse), a consensual decision-making process involves all of the 50 clans contained in the Six Nations of The Confederacy. The People have an ordered, non-hierarchical way of making certain all voices are heard.

"When the people speak, the Clan Mothers make the final decision based on what the people want. They are responsible for all the people in their clans. The Chiefs listen to them as well. The Clan Mothers decided that this whole park needed to be preserved and protected at all costs," said Rastia'ta'non:ha. "They were very upset with what they saw happening here and have said that these activities should never have gone on this long. The people who are doing this, should not be here, this is a burial site," he stated emphatically, "It's upsetting to the ancestors!"
When development of west Toronto was occurring, in 1921, "on a high sandy ridge immediately north of Grenadier pond, at an approximate depth of 90cm, workers discovered a single grave, uncovering eight or 10 red-ochre covered, in-flesh burials. All were in the usual sitting position ..." (Dr. R. B. Orr, Director, Provincial Museum, Canada). It is not known where the remains of the people found in those graves now are. There have since -- in 2009 and 2010 -- been other discoveries of bone fragments there but park officials and city authorities, according to Rastia'ta'non:ha, have been slow to take action to name them as such, despite the tagging of Bear Mound as a bona fide archaeological site.
"Watersnake mound is located near water and this body of water is on the very old map we have," says Rastia'ta'non:ha. "We've found Mica here from West Virginia, Obsidian from Yellowstone Park and further; a shell from the Gulf of Mexico, Red Ochre from "Hells Gate" on the Mattawa River near North Bay, Red Lake, near the Manitoba-Ontario imaginary line, chert (silica chalcedony) that comes from various locations: Fort Erie, Collingwood and further away. We know that many Indigenous People came to trade, live, hunt and fish here and have been doing so for thousands of years. We have found red ochre and aboriginal artifacts that would indicate that this is a gravesite. We have an arrowhead found here, which alone should signify that this is an archaeologically important site! This mound is an indicator of the relationship our people have with the land and signifies how important this place was and is."
History of the Meadowood people
The people of The Meadowood culture lived in three types of communities: semi-permanent base camps, temporary procurement camps, and mortuary sites. Mortuary sites were separate from living areas and were traditionally placed within natural knolls and ridges in the landscape, or near water. Their funerary rituals were elaborate. They sprinkled or painted their dead with red ochre and placed blades, copper, bone and shell beads as well as pottery, pipes, fire-making kits and baskets within the mortuary mounds. The in-flesh burials may have been designated for those of high status such as the Shaman, Chief or Clan Mother and each mound in High Park was aligned cosmically, by having their cardinal features coordinated with solar progressions, as with a giant sundial. They are also aligned geographically with Thunderbird Mound and other sites marking the travel routes of the people who migrated between Ontario and Ohio, where Serpent Mound is located and points beyond.
In 2003, the Province of Ontario's Ministry of Culture designated Bear Mound, just North of Grenadier Restaurant, as "Archaeological site AjGu-45."
"This action may have, in fact, made it difficult for the city to designate the sites as archaeologically significant or protected." says Ms. May Maracle of The Aboriginal Affairs Committee. The purpose of the committee is to make recommendations to City Council regarding the affairs of Aboriginal peoples in Toronto.
"The Preservation Society has had the opportunity to present their case to the Committee but so far that has not happened," said Maracle.
Rastia'ta'non:ha contests Maracle's statement and says the meetings between Täiäiäkó'n and the Committee were continually deferred to unspecified dates and when the meeting was to be held with the archaeologist in charge of the Toronto New Archaeological Master Plan, his organization was not invited to participate. The Aboriginal Affairs Committee had requested the city's archaeologist meet with THPS in 2009, but to this date, there has been no meeting.
Since August 28th of last year, Rastia'ta'non:ha and the city have been involved in a struggle to deal effectively with the Snake Mound issue. Several people have been observed cutting into the mound, he asserts, to find human remains and artifacts, which have surfaced after rainstorms. Barriers have been erected by the Parks and Rec department at the request of the society, and agreements have been struck with park officials as to their maintenance and enforcement by the police, but according to Rastia'ta'non:ha, the park and the city have failed to keep their promises. Monitoring of the area is inconsistent -- cyclists have continually knocked the barricades down late at night and have destroyed or damaged signs posted against illegal cycling there. They have also been seen digging for artifacts and have been verbally abusive, throwing rocks at supporters and making threats to the general park-going public. This culminated in the society lodging a formal complaint to the Mayor's Office, Park Officials, The Police Department and local Members of Parliament on Dec. 9, 2010.
There are videotapes online, of city officials and police in discussion with supporters at the Aug. 28 ceremony date of last year. In the tapes officials promise support however at other times, people claiming to be park workers have been witnessed giving shovels to children and telling them to "dig anywhere."
There are several bylaws which apply to this situation: the bylaw against digging in the park, Bylaw 608-29 sec a-d against biking off designated trials in the park; there is a criminal law against desecrating graves in Ontario and the Environmental Protection Act. Section 74 of the Cemeteries Act, covers the cemeteries of Indigenous peoples in Ontario.
Ms. Wynna Brown, the acting operations support coordinator for The Department of Parks and Recreation attests there have been no archaeological findings there but did not respond to an email request for the archaeologist's name and details of the types of assessments carried out. She did state, however, that stage one and two assessments had been completed but did not provide further details on the methods used or whether or not the assessment process was concluded. Brown also stated plainly that the city only works with bon fide groups that the Aboriginal Affairs Committee approves of.
The coroner's office follows certain procedures about dealing with human remains, as they must establish the circumstances around their location and whether or not they are linked to a possible homicide. When skeletal remains are found, if they are identified as such by a visual appraisal, they are forwarded to a forensic anthropologist who may further test them to establish their age. Despite the fact that police have been called to the site several times to keep people from cycling there and that the fragments were visually appraised by a coroner, their offices in Toronto stated to me they were unfamiliar with the case mentioned. Rastia'ta'non:ha has submitted the fragments found at Bear Mound to one of the DNA labs in Ontario, which specialize in forensic tests and dating of ancient human bone. He is currently awaiting results.
Rastia'ta'non:ha said the coroner did come to the site on May 10, 2009 to appraise the fragments and three days later determined that they were stone by visual appraisal but no further testing occurred. Other fragments were found lying on the ground after a rain in Aug. 2009, along with red ochre and other burial indicators. The police from 11 Division were called but refused to deal with the issue following the protocols under Ontario Cemeteries Act.
In August they told Rastia'ta'non:ha and witnesses at the site to "deal with the issue themselves" then left the scene.
Park officials have said that the assessment report has not yet come in. Rastia'ta'non:ha feels the damage to the place is apparent and should not require further delays in restoring the mounds. Activists have been warned against demolishing the bike ramps in fact, they would be arrested if they attempt to level the dirt jumps with any implements.
"We should not have to have anyone's permission to do this, these are the gravesites of our grandmothers' and grandfathers' ancestors!" said Rastia'ta'non:ha. In his view, archaeological assessments are destructive to ancient gravesites. He feels that the teachings and lore of his people should be enough to set the place as a sacred site and doing so could be very good for the city's reputation and subsequently generate revenue for the park. According to Rastia'ta'non:ha, when John Howard bequeathed High Park to the city, it was on the condition that the Six Nations continue their custodial role over the park and in particular, the sites themselves. They have strongly stated that it is their duty and spiritual obligation to maintain the mounds and their connection to the ancestors, for future generations of all people.
Notwithstanding difficulties in legislating this area as an Indigenous peoples burial site, there are other issues at stake. The area has already been deemed environmentally sensitive, as Trilliums and several species of Oak grow there which are shielded under Ontario's environmental protection laws. "On that count alone both High Park officials and the city have not stepped up to the plate in terms of protection of this area. There are protected tree root systems being destroyed, trilliums are being trampled on, not to mention all the animal species that live here. Their habitat is being eradicated."
Six Nations Confederacy Chief, Arnold General; Beaver Clan of the Onondaga Nation, does not understand why the park officials and city politicians are not letting people know about what is happening at Watersnake Mound. "This is our heritage," said the chief, "Treaties were signed with the government in good faith. Our rights are being eradicated, our lands taken away. I know what my ancestors told me, that anything related to the burial of our people should be left alone and protected. Why is it, that if we stand up for our rights, we are thought of as bad people when this land was ours to begin with?"
Rastia'ta'non:ha says that he believes that the restoration of the mounds in High Park will create a domino effect regarding the recognition of these sites all over the world. Said Chief General, "It would be nice if we were all of one mind around this issue. The way the city is dealing with this is degrading to our people."
Activists are trying to get the word out to those who may be supportive. An environmentalist involved with Täiäiäkó'n says he thinks this will be a step-by-step process accomplished in increments. "Essentially, you have to have a long view of what you want to do and be very clear about what your goals are. We're willing to work with the city peacefully and let them speak and do, as opposed to protesting and barricading. We feel that will make them more willing to help. Rastia'ta'non:ha has been amazing to work with and we are privileged and honoured to be working with him. It's a long process. Bottom line, this is a health and safety issue, this place is unsafe, there is broken glass everywhere, drug paraphernalia have been found here; the soil is eroding, it's dangerous for the children!"
Two Feathers Down, a Seneca man from Kentucky, says he feels if the people cycling on the ramps knew there were graves there, they would not be so eager to ride over them. He feels it doesn't matter whose graves they are, the fact that they're there, means they should be dealt with in a respectful way.
"The people of Toronto from all cultures are being damaged by the way this is being handled. This is a part of the city's history and there could be great benefit by recognizing that this ancient burial mound system is within its jurisdiction." He also feels that the police should address the person or persons, who are encouraging the children to be belligerent and abusive to the people trying to do the work of having the mounds recognized and preserved.
"We have suggested to the police and the city that BMX ramps be built elsewhere says Rastiatanon:ha," we are concerned for the riders who are taking risks both from a safety perspective and also from a spiritual perspective. The gravesites of the ancestors were protected when they were built, we do not want to see anyone get hurt here. Each grave," he elucidates, "was sealed with a blessing and a curse."
Two Feathers Down asserted that Indigenous People will come from as many as thirty US States and from as far north as the Arctic Circle if Rastia'ta'non:ha puts the word out that he needs help. "People from every direction are watching and waiting for the word."
Rastia'ta'non:ha is eloquent when stating that his cultural beliefs and practices encompass all aspects of life; the past present and future, "So when we do things, and we say things, we do them with what will happen seven generations down the road in mind. For me this is all encompassing. It carries over into all life. It's not just the ancestors, it is now and the future, because without these mounds, the footprint of the Haudenosaunee will be erased."
Catherine Tammaro is a digital artist, painter, musician and freelance writer living in Toronto. Her works have been exhibited in both traditional and alternative gallery spaces and her written and visual works have been published in various journals and publications in Toronto and internationally. Some of Catherine's art, music and witting can be found by clicking here, here, here and here.

--
Connie Kidd
Hamilton ON

http://grannyrantson.blogspot.com/
My Canada includes rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Love it or Leave it!
Peace.

2011-03-17T00:56:00.000-04:00

"The Disappeared of Canada : How and Why the Killings Have Never Stopped

A Sequel to last issue's article "Child trafficking in Beautiful British Columbia " in The Agora newspaper By Kevin D. Annett www.hiddenfromhistory.org "Ten of the last dozen women to be taken to the killing site at Piggy's Palace were accompanied by Mounties or regular cops. You think it was just Willie Picton who was killing them?"

Marion, sex trade worker, downtown eastside of Vancouver , May 10, 2006 In October of 1992, when I was still a United Church clergyman, I was approached by a colleague at my first Presbytery meeting in Nanaimo . The topic of child abuse came up, and after a few moments, the other man, a retired minister, smiled and gave me a sort of insider's look. He lowered his voice and said to me, "It's easy to get a child in this town." I must have looked shocked, for his smile faded. "What do you mean?" I said. "Nothing" he replied. "Some people are, you know, interested in that sort of thing." It all felt like an offer, masked but real, like a sort of masonic handshake: something known to insiders only. The same man had worked in the United Church 's Alberni Indian residential school for years, and piloted one of the "mission boats" that visited coastal Indian villages. One of my native parishioners later accused him of raping her as a child, but the RCMP threatened her not to press charges. Later, after I was fired from the church for asking too many questions, I learned of the well-protected child trafficking network that linked the coastal residential schools with wealthy men and clubs in Vancouver . Just how many children disappeared into those clubs and never emerged is unknown; but they are among the more than 50,000 residential school children who cannot be accounted for. "No crime ever disappears; it just adapts" a journalist once told me. And in British Columbia, the crime of abducting people is rampant, on the rise, and very lucrative, since it is part of a deadly international network in human trafficking. George Brown is a retired aboriginal RCMP officer who was part of a community-based "Missing Persons' Task Force" in Vancouver . His group documented hundreds of missing people until their work began to identify the complicity of local police, politicians and businessmen in the disappearances. At that point, George's group disbanded. "We didn't want to get killed" George told me during a videotaped interview in the summer of 2005. "I was called up by a senior officer in the force and told, `George, the number of disappeared women is nine, and it's going to stay at nine. Stop sticking your nose where it doesn't belong or you may lose it.' The fact is I personally know two fellow Mounties who were linked with Picton and making money by bringing girls out to his place. None of the girls ever came back. Everybody knows about it." I asked George who "everybody" was. The world-weary man shook his head sadly. "The Mayor. The Chief of Police. All the senior press people. Hell, you can't get into those positions without making a deal with the drug lords who run this town. The days of organized crime as a separate thing are over. It's all business run and legit now. It's organized corporate crime now � the drug importers from Asia and the real estate developers and the off shore investors, they're all part of the same gang. The cops all work for them. And body snatching pays well." George Brown's group documented a link between the disappeared women of the downtown eastside and the trans-pacific organ trafficking network based in China . According to sources within the network, at least a dozen women and men are abducted and murdered every month in Vancouver , their bodies disposed of in protected grave sites on the north shore, and their organs shipped overseas. Most of the disappeared are homeless men, transient youth or sex trade workers. A year after I interviewed George Brown, I was given more confirmation of his groups' claims. I received a message to meet a woman named Annie Parker at Oppenheimer Park in Vancouver 's downtown eastside. Annie was a short, timid woman with haunted eyes and scars along her neck and arms. "I got these by threatening to go to the press with what I knew" she said matter of factly, pointing to the scars. "Who did it to you?" I asked. She told me the man's name, a senior RCMP officer, and then said, "Who doesn't matter. They're all doing it. It's called the `hooker game'. The Vancouver cops will pick up girls off the street, drug them with scopolamine and film them as they fuck them, in a cop club downtown on Georgia street . Then sometimes they kill the girls and film that too, and sell it for $25,000 as a snuff film." I asked her what happens to the bodies. "That was one of Steve Picton's specialties. I met all the Pictons. Steve runs a snuff film operation in Coquitlam and then he dumps the bodies at a hunting camp about ten miles up from Horseshoe Bay , near the Sea to Sky highway. There's a special grave site there with sealed containers in a metal cistern. I was taken there, I seen it. It's watched over by the Mounties." Les Guerin is an aboriginal man who lives and works as a maintenance man on the Musequam Indian reserve near the University of B.C. He claims that the reserve holds at least two body dumping sites from which he personally has excavated human remains, and had them forensically examined. "As far back as 1989 I saw a man who I later identified as Willie Picton drive onto the Musqueam reserve and bury several large bags. Later when I saw his face on the news, I dug up the bags and had them examined at a lab at SFU. The report says they contain human and pig bones remains, including the humerus, pelvis and skull pieces of a young woman in her twenties. "The weird thing is I told the Vancouver Police, the press, everybody about this, and nothing was ever done. I sent the police the forensic report, me and my buddy Jim Kew, I told the CBC and even the lawyers for the families of Picton's victims. Nothing. The cops roped off the site in 2006 and that was that." A signed letter from Musqueam Band Housing Officer Glenn Guerin dated October 29, 2004 indicates that Dave Picton was employed by the Museum Indian band for a three month contract during 1990 to provide land fill for local street construction. Frustrated by the lack of police response, in December of 2005, Les Guerin mailed the bone fragments he obtained from the Picton deposit, along with the forensic report, to Amnesty International's head office in London , England. The package was returned unopened the following month. Next month, the eyes of the world will be on British Columbia and its Olympics. But will those eyes perceive the missing men, women and children whose remains lie scattered in hidden graves � and the authorities who put them there? Will the visiting world media record the truth of those who continue to disappear? Most important, will the killings be stopped? That depends on us. ��. Rev. Kevin Annett is a community minister, educator and award-winning film maker who lives and works in Vancouver 's downtown eastside. He is a member of the revived Community Task Force into Missing Persons. For more information on this Group, and for a copy of their recent report on which this article is based, contact Kevin at: hiddenfromhistory@... or 1-888-265-1007 (messages). His website is: www.hiddenfromhistory.org"

http://thetyee.cachefly.net/Books/2010/09/12/dtes-missing-women.jpg

--
Connie Kidd
Hamilton ON

http://grannyrantson.blogspot.com/
My Canada includes rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Love it or Leave it!
Peace.

2011-03-17T00:52:00.000-04:00

Where are the children BURIED? . . .
Truth and Reconciliation Commission looking into most horrible chapter of
painful residential schools saga
By: Alexandra Paul
Posted: 02/19/2011
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/fyi/where-are-the-children-buried-116524718.html

No one knows how many children died in residential schools.
No one knows how many graves were dug for them.
And there is no peace without knowing.
Research at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is underway to get
a grip on
the approximate number of missing children and unmarked graves at residential
schools in Canada, including on the Prairies.
Justice Murray Sinclair, chairman of the three-member commission, said the
tragedy of the missing children is a chapter that casts a deep shadow on the
saga of residential schools.
That children died and went missing isn't in dispute.
It's part of the record and the memory, such as the story Joe Harper recounted
of how his friend Joseph died in obscurity at the Cross Lake
residential school.
Fifty years on, it still rankles him.
"There was never a funeral for him," Harper said outside one of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission tents set up to hear survivor accounts last June at
The Forks. "I don't even know how his parents ever found out."
One question likely to remain a mystery is how many Josephs were at the schools.
"We are, quite frankly, not going to be able to say how many children died in
the schools or say where they are all buried, and what happened to them after
they died," Sinclair said recently at the commission's downtown Winnipeg
offices.
Nevertheless, he said it's essential to tackle the issue as part of the
residential schools legacy.
To get the work done, the commission has hired Alex Maass, a former Indian
Affairs civil servant who is an anthropology expert on gravesites. This month,
Greg Younging, a professor of indigenous studies at the University of British
Columbia, was appointed assistant director of research. One of his jobs is to
oversee the Missing Children Project.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Canada's provincial governments were in
place, along with requirements for deaths to be reported as they occurred.
While residential school deaths may have been reported, there are few death
certificates attached to student files in old archives. Finding out what
happened to each child would involve matching church and government records to
Vital Statistics files.
"In order to properly document the children who died in the schools and where
they are located, you'd have to go through millions and millions of pages of
archival material," Sinclair said.
The commission isn't equipped to complete the herculean task.
Even then, there are too many gaps in the records to clear up every death and
every missing child.
The best the commission can do is try to identify the magnitude of the problem,
Sinclair said. "And once we have, there will be better information for a
decision to be made about what to do about it."
The commission hopes to have enough information to suggest further research and ways to commemorate the graves.
Survivors' accounts are part of the historical record and will be used in the research. Documents to corroborate those accounts are, not surprisingly, hard to find.
"We've heard stories from survivors that babies were born in the schools to mothers who'd been impregnated by teachers and by priests. They say their babies were taken away. They think their babies were killed," Sinclair said. "We don't know the extent to which that occurred, if at all."
Records show there was a practice followed when children died.
"The local principal of the school would make contact with the family and basically say, 'What do you want us to do with your child? He's dead. He drowned when he was running away or he died of disease.' Sometimes there was no effort made to contact the family. They just buried the child."
Depending on the era, there might be a few deaths per year or dozens.
John Milloy, author of National Crime, the most extensive book on Canadian residential schools, has said that reports dating back as far as 1907 show 24 to 42 per cent of children in some schools died of tuberculosis. He said nearly every school he knew of had a cemetery on the grounds.
Records cited in the commission's 2010 study on missing children contained very few references to those cemeteries.
With gaps and discrepancies like that, investigators have their work cut out for them.
"We need to be sensitive to the fact there is a great deal of misinformation and non-information out there," Sinclair said.
Google "residential schools" to get a glimpse of how the fate of missing children decades ago is a super-sensitive and sensational issue today.
Scores of sites pop up, referring to the Canadian Holocaust, in which 50,000 children died or disappeared. The figure is widely reported, but also considered likely a dramatic overstatement.
Many of the sites feature former United Church minister Kevin Arnett from British Columbia, the self-appointed crusader for families who lost children in residential schools. His contribution fuels a debate that's disturbing enough without potentially exaggerated claims.
Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice ordered a working group in 2008 to define the scope of the problem in the wake of Arnett's polarizing allegations and their impact on survivors.
The working group found that children had gone missing and graves were not uncommon. The issue was handed on to the commission.
"There are people out there able to take advantage of the mistrust between survivors and the government and maximize their fear and their anger," Sinclair said. "That means there can be no peace until there are some answers."
alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca

2011-02-02T20:26:00.000-05:00

G20 police: Weighing in

Reading this article and especially the comments made me think about where I really stand on the issues of (alleged) excessive force (assault) by police, police, removing or obscuring their badge numbers, arresting peaceful protestors (allegedly) unnecessarily, etc.

http://m.ctv.ca/topstories/20110202/g20-officer-second-charge-110202.html

Commenters seem to take polar opposite views, either totally supporting or totally opposing police. I do not share either of those extreme views, but perhaps my view will be considered even more extreme:

I think police officers and their unions should encourage their misbehaving colleagues to come clean and turn themselves in, and support them in doing so.
(Is that sarcastic laughter I hear? Hear me out.)

