I have been told that at late Friday Night about 30 Natives have put up a Canadian and US Flag in front of DCE
OPP stood by and watched.
Therefore, it has been clearly proved that it is only illegal for non-natives to raise the Canadian Flag.
Of course, Gary himself was thrown in jail for attempting to raise a Canadian flag near the disputed Caledonia land.
The OPPA has issued a warning:
"The people behind these protests are not from the area," said OPPA President Karl Walsh.
"They are, however, acting on a sustained basis to push an aggressive political agenda that includes promoting hatred, flaunting the justice system and inciting violence," Walsh said
However, Gary sees his mission as one of accountability and justice.
Should be an interesting time in Caledonia today.
Update: OPP says STAY AWAY!
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Afternoon Update: Sounds like it ended up being just one big shouting match.
Background - Caledonia may well be just the tip of the iceberg.
Background - Caledonia may well be just the tip of the iceberg.
28 comments:
This is pretty shocking news. Would an organized economic boycott of Ontario be out of the question?
Ontario unions are quick to pass motions opposing perceived apartheid in Palestine, why do they give 'two tiered' justice in their own province a free pass?
The good people of Ontario have generally oppposed tyranny around the world; who will stand up for Ontario in it's time of need?
Just thinking...are the people 'from the area' glad that Mchale is doing this? Perhaps they are inhibited, fearing personal retribution.
Perhaps they are inhibited, fearing personal retribution.
From McHale? I doubt that. Perhaps the residents are afraid to do much on their own due to intimidation from the natives.
I find it interesting that they are saying people from out of the area are not welcome. If I am not mistaken most of the Natives are/were from out of the area. I also thought that we were free in Canada to protest where we want. Does this mean that people from outside Toronto are not welcome to protest at Queens park.
Yes Joanne that is what I meant at 1027...personal retribution from local Natives who recognise them.
Good point from anon at 1159.
Clearly double standard.
Most of the natives aren't even from Canada. A lot of them are from the US an came up here for the "protest"
To cherniak_wtf
You may well be correct in that the proposed rally is provocative and irresponsible. But, on what basis do you conclude that? Is it because the OPPA says so? The OPPA says the outsiders have angenda to promote hatred. On what basis do they conclude this?
Please don't mention "flaunting of the law" because the First Nations protestors have doing precisely that by disobeying a court injuction. So, apparently, has the OPP itself by not enforcing said injuction.
Hey... McGuinty has sent a message to the aboriginal communities that they have "carte blanche" as far as the rule of law is concerned... and they're gonna take advantage of that.
We've got our own little Caledonia Jr. out in the eastern part of the province...
-- DESERONTO -- Charged with three counts of uttering death threats are Shawn Michael Brant, 42, of Tyendinaga.
"Call me wacky... but when your best alternative to a negotiated agreement is shutting down legitimate businesses and threatening to kill people... isn't it time to back up a little and punt?"
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Two tiered justice is perfectly acceptable! As long as the beneficiaries are on the politically correct "Official List of Victims"!
I think Fantino should be handed his ass on a platter.... but that would first of all require that McGuinty and company be sent away!
No wonder Fantino is changing the cruisers colours to black and white. The OPPA statement calls white, black and black, white. Many of the natives are not from Calidonia, a bus load came down from Manitoulin, and the natives certainly have a political agenda. As for promoting hatred, just read the native spokspersons sstatements.
Thank you, swift, for your post. The last two sentences add up to a good answer to those who insist the provincial government has been even handed in its approach. The government clearly has not.
I do find it funny that always a huge issue is the 'natives from away', except where there are none and its 'white people from away' which is rarely mentioned.
But look at something like municipal politics, say there was a land claim on a zoning issue between two people. Would a municipality, a level of government well known for inactivity, let that issue run on for FORTY YEARS after a court ordered them to settle it? Of course not.
But that is exactly what the feds do. The *&^%ed up government is obvious here, since the feds have NO jurisdiction over land in the provinces, yet forcibly took over ALL aspects of the 'native question', which pretty much has ONLY to do with land. Anybody else see the insanity of that? Think its an accident?
It's amazing that most canadians will gripe about how messed up their government is until somebody else actually stands up to it and points it out. People gripe and complain about all the 'money' they get, forgetting that they are already treated as 'sovereign' by OUR government-they have to pay for health care as well as public education. Not to mention that their money goes to white bureaucrats running it, as well as their hand picked native 'government', as is obvious in looking at many reserves.
But media AND government are usually happy to string out conflicts, that's what they live for, especially when it comes to natives, because you need some skirmishes to provide the 'background' so you don't have to actually look at what the issues are. The racists are useful to them as well, that way nobody actually looks at the issues or does anything about it.
Six Nations designated 40 areas as places for land claims. The government knew this, it happened in 1987, four years before they sold the land to the developer. But then they sold it anyway. Gee, hows that for fair play? So this is hardly 'new' stuff, I was graduating high school then!
