Barriere Lake: Blockades for Broken Promises

by Farshad Azadian
Basics Issue #12 (Jan/Feb 2009)

On November 17th, 2008, the Algonquin community at Barriere Lake in Northern Quebec blocked traffic on Highway 117 for several hours. As the Canadian and Quebecois governments are refusing to honour their end of the Trilateral Agreements, the Barriere Lake Algonquins are resorting to direct action.

The Trilateral Agreements were signed in 1991, and included provisions that the Algonquin community would have a say in logging, mining and other developments on their traditional territory, and would also ensure that their hunting grounds remain protected. In addition, the treaties state that a portion of the profits from resource extraction would be given to the community, which would help fight against the extremely high levels of poverty on the reserve.

The two levels of government, putting the interests of business ahead of those of the community, have ignored these agreements. After years of lobbying the government to no avail, the community resolved that the only way it was going to get its voice heard was by fighting back.

Therefore, on November 17th, the Algonquin community took to the streets. Instead of addressing the community’s claims, however, the Canadian state resorted to police violence to suppress the peaceful protestors. Within a couple hours, the highway blockades were torn down by the police and a community spokesperson was arrested. Despite this, the Algonquin community, including children and elders, refused to leave the highway.

Unable to end the protest, the police brought in a riot squad. This peaceful demonstration, just like one which occurred a month earlier in the same place and for the same reason, was met with familiar blows of violence from riot police batons.

By the next day, a total of six people had been arrested. This included acting Chief Benjamin Nottoway who, along with other outspoken members of the community, was specifically targeted to weaken the Algonquin resistance. To this day, Benjamin Nottoway remains in custody as a political prisoner.

Despite state violence, the struggle of Barriere Lake Algonquins is building broader support. Indigenous solidarity networks have been established in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. At the blockade itself, some 30 non-native activists came to offer their support.

In Toronto, a solidarity protest took place on November 19th, 2008. Demonstrators blocked off Queen Street in the downtown core for 30 minutes, demanding that the two levels of government adhere to the agreements they have signed.

We can be sure that the struggle at Barriere Lake is not over. Just as the last generation blockaded the highways two decades ago, winning recognition of Algonquin territorial rights, this generation is also standing up for the survival of their community.

Mohawk Leader Shawn Brant Set Free

by Mike B. Basics #11 (November 2008)


On September 29, Shawn Brant, a spokesperson of the Mohawk Nation, was convicted of a mischief charge for taking part in a series of highway and rail blockades in 2007. The crown had been asking for 12 years jail time but had to back off after details about the OPP’s corrupt handling of the situation became public. This included evidence that the OPP did not follow their own guidelines, set up illegal wiretaps, mobilized snipers and armored personnel carriers, and gathered evidence on protests while posing as journalists. OPP commissioner Julian Fantino would have been subpoenaed had the case continued and Brant gone to trial.

The Mohawks of Tyendinaga have been struggling to achieve justice, despite the consistently poor response on the part of the Canadian Government to unresolved land claims from all over the country. Many of the people in Tyendinaga have not had access to clean drinking water for at least 10 years. In Tyendinaga their struggle has taken the form of economic disruption, which has included road and rail closures and the disruption of businesses profiting from the unresolved lands. The current campaign began in November 2006, when Mohawks announced that they would stop the construction of a subdivision on the Culbertson Tract, which is part of Tyendinaga’s land claims. There was a blockade of a military convoy on the reserve that month. In March 2007, a quarry that had been operating on the Culbertson Tract was shut down permanently. On April 20th the C.N. main rail line running through the territory was closed for 30 hours. Again, during the National Aboriginal Day of Action on June 29th, 2007 the C.N. main line, Highway 2, and the 401 were targeted and closed for 24 hours.