Sometimes we hear that police get frustrated because people with knowledge of crimes will not speak up. Well, this is the same thing: Police won't speak up about crimes of their fellow officers. Every time an officer keeps quiet, an injustice is done by those we depend on for justice, and another piece of the public trust is lost. How would police do their jobs if the public didn't help and support them by reporting crimes and criminals? Police jobs would become increasingly difficult and dangerous and crime rates would increase.
But why would the public help if police repeatedly arrest innocent people, use excessive force on arrestees - ie beat them up - and then lie about it, and cover up for each other, all lying to the public and the justice system? How is that any different, any more excusable than anybody who assaults any person and then he and his whole community lie about it? In my opinion, it is no different, except that the crimes of the officers are much more egregious because they are paid by the public to 'serve and protect' the public. That's called biting the hand that feeds you, never wise, and in fact these are crimes against democracy committed by protectors of democracy.

In the olden days, before cell phones with video cameras were everywhere, and videos and blog reports were not posted and available worldwide within seconds, back in the innocent (or fearful?) times when the police could easily cover up misbehaviour, the public could also turn a blind eye. Back then, 'nice Canadians' did not protest in the streets, just "union thugs" and "communists" did that. Well, that all changed starting in the 1960's when ordinary, even revered people took to the streets to improve democracy by fighting segregation and racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., protesting wars of aggression, cuts to social services, unfair labour practices, and a variety of human rights and other issues. I walked beside church ministers, social workers, nurses, reporters, teachers, steelworkers, office workers, farmers, university students and professors. The police have learned some lessons about policing democratic protests, but the traditional 'old boys' police culture has not changed fast enough to keep up, and now technology and savvy citizens are exposing the ugly underbelly of policing, where officers are criminals and cover up for criminal officers.

The exposure will ultimately be a good thing, cleansing the forces of officers who commit and cover up crimes, and depend on those methods to 'get their man'. Before that cleansing can occur, however, Police Commissions, the Brass and every officer will have to commit themselves to changing the secrecy culture that hides criminals among their ranks.

No matter what your job is, few people want to squeal on coworkers. However, some people might, for the protection of others, privately confront a colleague with the information, expect them to change, and support them through a change in behaviour. That's what I expect police and their unions to do, to police themselves, to uphold high standards for policing, and to be accountable to the public for both their actions and their truthfulness.

As police tell criminals and witnesses, it is in their best interests to be cooperative, tell the whole story, and the police and courts may be more lenient. The same applies to police: If those guilty of bad behaviour and those who know about it come clean, learn lessons and reform, the public will be more forgiving and policing will be more effective, with better public trust in officers.

When police attempt to incite riots to shut down peaceful protests, as the Surete Quebec did at the 2002 Summit of the Americas, when police bludgeon grandmotherly unionists/public employees as the OPP did at Queens Park in 1997, when police randomly attack people without cause as Toronto Police did to OCAP protesters at Queens Park in 2000, or when they detain (in the rain), violently attack or arrest over 1000 peaceful protesters and innocent bystanders, as during the G20 in Toronto 2010 ... then we have a violent police state. When people are afraid to associate, assemble, or speak freely in public for fear of police/state violence against them, then democracy and democratic freedom no longer exist in Canada.

We need a full judicial national inquiry into police actions at the G20 to fully expose those actions, including AND ESPECIALLY a thorough investigation of the entire chain of command: Toronto Police Services (the chosen fall guys?), OPP, RCMP, CSIS, and the PMO.

Would 90 (or more?) police officers independently and spontaneously hide their identities without sanction of superior officers?
I doubt it.
Would superior officers give such instructions without sanction from other authorities?
I doubt that too.

In fact, this whole thing stinks of rot at the top, not hard to imagine with a 'government' already known to be a one man show by a man who thus undermines our democracy and openly despises human rights . The violations of Charter rights at the Toronto 2010 G20 protests need to be investigated individually, and also as an orchestrated event.

If police officers on the street want to regain the trust of the public that they need to do their jobs, and protect democracy as is their job, they and their unions will support each other in telling the WHOLE truth.
imo
granny

2011-02-01T01:48:00.001-05:00

Freedom of information in Canada? Not much!
http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canada-ranks-last-in-freedom-of-information-study/article1863083/?service=mobile
In other words, business as usual in Canada's government - Make pretty laws, and do everything possible to evade them.

2011-02-01T01:33:00.000-05:00

'Indian' Affairs Canada ignores its own duty to consult Indigenous Peoples
http://firstnationsmanitoba.com/horizons/?p=648

2011-02-01T01:26:00.000-05:00

Aboriginal Law conference: Duty to consult
http://www.canadianinstitute.com/AboriginalLaw/agenda.htm

2011-02-01T01:16:00.000-05:00

It's too bad you didn't report on the Q&A, because your report is consequently incomplete and not balanced.

Audience members asked pointed and persistent questions about the wisdom of Blatchford writing a book about 'Caledonia' while ignoring and dismissing the legal context of Six Nations' land and Aboriginal rights.

Aboriginal rights are constitutional rights, the supreme 'rule of law' in Canada and as such,the first responsibility ofthe police. That doesn't excuse any offsite personal or property damage, and charges were laid, albeit not in the middle of angry mobs. Many Six Nations people went to court, some went to jail, and some felt the disapproval of their Six Nations peers and Elders for their inappropriate actions too.

Those who criticize police but were not there at the time, like Christie Blatchford and anti-native activist Gary McHale (whose biased 'research' Blatchford relied on heavily for her book), simply do not grasp the reality that faced the OPP: There are 24 000 Six Nations men, women and children, every one of them a 'warrior' in the struggle for their rights. The police could be outnumbered and overwhelmed in a matter of minutes, and the women usually took the lead as they are responsible for the land. Police were aware that Canadians would not approve of shooting Aboriginal people: Brute strength and guns were not the answer, and despite mistakes and missteps on all sides, NOBODY DIED THIS TIME!

If there is a lesson in this for Blatchford, McHale and for all Canadians, it is that Aboriginal rights cannot be ignored or dismissed: They are the "rule of law" in Canada and internationally. Angry mobs of Canadians screaming at police won't change that. Nor will Blatchford's unrealistic, poorly 'researched' and thoroughly biased book.
What needs to change is our governments' 'political will' to resolve Aboriginal rights issues across the country, and that 'political will' must come from us: Our MPs and MPPs and municipal councils must all feel the pressure from Canadians to implement real solutions locally, provincially and nationally.

2011-02-01T01:10:00.000-05:00

Honouring police is a two way street

Thank you Michael Valpy.
Perhaps when all the G20 investigations are over, there will be an apology to the people of Toronto and the protesters for treating them like criminals, and to all Canadians for disrespecting democratic process. The entire chain of command is implicated, but the 'boots on the street' are each individually responsible for upholding the charter rights of each and every citizen, protester or not.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2011/01/19/f-vp-valpy-toronto-police-funeral-ryan-russell.html

2011-02-01T00:53:00.000-05:00

The oldest civilization in the Americas.

http://www.thefullwiki.org/Norte_Chico_civilization

2011-02-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

"Mass graves" and "victims" of Canada's 'Indian' Residential Schools (as well as "survivors") enter the mainstream discussion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
About half of the children forced to attend the schools died there. There are no official records of their deaths, their families were usually not informed and the graves, some of them mass graves, were unmarked, and still are.

Many died from tuberculosis in the early 1900's. During that era, treatment of tuberculosis reduced its impact substantially among Canadians. However, NO TREATMENT WAS PROVIDED to Indigenous children in the crowded schools despite the efforts of the Medical officer at the time, Dr. Peter Bryce. Death rates among the children skyrocketed from 1900 to the 1950's.

Though the UN Convention on Genocide passed in 1948, Canada refused to sign it until 2000, after all of the government residential schools closed. Are we blind enough to believe this is coincidence?
This is Canada's genocide, finally becoming mainstream news, too late for the more than 50 000 children who died from Canada's intentional 'negligence'. Our governments were and are complicit in genocide and in the ongoing cover up.

http://www.bclocalnews.com/okanagan_similkameen/kelownacapitalnews/news/114397944.html

2011-01-15T03:36:00.000-05:00

Harper ignored duty to consult, delays North Warning System

The federal government is aware that it has a duty to consult with Aboriginal communities and to accommodate their rights on all of their traditional lands (not just "land claims settlements"). The feds ignored their fiduciary duty and ties responsibility to uphold the 'honour of the Crown' by failing to engage in appropriate consultations ahead of construction related to the North Warning System (formerly the DEW line). The Aboriginal governments have now invoked their rights, causing Harper to delay the project.

DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL!
As proscribed by the Supreme Court, the duty to consult Aboriginal peoples applies to all traditional lands, ie, all of Canada, a fact that the powers that be in Canada are trying to hide.
--
http://www.theprovince.com/mobile/news/national-news/Exclusive Aboriginal consultations delay tender Arctic radar chain/4105238/story.html

2011-01-15T03:31:00.000-05:00

Well it sounds like Royal Bank is covering its 'options' and keeping quiet about its new social policy, hoping First Nations will agree to the 10% revenue sharing offered. http://communities.canada.com/calgaryherald/blogs/pipeline/archive/2010/12/22/environmentalists-ride-rbc-social-policy.aspx

2011-01-14T01:47:00.000-05:00

Duty to consult First Nations a new way of doing business
-- First Nations and all Indigenous Peoples of Canada are speaking up, persisting in implementing the treaties, now proscribed by the Supreme Court of Canada as the duty to meaningfully consult and to adequately accommodate Aboriginal and treaty rights.

We live on Aboriginal land by treaties "to a plough's depth", and by the treaties, Indigenous Peoples retain their traditional rights to sustain themselves from the land too ... all traditional territory, regardless of 'land claims' ... all of the land.

The National/Financial Post (Aug10/10) addressed the effect this is having on the oil sands and the entire resource sector, a new way of doing business, with Aboriginal communities now as business partners with a say in development and a share in revenues.

Municipalities have some knowledge of the duty to consult and some may be doing so. A Hamilton judge said it didn't say it applied in every circumstance. A Brantford judge said there's nothing that says it doesn't apply.

Saugeen Objibwa Nation and Owen Sound: "duty to consult First Nations ... a new way of doing business"
http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2924831

2011-01-07T23:20:00.000-05:00

cont'd
As I was saying (now in more than 1000 characters;)
I am a Canadian taxpayer, supporting the federal government's 'Aboriginal industry' administering the 'Indian' Act, devouring millions for high paid people to drag out 'land claims', etc.
Contrary to some opinions, we/Canada/the Crown have not "stolen" any Aboriginal land.
We/Canada/the Crown - via 'Indian' Affairs - hold the land in trust, with fiduciary duty to administer the land and deposit to First Nation accounts the proceeds of land transactions and activities, according to treaties, and to withdraw for Aboriginal community support (administration, governance, roads, water, education, health, etc.).

So ... billion dollar 'Indian' Affairs industry ... Show us the public accounts, the money trail, for the lands of the Haldimand Tract.
If lands were surrendered to, entrusted to, the Crown for sales and leases, show us the income and debit accounts for the trust funds.
I want to see the bottom line.
Show us the federal money trail for the Haldimand Tract lands. If INAC accepted payment for Six Nations land, INAC should have accounts showing the deposits and withdrawals for Six Nations accounts. If Six Nations sold or leased land and takes annual payouts from its account, the books should be available.
If land was sold, and paid for, what's the delay in producing that information? After all, it matters not so much what the intentions were, as what was done.
Show us the money trail!
And don't send 3 high paid (we pay!), politically correct (long winded)'communicators'. For my dime,
just one accountant and the books will do.

Judge Arrell (Brantford) said Six Nations intended to surrender the land. And then ... ?
I knew someone who intended to sell some land once, signed the agreement, but never got the money. He still owns the land. Clear cut. It's sold or it's not.
So just show us the money trail for the Haldimand Tract land Six Nations sold.
I'm being repetitive, I know, and I respect that there may be issues about whether or not some or all of Six Nations may have 'intended' to sell land or not ... but I'm just a Canadian taxpayer, and I just want the answer from my government: Did we sell the land on their behalf, and did the money appropriately accrue to their account?

2011-01-06T13:30:00.001-05:00

SHOW ME THE MONEY! Aboriginal land 'surrenders' and Canada's federal accounts

We are all somewhat familiar with the contentious discussions that occur about Aboriginal rights and titles issues: Did they/didn't they freely and properly 'surrender' the land to Canada? The proper legal manner of surrender is described in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, still law in Canada under our Constitution (1867, 1982).
Those discussions can and do go on forever, often ad nauseam, as people on both sides of the Caledonia conflict can attest. However, such discussions - heated debates usually - are simply clever distractions from the real issue of ... MONEY! ... WHERE IS IT ??? If, for example, the Haudenosaunee Six Nations people 'surrendered' most of the Haldimand Tract, where is the federal accounting for the money thus owed to Six Nations account?
I am a Canadian taxpayer. We fund Canada's 'Aboriginal industry', millions (billions?) per year spent in those 'ad nauseam' discussions designed to evade the money issue.

2011-01-03T23:52:00.001-05:00

RBC: No consent, no pipeline $
--
The Royal Bank of Canada has agreed not to finance the Enbridge pipeline without consent of Indigenous Peoples whose traditional territories it would cross, who have made their objections clear.
The article refers to the principle of "free prior informed consent" in the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Also referenced by the language used is the legal duty of "the Crown" in Canada to consult meaningfully with Indigenous Peoples and adequately accommodate their (Constitutional) Aboriginal and treaty rights.

Governments drag out "specific land claims" (for title) endlessly, but the Supreme Court has ruled that agreement on development on traditional/treaty lands is immediate. It underlies protests by Indigenous communities across Canada, including the Haudenosaunee Six Nations in Southern Ontario (Nanfan Treaty).

http://mobile.thestar.com/mobile/business/article/911588

Kudos to RAN !
;-)

2011-01-03T01:11:00.001-05:00

Caledonia: "No one's hiding it, it's racist."

Looking back ...
http://sixnationssupporter.blogspot.com/2006/10/caledonia_25.html

2010-12-30T00:00:00.001-05:00

The Anglican church ran about 25% of the 'Indian' Residential Schools
and reports about 100 000 students.
Now that's odd, because the federal government reports only 100 000
students in total, or sometimes 150 000.

It's known that death rates in residential schools were 25 to 50%: an
estimated 50 000 students died in the schools.

But if 25% of the schools had 100 000 students, the total number of
students in all schools must have been closer to 400 000, and the
number of students who died, then, would have been 150 000 to 200
000.

Perhaps the Truth and Reconciliation Commission will clarify, but they
are still using the government's number, 100 000 to 150 000 students
in total. These numbers represent all students from 1872 to 1996 when
the last school closed.

80 000 survivors are still alive. This undisputed fact alone tells
the truth about the government's numbers: It is impossible that
half of all 1872-1990 students are still alive. Indian Affairs must clarify.

2010-12-27T16:57:00.000-05:00

Hunt begins for long-missing students

Neglected graves probed in renewed effort to solve mystery of aboriginal children's fates

Article
Comments (40)

BILL CURRY

From Monday's Globe and Mail

October 27, 2008 at 3:44 AM EDT

OTTAWA — The federal government is mapping burial sites at former residential schools as researchers try to identify how many of the estimated thousands of native children who went missing from the schools are buried in unmarked or anonymous graves.

Cemeteries scattered across Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario have been identified by researchers. Some of the graves have single white wooden crosses bearing no name. Others do not include even a cross.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission asked for the material before its head, Mr. Justice Harry LaForme, resigned unexpectedly last week after accusing the two other commissioners of being too focused on the commission's mandate to uncover truth about residential schools, at the expense of reconciliation.

Cemetery research is part of an attempt by the federal government to understand precisely what happened to the residential school students who disappeared.

It is a massive and sensitive issue. Native leaders and successive federal governments have said they simply do not know who or how many students of the residential schools even died, never mind where they might be buried.

While many community leaders, including elders and a former United Church minister, have spoken of unmarked graves on the sites of residential schools before, this is the first time federal researchers have attempted to compile documentary evidence as to the extent of these discoveries.

The material obtained by The Globe and Mail was completed by two researchers at Indian Residential Schools Resolutions Canada.

Their findings, submitted in an April, 2008, report, reveal several schools had cemeteries on school grounds.

The reason for the placement of cemeteries on the school grounds is not given in the research documents. But in the case of two schools in particular, the researchers found detailed documents describing graves without markings.

Indian Affairs documents reveal bodies were accidentally unearthed in 1992 on the grounds of the former Muskowekwan Indian Residential School in Lestock, Sask., which was run by Catholic missionaries. The graves were uncovered during a construction project to build a new sewer line on the property.

"On July 21, 1992, workers with N.I.S. Construction Ltd. uncovered three unmarked graves," the Indian Affairs document states. "On July 22, an additional 15 graves were encountered. They were located in a row paralleling the new gravity sewer main north of residence 0210-01. The contractor indicated there was evidence of another row of graves north of the first row encountered ... All remains unearthed were placed in plastic bags and stored in a locked building."

The document says the local band council was then notified and construction was halted. The band manager for Muskowekwan First Nation declined comment for this story, as did the manager of the youth centre now operating in the former residential school.

At another school, the St. John's Indian Residential School in Alberta (also known as Wabasca Residential School), the researchers found a document from 1961 describing how the principal came across an unmarked cemetery. A second letter indicates the unidentified principal ultimately cleaned up the site and erected 110 white crosses.

"The place was a terrible mess, so much underbrush," according to one of the letters. "Even though it is not finished, one can see a great improvement in it all, at least it is not woods now."

Anglican priest Richard Waye has been serving the Cree community of Wabasca for the past nine years. He said the community's large graveyard dates back to 1895 and is well maintained by the community, including support from the Big Stone Cree Nation. Rev. Waye said old crosses are replaced with new ones.

"I've never heard anything like that," he said when told of the 1961 entry by the principal. "If it ever happened that the cemetery had come into disrepair, I don't think that it would have been because of any lack of respect. ... Everything here is well maintained and it's respectful."

Rev. Waye said "99.9" per cent of the people attending his masses are Crees with ties to the residential school.

"My impression is that people still attend the church because of the positive experience they had as children in St. John's school," he said.

Detailed records related to the Edmonton Indian Residential School include a principal's letter from 1955, stating: "Some years ago the Indian Affairs branch asked for room on the property ... for a small graveyard in which to bury deceased Indians and Eskimos from Camsell Hospital whose homes are too far in the North to return the bodies for burial. The boys at the School keep the ground in reasonable condition for no remuneration but they get paid for digging graves."

Another reference to a document from 1945 suggests the Alberta Blood band council was aware of a cemetery at the Blood Indian Residential School (also known as St. Mary's), and wanted the graves dug deeper to prevent "effluvia" near the girls' playground

The researchers found a comment on the issue from the federal Indian Agent, stating: "While it is appreciated that in Winter particularly, it is difficult to get the Indians to do the work suitably, may we ask that this request be placed before the Indians when digging Graves."

The day after a Globe and Mail investigation reported in April, 2007, on the fact that thousands of native children likely died at Indian Residential Schools due to diseases like tuberculosis and possible neglect, the Conservative government promised to investigate.

"It is unimaginable to any parent that your child would go away to school and not return," then-Indian Affairs minister Jim Prentice said

at the time, announcing that the mandate of the Truth

and Reconciliation Commission would be expanded to include an investigation of unmarked graves and missing children.

But a separate paper dated September, 2008, suggests that approach was not the government's first instinct. Bob Watts, the commission's former executive director, who no longer works at the commission, wrote that Mr. Prentice was planning to tell the House of Commons, if asked about it during Question Period, that it had no information about the issue of "Missing Children and Unmarked Burials."

"I wrote back the author of the [Question Period] card, and asked whether or not this was true," Mr. Watts wrote. He then describes how a meeting was then hastily called and a decision was made to form a working group to study the matter and provide advice to the commissioners.

Mr. Watts then writes that Mr. Prentice's office was a "model of non-interference" as the working group began its research.

When The Globe requested all documents related to this working group, the government provided a highlyredacted version of a briefing note on the issue.

The Globe has also obtained a draft version of the non-redacted document.

It is a research paper into missing children and asks that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission undertake to discover how many residential students died and who they were, what they died from and where they are buried.

Native elders have for decades provided anecdotal evidence that schoolchildren died and their fellow students were forced to bury them.

The issue of unmarked graves was not specifically explored by the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. That report recommended an independent public inquiry be called to examine the effects of residential schools.

The boarding schools were part of an overall federal policy started in the first years of Canada's founding to assimilate aboriginals into the increasingly dominant population of European immigrants.

Partnering with churches that were already established throughout Canada as part of their missionary work, Ottawa built the residential schools and paid churches on a per capita basis to take in native children and teach them a mix of agricultural skills and traditional schooling.

*****

Buried, not forgotten

1. St. John's

Indian Residential School

Wabasca, Alta.

Anglican

Also known as Wabasca

Residential School

opened 1895; new school built in 1949; closed 1966

The IRSC report quotes a 1961 letter from an unidentified school principal who describes a cemetery with unmarked graves that is "a terrible mess." A letter written three weeks later states that the cemetery has been cleaned up and 110 white crosses erected. The school is no longer standing, but the current Anglican minister in Wabasca says the cemetery is well cared for and he had not heard of any historical problems regarding maintenance.

2. Edmonton

Industrial School

St. Albert, Alta.

Methodist

opened 1919; closed 1960s

The IRSRC report states that boys at the school were paid to dig graves at the area cemetery. A committee of historians wrote a letter to the Northwest Territories government in 1989 requesting funding for a memorial to recognize the 98 Inuit and Indian people lying in a small cemetery on the grounds of what was the residential school. Advocates for a monument wrote letters to government and church leaders stating that the cemetery grounds had not been cared for since the school closed.

3. Immaculate Conception Boarding School

Standoff (Cardston), Alta.

Roman Catholic

Also known as Blood Indian Residential School; St. Mary's Mission Boarding School

opened 1911; closed 1975

The IRSC report makes reference to a 1945 letter describing how it is "difficult to get the Indians to do the work suitably" when digging graves in winter at the school. The letter indicates that the Blood Band council was aware of this activity.

4. Muskowekwan

Indian Residential School

Lestock, Sask.

Roman Catholic

opened 1896; closed 1981

An Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada (IRSRC) report reviewing Indian Affairs documents describes an incident in 1992, when a construction company uncovered at least 19 graves connected to an unmarked graveyard at the site of the former school. Muskowekwan Indian Residential School is still standing and is on land managed by the Muskowekwan First Nation band council. It is now home to a youth services centre. Compiled by Rick Cash and Bill Curry, using information from the IRSC report as well as the Anglican Church of Canada and the Assembly of First Nations.

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2010-12-27T16:52:00.000-05:00

Aim of 'residential schools' was to get the land ... "One day the north will be strong and free..." Date: November 02, 2008 05:13PM

http://www.nunatsiaq.com/discussion/read.php?1,4287,4288#msg-4288

The true aim of the Indian residential schools was not to destroy the Indian in every child, as the governments continue to keep on claiming. It was just a ploy. The true aim of the Indian residential school system was to get the land of the native peoples, that was all they were intended to do, and it had worked remarably well. The Inuit of the eastern arctic had not really been included in the residential school fiasco until the end of the 1950's. The Inuit at that time had been sent to hostels in a few communities, this was for the Inuit of Quebec. The government had to work extremely fast in the beginning of the 1960's to ship young Inuit children to the one main residential school located at Churchill, anarq, because talk about residential schools were beginning to surface in southern Canada at that time. So the federal government worked on the scheme of Ralph Ritcey, who was just another englishman pedophile, to make the former army base in Churchill into a residential school. The government worked fast, extremely fast so that they could destroy our strong cultural and family ties just before they were done away with. The government had just this one chance to divide us up and seperate us from our families for long periods of time. The Churchill Vocational Center opened it's doors in 1964 and closed in 1973. And negotiations for the land started in 1973, makes sense? And negotiations for the land started in Nunavut shortly thereafter. The governments have almost gotten away with the crime of the century, which was to obtain my land by whatever means available. But just wait here one minute everyone, I am not finished yet. I have not surrendered or signed away of my rights or title to my land, nor some of my people, so in fact I still retain my rights to the land that my grandfathers and father had seen and walked on, I still do. And the unauthorized developments that have been taking place on my land have been going without my consent. And if the people who have not signed away their rights to their land on which their fathers walked and lived on decide to do so, we can kick out the developers of my land by force. It is still my land, and if I decide to do so, I can still make a claim for the whole territory north of the 55th parallel in northern Quebec, now known as the Kativik region. I am not finished yet, the Indian in me is not yet destroyed, in fact it has just gotten more stronger, and my resolve to right this horrible wrong has just gotten stronger as well. One day the north will be strong and free but for now someone else is taking care of it for my people and the job is being very poorly done. One day I will get my land back, one way or another, either through peace or force.

*****

Egerton Ryerson described his mandate for the 1847 report commissioned by Ontario, wherein he recommended that the government run the 'Indian' Residential Schools:

"There is a need to raise the Indian to the level of the whiteman, and take the land out of Indians hands."

2010-12-27T16:47:00.000-05:00

Wouldn't a partnership be a better way to move forward?

SIX NATIONS AND BRANTFORD

Posted By

Posted 2 days ago

"While maverick city Coun. James Calnan faced a barrage of criticism for breaking ranks over the city's legal action; he was right when he said the city should follow up with some sort of peace overture, instead of just legal confrontation." (Expositor editorial Jan. 7, 2009)

Six Nations has, to my personal knowledge throughout the past 33 years, made direct efforts to educate, inform and work, when possible, with the City of Brantford while respecting and protecting Six Nations land rights. Previous city councils led by mayors Charles Bowen, David Neumann, Karen George, Bob Taylor and Chris Friel have all interacted with us in efforts to move forward through similar turbulent times.

No doubt the present Mayor Mike Hancock, with his 20 years experience on city council, is also aware of these efforts and must continue with such diplomacy. And Six Nations must continue to extend the olive branch in answer to C. Orville Garlow (Expositor Opinion page, Jan. 8, 2009) because fairness and diplomacy are who we are.

Many of the city's previous mayors and councils have been Six Nations' best allies; lobbied for us and with us with no less than 19 federal ministers of Indian Affairs, numerous members of parliament and the provincial legislature in attempts to pressure Canada to resolve Six Nations' outstanding land issues in a fair and just manner.

Going forward with the City of Brantford, there is a way!

With the economy crashing into a recession, there is a great opportunity for business in implementing the Six Nations/City of Brantford Feb. 4, 1997 agreement. Six Nations can partner with investors on lands within the city of Brantford, be it an abandoned business site (to preserve as much farmland as possible) or a new site for business that meet our criteria and approval.

The lands will be held jointly by Six Nations and the developer/investor; exempt from municipal or provincial taxation per the terms of this 1997 agreement, our unique situation and the province's own legislation.

The developer/investor would pay what was saved in taxes to Six Nations to be used to repay the developer/investor the amount they initially paid for the disputed lands.

Upon the investment for the land repaid, the title will be transferred to where it should be, Six Nations.

The businesses would be issued long-term leases with lease payments securing Six Nations' perpetual care and maintenance, honouring the intent of our original agreements we had with our neighbours and the Crown. Certainty for investments would be achieved.

The City would be paid for the services they provide (fire, water, sewer, policing, garbage, etc.). Businesses would thrive having the advantage of commerce in a tax-free zone. Everyone would be working. Employment, training and apprenticeships would be available to everyone.

Six Nations would finally be included in the economy. Canada's legal duty to settle the land rights of the Six Nations People remains intact, but now big business and the City will be our allies, prompting Canada to settle with Six Nations.

The expected federal infrastructure dollars and economic stimulus package being proposed in the federal budget can only help if properly leveraged.

To date, the required investors and developers are excited and the province appears willing to amend the legislative changes arbitrarily implemented in 1997 that might have been an excuse for the City not to honour their part of the Feb. 4, 1997 agreement with Six Nations.

City of Brantford, it's your move.

Or would the City of Brantford rather be known as the place where uncertainty of land title has developers and investors suing the City and going elsewhere. Or Brantford, a place where Jane Doe, John Doe and Persons Unknown are not welcomed and subject to arrest. Or the City of Brantford, a place where Indian Fighting Lawyers and the Army are being sought to handle those pesky Indians.

Brantford, could your image get any worse? Phil Monture

Six Nations

Article ID# 1409631

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2010-12-27T16:38:00.000-05:00

To honor the lives and attain justice for the children that were brainwashed, raped and murdered under the Canadian Government’s Residential School Policy of genocide against Native people.

Wednesday February 10, 2009 at 10:00AM

Silent march beginning at the Department of Indian Affairs building in Hull , on to the Supreme Court of Canada, then to the parliament and ending at the Prime Minister’s office.

Each step of the way the Brief entitled;

Human Rights Violation

Government Sponsored Identity Theft

Through

Residential Schools

And

Its continued application within

The Canadian Judicial System

Will be presented to the respective authorities

If you can support this, please attend or help is in whatever way you can.

Help restore Humanity!

Mohawk Traditional Council ~ Kahnawake Mohawk Territory

mohawktraditionalcouncil@gmail.com

450-638-4357

Urgent Brief Concerning; Human Rights Violation Government sponsored Identity theft Through Residential Schools And its continued application within The Canadian Judicial System Mohawk Traditional Council 2 3 Native People have identified that Prime Minister, Steven Harper’s apology RE residential schools is hollow and means nothing, due to the fact that; It does not identify the true crimes that were committed. It does not identify responsibility for those crimes. It does not offer justice by charging those responsible for carrying out such heinous crimes against children. Which exemplifies for Natives, that there is no justice in the Canadian system. By making a one-time-lump sum payment to what the Canadian Government identifies as the survivors, is a clear denial of responsibility for the multigenerational problems it has caused, such as with the Duplessi Orphans of Quebec. This clearly identifies that each successive generations are also survivors, which in turn incurs more responsibility upon the government than a measly dollar amount and an apology. The Canadian judicial system is still carrying out the objective of the residential schools, of oppressing Native identity. 4 Excerpts from Prime Minister, Steven Harper’s official apology for Canada’s genocidal acts against humanity. June 11, 2008 “Two primary objectives of the residential schools system were”; “To remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures” And “To assimilate them into the dominant culture.” and “To kill the Indian in the child” “ Today, we recognize that, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country” Prime minister of Canada, Steven Harper 5 Residential Schools As an official Canadian Government policy, targeting children in collaboration with the Catholic Church enforced through the British Crown’s law, via the RCMP and the courts, constitutes an evil conspiracy of the highest order. The Conspiracy; “To kill the Indian in the child” on such a massive scale as to have this illegally forced, more often than not, at gun point, upon all native people, constitutes GENOCIDE. The methodology of genocide; “To remove children from their homes” is premeditated kidnapping, in the 1st degree. “To isolate them from their homes” is premeditated forcible confinement, in the 1st degree. 6 “To isolate children from their families” is premeditated dehumanization of the human spirit, in the 1st degree. “To remove and isolate children from their traditions and cultures” is premeditated identity theft, in the 1st degree. “To assimilate them into the dominant culture” is premeditated brainwashing and reprogramming with malicious intent to cause a deep-rooted psychological and physiological conflict, purposely forcing a multigenerational breakdown of the Native identity, in the 1st degree. “To kill the Indian in the child”, upon one child, is premeditated murder in the first degree. To systematically carry this out upon an entire race IS PREMEDITATED GENOCIDE, IN THE 1ST DEGREE. For the Prime Minister of Canada to admit “this policy of assimilation was wrong” and 7 officially apologize for its evil effects on the Native People of Turtle Island, clearly exemplifies how an already corrupt and archaic system of people, institutions, regional police, regional courts, provincial police, provincial courts, RCMP, federal courts, provincial and federal governments, CSIS, the catholic church and the British Crown, sank all society to the darkest depths of sub-human behavior. By singling out children, kidnapping them through the said institutions, raping, murdering and brainwashing the survivors with the evil intent of re-establishing the assimilated minds of these young helpless victims, back into Native societies, proves the Government’s intention was to have these children more easily accept the second phase of the assimilation process, the forcible (through murder) insertion of the elected band/tribal council system. 8 This is nothing more than the early Roman practice of kidnapping the children of their enemies, raising them and teaching them the ways of Roman Court politics, then return them back into their societies with their poisoned minds, with the intent of destroying their traditional political systems. This is done, by establishing a military maneuver of a “fifth column” such as what Adolph Hitler used in Nazi Germany, what the United States and Canada uses, and is a common practice of any military state. One must ask ones-self; what is the difference between our two identities to make this violent sub-human assimilation process necessary? The answer to this is like the difference between night and day. Where Canada is a paternal military state that wages war on 9 everyone who is not like them and on everything, including our Mother Earth. Contrarily, Native society is a matrilineal society, which wages peace to establish a living harmony with all living things. Native identity is to be true human beings, living in balance with our Mother Earth, protecting her from any destructive force that may attack and destroy her. Clearly these two identities clashed, for the non-native identity and culture is controlled by paternalistic democracy, which protects capitalism, which in turn thrives off the exploitation and destruction of our Mother Earth’s non-renewable resources. Thus, when Democracy and capitalism are combined, it creates the lethal abomination of “DEMOCRAPITALISM” which kills our Mother Earth by creating laws that legalize her destruction and other 10 laws making it illegal for human beings to protect her from the said destruction. The Native people know that, “killing yourself is no way to make a living” this is not our identity, nor will it ever be our identity. We are not destructors of the land like the non-native society. Not even the forced reprogramming of our identity through residential schools will get us to change from protecting our Mother Earth, to the non-native identity of destroying her! Prime Minister, Steven Harper’s official apology is an admittance that it is illegal to try and steal anyone’s identity, to force identity change or to oppress native identity from being expressed, through whatever methods of oppression that may be used to illegally force such a change, EG Canadian judicial system. 11 Therefore, in order for the positive step of Canada’s apology for the residential school system to mean anything, that which is identified as being wrong with the policy must be corrected. Meaning, all archaic policies that still continue to steal, oppress and prevent native identity from being expressed must be officially stopped by the Canadian Government. In light of this apology which identifies that it is wrong to try and oppress Native identity, it is not only hypocritical but also illegal for any level of court system to continue to criminalize any native person who engages in the expression and manifestation of our identity of protecting and defending our Mother Earth from the destruction of her vital resources. Not only will this benefit the Native people by ensuring that our identity is recognized and protected by law, it will also free the 12 Canadian people from the psychological damage that has been done to them as a result of their government being an oppressor and instigator of genocide, which devolved everyone’s humanity in order to accept such archaic, subhuman behavior. Recognizing Native identity will also benefit all humanity and our Mother Earth. Through official government policy and law, it will provide human beings with the only actual tangible mechanism to fight against the GLOBAL CLIMATIC DISASTER that is facing us all. Therefore, it is now your responsibility to inform every level of court within the Canadian judicial system, that it is illegal to keep doing what your Premier already apologized for and stop arresting any Native person for defending the land and to stop putting bail conditions on them restricting them from returning to the land in protest. Which would effectively prevent the Native people from exercising our TRUE NATIVE IDENTITY. Do act accordingly. In Peace and Friendship. Secretary, Stuart Myiow Mohawk Traditional Council Box 531, Kahnawake Mohawk Territory J0L 1B0

2010-12-27T15:36:00.000-05:00

Who built the ancient OCTAGON in Ohio and why?
What can be gleaned from much of the anthropological evidence, from described and drawn skeletal remains located within the early mounds, would suggest the presence of European peoples. This is further supported by much of the artefact evidence, which caused Cyrus Thomas of the Smithsonian Institute to write, 'Much more evidence of like tenor might be presented here, as, for example, the numerous instances where articles of European manufacture have been found in mounds where their presence could not be attributed to intrusive burials…'(The Problem Of The Ohio Mounds, by Cyrus Thomas, pg. 24, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1880).

2010-12-27T15:07:00.000-05:00

Absolutely NOT Blair!
We do not "understand"
and we do not forgive,
but if you squeal your face off as you quickly exit stage right,
we might!

YOU and the OPP and the RCMP and CSIS need a reminder:
You work for us.
The public is your BOSS!

And we will have justice.

bill blair said
Im sure the public will understand that we were very busy with many
other things at that time.
-------

yah ... too busy to tell the public - and the police? - that you were
wrong about G20 police powers
... that you gave the wrong orders to cops ?

http://grannyrantson.blogspot.com/
My Canada includes rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Love it or Leave it, eh!
Peace.

2010-12-27T13:39:00.000-05:00

Canadians VS First Nations? Christie Blatchford says so! What doesn't she understand about "the rule of law" in Canada? Obviously she doesn't understand the Constitution of Canada: Sec 35 "Aboriginal and treaty rights are hereby recognized and affirmed".
No, we cannot just do whatever we want with the land or waters, because Aboriginal rights exist everywhere in Canada: Treaties give us the right to live on the land "to a plough's depth" but Indigenous Peoples retain the right to sustain themselves from all lands and waters of Canada.
Blatchford misinforms Canadians. Speak out!
"For a group of B.C. fishermen, another Caledonia"

2010-12-20T02:22:00.000-05:00

APTN link: Military to say sorry to Mohawks
http://aptn.ca/pages/news/2010/12/07/military-to-say-sorry-for-mohawk-inclusion-in-counter-insurgency-manual/

2010-12-19T21:20:00.003-05:00

Mohawks are not terrorists: Military to say sorry for including them in counterterrorism manual.

One ill informed graduate student's musings about the meaning of terrorism was enough evidence for the military to plan
antiterrorist strategies against Mohawk people of the Six Nations. Somebody finally told them that protesting to get the government of Canada to uphold its own Constitution by respecting the Aboriginal rights of Mohawks (and others) IS NOT TERRORISM !

Glad to see the military plans to do the right thing.

2010-12-06T19:33:00.002-05:00

Editorial by Jim Windle
Brantford Expositor
http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2875560

2010-12-06T16:28:00.002-05:00

"Blatchford's 'Helpless in Caledonia': Gross inaccuracies ..."

Christie Blatchford, in her book "Helpless in Caledonia" has decontextualized, exaggerated and catastrophized Caledonia almost beyond recognition by those who were there, and Blatchford was NOT there in the volatile spring of 2006.
Use NEWS Brantford Expositor link in sidebar》 to read Jim Windle's editorial.

2010-10-18T11:41:00.002-04:00

Canada's duty to consult Indigenous Nations ... cont'd ...

http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=8462&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

SASKATCHEWAN NOW TARGETED FOR NUCLEAR DUMP

Dr. Jim Harding - October 11, 2010 - Southern Saskatchewan individuals and groups involved in the Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan met at Fort Qu'Appelle Oct. 8-10th to discuss what to do about Saskatchewan being targeted as a nuclear waste dump. People came from Moose Jaw, Regina, Cupar, Indian Head, Archerwill and Fort Qu'Appelle, from Coalition member groups like Kairos, Council of Canadians, Greens and Clean Green Regina. They agreed with the following points which will be taken to other Coalition members:

http://forum.stopthehogs.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=744

1. The Duty To Consult Can't Involve Economic Bribery.
The industry-based Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has confirmed that two of the four Canadian communities that it is talking to about becoming a nuclear dump are in northern Saskatchewan: at Pinehouse and English River. The other two are in northwestern Ontario, much closer to the nuclear power plants along the Great lakes that produce almost all of the nuclear waste in Canada.

Speaking for the English River band, Councillor Bernie Eaglechild said that “nothing has been decided and talks are still at an early stage”, emphasizing that “the band can still back out at any time.” Pinehouse mayor, Mike Natomagan, who also heads the Kineepik Métis Local, had a similar message; that this “learn more opportunity does not commit the village or Métis local to any further steps.” This doesn’t mean “Pinehouse has said ‘yes’ to the project”.
But can negotiating with the NWMO lead to informed consent. Under both international law and Canada’s Charter of Rights the “Duty to Consult” means there must be “free, prior and informed consent.” The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples makes it clear that this can’t involve monetary inducements such as the NWMO is using. Informed consent requires sufficient time to consider all relevant information, from all sides of the controversy, and not being bribed under the threat of losing benefits to another community.

And we know that northern communities are being bribed to take nuclear wastes. In November 2009 the NWMO met privately with all the Environmental Quality Committees (EQC) across the north. In its 2009 Report the government-run North Saskatchewan Environmental Quality Committee (NSEQC) said that the NWMO made “communities aware of the opportunities to host a nuclear waste management storage site.” It continued, “There will be incredible economic benefits to such a community, but suitable geology and accessibility are also factors.” Such bribery is outrageous and must be stopped.

The neo-colonial situation surrounding the uranium industry in the north will not and cannot encourage informed consent. Since 1991 Cameco has supported importing Ontario’s nuclear waste, including from its co-owned Bruce Power nuclear complex. It sees this as a lucrative business venture. It is now concentrating toxic, radioactive uranium tailings at its huge Key Lake mine site, and having Pinehouse, south of Key Lake, as a nuclear waste dump would fit in with a nuclear industry waste corridor in north central Saskatchewan. Prince Albert and La Ronge would become the gateway to nuclear wastes, not a gateway to northern fishing, hunting and eco-tourism.

2. Saskatchewan Is Not Morally Obliged To Take Nuclear Wastes
A few people argue that we are morally obliged to take back nuclear wastes from nuclear plants that use uranium from Saskatchewan. This is absurd and would lead us to become an international nuclear dump for the U.S., France, Japan and many other countries that buy uranium from here. Also, Ontario should be responsible for its own nuclear wastes and should have had a nuclear waste plan before it built all its nuclear power plants. Furthermore, after the UDP consultations, the Saskatchewan government decided not to support Bruce Power’s proposal to build nuclear plants along the North Saskatchewan River. One of the main reasons Saskatchewan people opposed nuclear power was because they did not want to create nuclear wastes.

3. A Nuclear Dump Is No Path To Northern Development
So why are these northern communities even considering a nuclear dump? English River’s Councillor Eaglechild says “the band is tired of seeing resources hauled out of its traditional land without receiving any payments for it”, and Pinehouse’s Mayor Natomagan notes the recent Conference Board study showing northern Saskatchewan having the second lowest median income of any Canadian region. This concern about the wealth of resource development not being shared with the north is compelling and, along with the cumulative ecological effects of uranium mine expansion, was the main reason why the Joint Federal Provincial Panel in the 1990s recommended against two uranium mines going ahead. But a nuclear dump makes no economic sense compared with much cheaper sustainable options such as adding value to the renewable sectors in the north. Creating a deep geological repository to store nuclear wastes would be even more capital-intensive than uranium mining. And the Conference Board study that Pinehouse’s mayor refers to, confirms that the north remained amongst Canada’s poorest regions, even though it has been the highest uranium-producing and most profitable uranium mining region in the world.

4. All of Saskatchewan Must Be Involved in Decision
The question we should be asking is: “why these northern Métis and First Nations communities are so hard-pressed that they have to consider bringing deadly radioactive wastes into the north to create a few toxic jobs”? An even more fundamental question is: “why the NWMO is able to end-run the people of Saskatchewan and negotiate the location of a nuclear dump in the province solely with a northern Métis or First Nations community?” Why are the rest of us being left out of the process?

5. Saskatchewan Should Pass Ban On Transportation and Storage of Nuclear Wastes
In 1987, the NDP government of Manitoba acted to protect the long-term public and environmental health of its people by legislating a ban on the importation and storage of nuclear wastes. Quebec did the same thing in 2008. Do Saskatchewan people deserve anything less?