On June 26th, 2008 Brant was released after more than two months in jail. Brant was being held on false charges alleging he had assaulted a white local businessman during road blockades that began on April 20th 2008. Brant challenged two local racists from neighboring Deseronto, ON, after they attacked a small group of mainly Mohawk women and children. The blockade had been erected the day before, targeting a land development on stolen Mohawk land. One man flew into a rage when he was turned back at the roadblock, swinging a bat at protesters, and even hitting a woman with his car. Although residents of Tyendinaga called 911, the police never laid any charges against the violent racists. Brant arrived at the scene and demanded that the attackers leave, and was consequently arrested several days later. At the time, Brant was living under strict conditions imposed as part of his bail from the June 2007 Aboriginal Day of Action, and was not even taking part in the blockade. Brant was arrested and held in pre-trial custody.

Shawn Brant is now facing one year probation and was ordered to stay on the Tyendinaga reserve for three months as a result of the recent convictions. There are at least 16 other members of the Mohawk Nation still facing charges from their participation of actions in defense of their communities.

Hip-Hop Unites Revolutionary Native, Black, and White Youth at Six Nations

by Wasun
Basics Issue #10 (Aug / Sep 2008)

On Friday, July 11, 2008 youth from the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC) attended the Six Nations Youth Rally at Chiefswood Park in Ohsweken, Ontario. The rally was organized by Six Nations youth organizers to mobilize local youth to fight for a youth recreation center on the reserve, which is long overdue. The opening evening of the concert was dominated by revolutionary rappers from across Ontario.

BADC organized a diverse group of artists to perform at the rally. Toronto-based Wasun and Lameck Williams performed new tracks from the Underground Railroad Mixtape, Volume 1. Shing Shing Regime out of Hamilton, Ontario, representing the Nations of Gods and Earths, performed their new tracks.

Testament, an Arab anti-poverty activist from London, Ontario blessed the mic with hard hitting anti-imperialist lyrics drawing connections between the struggle for Palestinian liberation and the Six Nations land reclamation against Canadian colonialism. Finally, School of Thought, a group of white working-class youth from Barrie, Ontario came together with all of the MCs present to do a throwback freestyle set on a series of classic Wu-Tang Clan instrumentals. The Six Nations Youth Rally Concert was a good example of how revolutionary hip hop is being used to unify native, black, and white working-class youth in our common struggles for liberation.

Canada’s Dirty Colonial Past: The Residential Schools Genocide

by Alok Premjee

On June 11, 2008, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized to the some 100,000 living survivors of Canada’s more than century-long Indian Residential School system. His apology touched upon some of the atrocities aboriginal children suffered, which included physical torture, sexual abuse and rape, prohibition of native languages and cultural practices, inadequate food, shelter, and medical treatment, and, worst of all, being kidnapped from their families.

These acts of violence largely destroyed aboriginal ways of living by forcefully assimilating its survivors into Canadian society. Harper admitted that the logic of the Federal Government and the Catholic, Anglican, and United churches from the 1870s onward was to forcefully assimilate the aboriginal population (which they classified as “inferior beings”) into Canadian culture. Provisions were built into the 1884 Indian Act to legally force aboriginal children to attend these schools, and to arrest and/or fine parents for resisting these terms. The Indian Act was a legal-genocidal document not only in cultural terms: with a close to 50% mortality rate in the residential schools, the government of Canada and churches in Canada oversaw and administered a physical genocide of indigenous peoples. The last of these residential schools were closed only recently in the 1990s.

Harper’s apology comes two months after the formation of the International Human Rights Tribunal into Genocide in Canada (IHRTGC), a non-governmental body established by indigenous elders. The IHRTGC has recently made a presentation to members of the United Nations, publicly revealing the whereabouts of some 28 mass graves of the child victims of the residential schools. In total, it is estimated by researchers that about 50,000 children perished in these schools.

Thus, Harper’s shallow and worthless apology wasn’t an expression of Canada coming to terms with its genocidal past, but the Canadian government responding to the mobilization of indigenous people against a long history of Canada’s genocidal policies.

In the criminal justice system, when a criminal is convicted of murder, he or she is punished accordingly. Yet, indigenous peoples are expected to accept shallow apologies for a genocide committed against them.