Just why is the Wall-led government allowing the industry’s NWMO to travel around the North and privately negotiate the location of a nuclear dump that will affect people throughout the whole province? At the 2009 NDP convention, held just after Lingenfelter was elected as party leader, the delegates passed a resolution that an NDP government will not consider “storing nuclear wastes under any circumstances.” This resolution was co-sponsored by Regina’s Douglas Park constituency which later elected Lingenfelter as an MLA. So when will the NDP opposition and its leader start standing up for the rights of Saskatchewan people on this matter? Have provincial politics become so personal and vindictive that vital matters of ecology and justice aren’t worth the effort?

The Wall government’s own 2009 public consultations on the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) found that, of the thousands who participated, over 80% opposed bringing nuclear wastes to the province. At its last provincial conference the United Church passed a resolution calling for a ban on nuclear wastes in the province. This public opinion, including coming from what the government itself called the most extensive public consultations ever held on the nuclear industry in Saskatchewan, must be respected. We now need a provincial ban on transporting and storing nuclear wastes. It is the right thing to do!

Stay informed.Subscribe and get the best of PEJ News by email. Free.Prometheus Institute does not endorse any article or comment that is published on PEJ.org. The opinions expressed in all articles and comments are those of the authors and not of Prometheus Institute or the Peace, Earth & Justice News.

And see ...

http://grannyrantson.blogspot.com/2010/08/duty-to-consult.html

2010-10-18T11:35:00.001-04:00

Canada's duty to consult Indigenous Nations ... cont'd ...

MCA against shipment

http://www.standard-freeholder.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2791464

By CHERYL BRINK

Updated 9 days ago

Photo by Bruce PowerBruce Power plans to ship 16 generators used at its nuclear plant through the Great Lakes and Seaway on its way to Sweden, where it will be recycled. A number of groups, including the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne have voiced their opposition to the proposal.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission will set a dangerous precedent if it allows radioactive waste to be shipped through the St. Lawrence Seaway, according to groups based along the waterway.

Bruce Power, which sits on Lake Huron, has asked for a permit to bring 16 generators used at its nuclear plant through the Great Lakes and Seaway on its way to Sweden, where it will be recycled.

But the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne (MCA) said it was not even consulted on the plan that would break a local bylaw."There is a duty to consult," said Henry Lickers, environmental science officer for the MCA. "If they wanted to do this right, they would have talked to us."
However, all the discussion in the world wouldn't change a resolution passed by the council in 1999, stating that no nuclear materials are allowed in their territory, he pointed out.

"It's just in keeping with the MCA and what we've done in the past," said Lickers about their opposition, which was detailed in a letter to the nuclear safety commission (CNSC).

"Your government will be in violation of our community law if you allow this shipment to enter into our territory," wrote Grand Chief Mike Mitchell.
The CNSC held consultations to determine if the transportation permit should be approved, and has promised the shipment is not dangerous.

"The chances of a spill or anything are terribly remote," said Guy Lauzon, MP for Stormont, Dundas and South Glengarry. "They've done analyses. There's no risk to the public or the environment."

While that may be true, the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative -which includes Mayor Bob Kilger in its membership -have come out strongly against the idea.

Though Kilger said he hasn't personally lobbied the commission, the group has sent a letter to the CNSC, along with four pages of questions about the proposal on everything from timelines to qualifications for the ship's pilot.

"I am disappointed that the CNSC has refused to discuss or provide the underlying technical report on the environmental impacts of an accident on the Great Lakes or the St. Lawrence," wrote David Ullrich, executive director of the municipal coalition.

Beyond environmental concerns, Lickers said it just makes sense for the government to develop the capacity to deal with its own nuclear waste rather than shipping it across the ocean.

"Canada should be solving its own problems in its own backyard," he said.
Part of his concern is that Sweden may have more relaxed regulations on what is considered dangerous material.

"The (recycled) steel will go back into the steel source, and we could be getting it back as Ikea furniture," he said.

"I think it's good public policy that if we use it... we should be able to deal with it," added Kilger.

But Lauzon said nations all across the globe send their waste to Sweden because of their expertise. Even this shipment wouldn't be the first time Canada sent materials to the country.

"It should be noted that radioactive materials... are shipped across Canada and around the world on a regular basis without risk to the public or the environment," states the commission on its website.

CNSC spokesperson Aurele Gervais said decisions on permits are generally made 30 days after public consultations, which were held at the end of September on the Bruce Power proposal.

"They will consider information heard through the course of the public hearing," said Gervais. "During their deliberations they will determine if further information is needed or if the commission is ready to proceed with a decision."

Despite reassurances that every danger will be analyzed, Kilger said under no conditions would he accept the shipment through the Seaway, since the lakes and river system "provides potable water for over 40 million people. You just can't take that risk."

"The Seaway is such a crucial part of our Akwesasne and surrounding neighbours," added Lickers. "We can't really afford any problems here. Our experience is a long and painful one (of ) contamination by different industries here."

Article ID# 2791464

And see ...
http://grannyrantson.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html

2010-10-18T11:31:00.002-04:00

Canada's 'Duty to consult' Indigenous Nations cont'd ...

http://www.elliotlakestandard.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2798304

Open letter to Elliot Lake mayoral candidates from SRFN chief

Letters To The Editor

On behalf of Serpent River First Nation council and citizens, I send you greetings and trust that you are working diligently to win the confidence of the citizens of Elliott Lake so they will put their support behind your respective visions for Elliot Lake. We wish you both luck and commend you for your efforts to make Elliott Lake a good place to flourish and prosper.

As elected chief of the Serpent River First Nation, I know the experiences that you aspire to cultivate in leadership are those only public service brings. Regardless of our political stripes, we all serve for a similar reason – to ensure that our citizens are provided with effective representation and the highest quality of life possible.

As you know, the Serpent River First Nation is not just a neighbouring community to Elliot Lake. The region where the city is located is integral to our traditional territory and we have strong historical, geographical, harvesting, cultural and spiritual ties to Elliot Lake. Since time immemorial prior to contact, we walked these lands - the land owned our people. Today, our existing Aboriginal and treaty rights are recognized and affirmed in section 35 of Canada's constitution.

When we set our fishing nets in Elliot and Dunlop lakes on Oct. 1, 2009, we were not protesting. We wanted to show our neighbours of our rightful access and jurisdiction to Crown lands. We also know that the issue of colliding interests must be reconciled. Serpent River First Nation is now asking the question - where does the Elliot Lake leadership stand on the need for First Nation dialogue on plans to assert further access for First Nation benefit and gain?

The Supreme Court of Canada has consistently reaffirmed that both, federal and provincial governments have a legal duty to consult with us and provide accommodation regarding our Aboriginal and treaty rights. Since Elliot Lake is a creation of the province of Ontario, Elliot Lake must recognize, respect that First Nation rights and interests must be accommodated before new developments can proceed. Ontario is currently at the table - Elliot Lake leadership should now start asking questions.

Given the importance of the outcome of this election for all of us, I want to invite you both to a public town hall discussion about how you, as mayor, would like Elliot Lake to work with us - essentially to meet issues head-on with the goal of collaborative policy questions and proposed outcomes.
For example, where can a successful joint relations committee take our communities? What is your intent to ensure that Crown resources serve the economic interests of both Serpent River First Nation and the City of Elliot Lake? What might be the best options for the First Peoples of the Serpent River headlands and the City of Elliot Lake in proceeding with a broad heritage study that seeks to establish protection status of sites and routes of the original people in and around Elliot Lake? I want to discuss the City of Elliot Lake's plans regarding the cottage lot program and the potential legal challenges to the Elliot Lake Act.

In closing, I believe that it is in the best interests of both of our communities and citizens that we have a public dialogue about how we intend to move forward as friends and neighbours in a mutually beneficial, peaceful and prosperous co-existence – in the true spirit and intent of our Robinson Huron Treaty, 1850. I look forward to your timely response.

Isadore Day,
Wiindawtegowinini,

Chief of the Serpent River First Nation

Article ID# 2798304

And see ...
http://grannyrantson.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html

2010-08-19T13:17:00.002-04:00

'The duty to consult' ... Financial Post, National Post

'The duty to consult'

Julius Melnitzer, Financial Post · Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2010

Aboriginal rights issues are cutting a wide swath in the energy sector, touching everything from resource extraction to liquefied natural gas facilities, transmission lines and pipelines. So much so that one industry pundit has maintained that all of Canada's new supply sources for oil and gas have at some point been "tied up" with aboriginal rights claims.

Among the projects affected are the $50-billion oil sands development in Alberta, the $500-million Kitimat liquefied natural gas terminal project in British Columbia, and the Maritime pipelines project.

There's also the multi-billion-dollar Mackenzie Valley natural gas project on which may hinge the future of Canada's north. Originally expected to come online in 2007, it remains uncertain as to when gas will begin to flow.

Environmental concerns, political squabbling, cultural differences and divisions among the aboriginal groups became so acute that Imperial Oil stopped work in April 2005, citing "unreasonable demands" from the Deh Cho. The impasse ended later in the year, but only after the federal government promised $500-million to address aboriginal social and economic concerns.

The Supreme Court of Canada's "consultation trilogy" in 2004 and 2005 has been the prime catalyst for the emergence of aboriginal rights issues. The trilogy -- which consists of legal cases involving the Haida, Taku River Tlingit, and Mikisew Cree -- established that both federal and provincial governments had a duty to consult with aboriginal groups before making decisions that might adversely affect their asserted but unproven aboriginal rights.

"The duty to consult is triggered when the Crown knows or should know that its actions might affect constitutionally protected rights," says Wally Braul, an aboriginal and environmental lawyer at Fraser Milner Casgrain's Calgary office. "And the courts have made it clear that consultation is not just about blowing off steam. It's a results-oriented process that includes both information and response components focused on accommodating the competing interests at stake."

That means governments cannot -- without prior consultation -- grant or renew licences, leases or other privileges to third parties or take action on their own that could infringe on potential aboriginal rights. While governments can delegate the implementation of their duties to third parties in the private sector, the ultimate burden of ensuring that meaningful consultation occurs remains with the Crown. What is meaningful depends on the circumstances, including the strength of the aboriginal claim and the seriousness of the adverse effects on that claim.

"With the trilogy, resource harvesters became aware that aboriginal rights had a direct impact on the way they did business," says Tom Isaac, an aboriginal rights lawyer at Mc-Carthy Tetrault's Vancouver office.

Indeed, allocation of Crown rights and the development process proceed fairly simultaneously nowadays. Currently it is rare for Canadian governments to allocate resources without consideration of how the resource will be developed and whether the development will affect aboriginal rights.

In the real world, this means that the Crown off-loads the consultation process to those seeking the grants to access resources.

"Applicants requiring government approval for a permit or licence may not know if aboriginal consultation is required," says Ken Clark, an aboriginal lawyer at Lang Michener's Vancouver office. "They may also not know what aboriginal groups should be consulted; when the consultation should occur; what information they should provide; how long the consultation process might take; whether the consultation will result in approval; what changes might be required, and whether an approval, if granted, might be set aside by a court." So unless they get the right advice, project developers may find themselves on a slippery slope.

"In the last few years, the adequacy of the consultation process has been challenged in court by various aboriginal groups," Mr. Clark explains. "A frequent result is a determination that the consultation process was not adequate, and a direction that the Crown go back and consult some more."

Companies wishing to avoid dilemmas of this kind must make sure not only that they get the delegated consultation process working properly, but also that the Crown has done its job by putting a proper process in place.

"After all, the Crown bears the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that consultation occurs, but if the process is one that isn't fair and transparent and doesn't withstand judicial scrutiny, it's the developer who suffers the consequences," Mr. Isaac says.

The courts have made it clear that they would prefer to see some kind of policy guiding the consultation process, but governments have not been quick to respond.

"The feds tried and created some interim guidelines but they remained interim and are not generally followed," Mr. Clark says. "Alberta has made an effort but without much success. Earlier this summer, Saskatchewan did come up with guidance that looks reasonable and providesclarityandcomes closest to the kind of regulatory regime that the Supreme Court of Canada has been referring to in its decisions."

Meanwhile, the legal rulings are evolving rapidly.

"It's very important to align a project with the very latest guidance that comes from the courts," Mr. Braul says.

At the same time, First Nations' and other aboriginal groups are increasing their expectations and becoming more sophisticated in their approach to the issues. "It's no longer just a matter of respecting aboriginal rights and traditions," Mr. Isaac says. "Rightly or wrongly, there is a growing expectation of some form of economic benefit flowing from projects to First Nations."

The practical challenge for the resource and other sectors, then, is how to measure, manage and mitigate the risk in the consultation and accommodation process.

"Every jurisdiction in the country is different in its approach, every sector is different, and the First Nations, Metis and Inuit are all different in their approaches. So you're not going to get cookie-cutter answers, and that won't change until we get the kind of political leadership that will lend greater clarity to the process," Mr. Isaac says.

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/duty+consult/3411973/story.html#ixzz0x4aMrETB

2010-08-16T00:01:00.000-04:00

Indian Affairs imposes new Chief and Council on Barriere Lake on the basis of a half-dozen nomination ballots

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, August 13, 2010

Indian Affairs imposes new Chief and Council on Barriere Lake on the basis of a half-dozen nomination ballots: “This looks like tyranny,” say community spokespeople

Kitiganik, Rapid Lake, Algonquin Territory / – The Department of Indian Affairs has announced that a new Indian Act Chief and Council have been elected by acclamation in the community of Barriere Lake, after between 6 and 10 nomination mail-in ballots were received by a government electoral officer.

But even the acclaimed Chief, Casey Ratt, has announced he will not take the position, refusing to break ranks with the community’s broad opposition to the Indian Act band elections that the Department of Indian Affairs has been trying to impose on Barriere Lake.

“The overwhelming majority of our community remains opposed to the Indian Act band election regime. Almost two hundred people signed a resolution in May rejecting it and supporting our traditional selection process. Does the Minister of Indian Affairs really think a handful of nominations for a Chief and Council can let them get away with eradicating our system of government?” says Tony Wawatie, a community spokesperson. “The government has lectured us about democracy. But how can this be democratic if it goes against the will of our entire community? This looks more like tyranny.”

Today, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Shawn Atleo sent a letter to Minister of Indian Affairs John Duncan demanding that he rescind the section 74 order to impose band elections, and that he respect the community’s reconciliation process, which will ultimately result in a new Customary Chief and Council being selected according to Barriere Lake’s traditional selection process.

“I strongly urge you to reconsider the decision of your predecessor to invoke section 74,” Atleo wrote. “Trying to force the community into the Indian Act election system, when they seem to be overwhelmingly opposed, will only increase tensions and the risk of confrontation with your Ministry.”

“The decision to impose section 74 band elections is an attack not only on our traditional system of government, but on our culture, language and way of life, which are all connected to our traditional system of government,” says Marylynn Poucachiche, another community spokesperson. “We will not accept it. Until our basic and legitimate rights are respected, we will escalate our actions, including not allowing any resource extraction within the Trilateral Agreement Territory.”

The government had announced the elections would originally take place September 23rd, 2010.

Barriere Lake’s inherent right to customary self-government is protected by section 35 of the Canadian Constitution and is enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. A May, 2010 report by the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples affirmed that First Nations have the right to maintain control over their internal affairs and be free to pursue their vision of customary government.

-30-

Media contacts:

Tony Wawatie, community spokesperson: 819 – 860-4121

Marylynn Poucachiche, community spokesperson: 819-441-4923

2010-08-12T10:43:00.288-04:00

Myths and truths about the 'Iroquois':
Pre-Iroquois and Iroquois evolution in Southern Ontario

Prologue: Apologies and invitations

I write this blog/article accompanied by my sincere apologies to my many Haudenosaunee* ('Iroquois') friends of the Six Nations, for some of its tone is very hurtful to them and even savage. It is, unfortunately, in part the harsh truths about the myths taught to and learned by generations of Canadian schoolchildren and indeed all of the people of Southern Ontario and Canada for over two centuries now. It is time the myths were exposed, and the truths were told, and this article attempts to do so in a way that can be understood by students and the general public across Ontario and Canada.

In this first draft, there may well be some errors in fact, some references missing, etc., and I respectfully invite readers to inform me of these via blog comments or email (grannysaga@gmail.com). I will seek to verify and correct for accuracy and provide appropriate sources, from both documentary ('European')and oral (Indigenous/Aboriginal) traditions, as new or more accurate information becomes available to me.

In this first draft also, I hope only to provide enough of a re-orientation of perspective on the 'Iroquois' to generate such discussion, even public controversy, to begin the process of public re-education in Ontario and Canada - 'doing a 180'(degree shift) as I have experienced it myself over the past four years of association with the intelligent, strong and kind people of the Six Nations. Though I am an educational researcher myself (M.A.Sc. Psychology, UW 1982, retired 2007), I do not claim to be an 'objective' source because good scientists and researchers know that no human being ever is. Those who claim to be 'entirely objective' are attempting to deceive you. Good researchers lay out their biases upfront, allowing readers to include that in their consideration. I am sharing what I have read, heard, seen and experienced and the conclusions I have come to myself. I openly admit that in doing so my motivation to persuade people to see what I believe is the truth, so that readers also experience 'a 180' degree shift in perspective.

Background: Global myths about the 'Indians' of Canada

1)We own Canada because we beat the 'Indians' in war
There were no 'Indian' wars in Canada/British North America.
The Indigenous/Aboriginal Nations were never conquered by us - neither by the French nor by the British. We did not "win" the rights to the lands of Canada.
Indigenous Nations were mostly our allies in battle, and still are to this day.
We - France/Britain/British North America - made peace treaties with Indigenous Nations* in
Canada, beginning with the Two Row Wampum Treaty of Alliance*.

In becoming a nation, Canada assumed full legal responsibility for those peace treaties.
The treaties stand as law in Canada to this day, repeatedly upheld and clarified by the Supreme Court of Canada, and forming the basis for current 'land claims' negotiations among other issues.

The harsh truth about the myths
As a child of the '60's I recall, as do most former school children in Southern Ontario throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, being taught that the 'Iroquois' were a fierce, aggressive, frightening and murderous people in the history of Southern Ontario. We were told that their 'real' home is in the (implied aggressive) United States in New York, and that they first came to British North America/Canada from New York only because the British brought some of them here in 1784 after the 'American Revolution' (War of Independence). While Britain/Canada had needed and used their fighting prowess, the tone of the teaching and learning of Southern Ontario schoolchildren for the two centuries following that time has always been that it was somewhat to be regretted that the British/Canadians had found it necessary to ally themselves to such savage people, and entirely regrettable that they ever arrived in 'Canada'.

The reason for the negative tone toward them was ostensibly because in Canada they stood out as being strong ("aggressive"), continuing their 'savage' ways by making war on peaceful aboriginal nations, whose 'real' home was Southern Ontario, most notably that they 'destroyed' the Huron (Wendat/Ouendat/Wyandotte) community entirely by slaughtering them to extinction, and by burning associated Catholic priests ("Martyrs") at the stake.

The truths
First of all, the people called the 'Iroquois' are in fact the Haudenosaunee people of the Five/Six Nations - the 'people of the long house', Hau-de-no-sau-nee. 'Iroquois'

1) Let's start at the myth of 1784 as the date of 'arrival' of the Haudenosaunee people of the Six Nations.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/q03h7101v0668w2u/

Iroquoians become recognizable in the archaeological record of southern Ontario about A.D. 500, with the appearance of Princess Point sites and maize agriculture in the lower Grand River valley. After A.D. 1000, Iroquoians lived in longhouse villages situated in the interior, north of Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and the St. Lawrence River. This synthesis of the Iroquoian occupation of southern Ontario prior to European contact focuses on origins, settlement patterns, demography, subsistence, and sociopolitical organization. It highlights the significant contributions to Iroquoian archaeology that have been made by government and private consulting archaeologists over the last two decades.

(Bold and underline emphases added.)

http://foundlocally.com/Hamilton/local/Info-CityHistoryIndians.htm
The first humans, the Clovis people, arrived in Niagara Region almost 12,000 years ago, around the time of the birth of the Falls, when the land was tundra with spruce forests. These nomadic hunters camped along the old Lake Erie shoreline, in small dwellings, and left little behind except chipped stones, likely used to hunt caribou, mastodons, moose and elk.

By 9,500 years ago deciduous forest covered southernmost Ontario, supporting wildlife like deer, moose, fish and plants, enabling small groups to hunt in the winter, coming together into larger groups during the summer, to fish at shorelines and at the mouths of rivers.

About 2,000 years ago, the Woodland Period brought Iroquois culture in southern Ontario. These peoples began agriculture based on crops of corn, bean and squash, which supported a boom in population and a rich culture with small palisaded villages in which extended families occupied individual longhouses. They developed ceramics technology and forged strong inter-village alliances.

By the time the European explorers and missionaries arrived in the early 1600s, the Iroquoian villages had elected chiefs and were allied within powerful tribal confederacies. The Neutral Indians were the leaders of a group of ten tribes of the Iroquois Nation. Other tribes included the Seneca, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Huron, Petun, Erie and the Susquehannock. The French explorers , gave this Indian tribe the name "Neutrals", because of their position and status as peace keepers between the warring Hurons and Iroquois. Unfortunately, inter-tribal warfare was made worse by the intrusion of the Europeans.

http://www.nefac.net/anarchiststudyofiroquois
The traditional society of the Rotinonshón:ni (Iroquois), "The People of the Longhouse," was a densely settled, matrilineal, communal, and extensively horticultural society. The Rotinonshón:ni formed a confederacy of five nations.Generations before historical contact with Europeans, these nations united through the Kaianere'kó:wa* into the same polity and ended blood feuding without economic exploitation, stratification, or the formation of a centralized state.