The only solution to this historical injustice is for indigenous peoples to reclaim their resources and their land in order to begin rebuilding their societies and self-determine their futures. Everything that has been stolen from these peoples by the Canadian government acting on behalf of the rich certainly won’t be handed back without a struggle. It’s up to indigenous communities to take back what belongs to them, as is being done all across Ontario and Canada today. Non-Native working-class people are allies to these struggles because we share a common enemy with indigenous peoples: the Canadian ruling-class that exploits us, lies to us, taxes us, represses us, and sends us to war with other peoples.

Native Political Prisoners & the Struggle for their Land

by Sara Falconer
Basics Issue #9 (May 2008)


A recent standoff between First Nations people and the cops has ended in six new arrests, bringing the total number of First Nations people facing charges from land struggles into the double digits. Are they Ontario’s political prisoners?

The storm around First Nations land claims has been brewing over the past several years around several controversial uranium mining and development projects. On April 25, Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) drew guns in a confrontation on Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory near Deseronto. Solidarity blockades and actions took place at Six Nations, Akwesasne, Kahnawake, Guelph, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver over the following four days. After the OPP withdrew from Tyendinaga on April 29, the other blockades were dismantled.

Mohawk warriors have occupied a quarry on the disputed Culbertson Tract for over a year. The latest conflict began when spokesperson Shawn Brant was arrested on an outstanding weapons charge, less than two weeks after he was acquitted of uttering threats at soldiers at a 2006 demonstration.

During his arrest, which took place in the midst of an interview with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, Brant offered some pointed criticisms. “This is it, justice for First Nations communities: Lock us up.”

The Supreme Court noted in 1999 that although aboriginals make up only 3 per cent of Canada’s population, they make up 12 per cent of the prison population. Skyler Williams, a Mohawk from the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, says that more and more it seems to be a case of “Canada settling land claims by arrests.”

Williams was arrested in September along with eight others at a protest against construction of a subdivision in Caledonia and charged with mischief, as well as a previous assault charge.

Robert Lovelace, aboriginal student counsellor at Fleming College in Peterborough, is serving a six-month sentence for contempt of court for protesting Frontenac Ventures’ uranium exploration near Sharbot Lake on traditional Ardoch Algonquin land. Paula Sherman, a Trent University professor and single mother of three children, was arrested along with Lovelace but paid a $15,000 fine to avoid jail time.

In the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation (known as KI) in Northern Ontario, six council members are serving six-month jail sentences for refusing to obey a court order to allow Platinex to resume mineral exploration near Big Trout Lake. The community has rallied for the release of the KI6, as they have become known, including Chief Donny Morris and Cecilia Begg, a community leader and grandmother.

“Solidarity is a big thing for all native people,” Williams says. “It’s something that’s happened throughout our history... Struggle will always bring those nations together.” ∗

TO Cops Kill Again: Native Man Byron Debassige Slain in Davisville Area

by Kabir Joshi-Vijayan

On the night of February 16th, in a convenience store near Davisville station, Byron Debassige stole two lemons. He had a pocket knife. A few minutes later, in nearby Oriole Park, he was shot in the chest by police and was later declared dead in hospital.

A witness recounts that Byron was obviously drunk at the time, and was singing and asking for change immediately before being killed. The passer-by heard the cops scream “drop the knife” moments before they fired four shots at Byron who “fell like a bag of hammers.” The police and media’s explanation of what happened is, unsurprisingly, sketchy to say the least. Some initial reports talk about two officers being hospitalized for minor injuries suggesting Byron had stabbed/assaulted the police. However, later articles and quoted police statements make no reference to any injured cops, and simply talk about a “confrontation” with police.

Whatever happened that night, one thing is clear: a 28-year old man was deliberately slain by the cops – for the initial crime of stealing lemons.

On March 5th, friends and family honored Byron in a packed room at the Native Canadian Centre. He was remembered as a kind person who always saw the best in everyone. He was a gifted DJ and graffiti artist, and despite having gone through difficult times, he had renewed a commitment to succeed. Attendees also expressed a deep frustration and anger at Police, with many acknowledging the violent targeting of the Native community. One friend mentioned that Byron was a schizophrenic, which, along with his intoxication, may have well meant he did not understand police when they told him to drop his knife.