A work in progress ... to be continued ...
granny

NOTES:
* I encourage readers to find additional resources of their own. However, I caution you that accounts written by our U.S. friends will refer only to the 'Iroquois' within their boundaries, indicating that the Five/Six Nations resided below the Great Lakes. Canadian resources are, thus, preferred for information about the locations of the Haudenosaunee people within the boundaries of present day Canada. Also, today's legal realities are somewhat different above and below the border. U.S. resources are, however, just as valuable as Canadian ones for information about laws, customs, etc. Readers are encouraged to apply critical thinking skills and to 'consider the source' as well as the content.
For comparison and consideration, two (of several possible) maps of the location of the Five Nations:
http://wpcontent.answcdn.com/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b2/Iroquois_5_Nation_Map_c1650.png/320px-Iroquois_5_Nation_Map_c1650.png

http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/rbm/kislak/lands/fivenationsmapd.html

* Haudenosaunee is also written Rotinonshón:ni. Such differences are attributable to the task of translating an oral language (Mohawk) to a written phonetic one. For example, the beginning sound in their language is somewhere between our 'r' and 'h' sounds. Likewise, other sounds are somewhere between 't' and 'd', 'k' and 'g', etc., leading to some identification confusion for non-Mohawk speakers.

* I personally use the terms "Indigenous" (natural, of this land)) and "Nations" respectfully. Canada uses 'Aboriginal' (meaning out of or from the original people) and still refers to them as 'Indian' in some law and policy documents, so those terms appear here too in certain contexts, but they are not preferred. In Canada we do not tend to call them 'tribes' as in the U.S. Prior to European contact, they were various Nations of people, with local, inter-local and global trading practices and laws, treaties, religions, villages, homes, families, leadership and legal organizations, etc. There is nothing in Indigenous nor Canadian law that has changed that legally to this day: Canada's 'Indian' Act that sought to do so is widely recognized to be not legal, and is proposed for massive changes or extinction* itself. It has not yet been tested in the Supreme Court of Canada. The Canadian government would suggest that 'negotiations' are necessary.
Clearly, I am taking a political position on this issue, but one based soundly on past decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada. granny

* Two Row Wampum
* Also Gayanashagowa The Great Law of Peace that joined the five nations - Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca - into one Confederacy as the Haudenosaunee:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Law_of_Peace
Historians once thought the Iroquois Confederacy started in the 1500s, but a more recent estimate dates the confederacy and its constitution to between 1090 and 1150 CE. These estimates were based on the records of the confederacy leadership and astronomical dating related to a total solar eclipse that coincided with the founding of the Confederacy.

2010-06-27T07:52:00.000-04:00

'I can't even describe it in words'
Toronto G20 Protests: By the Minute

by Gwalgen Geordie Dent →Canadian Foreign Policy, →Toronto News
Illegal Search and Arrest PHOTO Nadim
Queen's Park

1:30pm
I'm late. Throngs of protesters moving South on Queen. There's thousands of people here. Unconfirmed reports that people have been detained from Queen's Park before the march even began.

2:00pm
A damn fool is risking 'death by yoga' at University and Queen. We just passed by the heavily fortified US consulate at University and Armoury. There are hundreds of groups here including many of the big names: Canadian Labour Congress, Amnesty, a couple COmmunist Parties, the UFCW, Greenpeace, CUPE and a host of other smaller groups. It's amazing: there's well above 10,000 people here. The largest previous G8 protest in North America was 3,000 people.

2:30pm
Me and a couple of Alternative Media Centre folks run up ahead to try to get to the front of the march. This involves running full tilt from University Av. to Spadina Av. through the huge swaths of people. We don't even come close the the front of the march. We pass the a group of protesters employing the Black Bloc tactic. They are protesting peacefully. The police are halting any movement to the South of Queen St. by long lines of cops blocking each street with huge presence of police in the background.

2:45pm
Protesters are breaking off towards the fence at Spadina and Queen. CUPE 1005 Steelworkers are one of the first groups to approach the riot line and confront police. Thousands of others turn toward the police lines and an immediate stalemate. Marimba bands and various groups show up.

2:57pm
Montreal riot police show up. Protesters are throwing flowers at police while the Black Bloc'ers have come and gone without a fuss. Someone lights a flare creating a lot of smoke and confusing atmosphere. The police just used tear gas.

3:10pm
People are reporting clashes with police back towards University. A protester is sporting an arm brace from getting batoned by a cop. Other protesters are reporting beatings from police. One man had a serious head injury and a lot of blood loss from police beating him over the head.

3:28pm
I start walking back towards Universtiy on Queen but am stopped by a riot line of police protecting a smashed in cop car about 50 meters from Spadina. Seems like someone has run amok. There's every kind of police here today. RCMP, Toronto Police, York Police, Peel Police, and a couple of other cop patches including one that says "POU". The police are holding tasers and have pepper sprayed people. Someone teels me there is a fire downtown and I steathly make my way through the line.

4:00pm
I'm a little taken aback. Targetted vandalism is visable all along Queen and Toronto has erupted into chaos. Starbucks, Nike, Scotiabank, TD, BMO, CIBC, Royal Bank all got the brunt of some window smashing and spray-paint. Not sure if the Canadian banks $125 Billion bailout will cover it. I'm also hearing reports that the fire was actually a torched police cruiser . Reports later claim that a number of business have been hit including an American Apparel, a Pizza-Pizza, a Tim Hortons and some small businesses. There are small bands of protesters EVERYWHERE and handfuls of 100-200 are challenging police at various spots. No signs of any protester violence.

4:30pm
King and Bay. The so-called 'burnt out cop car' is being shielded by cops so I choose another route to get a closer look. I hit another police wall before the cops start moving in on protesters and pushing them back. So I go through a shortcut! I make sure to thank the police several times for assaulting several people, 100's of illegal detentions and searches and for punching one of my colleges in the face yesterday. Twice. As a single guy with a press pass, I move through some nooks and crannies easily. I somehow end up on the other side of both riot lines.

4:45pm
Well it turns out the report of a burnt and destroyed car was not exactly true. There were 2 cars burnt and 4 were destroyed. The cars are totalled and the BMO, Scotiabank and CIBC nearby have been vandalized.

5:00pm
It's like night and day down here. I'm on the other side of the police lines and can see bedlam and clashing between bands of police and protesters on many streets North of here. South is quiet and relaxed. Many delegate drivers are milling about. The G20 leaders are living in peace behind their castle walls. The centre of the financial district is eeringly ominous and still after what I've already seen.

5:15pm
I'm heading North on University with a newly found media partner. A man is walking South. He has a small stick (the size of a drumstick), a bell that he's hitting and a bag. A police officer confronts him but he keeps walking. The police officer (TPS Constable #2256) starts demanding things and pushing him around saying that he's going to lose his bag. The man doesn't say a word to him and tries to ignore him and keeps picking up his things which the cop keeps throwing on the ground. The officer has not charged him with anything or recieved his consent to search his bag (this is commonly known as 'police breaking the law'). As the man continues to be uncooperative, the cop throws him to the ground, sits on his back and arrests him. I ask repeated times what he is charged with and the police officer tells me "this doesn't concern you."

5:30pm
Trying to get back to my bike and instead run into 100's of riot police marching and several other Alternative Media Centre journalists. Another standoff with police. The Downtown core resembles a decentralized and unfocused riot. We again thank the police numerous times for for assaulting several people, 100's of illegal detentions and searches and for punching one of my colleges in the face yesterday. Twice.

6:00pm
We head up to Queens park seeing sporadic vandalism along the way. Lots of vandalism but no protester violence to speak of. Protesters are not attacking or using force with police in any way.

6:05pm
Queen's Park, the 'designated' protest zone has turned into a war zone. I'm there about 10 minutes; enough to see police viciously grabbing peaceful protesters, most of them sitting on the pavement and arrsting them. A staunch standoff occurs with police running out to grab heckling protesters every 30 seconds, advancing to push protesters back and shooting them with hundreds of gaseous tear gas pellets and rubber bullets. A number of these protesters have not confronted police at all today and many of them were not protesting. Hundreds of protesters are being pushed back.

6:15pm
I snake through the University of Toronto to find my bike.

7:02pm
Back at the Alternative Media Centre. We're hearing reports of chaos all over the City. Queen's park protesters are apparently being pushed back and arrested on mass. More reports of rubber bullets and violence against protesters. Updated reports coming in that many organizers have been arrested, searched and detained illegally. Two Alternative Media Centre journalists have been arrested. Chicago Indymedia Centre has been denied entry at the border. Events being planned to help those in jail. Ongoing confontations between police and peaceful protesters.

8:12pm
Got this message from someone who went to Queens Park:

"My mom, me and my brother we were all at Queen's Park and we just got there 30 seconds before they said move. They pushed back all of us with their bikes and pepper sprayed us. They were pushing my mom and me and throwing punches at my brother and they just kept pushing forward and saying "move move move" and not really caring who was there. I have cancer and I kept saying "I have cancer, I have cancer," but they didn't care, they just kept pushing forward.

They just said "move! move!" I didn't provoke anything or say anything. I wasn't protesting, my brother was before, but I was just curious to see what was going on. We didn't have time [to move], we did not have any time to react.

We have to be seen by paramedics and stuff. We're going home soon but we're with paramedics right now. No one from the police talked to us."

9:00pm
Alternative Media Centre story meeting. We've got coverage of everything that happened today. We're hearing rolling updates of a major protest near the security fence with protesters demanding to speak with a leader of the G20. There's also a massive protest at the Novatel hotel. Queen's Park protesters have been crushed with mass arrests. We miss friends and our co-workers who are in jail right now.

11:30pm
Mass arrests of people peacefully protesting at the Novatel hotel. We're hearing 150 people and 70 people still there. More raids, police violence and arrests of Alternative Media Centre people. We send them our love.

12:30am
Still random pockets of people trying to confront the G20. I head to all night reporting at CKLN, with great interviews, music and analysis.

1:15am
We're hearing 100's of people rallying on Eastern Av. for jail solidarity are being surrounded by Police.

2:45am
30 people arrested by police for unlawful assembly. They were told if they left they would not be arrested, but the police lied. Thanks. Police followed and have now arrested a large portion of the rally. A number of them have been processed already. Patrick, one of the protesters, is live on air at CKLN and watching his friends get arrested. Sorry Patrick.

4:22am
Still reporting...

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2010-06-24T18:48:00.000-04:00

Can Little Corpses Forgive, or Be Apologized To?
Awakening from Canada's Big Lie
by Kevin D. Annett
www.hiddenfromhistory.org

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it .
Adolf Hitler, 1925

You have to admit it, but the Canadian establishment has to be pretty nervous these days, if you judge by its unfolding circus in Winnipeg.

I expected at first for the Indian residential school "Truth and Reconciliation" (TRC) bandwagon to do its usual photo op and move on, after the typically expensive fanfare and self-congratulations. But no. The lies and obscenities are growing on what they feed on. Hot on the heels of the TRC posturing there is descending on Winnipeg in a single week 280 world religious leaders, followed by a United Nations human rights delegation, and finally, Queen Elizabeth herself - all of them bubbling with praise for Canada's human rights record towards aboriginal people.

Liz Windsor, true to form, will have the unmitigated gall to unveil a statue of herself in Winnipeg on July 3, just before laying a piece of soil from Runnymede, where Magna Carta was signed, at the foundation of Canada's new "human rights museum", which hosts not a single exhibit of the genocide of Indians in Canada.

Some of us wrote to Queen Liz over two years ago, asking her to identify where the children who died at the hands of her church and state are buried. She never replied. But William Combes, who survived torture and starvation at the Catholic Indian residential school in Kamloops, B.C., wants the Queen to also explain what happened to ten native children who were last seen in her company in the fall of 1964, and disappeared forever.

"The Queen showed up at the school one day in September, she and her husband, when I was eleven" described William on my radio program last year.

"All of us kids at the school were given clean clothes and breakfast that day for her royal visit. We went down to a big field near Dead Man's Creek and had a picnic with her after she did her tour. After that, she went off with seven boys and three girls, and we never saw any of them, ever again."

The truth is that the topsoil has finally blown off the mass graves of more than 50,000 children who never returned from residential school, and those responsible are doing their damnedest to distract all of us from those revealed, tiny corpses. And what better decoy to use than an appeal to our deep collective need, as the guilty party, to be forgiven and to get off lightly for our crime?

A Big Lie can only be believed if those hearing it need to believe it: and in this case, Canadians' need for self-absolution for their century-long slaughter of innocent children has been our primary response to the residential schools revelation.

Every politician and Bishop in Canada knows this, and they've crafted their rhetoric and actions accordingly. But there's an odd sort of panic in the way they're going about it, using such overkill in their ridiculous stacking and censoring of their "official inquiry" into themselves that it suggests a deep and underlying uncertainty and fear by church and state.Undoubtedly this explains how thickly Ottawa and its church partners have been laying it on in Winnipeg since June 16, relying on a smiling Governor General, church celebrities, and the Queen herself to push the Big Lie that every crime, and every corpse, can be swept away with the right words.

The trouble with overkill is that it produces the opposite of its desired effect. For even residential school survivors who came to the TRC believing in it have come away hurt, angry and determined to be heard in some other forum.

Shirley, a Cree woman from northern Saskatchewan, told me,

"Nobody would pay our way to Winnipeg, and there was twenty of us who wanted to speak. So I came all by myself and I waited three days, and I never got to be heard. Except for a few token Indians, the whites were running the show, and they kept looking at me suspiciously and said I had to let them see my statement before I could speak. I said to them, I just want to speak, I don't have it written out, and they just snubbed me after that."

Peter Yellow Quill, an Anishinabe traditional chief who helped lead an anti-TRC protest outside the event, said afterwards,

"People themselves kept raising the whole missing children thing. They kept saying, 'We need help finding our dead relatives.' They were just ignored. There weren't court reporters present so everyone could see it wasn't even a proper hearing. I think the government people are just exposing themselves and they have no way out, really, and it worries them."

Voices like Shirley and Peter never reach "mainstream" Canada or the world, thanks to the loyal compliance of the media in shutting them out. A total of eight different news agencies refused to report our anti-TRC protest in Winnipeg, or quote natives who called for an international inquiry into genocide in Canada, including the CBC, the Globe and Mail, the Winnipeg Free Press, CTV, the Canadian Press and even ostensibly "radical" news agencies like Rabble and Canadian Dimension magazine.

"It was a total media blackout on us, by everybody" commented one protester.

"The only reason reporters would call me up would be to find out what we were doing that day, probably to tell the feds or the cops. But they'd never do a story on us."

All of this, of course, is a sign of the impact the voices of the living, and the dead, are having on churches and a government which, like the Vatican itself, have run out of options as they stand finally exposed as mass murderers and serial child rapists.

My problem these days is less with the criminals - for they are, after all, ultimately just corporations in damage control - and more with the masses of Canadians, beginning with "progressives" of every hue, who stand by with absolute non-interest regarding the greatest crime and cover-up in our history.

Awakening from a lie, particularly a huge and historical one, is always difficult. But when so many "activists" across Canada studiously shun our rallies at churches demanding that the corpses of children be returned, or that child rapists in high places be arrested and tried, then one wonders what has happened to the soul and the conscience of our people.

After years of acting in the wilderness to expose and undo the Canadian genocide, our efforts are finally igniting a response around the world, especially in the recent formation of an eight-nation International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State - a body that will be confronting the Pope in September and convening local non-governmental tribunals throughout the fall in Europe and on this continent.

In the meantime, it is incumbent on all Canadians to at least loosen their mental and spiritual subservience to the Big Lie and Criminal Conspiracy called Christian Canada - and shift their allegiance away from a murderous Crown and Church to a new social order that some have called a Republic of Kanata.

Stay tuned.

.........................................................................................................................

Kevin Annett is a community minister, author and award-winning film maker who lives in the downtown eastside of Vancouver, Canada. He is a co-founder of The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State, and can be heard every Monday at 1 pm (pacific time) on his program "Hidden from History" at www.coopradio.org .

ph: 386-323-5774
260 Kennedy St.
nanaimo, B.C. Canada V9R 2H8

Read and Hear the truth of Genocide in Canada, past and present, at this website: www.hiddenfromhistory.org , and watch Kevin's award-winning documentary film UNREPENTANT on the same website.

UNREPENTANT: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide
- Winner, Best Foreign Documentary Film, Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, March 2007, Best Director of a Foreign Documentary, New York Independent Film Festival, October 2006
- Winner, Best Canadian Film, Creation Aboriginal Film Festival, Edmonton, 2009

“Kevin is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than many who have received it in the past.”
- Dr. Noam Chomsky
Institute Professor Emeritus
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"As a long time front line worker with the Elders' Council at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, I stand behind what Kevin Annett is trying to do for our people. The genocide that continues today and which stemmed from the residential schools needs to be exposed. Kevin Annett helps break the silence, and brings the voice of our people all over the world."
Carol Muree Martin - Spirit Tree Woman
Nisgaa Nation

"I gave Kevin Annett his Indian name, Eagle Strong Voice, in 2004 when I adopted him into our Anishinabe Nation. He carries that name proudly because he is doing the job he was sent to do, to tell his people of their wrongs. He speaks strongly and with truth. He speaks for our stolen and murdered children. I ask everyone to listen to him and welcome him."
Chief Louis Daniels - Whispers Wind
Elder, Turtle Clan, Anishinabe Nation
Winnipeg, Manitoba

2010-06-17T17:38:00.001-04:00

G8/G20 403 400 BLOCKADES ...

First Nations group plans blockade on highways 403, 400
http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/790991
June 17, 2010

A First Nations rights group is still planning highway blockades around Toronto despite an apparent warning from Canada's spy agency and heavy security around the G20 meeting of world leaders.
The blockades are planned for either Highway 400 or Highway 403 next Thursday to tell the world that, "everything is not OK in Canada for native people," said Red Power United spokesman Harrison Friesen.

Plans have been in the works for the actions since April.

An Aboriginal Peoples Television Network report that CSIS warned the group that blockades around Toronto could be met with resistance by foreign security services has only increased support, Friesen said.

"(Warnings from CSIS) have not had a negative affect on us," said Friesen. "After the CSIS issue, more support was shown for us."

The 403 runs from Woodstock, Ont., to Mississauga, Ont., just west of Toronto, and Highway 400 runs north between Toronto and Barrie, Ont.

A blockade is also planned on the Trans-Canada Highway the same day near Thunder Bay, Ont.
World leaders are gathering in Toronto on June 26-27 for the G20 summit, which will be preceded by the G8 summit in Hunstville, deep in Ontario's cottage country, from June 25-26.
It's expected the leaders will arrive at Toronto's Pearson International Airport and travel by helicopter to the G8, and by car along Highway 427 to the G20 in Toronto.
The blockades would not interrupt those plans.

However, a motorcade making the nearly three-hour trek to Huntsville would likely travel along Highway 400.

Friesen said plans are to hold the "non-violent" blockades for as long as it takes to have their message heard.

"We want the Stephen Harper government to realize that we will not back down," said Friesen. "We will only resist if (police) threaten violence against us. We want these to be peaceful blockade demonstrations and nothing more than that.

"I will not allow any of our people to be harmed on that day."

Friesen said he expects between 20 to 30 men and women to participate in the Toronto-area blockades.
Michael Boucher, from Fort William First Nation, Ont., said he expects about 200 people to turn out for a planned five-hour blockade on the Trans-Canada Highway near Thunder Bay. He is meeting with the Ontario Provincial Police to inform them of their plans.

"I have two children and I was thinking that by the time my kids are older, with they way things are going, their rights are going to be diminished," he said.

"I am fighting for my children's rights and my family and friends."
In an exchange captured on video by APTN National News, a person that the network says is a CSIS agent warns Friesen his group could face a reaction from foreign security agencies if they blocked Highway 400.

"I will tell you that straight up, because there's going to be people travelling there from all over the world and different countries do not have the same perspective on activists as our county does," the woman says.

"There's other forces that are from other countries that will not put up with a blockade in front of their president."
CSIS would neither confirm nor deny that the meeting took place, citing security and privacy reasons.

Canadian Press

----------

The Indigenous Peoples of Canada have a legal right to blockade Canada's transportation routes. They run across Treaty and Traditional Aboriginal Territories protected by the Canadian Constitution (Sec 35). Since Treaty and Aboriginal rights have not been honoured,

2010-06-17T12:18:00.008-04:00

The TRUTH about Canada: Child asks "WHY?!"

Canada's court-ordered, internationally monitored 'Truth and Reconciliation Commission'into the 'Indian' Residential Schools has just begun. All Canadians need to understand that these were not just 'schools', but a government designed policy for a means of destroying the culture, customs, heritage and birthrights of Indigenous Peoples. In particular, the schools were planned by Canada's government "to take the land out of the Indians hands". (Egerton Ryerson, 1847) The 'Indian' Residential Schools were just one of Canada's weapons of GENOCIDE against Indigenous Peoples who had, and have legal title to the lands and resources of Canada.

The struggle continues for Indigenous Peoples of 'Kanata' to reclaim their birthright - Aboriginal Rights and Title to the lands of Canada - a say in development and a share in the revenues from the land. Indigenous Peoples also struggle to overcome the horrific personal legacies of Canada's 'Indian' Residential Schools - the traumas of over 100 years of chronic abuse and neglect, separation from family and culture, and the losses of friends and relatives who died or 'disappeared' in the schools.

Over 50,000 Indigenous children died or disappeared in Canada's 'Indian' Residential Schools, and their fates and burial places remain a mystery as their graves are unmarked and sometimes hidden: Unmarked and mass graves of these children exist all across Canada.
NOTE: See sidebar, and see previous articles here, esp. Globe and Mail.
http://grannyrantson.blogspot.com/search/label/%27Indian%27%20Residential%20Schools
and SEE DOCUMENTARY FILM
UNREPENTANT: CANADA'S GENOCIDE

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2010/06/16/man-truh-reconcilation-commission-foster-care.html#socialcomments

Boy, 11, slams residential schools legacy
Last Updated: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 | 9:28 PM CST Comments134Recommend235
CBC News
Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, speaks during a sharing circle in which persons affected by residential schools shared their experiences. Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, speaks during a sharing circle in which persons affected by residential schools shared their experiences. (John Woods/Canadian Press)

An 11-year-old boy stole the spotlight at the opening day of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings into the tragedy of Canada's residential schools.