While no one (except his killers) knows how Byron died, we DO know that Byron was Native, which in this country makes you a target for the Canadian state and its thugs (RCMP and Police). We also know that Cops in this city brutalize and execute racialized and impoverished youth on a regular basis. Byron’s death comes only 4 months after Alwy Al Nadhir was murdered in Riverdale.

While it is not certain that Byron threatened the police, because the police consistently lie to cover up their crimes, even if Byron had attempted to harm one of the officers, a group of well-armed, trained men could have easily restrained or talked down a single intoxicated man with a pocketknife. The firing of 4 shots was a brutally excessive use of force. We must demand a full investigation into Byron’s killing, not by the ex-cop stacked Specials Investigations Unit, but a fully independent civilian body.

Justice for Byron! Justice for Alwy! Justice for all victims of police terror! ∗

Lakotah Declare Independence

On December 19, 2007 the Lakotah Sioux Indians broke of all of their treaties with the Government of the United States and declared the independent Republic of Lakotah, which encompasses territory from Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

A four-member delegation of the Lakotah Sioux Indians visited Washington, D.C. to formally submit their withdrawal from their treaties with the American government. The Lakotah Sioux’s legal basis for the move is based on the U.S. Constitution itself, which indicates that treaties are the highest law of the land. One of the delegates, Phyllis Young, a former indigenous representative to the United Nations, stated that “We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children.’’

The Lakotah Sioux have suffered greatly under the rule of the U.S., with a life-expectancy of 44-years for men, one of the lowest in the world, and with an infant mortality rate five times that of the average American.

Russel Means, one of the representatives of the new country and one of the founders of the American Indian Movement, declared that “We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us.” Citizens of the new country will live tax-free, and will be issued new passports and driver’s licenses.

While in Washington, representatives of the new country visited the embassies of Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, and South Africa to request diplomatic recognition. Ireland and East Timor have also expressed interest in the declaration.

Duane Martin Sr., one of the Washington delegates said “after 150 years of colonial enforcement, when you back people into a corner there is only one alternative...to bring freedom into its existence by taking it back to the love of freedom, to our lifeway.”

Gov’t Starts to Return Park

Return of Ipperwash, stolen from First Nations for WWII army base, starts 12 years after the police murder of Dudley George.

The provincial government announced on December 20 that they will start to return Ipperwash Provincial Park to the Chippewas of Kettle and Stoney Point First Nations. The park was the site of the Ipperwash crisis that culminated in the police murder of First Nations activist Dudley George.

The First Nations have been struggling for decades to see the return of their ancestral lands that include a sacred burial ground.

In 1942, the government used the War Measures Act to steal the land from the First Nations and turn it into a military base to train soldiers before they went off to fight in Europe. The government promised to return the land when no longer needed for military purposes.
In 1995, after years of pressuring the government, the First Nations moved to reclaim their stolen land. 35 First Nations people moved on to the park, at the time lying unused as it had been abandoned by the military.

The provincial government responded with violence, sending in the riot squad backed by a heavily armed Tactical Response Unit to evict the unarmed First Nations. The police opened fire, wounding two and killing Dudley George. (The officer who killed George with a sniper rifle was convicted of criminal negligence but received only two years of community service. The OPP gave him an estimated payoff of one million dollars and a lucrative job in the private sector.)

The George family welcomed the announcement. “I think he would be pleased. He paid the ultimate price and is not here to enjoy,” said his brother Sam at a recent press conference.
While the announcement is a good first start, it does not immediately return the land to the First Nations. For now the park will be “co-managed” by a joint committee of representatives from the government and the Chippewas of Kettle and Stoney Point First Nations, in consultation with “community members”. No mention was made on who’s wishes would come first in case of disagreement, or exactly when full control would be passed over - only that it would be “a matter of time”.

People of all nations in Canada must keep a close watch on the government of Ontario to demand that they do not cheat the First Nations yet again. 66 years is long enough! Give the land back!

Pickton: No End to Colonial Violence

Robert Pickton: A Pathological Individual or the Personification of Canadian Colonial Violence?, a special report by guest columnist and Indigenous scholar, Robyn Bourgeois.