The former foster child, who turned up to ceremonies at The Forks in Winnipeg on Wednesday, told CBC News that members of his family still suffer from the aftershocks the federal government's former policies had on his grandparents and elders.

He cannot be identified because he's a former ward of the child-welfare system — a system he says continues to remove children from their homes and places them in care where they are sometimes subjected to abuse.

'I want a good explanation why all our elders went to residential schools.'— Former Manitoba foster child, 11

In Manitoba, recent data from the provincial children's advocate shows there are more kids in state care than ever before, most of them spread across a number of regional child-welfare authorities throughout the province.

"When I was a baby, like two years old, I was taken away from my Mom to a foster home," the boy said. "And still nothing has changed. They might do something today for residential schools but nothing's changed.

"Well, some kids are still in foster homes, still kids are still being treated bad and you cannot take away what happen to those people that went to residential schools," he said.

He wondered why the government wanted residential schools to exist in the first place, given their legacy of damage and trauma.

"That doesn't, what you call, make sense — like why would they do that?," the boy said. "And still, still, still today, our grandfathers and grandmothers — our elders — are still sad about what happened," he said.

"I want a good explanation why all our elders went to residential schools."
Stories note loss of language

About 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were forced to attend the government and church-run schools over much of the last century. The last one closed outside Regina in 1996. About 85,000 former students are still alive.
Jack Beardy, 65, leans against his cane during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's opening ceremonies in Winnipeg on Wednesday morning. Jack Beardy, 65, leans against his cane during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's opening ceremonies in Winnipeg on Wednesday morning. (John Woods/Canadian Press)

The $60-million truth commission, meant to expose and expiate the pain and suffering caused by the policy, was part of a landmark deal reached with survivors who had filed a class-action lawsuit against Ottawa and the churches that ran the schools.

Others also shared their experiences — some in private, some in public — with those at the commission charged with recording their stories for a national public archive.

Robert Joseph, from British Columbia, told the commission he was sexually abused by two people as a young student. He said he used to hide under his blankets and dream about his family, whom he was not allowed to see.

Leanne Sleigh, from Alberta, told the commission she felt worthless after attending a residential school where she was sexually abused.

Mary Simon, head of Canada's largest Inuit group, said she was made to feel ashamed of her culture at a day school in northern Quebec. She said she had her hand strapped whenever she spoke her language.
Healing and forgiveness

While many spoke of their trauma and anger toward the government and those who ran the schools, others, such as Rev. Guy Lavallee from St. Laurent, Man., spoke of the need for healing and forgiveness.

Lavallee, a Catholic priest who is Metis, said he understands why people are upset.

"I think that animosity has been in the minds [and] hearts of survivors for many years now," he said. "They have the opportunity to express themselves fully here."

All Canadians need to take part in the commission's work, he said.

It is expected that more than 5,000 people, including former students, leaders of aboriginal organizations, church groups and members of the general public will attend the event during its four days in Winnipeg.

The commission has the ability to record as many as 600 statements from survivors during its time in the city.

By noon Wednesday, about 50 people had given one.

AND SEE MORE ...
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2010/06/16/man-truh-reconcilation-commission-foster-care.html#socialcomments

Read more:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2010/06/16/man-truh-reconcilation-commission-foster-care.html#socialcomments#ixzz0r6vlJSLw

2010-06-10T02:45:00.001-04:00

$1.1M for G20 posters ...

Summit wallpaper for behind podiums the latest bit of federal fiscal fun
Toronto Sun
By GREG WESTON, QMI Agency

Last Updated: June 10, 2010 12:00am

A pal who once served as a senior Canadian diplomat in Washington tells the story of having to change the locks on his diplomatic mansion to keep the government decorators from continuously renovating the place.

Canadian taxpayers, he says, have nothing to fear from the limo crowd more than an army of Foreign Affairs decorators all cashed up with nothing to paint.

This may help to explain how the federal government is managing to blow millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on a fake lake and other ridiculous decorations for the coming G8 and G20 summits in Toronto and in Muskoka cottage country to the north.

The latest bit of fiscal fun at public expense is $1,102,500 — wait for it — for backdrops in the two meeting halls hosting the summits.

No joke: Foreign Affairs is shelling out over a million bucks for those really big banners and signboards commonly used as backdrops behind speakers’ podiums.

These will be used mainly to decorate the meeting halls in Toronto and Muskoka where the world leaders will be gathering for their gabfest and photo op.

An executive with the company installing the expensive props explains they provide suitable decor and messaging in camera shots of the leaders and other speakers.

It doesn’t seem to matter that most media toting those cameras won’t be allowed within several kilometres of either the Muskoka or Toronto meeting halls to shoot the million-bucks-worth of backdrops, much less the bigwigs standing in front of them.

The exec says that outside the Metro Toronto Convention Centre there will be some really big billboards, presumably with catchy slogans such as: Welcome to the G8/G20 summit.

Aside from letting Barack Obama and his several thousands handlers know he’s in the right place, the giant signs will provide a security screen for leaders arriving in their limos.

Inside, the exec tells us, the company is creating and installing “all the backdrops that you’ll see on camera within the context of all the meeting rooms, etc.

“This is all the environment that is required in the space to outfit the rooms to make them suitable for the purpose.”

Translation: The company is putting up some really big pictures.

Not just any pretty pictures, of course.

The exec says: “Obviously we want to use the graphics as opportunities to focus on things that are iconic to Canada. So there’s a Toronto sillouette, there’s maple leafs (sic), and various other content.”

Please, sir, say that for a million bucks we are not showcasing the Toronto Maple Leafs.

“Oh, no, no, no. This is about success.”

None of this, of course, should be confused with the fake lake and other Disneyesque nonsense costing taxpayers $2 million to dress up an entirely different Toronto convention hall being used as a media centre during the three-day confab.

If the insatiable Foreign Affairs decorators wanted to capture the true essence of the summits, they would have backdrops depicting a billion-dollar sinkhole.

greg.weston@sunmedia.ca

2010-06-08T12:57:00.001-04:00

Children’s services on reserves and human rights

June 02, 2010
Craig Benjamin
Toronto Star

Over the next two days, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal will decide whether or not to continue hearings into the federal government’s underfunding of children’s services in First Nations reserves. The decision should be of pressing interest to anyone concerned about human rights in Canada.

First Nations children on reserves are eight times more likely than other children to be put into foster care or government institutions. These children are being taken from their families and their communities for a wide range of reasons, but the most common is what’s called “neglect.” This includes conditions of poverty, poor housing and physical and mental illnesses suffered by their parents. In other words, their families have not been able to provide the care that these children need. Not without support.

Advocates for the rights of First Nations children have long pointed out that things don’t need to be this way. If children’s services on reserves were linked to the needs of the children and equitable to services available in other communities, early intervention programs and other services could assure that more children receive the care they need and deserve without taking them away from their homes and their culture.

In 2000, the Department of Indian Affairs took part in a study that determined that, on average, the federal government spends 22 per cent less per child for children’s services on reserves than their provincial counterparts spend in predominantly non-aboriginal communities. This is despite the greater expense and greater need created by the remoteness of many aboriginal communities and the lasting harm caused by past government policies, such as the residential schools.
Canada’s only response is a model called “enhanced funding” that the auditor general has already ruled inequitable. Even this approach is not available in all regions.

The fact that this issue is now before the Human Rights Tribunal reflects the failure of successive federal governments to do the right thing for children and families by acting on the findings of their own reports and independent experts.
Two years ago, the federal government formally apologized for the forced removal of children from their homes and families during the residential school era. Like many Canadians, I felt that this apology was a welcome step toward the necessary and long-overdue reconciliation of aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples. Justice, however, requires more than just words. Justice requires that every effort must be made to undo the harm that has been done and to ensure that the wrong is never repeated.

Sadly, it’s a test that the Government of Canada is failing. Overall, the number of First Nations children placed in foster care is higher today than at the height of residential school operations. And the federal government is fighting against being held accountable for its failings.

The Human Rights Tribunal has been asked to determine whether the underfunding of First Nations child services constitutes discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act. The Federal Court has already denied government requests to prevent the tribunal hearing on this case. Now the government is trying the same tactics at the tribunal. This week the tribunal will consider the government’s claim that the Human Rights Act applies only to the delivery of government services, and not to the funding decisions that ultimately determine the kind and quality of services that can be provided.

This is legal hairsplitting but it has potentially serious consequences for human rights. The area of child and family services is only one among many where First Nations institutions deliver services based on funding formulas set by the federal government. If the government is able to convince the tribunal to throw out this case, it would create a large gap in human rights accountability for government decisions in critical areas such as First Nations health and education.

One of the ironies of this case is that this is the same government that two years ago refused to the support the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, arguing that Canada was better off relying on the Canadian Human Rights Act alone. Now, in its submission to the tribunal, the government is arguing that its funding of services on First Nations reserves should be excluded from both domestic and international human rights standards. What happens to the children if they are successful?

Canadians should demand better. For the welfare of First Nations children. And for the basic principle of universal human rights protection.

Craig Benjamin is Amnesty International’s c

2010-05-14T15:30:00.006-04:00

Deja vu: Canada's 'Indian' Residential Schools ... and now the Roma children??

From article below:
“The [next] government’s agenda must include a program designed to gradually put as many Roma children as possible into boarding schools and gradually separate them from the life they live in their settlements,”

... HMMM! ... sounds an awful lot like this ...
"Their education must consist not merely training of the mind, but of a weaning from the habits and feelings of their ancestors, and the acquirements of the language, art and customs of civilized life."
Egerton Ryerson, 'father' of Canada's 'Indian' Residential Schools (1847)

... AND this ...
"I want to get rid of the Indian problem...Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question and no Indian department."
(Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1913-1932)

...AND this ...
Nicholas Flood Davin Report of 1879 noted that "the industrial school is the principal feature of the policy known as that of 'aggressive civilization'....Indian culture is a contradiction in terms...they are uncivilized...the aim of education is to destroy the Indian."

...AND this too?? ...
"It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habituating so closely in the residential schools and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this does not justify a change in the policy of this Department which is geared towards a final solution of our Indian Problem."
(Duncan Campbell Scott)
www.shannonthunderbird.com/residential_schools.htm

Boarding schools for Roma kids?

by Claire Ward on Wednesday, May 12, 2010 2:40pm - 2 Comments

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/05/12/boarding-schools-for-roma-kids/

In an attempt to integrate future generations of Roma into European society, the Slovakian government has controversially proposed to send children of Roma families to state-run boarding schools. Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico made the announcement in March following a damning report by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay during her annual address. Pillay slammed Slovakia for the “deteriorating” situation of its impoverished, widely unemployed Roma citizens, who represent around 10 per cent of Slovakia’s overall population of 5.4 million.

“The [next] government’s agenda must include a program designed to gradually put as many Roma children as possible into boarding schools and gradually separate them from the life they live in their settlements,” said Fico, whose left-wing Smer party is facing a June election. “It seems that there is no other system. Many things have been tried. If we don’t do it, we will raise another generation of Roma which will not be able to integrate.”

A recent EU summit in Spain focusing on the Roma situation in Europe concluded that tens of thousands of Roma children are currently sent to schools for the mentally disabled, and suffer from a widely adopted systemic racism that perpetuates the segregation problem. Fico’s solution hasn’t been rejected by the EU, on the condition that the schools are voluntary and temporary. The Slovak government has confirmed preliminary approval of the plan by top Roma officials, and that the schooling would be indeed offered on a voluntary basis.

But human rights organizations have decried Fico’s solution. “[The Canadian Roma community] are very upset about it,” says Ronald Lee, a Hamilton-based Roma-Canadian author and activist. “It’s like native children in Canada being sent to residential schools. It destroys the ethnicity, the culture, the language, the sense of identity. How are they going to be treated in these boarding schools? Prejudice over there is rampant.”

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Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group

GENOCIDE "Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
GENOCIDE@WIKI

2010-02-26T16:19:00.000-05:00

COUNCIL OF CANADIANS--
Help defend the Browns Creek watershed: the Okanagan Indian Band
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

The Okanagan Indian Band has set up a road blockade near Bouleau Lake to stop Tolko Industries from logging in the Browns Creek watershed area near Vernon, British Columbia.

The Okanagan Indian Band is concerned that the logging will threaten their water supply and archeological sites. They insist that the logging should not take place while land claims remain unresolved.

Chief Fabian Alexis says, “The federal government has done nothing to protect the 1,800 people who live on the Okanagan Indian Band reserve. The provincial government has made it clear that the financial interests of Tolko are of greater concern to them than the health and safety of the people who derive their drinking and irrigation water from the Browns Creek watershed. When it comes to protecting watersheds that supply Vernon with its water, government agencies would not hesitate to act, but suddenly when it involves our community, our concerns are discounted. This systemic racism will not stand.”

National Chief Shawn Atleo of the Assembly of First Nations says, “I would like to offer my support to Chief Fabian Alexis and the members of the Okanagan Indian Band in their efforts to protect their community’s water supply.”

Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs Grand Chief Stewart Phillip says, “The UBCIC fully supports the Okanagan Indian Band’s decision to protect their community’s water supply… I received a letter from Minister Pat Bell that makes it clear that the safety of the drinking water that supplies most of the 1800 people who live on the Okanagan Indian Band reserve is not as important to him as facilitating short term profits for Tolko.”

The BC Supreme Court gave permission for the logging to proceed provided the archeological sites were protected in a February 1 ruling. Tolko is now going to court to seek an enforcement order on the logging permits that have been issued to them.

Chief Alexis is asking that members of the general public help by calling their MLAs and MPs to express their support. Supporters have also been invited to attend the blockade.

To find the contact information for your federal representative (and for those in BC your provincial representative), go to the Council of Canadians website at http://www.canadians.org/action/contact_reps.html.

2010-02-10T15:01:00.005-05:00

Natives died in droves as Ottawa ignored warnings

Tuberculosis took the lives of students at residential schools for at least 40 years

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GRANNYNOTE: AS CANADA'S COURT-ORDERED, UN-SUPERVISED 'TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION' TRIES AGAIN IN 2010 TO BEGIN ITS VVORK, A REVIEVV OF THE HEINOUS FACTS ... THE TRUTH OF CANADA'S ACTIONS ... IS NECESSARY.

PLEASE DISTRIBUTE THIS INFORMATION TO ALL CANADIANS
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Globe and Mail investigation

BILL CURRY AND KAREN HOWLETT

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

April 24, 2007 at 1:30 AM EST

OTTAWA — As many as half of the aboriginal children who attended the early years of residential schools died of tuberculosis, despite repeated warnings to the federal government that overcrowding, poor sanitation and a lack of medical care were creating a toxic breeding ground for the rapid spread of the disease, documents show.

A Globe and Mail examination of documents in the National Archives reveals that children continued to die from tuberculosis at alarming rates for at least four decades after a senior official at the Department of Indian Affairs initially warned in 1907 that schools were making no effort to separate healthy children from those sick with the highly contagious disease.

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GRANNYNOTE: IN 1901, IT BECAME CANADIAN POLICY TO SEGREGATE PEOPLE VVITH TUBERCULOSIS FROM OTHER PEOPLE TO AVOID THE SPREAD OF THE DEADLY DISEASE. NO SUCH EFFORTS VVERE MADE TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN IN CANADA'S 'INDIAN' RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS. THEY DIED IN NUMBERS SO HIGH THAT IT COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED BY NORMAL TRANSMISSION. IT VVAS DELIBERATE MASS MURDER PERPETRATED BY THE GOVERNMENTS OF CANADA AND THE CATHOLIC, ANGLICAN AND UNITED CHURCHES OF CANADA.
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Peter Bryce, the department's chief medical officer, visited 15 Western Canadian residential schools and found at least 24 per cent of students had died from tuberculosis over a 14-year period. The report suggested the numbers could be higher, noting that in one school alone, the death toll reached 69 per cent.

With less than four months to go before Ottawa officially settles out of court with most former students, a group calling itself the Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared Residential School Children is urging the government to acknowledge this period in the tragic residential-schools saga – and not just the better-known cases of physical and sexual abuse.

Last week, Liberal MP Gary Merasty wrote to Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice asking the government to look into the concerns. Mr. Prentice's spokesman, Bill Rogers, told The Globe that departmental officials have been asked to meet with native groups.

Some of their stories, including tales of children buried in unmarked graves beside the schools, are told in a new documentary by Kevin Annett, a former United Church minister, titled Unrepentant: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide.

Mr. Annett, as well as some academics, argue that the government's handling, combined with Canada's official policy of removing children from their homes for 10 months each year to attend distant schools, does indeed fit the United Nations definition of genocide.

The UN definition, adopted after the Second World War, lists five possible acts that qualify as genocide, of which killing is only one. The fifth act is described as “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

But transcripts of debates in 1952 of the House of Commons external affairs committee, reviewed by The Globe, show public servants advised politicians not to enshrine a definition of genocide into law, despite Canada's promise internationally to do so.

In 2000, four years after the last residential school closed, the government finally adopted a limited definition of genocide, excluding the line about forcible transfer of children. But courts have rejected native claims of genocide against Ottawa and the churches because Canada had no law banning genocide while the schools were operating.

“It's another crime,” said Roland Chrisjohn, a professor of native studies at St. Thomas University who has written extensively on the subject. “Canada can't define genocide to suit its own purposes.”
(See http://www.dominionpaper.ca/original_peoples/2006/10/12/like_weeds.html )

Few argue that the policy was genocidal in the Nazi sense of deliberately killing people. Rather, the focus was on killing native culture in the name of assimilation, said John Milloy, a Trent University professor.

“The purpose of the [federal government's] policy is to eradicate Indians as a cultural group,” said Prof. Milloy, who has had more access to government files on the subject than any other researcher. “If genocide has to do with destroying a people's culture, this is genocidal, no doubt about it. But to call it genocidal is to misunderstand how the system works.”

Whatever the definition, there is no disputing the deadly swath tuberculosis cut through native schools.

Dr. Bryce followed up his 1907 report with a second one two years later, this time on the toll TB was taking in Alberta residential schools. He recommended that Ottawa take over responsibility of the schools from church control.

The Globe has uncovered letters in the archives showing that many others issued similar warnings. Just a few months after Dr. Bryce's 1909 report, the department's Indian agent for Duck Lake, Sask., wrote to his Ottawa colleagues: “The department should realize that under present circumstances about one-half of the children who are sent to the Duck Lake boarding school die before the age of 18, or very shortly afterward.”

Another document published in 1914 shows Dr. Bryce's findings were accepted by Duncan Campbell Scott, the most influential senior Indian Affairs official of the period. “It is quite within the mark to say that fifty per cent of the children who passed through these schools did not live to benefit from the education which they had received therein,” Mr. Scott wrote in an essay.

But one of the documents obtained by The Globe reveals Mr. Scott's department rejected the doctor's recommendations because the government did not want to upset the churches that ran the schools.

The residential schools were an extension of religious missionary work. They started receiving federal support in 1874 as part of Canada's campaign to assimilate aboriginals into Christian society by obliterating their language, religion and culture. Well over 100,000 native children passed through the schools, most of which were closed in the mid-1970s.

The tuberculosis problem was symptomatic of the deplorable living conditions for the thousands of children uprooted from their communities and placed in the care of strangers. Tuberculosis is one of the deadliest infectious diseases, entering the body through breathing and infecting the lungs. It can then spread to the central nervous system, bones and joints, according to the Canadian Lung Association.

In May, 1930, at the Shubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia, officials were coping with an outbreak of tuberculosis seven months after the facility opened. But it was the arrival several years later of James Paul, a new student with an advanced case of tuberculosis, that raised the ire of the school's visiting physician.

“Evidently somebody has mistaken our residential school for a TB sanatorium,” D. F. MacInnis says in a letter to Indian Affairs.

Later, Dr. MacInnis wrote to the school principal: “We are apparently getting all the advanced TB cases and syphilities in the three provinces shipped into our school and apparently there is no way left for us to keep them out. It is very unfair to the children who are clean and well.”

Although most students from this period are no longer alive, some who attended later recall sharing sleeping quarters with dying children.

“I've known some students that died there and I don't know how they died. All we know is we had their funeral service,” said Harry Lucas, 66, who attended Christie Indian Residential on Vancouver Island from 1948 to 1958.

“There were quite a few grave sites there that I always questioned. We were able to sleep next to a person that was dying. They didn't put them away in separate rooms. That was always kind of spooky for me.”

Ted Quewezance, the executive director of the National Residential School Survivors Society, attended Gordon Residential School and St. Philip Residential School in Saskatchewan from 1960 to 1969. He said he has spoken to thousands of former students across Canada.

“We'd see [funerals] monthly,” he said. “We were never able to ask what they were. It's no different right across the country. There's even some graves unmarked. Kids were buried at the school, but now we're talking about how do we bring our survivors home?”

The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared Residential School Children claims thousands of children are buried in unmarked graves near the schools. Many of their stories are contained in the documentary by Mr. Annett ( Link: Unrepentent ) who says he was ousted from the United Church in 1995 after raising concerns about the church's residential-school history.

(The United Church rejects Mr. Annett's version of events, pointing to a three-week termination hearing in which several witnesses said he was a confrontational figure who was a poor manager of his Port Alberni church.)

James Scott of the United Church said there is relatively little solid information on deaths at the schools because archivists have been so focused on researching claims of living former students.

“My sense is that the more we find out about [the schools], the deeper our understanding of the catastrophic impact of the residential schools on aboriginal people, on their families and their culture,” he said.

Bede Hubbard of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said the Roman Catholic Church, which ran most of the schools, noted that previous research has shown the churches made many pleas to Ottawa for more money to improve standards.

“I didn't realize that the rates of tuberculosis were that high. In the 1930s, tuberculosis was rampant in Canada itself, so it shouldn't be surprising then that it was also a problem in the residential schools.”

Prof. Milloy of Trent University is the only outsider to have accessed the locked vault of Indian Affairs records through his role as a senior researcher for the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

In 1999, he published his research in a book titled A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System. Prof. Milloy expressed discomfort with the campaign of Mr. Annett and others to introduce language such as genocide and “aboriginal holocaust.”