Beginning in the early 1980s, women began disappearing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside – one of the poorest regions in Canada. Over the next two decades, family and friends of missing women, along with community groups from the area, fought to bring these disappearances to the attention of police and local governments. Yet because many of these women battled severe drug and alcohol addictions, and because many were involved in the sex trade, police and city officials failed to act, claiming that the women’s street lifestyle made their disappearances difficult to investigate. Indeed, it wasn’t until 2001 that a formal police task force was established; and by this time, sixty-eight women (known collectively as the “Missing Women”) had disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
In 2002, a Port Coquitlam, BC, pig farmer named Robert “Willie” Pickton was charged in the deaths of twenty-six of the Missing Women. In December 2007, Pickton was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole after twenty five years. A second trial on the remaining twenty counts is expected to commence in 2008. If convicted of all twenty-six counts, Robert Pickton will stand as the worst serial killer in Canadian history.
While much has been made of the Missing Women’s common existence in the worlds of addictions, prostitution, and street life; very little attention has been paid to other startling commonality among the women at least one-third of the Missing Women were of Aboriginal ancestry when Aboriginal women make up less than one percent of the population of Vancouver.
Sadly, the overrepresentation of Aboriginal women in such violence is neither surprising nor new. Over the last twenty years, it is estimated that over five hundred Aboriginal women have gone missing and/or been murdered across Canada. This includes the disappearances and deaths of at least seventeen Aboriginal women along Yellowhead Highway Sixteen in northern British Columbia, now painfully known as the “Highway of Tears”. This also includes the deaths and disappearances of at least twenty high-risk women, the majority of whom are Aboriginal, being investigated by Project KARE in Edmonton, Alberta; and the serial killings of John Martin Crawford, a Saskatoon, Saskatchewan man convicted or killing at least four Aboriginal women during the early 1990s.
Statistics pertaining to violence show a grim existence for Canada’s First women. For example, Aboriginal women are five times more likely to die as a result of violence than any other Canadian women. Eight out of ten Aboriginal women experience violence in intimate relationships (including husbands, boyfriends, and family members). Seventy-five percent of Aboriginal girls under eighteen have experienced violence – particularly sexual assault – and of these, fifty percent experienced this violence before the age of fourteen. Indeed, the life expectancy for Aboriginal women falls more than seven years below the average female non-Aboriginal Canadian.
It is nearly impossible to separate the violence committed against Aboriginal women from issues of colonialism, racism, and poverty – all of which have worked together to push Aboriginal women to the margins of Canadian society, and thus, overexposed to violence. Histories of colonization have seen the erosion of traditional Aboriginal communities and the production of a grossly disadvantaged and destitute Aboriginal population. Additionally, racist colonial stereotypes that see Aboriginal women as “squaws” – dirty and sexually available women – results in Aboriginal women being targeted for sex – whether consensual or not.
The story is simple: Aboriginal women leave their communities – whether fleeing violence, trying to find work, or obtain an education – and find themselves alone in urban centers, with no social supports there to help them. As a result, many of these women end up involved in the sex trade – whether to support addictions that formed as a result of the isolation and desperation of urban life; or as a means of supporting one’s self or their family. The sex trade, being on the “wrong side of the law,” means that Aboriginal women are over-policed (often arrested for prostitution), but under-protected from acts of violence.
The point is that violence against Aboriginal women is not just an “Aboriginal issue”. It is about being a racial minority and an ‘outsider’ in Canadian society. Being Aboriginal is just part of the equation that results in the basic outcome of not having access to the means of survival, and being forced into dangerous and life-threatening situations just to ensure survival. The situation is not that different for young black men in Toronto, who are also forced into dangerous situations in order to survive and who in turn experience endemic violence and police brutality.
Violence against Aboriginal women is an issue of the utmost importance for all marginalized Canadians. The problem of violence against Aboriginal women is not the pathology of one individual, but the pathology of the colonial and imperialist Canadian society wherein this sort of violence is permitted against certain sections of its population. 