What government and church records do show, he said, is that the deaths were primarily due to the policy of paying churches on a per-capita basis to run the schools. Numerous letters indicate that because of the funding policy, churches would admit sick children and refuse to send ailing ones home. Pleas to the department for more funding fell on deaf ears.

“That's why there's so many kids sleeping in so few beds in so many dormitories across the country,” Prof. Milloy said. “It has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of ‘Let's get them sick with tuberculosis and wipe them out as a species on the earth.' It's the fact that the feds won't spend any money on this, and that's what it leads to.”

As for Dr. Bryce, the man who first sounded the alarm, he was shuffled to another department. The position of chief medical officer was terminated and the government appears to have made no further effort to gather statistics on deaths at the schools. Ottawa did not take over control of all schools until 1969.

In 1922, after he retired, Dr. Bryce penned a diatribe against Ottawa's lack of response to his reports.

The title: The Story of a National Crime.

A HISTORY OF SHAME

EARLY YEARS

Started before Confederation as part of religious missionary work, residential schools originally focused on replacing aboriginal beliefs with Christianity. More than 70 per cent of the schools were run by the Roman Catholic Church; the rest by the Anglican and United Churches.

FEDERAL INVOLVEMENT

The federal government started funding residential schools in 1874, using American Industrial Schools as the model for introducing manual labour and agricultural skills to natives. To encourage children to use English and French, they were physically punished for speaking their own languages.

OTTAWA TAKES OVER

There were 72 residential schools in 1948 and 9,368 students. Ottawa took full control of the schools in 1969 and most were closed during the 1970s. The last school shut its doors in 1996.

THE LEGACY

Stories of physical and sexual abuse began to emerge in the 1980s, and became major news when Manitoba Chief Phil Fontaine, now the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, went public with his story of sexual abuse as a student.

In April of 2006, Ottawa reached a $1.9-billion agreement with former students to settle their class-action lawsuits out of court and compensate for the loss of language and culture. Further money has been set aside to settle claims of physical and sexual abuse. Students have until Aug. 20 to accept the package. Bill Curry

RAISING CONCERN

January, 1919

Duncan Campbell Scott, a senior Indian Affairs official, talks about the inadequacy of the school buildings in a memorandum to Arthur Meighen, then Superintendent General of Indian Affairs. “They were unsanitary and they were undoubtedly chargeable with a very high death rate among the pupils.”

December, 1920

A report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs says 33 students at the Sarcee school near Calgary are afflicted with tuberculosis.

February, 1925

W.M. Graham, Indian Commissioner for Saskatchewan, says in a letter to Mr. Scott: “We will have to do something to stop this indiscriminate admission of children without first passing a medical exam. ... I quite often hear from the Indians that they do not want to send their children to school as it is a place where they are sent to die.”

February, 1925

Russell T. Ferrier, Superintendent of Indian Education, writes to Indian commissioners and agents, saying each child should be pronounced fit by a medical officer before being admitted to a school. “When a pupil's health becomes a matter of concern soon after admission, the consequent parental alarm and distrust militates against successful recruiting.”

March, 1932

The Department of Indian Affairs announces that as a result of spending cutbacks, it cannot authorize admitting children with tuberculosis to a sanatorium or hospital unless the patient requires “care for relief of actual suffering.” Karen Howlett

Original source. www.theglobeandmail.com

Natives died in droves as Ottawa ignored warnings

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GRANNYNOTE: THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA IS ATTEMPTING TO CONTROL THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION BY CONTROLLIN ITS FUNDS AND BY STACKING THE COMMISSION VVITH GOVERNMENT/CHURCH-FRIENDLY APPOINTEES.

VVILL CANADIANS ACCEPT THE VVHITEASH?
DO VVE VVANT TO KNOVV THE REAL TRUTH?

2010-02-05T12:11:00.000-05:00

Six Nations comes 'ready to negotiate'

January 28, 2010
Chief William K. Montour
The Hamilton Spectator
(Jan 28, 2010)

First off, I would like to congratulate the Mississaugas of New Credit chief and council and their negotiating team for reaching an agreement with Canada for their City of Toronto and Brant lease claims. It is now up to the New Credit membership to ratify the agreement.

My deep concern and utter disbelief is based on reports about the narrow attitude of the Minister of Indian Affairs and the local politicians in intimating that if New Credit can come to an agreement, why can't Six Nations?

The name, Mississaugas of New Credit, tells the story. This particular group of Mississaugas was displaced from the Credit Valley by the Province of Upper Canada. They moved to the Six Nations Grand River lands after the Mississauga Chiefs and the Six Nations Confederacy Chiefs negotiated a lease arrangement for 6,000 acres of Six Nations of the Grand River lands. Hence the name NEW Credit.

What the minister and the local politicians don't seem to realize is that if it were not for the Six Nations there could well be no Canada, as we know it today. From the late 17th century to the American Revolution, the Six Nations and the British had a military alliance against the French, and later the American patriots, in the fight for dominance in North America.

After the American Revolution and the Haldimand Proclamation of King George III, the Six Nations settled along the Grand River. This settlement was not arbitrary but specific.

The Six Nations were to act as a buffer between the British settlements in Upper Canada and the new United States of America. This was tested in the War of 1812.

The Haldimand Proclamation was a specific designation of lands within our beaver hunting grounds that were to be recognized as a deed to Six Nations of these lands. This proclamation of six miles on either side of the river from mouth to source and comprising of 950,000 acres of land was to become the new home of the Six Nations to compensate for lands lost to the new United States of America. These lands were to be enjoyed by the Six Nations and their posterity forever.

After the need for Six Nations to fight as allies of Great Britain, the land dealings by Crown trustees started. These nefarious sharp dealings by these Crown trustees and later the new Canada and the Province of Ontario, have reduced the land base of Six Nations, in the legal terms of the dominant society, to 46,000 acres. The Six Nations still maintain land rights to the entire original Haldimand Tract.

The only land settlement that the Six Nations Elected Council will support is a global settlement that, by modern treaty, secures our perpetual care and maintenance for basic services such as education, health, social and public infrastructure.

Further, any lands that become available must revert to Six Nations title, as well as the return of monies taken from our trust accounts by these same sharp dealers that used Six Nations money to build various buildings and other facilities that Ontario and Canada still enjoy today.

In addition the Six Nations Elected Council will not settle any land right for money and then sign a paper that absolves Canada of any future obligation to negotiate further grievances. We will not be forced to extinguish our children's right to their homelands for money. Six Nations comes to the table ready to negotiate while Canada only comes to the negotiating table with a predetermined solution with pretense that negotiations have taken place. The province comes to the table as a spectator.

I hope I have articulated to the reader that every land claim settlement cannot be completed in a cookie-cutter approach.

William K. Montour is Chief, Six Nations Elected Council.

2010-01-19T13:17:00.003-05:00

Canada: Aboriginal Youth Suicides Hit Crisis Rate

Monday, January 18th, 2010 @ 16:32 UTC

by Juhie Bhatia

When the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games kick off next month, an Aboriginal symbol will be representing the event. The Games' logo is a contemporary inukshuk, a stone sculpture used by Canada's Inuit people as directional landmarks, which organizers say symbolizes friendship and hope. But hope is one thing many Aboriginal youth in Canada appear to lack, as suicide continues to occur at alarming rates, leading to crisis-like situations in some communities.
Suicide rates have declined in Canada through the years but not in Aboriginal communities, though there is great variation among communities. Suicide rates are five to seven times higher for First Nations youth than for non-Aboriginal youth, and rates among Inuit youth are among the highest in the world, at 11 times the national average. Some spectulate that the problem is actually worse, as stats don't usually include all Aboriginal groups.
Many factors may be contributing to these high rates, including isolation, poverty and lack of adequate housing, health care, social services and other basic amenities. The blog Sweetgrass Coaching, written by Richard Bull, also blames the pain and helplessness that resulted from colonization:

“You can’t understand Aboriginal suicide without looking at colonization. We, as Indigenous people, must realize that we did not have sky-high suicide rates before the European invasion (contact is too clean a word for what actually happened).
When Canadian society says we’re sick that’s like a psychopathic killer complaining to someone he’s tried to strangle repeatedly that she should do something about the marks on her neck and see a psychiatrist about her recurrent nightmares and low self-esteem.”

Specifically, some bloggers point to Canada's residential schools, a federally-funded system run by churches that removed Aboriginal children from their families and communities to help them assimilate into Euro-Canadian cultures. From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 Aboriginal children were required to attend these Christian schools. It was later revealed that many of these children endured physical, emotional and sexual abuse. In June 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized on behalf of the Canadian government and its citizens for the residential school system.
Anishinawbe Blog by Bob Goulais says the multi-generational effects of residential schools must not be underestimated.

“Many residential school survivors and their families have no identity beyond their church and what they learned in school. With no identity and without acceptance, they are banished to the margins of society. Although this generation might be more accepting – with access to more social programs and numerous political, legal and rights-based victories – the damage from the past generations has been done. Parents don’t know how to be parents. Families don’t know how to Love…
…For far too many youth, suicide is the ultimate way out. We’re seeing that more in more in remote, northern communities. This is truly the saddest commentary. I can’t imagine how bad life must be for a twelve year-old Cree boy to hang himself at the recreation centre swing-set. To not have the Love he needs… to not have hope. To know that he hasn’t been the first and he won’t be the last.”

To help combat suicide among Aboriginal youth, the Web site Honouring Life Network, funded by Health Canada, was launched in April 2008. It contains resources for youth and youth workers, a blog and personal stories from Aboriginal youth, among other things. In this personal story a young man talks about how his older brother's death led him to contemplate taking his own life.

“On the second anniversary of his death, I just couldn’t feel like missing him anymore. I got up really early in the morning and was walking to the picnic shelter by the lake. This other guy had hung himself there not long before. I felt like I wanted the lake to be the last thing I saw.
My neighbour was out though and started talking to me and I guess he could tell something was wrong. He kept talking to me and talking to me and then he woke up my parents. I never actually told them what I was going to do but they knew somehow. It was a big shock to all of us and it woke us up.
We started to get into the traditional healing; like my dad and I will do a sweat lodge with the other men. I’m not going to talk about that because it’s private. And my mom does the whole thing with burning sage and sweetgrass, which kind of stinks up the house but that’s okay I guess because she’s more like my mom again.”

Last fall, the Honouring Life Network announced a video contest, where Aboriginal youth were encouraged to submit a short video related to suicide prevention and awareness. The entries can be viewed on their YouTube channel; the winning entry is entitled “Choose life”:

Other youth are also working to help fight this growing problem. In 2006, Steve Sanderson, an Aboriginal youth cartoonist, wrote and illustrated a comic book called “Darkness Calls” to highlight suicide among Aboriginal youth. Revolving around a teen named Kyle, the story is also available as a video. In the blog Stageleft, the blogger discusses 12 other Aboriginal youth who are making a difference, and were rewarded for doing so, including his daughter Charlotte:

“I feel very safe in saying that not one of the 12 people on the stage lived the lives they have lived, or did the things that they have done, so they could get an award…Charlotte has been concerned with Aboriginal youth suicide rates, the rate of suicide in the Aboriginal community is many times higher than the national rate, and the rate of suicide within the Inuit community is the highest in Canada. To help bring attention to this she, and 4 other Aboriginal youth, walked from Duncan BC to Ottawa speaking at community centres, youth detention facilities, friendship centres, municipal councils, and to every politician that would listen to them.”

A 2009 UNICEF Canada report on Aboriginal children's health states that suicide intervention and prevention can only be successful by taking into account the interconnected relationships between culture, community and environment. Whatever the approach, the blog Rebel Youth says Aboriginal youth, like all Canadian youth, deserve a future.

“Over 50% of Aboriginal people are under 23. Canadian youth justified by being deep enraged by treatment of Aboriginal peoples by the Canadian ruling class; the attack on Aboriginal youth is an attack on all youth.
Aboriginal youth need a future. A future free from racism, a future with a good paying job, a future with land or proper compensation for land use. A future with rights to universal education right up to and including post-secondary education. A future with good housing. A future without racist police brutality and racial profiling. A future with a dream. A future that is a reality.”

Photo of Inuit Child by wili_hybrid on Flickr, Creative Commons.

Posted by Juhie Bhatia

Print version

3 comments

Richard Bull

Suicide is not about dying, but about stopping the overwhelming pain that is associated with colonization.
In Canada, we are currently into the fifth devastating wave of colonization. First, it was disease; secondly, relocation and the establishment of the reservation system; thirdly, the theft of rights and criminalization of culture; then, the residential school experience; and now, social services.
Understanding that colonization is still happening and is not just part of our past is key to healing our communities from within.
Thank you for your article.

# 2010-01-18 at 23:22 pm

Reply to this
Andrea Arzaba

This is a very interesting article, I relate it to indigenous cultures here in Mexico. The way they had to leave their own faith and beliefs to “enter a society”. It is sad that in the end they are not still a part of it.
Thank you for your article!

# 2010-01-19 at 2:37 am

Reply to this
Jeremy Clarke

The suicide statistic is something we learn in school and have to deal with, but its always to accept facts that are so disturbing.
A well written and thoughtful description of some of the problems native Canadians face. Thanks Juhie.

# 2010-01-19 at 15:56 pm

Reply to this

2010-01-16T18:35:00.000-05:00

a prime minister who thumbs his nose at Canadians ...

Just how stupid do they think we are?

LANA PAYNE
The Telegram
http://www.thetelegram.com/index.cfm?sid=318888&sc=86

The Economist magazine is right. And Senator Fabian Manning just proved it.

The international magazine just printed two scathing articles about Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his decision and reason for proroguing Parliament.

The magazine accused Canadians ministers of not being able to walk and chew gum the same time.

It seems the matter of juggling a couple of balls is also a problem for some Canadian senators.

Let's be clear. Manning may have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time, but most of us can manage it and a whole lot more for a lot less pay.

Manning dropped some of our money on a few worthy provincial projects last week, and repeated to the media, when asked, his boss's rationale for proroguing Parliament.

The federal minority government needs a break from democracy - oops, I mean from politics and Parliament in order to focus on the economy, get its budget together and examine how the economic action plan is doing. The reality is all of this can happen and Parliament can sit too. It always does.

The rationale is causing a lot of head-shaking across the country. After all, this is the same government that denied in November 2008 we were even in a recession - despite the fact that the rest of the world was grappling with how to deal with the greatest economic disaster since the 1930s.

Now, all of a sudden, the recession is the excuse to give democracy a smack.

In fact, the prime minister has expanded his justification for proroguing Parliament saying it was necessary in order to avoid instability.

How blatantly disingenuous can he get and just how stupid does he think Canadians are? Manning seems to also think we are a witless bunch.

But Harper's cowardly call to the Governor General to prorogue Parliament has given new life to the floundering leader of the Official Opposition. "The idea that democracy creates instability is ridiculous," said Michael Ignatieff. "What does he want? To cancel Parliament altogether so we can have the stability of a prime minister without any limits on his power? The reality is Parliament has to do its job, to hold the prime minister accountable. That doesn't create instability, that's just institutions working the way they should."

But that is the problem. Harper does not want Parliament to work. He has been thumbing his nose at the wishes of Canadians - a minority government to keep him in check - since being elected to his first minority in 2006.

And perhaps in his machiavellian brain, this is just another political stratagem to push the opposition parties into the election he says he doesn't want, but clearly does.

Or perhaps it really is about avoiding those embarrassing questions relating to the torture of prisoners handed over by the Canadian military to Afghan forces.

No Canadian government wants to be tainted with the brush of war crimes and the Harper government is fast running out of excuses about what they knew and didn't know.

The fact is, the government knew plenty. And we have obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure that prisoners of war are not being tortured or abused.

St. John's East MP Jack Harris, who is the NDP defence critic, has been critical of the government's attempts to stonewall an investigation into this issue.

Canada prides itself as being a leader in the field of international human rights and this matter could certainly end up tainting that reputation, he says.

Whatever the prime minister's reason or reasons for proroguing Parliament, a lot of Canadians are paying attention and, according to the polls, they are not too happy with the extended break.

They certainly don't buy the argument that the government needs to focus on the economy when closing down Parliament gives the government a virtual free ride, because now the prime minister doesn't have to answer any difficult questions from the opposition about its economic action plan.

In a normal and evolved democracy, we'd be able to rely on the media to assist in holding government to account. But that is tough with this prime minister, an expert at controlling media access and the message. Spin-doctoring has entered a new age.

And what of accountability and transparency? Remember, that was the Conservative mantra during the Liberal sponsorship scandal.

And while the Liberals handed the sponsorship matter over to an independent inquiry, this government has refused to do the same with the Afghan prisoner controversy.

In shutting down Parliament to avoid more questions about Afghan prisoners, The Economist called the prime minister's action a matter of "naked self-interest."

So where does that leave us? I fear it leaves up with an electorate even more cynical than before.

And it leaves us with a prime minister who continues to thumb his nose at Canadians and our democratic institutions like Parliament and the media.

But one thing is for certain, a lot of Canadians now know what proroguing means. Perhaps we can thank the prime minister for that.

Lana Payne is president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour. She can be reached by e-mail at lanapayne@nl.rogers.com. Her column returns Jan. 30.
16/01/10

2010-01-06T21:24:00.001-05:00

Ashamed to wear the Maple Leaf

Maude Barlow

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail Published on Monday, Jan. 04, 2010 5:42PM EST Last updated on Tuesday, Jan. 05, 2010 8:30AM EST
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/ashamed-to-wear-the-maple-leaf/article1418706/?plckFindCommentKey=CommentKey:e5bec4df-b4c0-4032-8540-78e50b7ab232

As a new year and a new decade begin, it is time to accept an unpleasant reality: Canada's international reputation as a progressive middle power is gone. Instead, our country is increasingly seen as a human-rights-denying eco-outlaw that has lost its way and its special status as a standard bearer for a better world. This change is largely the doing of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the ideology that has motivated him and his mentors for decades.

Let's start with the fact that while Canadians were resting over the holiday, Mr. Harper prorogued Parliament, thus cancelling the committee hearings into his government's handling of the Afghan detainee affair. This move allowed the Prime Minister to duck allegations that Canadian troops turned over innocent civilians for torture at the hands of Afghan authorities as well as his government's shameful treatment of Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin, whose testimony before a House of Commons committee in November blew the issue into an international story and embarrassed Mr. Harper on the eve of his important first trip to China.

There are growing calls in Canada and internationally for an investigation into whether Canada has violated the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court by knowingly turning over civilians to torture, calls that the government hopes will get lost in the post-Olympic euphoria when Parliament resumes.

Proroguing Parliament also puts time and distance between the Prime Minister and his shameful performance at the December summit on climate change held in Copenhagen, where Canada was held up as an example of the worst practices. Not only is Canada among the top 10 greenhouse-gas emitters in the world, but it is the only country to ratify and then abandon the Kyoto Protocol, announcing weeks before the talks that it would be a failure.

Mr. Harper's government continues to promote unlimited growth in the Alberta oil sands – Canada's Mordor – the fastest-growing source of pollution emissions in the country, and this fact was repeatedly cited by delegates from the global South as a barrier to their commitment to reducing their own emissions. Author and Guardian columnist George Monbiot called Canada a “corrupt petro-state” and said the country's failure in Copenhagen outweighs all the good it has done in a century.
During the summit, climate-change activists in London took down the flag at the Canadian High Commission and drenched it in oil, an action that received widespread attention there, though not in Canada.

Under Mr. Harper, Canada has also abandoned its traditional support of human-rights initiatives at the United Nations. In 2007, Canada was one of a handful of countries to vote against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which sets out global human-rights standards for indigenous communities and was supported by the vast majority of UN members. Human-rights and aboriginal groups pointed to a well-funded campaign of the Harper government to derail the accord and charged it with giving in to big-business demands for access to the lucrative energy and mineral wealth on native lands.

Similarly, Canada has refused to support the call at the UN for the right to water, even though billions of people are suffering from the inability to get a clean supply simply because it has a price they cannot meet. A powerful international movement is calling for a covenant to ensure equitable access to the dwindling global supplies of fresh water; to the bafflement of the international community, Canada is not among the growing list of countries on side.

And let's not forget that the global expansion of Canadian mining operations has been accompanied in many cases by environmental disaster, displacement of indigenous peoples and numerous human-rights abuses. In many communities in the global South, the name Canada is connected with injustice. Yet Mr. Harper refuses to support calls to set even the most basic standards for these mining emissaries abroad.

I am personally ashamed of my country as I travel internationally. In a world calling out for new models of justice, conflict resolution and environmental stewardship, Canada could be playing such a powerful role as it has done in the past. Stephen Harper with a majority frightens me.

Maude Barlow is national chair of the Council of Canadians

2009-12-17T11:26:00.002-05:00

Vatican told bishops to cover up sex abuse

Expulsion threat in secret documents

[url=http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Observer/documents/2003/08/16/Criminales.pdf]Read the 1962 Vatican document (PDF file)[/url]

'These instructions went out to every bishop around the globe and would certainly have applied in Britain. It proves there was an international conspiracy by the Church to hush up sexual abuse issues. It is a devious attempt to conceal criminal conduct and is a blueprint for deception and concealment.'

* Antony Barnett, public affairs editor
* The Observer, Sunday 17 August 2003 01.27 BST

The Vatican instructed Catholic bishops around the world to cover up cases of sexual abuse or risk being thrown out of the Church. The Observer has obtained a 40-year-old confidential document from the secret Vatican archive which lawyers are calling a 'blueprint for deception and concealment'. One British lawyer acting for Church child abuse victims has described it as 'explosive'.

The 69-page Latin document bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII was sent to every bishop in the world. The instructions outline a policy of 'strictest' secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and threatens those who speak out with excommunication.

They also call for the victim to take an oath of secrecy at the time of making a complaint to Church officials. It states that the instructions are to 'be diligently stored in the secret archives of the Curia [Vatican] as strictly confidential. Nor is it to be published nor added to with any commentaries.'