Shawn Brant: “These Are Survival Issues. People Are Not Going to Stop”

Mohawk activist Shawn Brant speaks on the June 29th National Aboriginal Day of Action blockade that shut down highway 401, brought trade to a standstill and pushed First Native land claims to the forefront.

Basics: Can tell us some of the history of the land claims and the quarry?
Brant: It came from frustration in dealing with the Government of Canada and its agreements that it has made in the past. We felt strongly that this particular claim stood as an example of all the claims that were going on across the country. We shut down a company that was mining on the very lands that we knew to be ours and that the government had admitted was ours and yet it allowed for mining to continue. So we saw it as a basic, simple indignity that people in the broader public could understand. Don’t truck away the land while we are sitting at the table talking about it. What we found was that we had to physically put our people there in order to prevent this from happening. We wanted the process to continue in a way that was fair and dignified at a table that was balanced with justice and people working towards a resolution but that didn’t happen. That indignity of having to sit on our land and prevent it from being strip mined grew and grew and we started a growing campaign of economic destruction and we got into a lot of situations that have culminated recently. This claim went back 170 years and it is typical of every other one. There were agreements; there were broken promises, lies, it was about theft and even the government itself admits it cannot justify theft under these circumstances. Having that admission, though, didn’t mean the issue was resolved.
Basics: Its funny that you mentioned negotiating land while trucking it away. In Chile, that is something the Pinochet government did to Bolivia back in the 80s. Pinochet, with his fascist government said okay we will give you the land while he was trucking away the minerals under it.
Brant: It is something on going for 100s of years and when you see something as simple as this can’t be resolved, it is understood by people that nothing can resolved with the state in terms of land claim recognition. It instills and entrenches in our minds the indignities we face on a constant basis. The land is yours, the government admits it is yours, but that doesn’t mean you are going to get it. When its yours and you know that you are fundamentally obligated to take responsibility and to take whatever action for reclamation. You are there you defend your home like someone was coming to hurt your kids and you take steps to get it recognized internationally to make sure it never happens again.
Basics: This wasn’t the first time the OPP, RCMP, or Armed Forces has engaged in activities over you has it?
Brant: It is not our first contact with them. We are a fighting community. We have engaged the Canadian Military and the OPP in the past. We have had Mohawk nations come out and defend lands where their ancestors were buried from having condominiums placed upon them. When we talk about a gravel quarry, the state has clearly demonstrated it is willing to develop where our ancestors are buried and we have had to come out with arms to defend that. I find people always appeal to compassion and sensibilities. People need to be aware that a different approach has to be taken when the government operates in that way. They are turning over the soil where our ancestors are buried. We are constantly placed in a situation of confrontation and we can’t back down. Gas lines and pipelines are continually being put up in our backyards because non-natives did not want them and our land is cheap. There are 400 native nations across this country where CN touches their land and major highways too. It’s frightening that natives have faced indignities for hundreds of years. If you want to take $1 dollar from us we will cost you $1000 dollars. We have shut the CN mainline down 3 times, we have shut the 401 down and the detour routes, we have closed towns and businesses too. We have shut it all down.
Basics: What has been the estimated cost of it?
Brant: I estimate about half a billion dollars. That’s over the simple matter of the quarry license. That has brought us to the forefront of land claims. Land claims turn nasty when the situation in the communities gives rise to militancy. Maybe you can’t understand that you live in poverty, that you drink polluted water, that your kids kill themselves. But when someone encroaches and tries to put up a development we can see that and we can stop it. Maybe we can’t stop the social issues but we can physically stop that development. That’s why we fight.
Basics: With the increased militancy when the state tries to steal land there has been some news media who denounce what you are doing.
Brant: When we closed the rail line in April, they saw how dirty and messy that is, people saw how far the state is willing to go to further the free flowing economy. My brother who is a lawyer got a call in the middle of the night by someone to talk me out of June 29th or he would be charged with collusion and they will get my body from the morgue. They sent people out to tell us if we don’t leave the highway we will be dead. It isn’t the line of the government or the police to threaten everyone with death but that is how it is in First Nations communities. When Paul Fontaine or the band chiefs stepped down, they did it under duress that they will spend a long time in jail. This shouldn’t diminish their courage. These are simple aspects of life necessary for survival. We want the basics for our kids. It is a struggle for survival.
Basics: In Lawrence Heights, we have been organizing people around the important issue of displacement and the selling of their land to developers. Do you see any parallels in terms of displacement?
Brant: People are aware of Kasheshewan - a modern crisis in Ontario. There was an attempt to displace that community and move them into North Bay. Not because they wanted to fix their water, but because they discovered resource deposits in the shores of James Bay. You are only in a spot until resources are found and then you are moved. The government and systems of capital are designed in order to maintain a degree of suffering and poverty in a segment of society. If can’t make it then you sleep on the streets. If you can’t feed your child on the $100 dollars a month then your child will go to someone who will get $1000 dollars to raise that same child. These are fundamental indignities that go across racial barriers. We are lucky to live in a community that can organize and has strength to do those things. People have to realize that outside of reservations, Lawrence Heights, Regent Park and elsewhere there needs to be strong resistance and mobilization against encroachment on communities. There has to be more than passive resistance and appealing to feelings. I got released on bail a couple days ago after being held because of the “threat of re-offending”. My offense was trying to bring attention to social issues that affect First Nations people on a daily basis, like drinking water and hunger. If that is my threat to re-offend then who is offending who? The government needs to be held responsible for its actions. A community like this is one that can do that.
Basics: How long were you in for?
Brant: A couple months
Basics: Basically as a political prisoner - and you weren’t the only one in jail.
Brant: There are people still in under different circumstances. There are people on the run from outstanding charges in Caledonia. I have never considered the term political or otherwise. When you are in the institution, you are just a prisoner. We were in there because we couldn’t let things keep going the way they are going. We have an obligation as Mohawk men to seek every peaceful solution before we become more aggressive. We have done that up to this point. If nothing happens then there is an obligation to continue. These are survival issues. People are not going to stop.
Basics: Anything you’d like to say to the Lawrence Heights community?
Brant: The message that needs to go to all communities is that they need to stand up to the injustices that are perpetrated by government. Native issues need to be translated to a more common front to bring about a better government. We are concerned about housing issues, and people sleeping on the street or finding enough food. Society at large need to start working together and go beyond the classifications of communities and when things like this emerge they will all stand and bring real justice to everyone. There could have been a large response on June 29th if people were attuned to the political advantages that existed for them at that time. They have to accept that Mohawks are going to stand and fight. We will take the government down until it has real respect and honour for the people it supposedly represents.
Basics: Thank you Shawn Brant.  

Draft Military Manual Targets First Nations

In what General Rick Hillier called, “a glimpse of the future”, the military recently released a draft of its new counter-insurgency doctrine that shifts the focus of the military towards the suppression of “insurgencies” – including not only Taliban forces in Afghanistan but also the popular democratic movement in Haiti and First Nations groups in Canada struggling for their land treaty rights.

First Nations leaders reacted with shock and outrage when they learned that the Mohawk Warrior Society was listed as a potential “insurgent group”. According to the manual, this would make its member fair military targets for deception, ambush, and assassination!

“The rise of radical Native American organizations, such as the Mohawk Warrior Society, can be viewed as insurgencies with specific and limited aims,” the manual states. “Although they do not seek complete control of the federal government, they do seek particular political concessions in their relationship with national governments and control (either overt or covert) of political affairs at a local/reserve (‘First Nation’) level, through the threat of, or use of, violence.”

For all the military’s fear mongering about the supposed threat of the Mohawk Warrior Society, Canadians should remember that the violence between the First Nations and the government has been markedly one-sided. Protest actions by First Nations groups such as those at Oka, Kanestake, and Gustafsen Lake during the 1990s, or more recently at Caledonia, Grassy Narrows, and Tyendinega, were only launched after decades (and in some cases centuries) of legal negotiations and government stonewalling. The hyper-aggressive police and military responses have included the use of hundreds of tactical assault troops, helicopters, surveillance planes, armored personnel carriers, land mines, tear gas, tens of thousands of spent rounds of live ammunition, mass arrests, incidents of torture, and the shooting death of unarmed protester Dudley George.