The document, which has been confirmed as genuine by the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, is called 'Crimine solicitationies', which translates as 'instruction on proceeding in cases of solicitation'.

It focuses on sexual abuse initiated as part of the confessional relationship between a priest and a member of his congregation. But the instructions also cover what it calls the 'worst crime', described as an obscene act perpetrated by a cleric with 'youths of either sex or with brute animals (bestiality)'.

Bishops are instructed to pursue these cases 'in the most secretive way... restrained by a perpetual silence... and everyone... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office... under the penalty of excommunication'.

Texan lawyer Daniel Shea uncovered the document as part of his work for victims of abuse from Catholic priests in the US. He has handed it over to US authorities, urging them to launch a federal investigation into the clergy's alleged cover-up of sexual abuse.

He said: 'These instructions went out to every bishop around the globe and would certainly have applied in Britain. It proves there was an international conspiracy by the Church to hush up sexual abuse issues. It is a devious attempt to conceal criminal conduct and is a blueprint for deception and concealment.'

British lawyer Richard Scorer, who acts for children abused by Catholic priests in the UK, echoes this view and has described the document as 'explosive'.

He said: 'We always suspected that the Catholic Church systematically covered up abuse and tried to silence victims. This document appears to prove it. Threatening excommunication to anybody who speaks out shows the lengths the most senior figures in the Vatican were prepared to go to prevent the information getting out to the public domain.'

Scorer pointed out that as the documents dates back to 1962 it rides roughshod over the Catholic Church's claim that the issue of sexual abuse was a modern phenomenon.

He claims the discovery of the document will raise fresh questions about the actions of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.

Murphy-O'Connor has been accused of covering up allegations of child abuse when he was Bishop of Arundel and Brighton. Instead of reporting to the police allegations of abuse against Michael Hill, a priest in his charge, he moved him to another position where he was later convicted for abusing nine children.

Although Murphy-O'Connor has apologised publicly for his mistake, Scorer claims the secret Vatican document raises the question about whether his failure to report Hill was due to him following this instruction from Rome.

Scorer, who acts for some of Hill's victims, said: 'I want to know whether Murphy-O'Connor knew of these Vatican instructions and, if so, did he apply it. If not, can he tell us why not?'

A spokesman for the Catholic Church denied that the secret Vatican orders were part of any organised cover-up and claims lawyers are taking the document 'out of context' and 'distorting it'.

He said: 'This document is about the Church's internal disciplinary procedures should a priest be accused of using confession to solicit sex. It does not forbid victims to report civil crimes. The confidentiality talked about is aimed to protect the accused as applies in court procedures today. It also takes into consideration the special nature of the secrecy involved in the act of confession.' He also said that in 1983 the Catholic Church in England and Wales introduced its own code dealing with sexual abuse, which would have superseded the 1962 instructions. Asked whether Murphy-O'Connor was aware of the Vatican edict, he replied: 'He's never mentioned it to me.'

Lawyers point to a letter the Vatican sent to bishops in May 2001 clearly stating the 1962 instruction was in force until then. The letter is signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, the most powerful man in Rome beside the Pope and who heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the office which ran the Inquisition in the Middle Ages.

Rev Thomas Doyle, a US Air Force chaplain in Germany and a specialist in Church law, has studied the document. He told The Observer: 'It is certainly an indication of the pathological obsession with secrecy in the Catholic Church, but in itself it is not a smoking gun.

'If, however, this document actually has been the foundation of a continuous policy to cover clergy crimes at all costs, then we have quite another issue. There are too many authenticated reports of victims having been seriously intimidated into silence by Church authorities to assert that such intimidation is the exception and not the norm.

'If this document has been used as a justification for this intimidation then we possibly have what some commentators have alleged, namely, a blueprint for a cover-up. This is obviously a big "if" which requires concrete proof.'

Additional research by Jason Rodrigues

more ...
[url=http://www.google.ca/search?q=Crimine+solicitationies&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a][/url]

2009-12-17T10:46:00.000-05:00

Feds not responding to meeting requests

By Erin Tully-Musser

SIX NATIONS

The Six Nations Confederacy is ready to get back to the negotiating table but the Feds are nowhere to be found.

Mohawk Chief Allen MacNaughton gave a brief update on the state of negotiations to the Confederacy Council on Saturday.

“Unfortunately there is not much to report since our last negotiation meeting when the Crown walked out,” said MacNaughton.

He said that he had sent letters to the Crown requesting that they meet and discuss finance last week but he has received no response. MacNaughton said that the land rights department is in need of money before Christmas.

“Those people (working for land rights) haven’t gotten paid since August 14,” said MacNaughton. “They are asking that we pay and get reimbursed with funding from negotiations.”

The Chiefs also talked about the need for restructuring the current negotiations process.

“The framework needs to be upgraded,” said Blake Bomberry, Cayuga Chief. “The way we are proceeding is like banging heads against the wall. You can’t do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome, it’s not going to happen.”

Ron Thomas shared Chief Bomberry’s position.

“We have been sitting for the government for three years and we’re really not getting anywhere,” said Thomas. “The community is growing impatient and there’s a declining confidence in the Confederacy.”

Thomas also said that he thought there might be a lack of vision and strategy when they sit at the negotiating table and that there had been some missed opportunities. Thomas said that the Haudenosaunee Development Institute (HDI) was asked to offer suggestions to improve the negotiations process and they did offer a 21 page document. He said that the Confederacy was supposed to have met to discuss the HDI recommendations but that has not happened yet. The Confederacy council also talked about accepting the HDI policy submitted to council six months ago. It was decided that because some Chiefs didn’t get a chance to review or didn’t receive the policy the decision would be put over until the next council meeting.

The Chiefs also have to decide if they want to sign a MOE (memorandum of understanding) concerning the proposed project and working agreement with Competitive Power Ventures. The power company has suggested operating a gas line that would run through or close to the Six Nations territory. The MOE would be the first step towards exploring what the relationship between the company and Six Nations would look like.

By agreeing to the MOE the Chiefs would not be saying yes to the project, they would be saying yes to looking at what the project could/would do for the community. Those items were put aside until the next council meeting to allow time for more research.

2009-12-09T20:00:00.000-05:00

When they hell did we ask to be Canadians? -

Haldimand County Mayor's suggestions draw ire from Six Nations

By Jessica Smith

Haldimand County Mayor Marie Trainer wants reserves abolished and First Nations people paid off to the tune of $2,000 for their rights. At least that’s the message she took to Ottawa last week in a meeting with Indian and Northern Affairs minister Chuck Strahl.

Trainer said “every native would love him for doing that." However, Trainer's ideas drew ire, not love, from Elected Chief Bill Montour and Haudenosaunee Development Institute spokesperson Hazel Hill while Mohawk Chief Allen MacNaughton said Trainer is turning Caledonia into an economic desert.

Mohawk Chief Allen MacNaughton said “it is unfortunate that she is concentrating on finding conflict with Six Nations instead of trying to get business back into Caledonia.”

Mohawk Chief McNaughton said “it is that kind of attitude from the county’s leadership that is causing the economic woes of Caledonia.”

Montour said Trainer loves the media. "Marie Trainer, in my estimation, is a media darling," Montour said. "She dearly loves to get in front of a microphone and start spouting off about a bunch of stuff that she's not researched, doesn't understand, or maybe doesn't want to understand."

Montour said abolishing reserves and giving native people money in return is "the most ludicrous statement [he] ever heard." Instead he suggested Trainer "crack open a history book." He offered a lengthy history lesson about Six Nations that began with the Royal Proclamation, covered Six Nations military service, residential schooling, gaining the right to vote, treaty rights protected by the constitution and the events surrounding the reclamation of the Douglas Creek Estates.

Montour said what bugs him is "we have people, that like her, who are ignorant of the history of the area that they live in. It's just unbelievable for me to fathom that there's that much ignorance still in this area, in 2009, 2010. And that begets racism." Trainer knew her ideas might not be immediately popular.

"I said, if they could finalize the land claims-and you might not like this-and then maybe, at that time, they could dissolve the Indian Status and treat everyone who lives in Canada equally," she said.

"We were just giving different ideas around, like divide the value of the land claims and the land of the reserves among the members of the band, giving each member personal ownership of their own homes, because right now they don't, have that."

Trainer wants to see the former reserves become municipalities and "a massive one-time payout" to First Nations. And, if that is deemed insufficient, she suggested paying all living native people $2000 a week for the rest of their lives. She admitted not knowing how many native people there are in Canada.

The 2006 census counted 698,025 First Nations people in Canada, which means the $2,000-a-week plan Trainer suggested would cost Canada at least $72.5 billion in the first year alone.

Montour was not impressed with Trainer's $2000-per-week plan. Montour asked: "Does she think that's going to satisfy us?" He said that money is too liquid to compensate for lost land. He talked about giving a presentation to the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs in Canada in 1991, in which he told parliamentarians Six Nations had valued the total worth of the 28 claims submitted at that time at $84 billion.

"When they picked their jaws up off the table, they said, 'We can't pay that,'" Montour said. "I said, 'We don't want money. We want perpetual care and maintenance.

We have to have our kids educated, we have to have the health of our people taken care of, we have to have social recreation.'" "For instance, if we'd have took the $26 million for the Welland Canal, how much do you think would be left now with this downturn in the economy?" he said, referring to a recent settlement offer from the federal government.

"I suggest very, very little. So money is not the issue here. We want to sustain ourselves from the good grace of land the Creator put us on." Trainer's plan requires the federal government to complete all the ongoing land claim negotiations. with a good kid bad kid approach.

"I did say to the federal government that they need to start negotiating with the less militant bands, like the Mississaugas of the New Credit, for example, to show that bad behavior gets slower results than good behaviour," Trainer said. Asked for an example of a militant band, Trained said Six Nations qualifies.

"Well the Six Nations for instance are occupying land, tearing up highways, burning tires, throwing vehicles over bridges, stopping developments from going forward," she said. "If that gets attention so that claims can go forward, I think that's the wrong message to send out."

Montour said "We're not militant just because we want to be, we're militant because of frustration." "How else would this have come to fruition, come to a point?" he asked. "They tried to have information blockades, give people understanding, it didn't work. The only thing that seems to get the attention of the federal and provincial government is direct action." "But that's what the people do," he added. "Leadership should be sitting down with leadership discussing rights, aboriginal rights, treaty rights, not making an assumption that those things are old, long gone, they should be done away with."

Confederacy technician Hazel Hill, said that Trainer needed to look at Caledonia's history. "They need to look at their own history, because a lot of how they got the land that they're currently residing on was done through violence, through force, through murder, rape and theft," Hill said. "That's the legacy of how they got it, and they continue with that legacy because it's all they know how to do. They call in armed forces. Caledonia wanted the army." Hill said that it's Caledonia that has been rewarded for its ongoing history of militant behaviour and Caledonia that has benefited the most from government funds since 2006.

"Talk about hand outs, talk about living off the coffers of the Canadian taxpayer," she said. "They talk about our people being nothing welfare people, who the hell's the welfare recipients?" Trainer compared how she believes the government should act with First Nations to how parents shouldn't reward the bad behaviour of their children.

"Often there's one in the family that's a little bit of a brat or whatever, and if he keeps being rewarded, 'Oh here's another toy,' and 'I'll buy you something,' and 'Here's another chocolate bar,' and blah blah blah blah, well then I'll be bad all the time when I'm in the store," Trainer said.

"But if you say, 'no, you be good, then you can have a new bicycle' or if you reward the good behaviour, or 'Do good in school, for every A you get I'll give you $10.' Everyone has different ways of rewarding, you know," she continued.

For Montour, that explanation called up the history of Indian Agents and residential schools. "For her to suggest that we're nothing but children is going back to the Indian Agent days," Montour said.

"You have to have my permission to go off the reserve, you have to have my permission to sell your produce from your farms, you have to have my permission for your kids to stay home because I'm going to put them in residential school." "We weren't even adults," he added.

"We weren't even humans at one time. And in 1960 somebody decreed: You can vote, now you're a Canadian. When they hell did we ask to be Canadians?" One area where Montour agreed with Trainer was the suggestion that the two communities work together to build a series of walking paths that link Six Nations and Haldimand County. He called it an "excellent idea," but acknowledged that ideology has gotten in the way when the two communities have tried to work together in the past.

Trainer also spoke to the Minister of Public Safety and senior staff in that department to discuss tobacco regulations. She said she learned of a plan to install highways signs that advertize that consumers of illegal cigarettes support organized crime and that she supports the idea.

Montour disagrees with Trainer, and said that legitimizing the tobacco industry within Six Nations' jurisdiction would benefit the community.

"If Marie Trainer and her people want to say it's illegal, it's her business, it doesn't concern me at all," he said.

A spokesperson for Minister Strahl said it would not be appropriate for him to comment on what was said in the meeting.

2009-12-09T18:36:00.002-05:00

Olympic organizers reach deal with Mohawks
to drop RCMP escort for torch relay
December 08, 2009
Peter Rakobowchuk, THE CANADIAN PRESS

KAHNAWAKE, Que. - The Vancouver Olympic organizing committee agreed to drop the usual RCMP escort for the Olympic flame as it passed through a Mohawk reserve Tuesday in what turned out to be a joyous celebration.

Games organizers made the concession after a flurry of negotiations with community members who were upset by the prospect of a non-aboriginal police force patrolling their territory.

The agreement allowed the flame to pass through a community that played a role in the Oka crisis, a tense summer-long standoff between aboriginals and police in 1990.

Schoolchildren waved paper torches and 500 people cheered from the sidelines Tuesday during the celebration in Kahnawake, a community south of Montreal.

The torch was carried by Olympic medallist Alwyn Morris,

a local hero who won gold and bronze medals in canoeing at the Los Angeles Olympics.

"What a great thing to rekindle the (Olympic) spirit in the community and give some hope and dreams to some very young people here who may want to follow in those footsteps," Morris said.

The compromise sent a signal that organizers are serious about aboriginal communities playing a role in the Olympics, as the other options would have been to bully forward with the RCMP or cancel Tuesday's visit altogether.

But the fact that organizers did give in to concerns could also send a signal to other groups that the mere mention of trouble could be enough to scare the relay away.

A cloud of controversy hung over the flame as Morris carried it along one of the main streets. In addition to jubilant crowds, there were several protestors holding huge banners protesting the event Tuesday.

Grand Chief Mike Delisle Jr. noted that the Mohawks have had "a long, storied, sometimes troubled history" with the Mounties.

"They've raided our community in the past for what is considered illegal and contraband tobacco," he said.

John Furlong, head of the Vancouver Games organizing committee, explained that the festivities were not considered an official relay event, which allowed the security protocol to be changed.

"It wasn't frankly really a leg of the relay in the traditional sense," he told reporters in Vancouver.

"What we did was we found a way to sort of break away from the relay for a bit of time so we could bring a torch in there and share it with the kids and families.
"It was a good day, it was a situation that needed a solution that was going to work and we got one."

The flame's visit to Kahnawake was originally supposed to be an official stop on the relay, one of more than 1,000 carefully choreographed moments along the 106-day event.

The decision to divert from the original plans was a significant one for the organizing committee which, along with governments, has spent millions trying to get aboriginal communities onside for the Games.

Torch relay sponsor RBC, wise to the fact that protest from aboriginal communities was a potential threat to the relay, also hired former Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine to work with communities along the route.

He did not return a call for comment but, according to one of the groups involved in the negotiations for Kahnawake, was not involved in the issue.

Delisle said he had worried the latest controversy might have "put a bit of a damper" on Tuesday's event as the torch made its way through his community.
"But, by the faces of the kids today, I doubt it," he added.

"There's been a lot of angst and consternation over the past two weeks or so. I think cooler heads prevailed," he said.

"It was a show of respect and a sign of recognition in terms of the RCMP backing away (and) the Olympic committee acknowledging the fact that we have a peacekeeper authority here."

The head of the Mohawk band council called the flame "a beacon of hope."
"That's what the flame is supposed to represent - brotherhood and peace. Peace is part of our foundation and part of our founding principles."

A handful of locals did stage a demonstration and carried large white banners that declared the Olympic torch was not welcome in Kahnawake or any native community.
"We don't support the torch coming through Kahnawake because of the land that's being destroyed in B.C. (for the Olympics)," Cheryl Diabo said in an interview.
"We support our native sisters and brothers who stood in line in our defence in 1990 during the crisis that we faced, and it's only natural that we do the same.
"We don't support the destruction of any land anywhere."

Diabo is a member of the community's Mohawk traditional council.
One of the banners that was stretched out beside her read: "Remove the Poison, Remove the Torch."

In the coming weeks, the torch is expected to pass through both Six Nations and Tyendinaga, two areas where violent confrontations have happened in recent years between residents and police.

Groups in both communities have committed to protesting the torch, though Furlong said he didn't expect another compromise was going to be required.
"We're not anticipating that it will, but the goal is . . . to try and find ways to make it all work and there's a lot of very happy young kids today because we did it," he said.

"We've very happy because that's the vision, to try and make sure we live up to our commitments and our promises."
(With files from Stephanie Levitz)

In a town haunted by Oka, nobody is ‘Canadian’

The Globe and Mail
By Sean Gordon, The Globe and Mail Posted Tuesday, December 8, 2009 9:07 PM ET

KAHNAWAKE, QUE. - The precious cargo arrived in a nondescript blue rental car, unadorned by the usual travelling fanfare that surrounds its every movement.

Typically, the Olympic flame is accompanied by a phalanx of Mounties, and preceded and followed by heavily branded Vancouver Organizing Committee vehicles.

But Kahnawake is anything but a typical stop on the Olympic Torch Relay. By prior arrangement, and after lengthy negotiations - which dragged late into Monday evening - the RCMP stayed off tribal land, and so did the rest of the torch road show.

They did so with good reason: The lessons of recent history are still painful in this community, which sits across the St. Lawrence from Montreal.

Put simply, since the Oka crisis, everything has changed in Kahnawake, and nothing has changed.

The Mohawk community has become a huge global player in the online gaming industry and is clearly thriving. Yet it remains beset by continuing problems with poverty, addiction and crime, and then there's the small matter of the continuing political stalemate between the band and the governments that would control it. Kahnawake is a place where the word Canadian is often set in quotation marks.

"If you go to any man, woman or child in this community, no one would tell you they're Canadian," said Michael Delisle Jr., grand chief of the Kahnawake Mohawk Council, who nevertheless said the torch is "a beacon of hope" to his community and that it was "a great day."

And so the torch's passage illustrates a mostly unspoken dichotomy: The Olympic ideal is held up as a symbol of hope and achievement to young people in aboriginal communities, but in Kahnawake that inspiration has little to no connection with the national celebration the 2010 Games organizers envision.

"You have a persisting disaffection with the federal government, and the claims to federal authority over Kahnawake. That hasn't evolved much or at all since Oka ... the Mohawk conception of national sovereignty is completely at variance with Canada's or Quebec's or with that of most of the Canadian population," said Ronald Niezen, a native affairs expert who teaches anthropology at McGill University.

Though the 1990 Oka crisis primarily involved a dispute at Kanesatake, a Mohawk reserve northwest of Montreal, members of Kahnawake blockaded a bridge linking their community to the city in solidarity.

Those roadblocks prompted construction on what would become Highway 30, the proposed extension of which is currently being contested by the Mohawks.

The situation today is nothing like the simmering tensions of the summer and fall of 1990, but the political positions remain intractable.

Indeed, the RCMP and Sûreté du Quebec provincial police are not welcome in Kahnawake unless they seek permission and co-operation from the community's police force, and the relay organizers were willing to make allowances to get the torch there, including shortening the original route.

"The goal, and we had the full support of the RCMP, is to find a way to make it all work. And there are a lot of very happy young kids today because we did it, and we're very happy," VANOC head John Furlong said. In the event, a crowd of several hundred school children and residents gathered under dazzling blue skies to cheer the relay.

Just before noon, the canister holding the flame - by then surreptitiously transferred into a Mohawk Peacekeepers squad car - was brought out to light a torch held by Kahnawake's own Alwyn Morris.

The 52-year-old, one of two medal-winning Olympians to hail from the community of about 7,500, said "the torch relay is about unity, it's about peace, it's about bringing together family and friends and uniting the country." He also expressed hope the day would help clear up a few misconceptions about his community.

"Unfortunately [the reserve] is given some very unappealing stereotypes. I was at the Olympic Games, I represented Canada at those Olympic Games, it didn't take anything away from Canada and I'm also a Mohawk. It's not something to be afraid of."

The two-time Olympian is a fitting exemplar of his community for more than athletic prowess. After winning two kayaking medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Games - a gold and a bronze - he returned home to work in addiction counselling and as a senior adviser to the band council.

In 2007, he quit that post to found a company in the reserve's booming industry, online gaming.

Kahnawake's computer servers are home to more than 500 Internet casinos, an activity that is technically illegal under Canadian law (as is much of the community's robust discount tobacco trade). But the gaming business has created hundreds of jobs and despite hefty federal funding for education and health, the general perception is Kahnawake has been left to its own devices.

"There's so many things that are happening in the community in terms of economic development. A lot of it, unfortunately, is in spite of what comes in by virtue of governmental support," Mr. Morris said.

Coincidentally, the first day the flame wasn't escorted by Mounties was also the first day on which a protester was arrested. As Mr. Morris alternately walked and jogged the few hundred metres between a gas station on Kahnawake's main drag and a school, a protester ran up and tried to hand him a stack of tracts. The protester was grabbed by a couple of burly Peacekeepers and after a brief scuffle was shepherded into the back of a squad car.

Just down the road, a traditionalist Mohawk group held a protest that comprised a handful of people holding bedsheets painted with slogans such as, "Remove the poison, remove the torch." Demonstrators grumbled Mr. Morris was trying to drum up attention for his business interests, while passing band members replied with insults aimed at the protest. A few children even booed.

With a report from Rod Mickleburgh in Vancouver

GrannyRantsON

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