In their quest to dehumanize resistance, the document downplays the critical role that the popular support plays in supporting an insurgency, claiming that “insurgency is not a movement or a people”. Yet the example of Iraq proves otherwise: there are more than 300,000 soldiers and private mercenaries in Iraq today – a country less than half the size of Ontario far more than required to crush a few rogue elements or ‘extremists’. It takes hundreds of thousands of troops to only begin to try to destroy mass movements and peoples. And if history is any guide for the future, we know that armies almost always fail to succeed in crushing united peoples movement.

At the same time, in what it calls the “hearts and minds” campaign, the document emphasizes the psychological aspect of warfare. What this document shows is the degree to which the Canadian government and military manipulates so-called non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to achieve their foreign policy objectives. It stresses the importance of getting to know the culture of the people under occupation and the use of NGOs as a way to create loyalty to the foreign occupiers. That NGOs are willing to be used by occupation forces and puppet governments to achieve military objectives should make Canadians very skeptical of the thousands of NGOs in this country who receive government funding to do their work.

Canadians should understand that the new counter-insurgency doctrine will not be limited to fighting foreign uprisings. It is hard not to notice the increased troop presence in Canadian cities alongside the aggressive recruitment campaigns in Canadian high schools, colleges and universities. Just last year the Canadian military participated in a week-long urban warfare exercise in the city if Winnipeg, training over 500 Canadian reservists alongside 40 American counterparts, in the strategy of urban warfare in Canadian cities.

While the military has been backpedaling on the report and now claims that all references to First Nations groups will be removed in the final version, this does not change the fact that Canadian military is being transformed from a body equipped for fighting inter-state wars into a body more readily able to fight against popular movements. Canadians need to take this document as a very serious expression of the future direction of Canadian foreign and domestic policy. Clearly, the government and the military know something that Canadians are not being told. Canada’s military is supposed to be for defending our country, so why is it developing policies for subjugating popular resistance movements, both at home and abroad?

Captive Nations: Ombudsman Slams Justice System's Treatment of First Nations

The Office of the Correctional Investigator released a report on Monday blasting the federal Correctional Service for its treatment of the First Nations in Canada. First Nations peoples make up 18.5 per cent of the prison population despite being only 2.7 per cent of the population of Canada and are nine times more likely to go to jail than the population at large. In Western provinces the situation is even worse, where Natives make up 60 percent of the inmate population.

Once inside the justice system, First Nations fare worse than non-First Nations. They are less likely to get sentenced to community supervision and are frequently "over-classified" - ie. sent to maximum security instead of medium - forcing them to serve their time far from their homes, families, elders, and communities. They have less access to rehabilitative services, such as education, job training, or addictions counseling. They are released much later into their sentences and are more likely to get their parole yanked and sent back to prison on technical grounds.

While this injustice has grown worse in recent years, it is hardly new. "Despite years of task force reports, internal reviews, national strategies, partnership agreements and action plans, there has been no measurable improvements in the conditions for aboriginal offenders during the last 20 years," Sapers said. The pattern of sweeping the problem under the rug continues, as Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said he would "take the report under consideration" but denied that there was any evidence of systemic discrimination against First Nations in the prison system.

Such avoidance makes sense, since having impoverished and locked-up First Nations communities benefits powerful interests in our society. The First Nations have repeatedly and consistently struggled to defend their sovereignty and land rights, arousing the ire of the government and their corporate backers. Traditional, unceded First Nations territory includes lucrative fishing areas on the East and West coasts, massive oil and uranium deposits in the prairies, hydroelectric projects in northern Quebec, rich logging areas all over Canada, and more. Even those lands that lack natural resources are still be considered useful - as dumping grounds for solid or toxic waste that would be politically unacceptable in richer, whiter, parts of the country. As long as we have a government in power that views strong, vibrant, First Nations communities as a threat to their power and control - rather than allies in the struggle for justice - we can look forward to another decade of government stonewalling, sabotage, denial, and repression.