This land is contested because at the time it was 'sold' back in 1841 (we still have the records) by a government which Canada IMPOSED on the natives. They were not their traditional leaders, and they were not entitled to speak for the people, who at the time had a far more advanced democracy than Canada does even today. So a government rep essentially showed up, found a native and said, "Hey tonto, sign this here and we'll give you six cases of booze and some copper pots for all this land". The native would have looked at the land and of course not even understood what it meant to 'buy' the land, and said 'what the hell, I can get some booze and cookware out of it'.
So those are the basic facts. It's weird because white guys like Jackie Vautour are something of a folk hero where they live because they 'stood up' to the big mean government.
The main drive of the levels of government is to keep white people from sympathizing with natives because they'll discover the natives want the same thing as most canadians-for responsible land use that will benefit them and canadians and not foreign investors and millionaires in Toronto, Montreal, Bermuda or Calgary. In New Brunswick, virtually the only job growth in forestry is from native foresters now, even while taxpayer money is shovelled to Fraser, Irving and UPN in 'technology partnerships' which of course is machines that put people out of work.
Natives, unlike canadians, actually use their land base responsibly and don't just hand it over to millionaires and foreigners. Perhaps the 'racism' in white people is simply the low self esteem of a people who realize the people their government has been screwing over for over a century are actually much smarter than they are.
Anon - I can agree with you to the point that I feel that all levels of government have failed here. It is an outrage for both sides that this carries on while Dalton gets his big payhike and won't be back til March.
Perhaps a nice show of solidarity is in order then. Check out some native blogs and sites for numerous accounts of that 'two tiered justice' mentioned, most going against natives.
You can start with Grassy Narrows, where environmental laws were routinely flouted by logging companies and 'third party management', where ALL rights are stripped from natives on reserves and given to accountants in city's thousands of miles away. This usually happens when band leaders are investing in environmentally sound businesses so the government cuts off funding, waits a few months for somebody to commit suicide and then takes all legislative authority from the band council and gives it to those accountants. Imagine how you'd feel if somebody in your city committed suicide and the feds used that to dismantle all the powers of your municipal leaders and gave it to accountants in Calgary or London. Every single thing you want to do, from building a porch to keeping your dog outside has to go in writing to some accountant you've never seen before. I'm thinking those acts wouldn't go over too well , yet they are all too common on reserves.
You can also mention Canada's human rights infractions against the Lubicons cited by the UN, or just a few of the over 1000 outstanding land claims that the government is breaking the law for over forty years. One guy with a pole is hardly evidence of that, far worse is done against the rights of the poor on a daily basis in this country.
Perhaps how the government refused to enforce the law in cases in burnt church and even imprisoned natives for defending themselves when attacked illegally by DFO officials.
Or cases like Charles Leblanc, who was arrested just for taking pictures of cops, or Jagghi Singh who was arrested while at a protest even though he wasn't partaking in the protest. It's odd how some protests, like protests against other people's protests are considered on a different footing than, say, a protest against globalization, where random police arrests are usually quite welcome.
If he or anybody else needed to do such an act to 'prove' the duality of the justice system, I envy them. Try being poor or a minority, you'd have known about a LONG time ago. Try reading one of the many books on the cozy relations of Ottawa bureaucrats and politicians and the RCMP. 'justice is blind' is a lovely catchphrase, but that's all it is.
Anon at Mon Jan 22, 10:06:00 PM EST - You raise a number of good points. There is no doubt that natives have suffered abuse and losses over the years. However, does that justify what's going on in Caledonia? Are all natives in Canada behind the Six Nations on this?
To answer the first question-yes, absolutely. What options were there? There were none. The government refuses to talk, sells the contentious land, a builder starts building on it, which means soon it will be a community and virtually impossible to get the land back.
Does anybody have suggestions? Hell, what would YOU do? The government treats us shabbily enough, but that goes beyond anything we can dream of in our red tape driven, bureaucracy laden dreams.
So absolutely, at some point civil disobedience becomes the only option. Natives have been notoriously kind hearted in their dealings, hell, look what palestinians started doing in Israel. When was the last time you heard about a suicide Iriquois blowing up a restaurant? If, as a white person, you aren't sending emails to the feds telling them to smarten the *&^% up then you certainly have no right to gripe about the natives. Even common sense says that with any group you can only push them so far. I guess in Canada we've been lucky, they've been inflicting most of their aggression on themselves, which says a lot about their culture, OUR culture usually looks for the weakest link around to beat the hell out of.
Ontario Chiefs have publicly said their support, the Mohawks of course did, poorer reserves know to keep their mouths shut because their funding often depends on it. That part is irrelevant anyway. As everybody SHOULD know, Canada was not a 'native country', it was country of natives, who all had their own 'nations'.
To see the difference all you have to look at is the various websites. It's interesting as one side (the natives) says 'negotiate' and the other 'deal with'. I think it was the Globe and Mail that even had a Chief saying that 2007 will feature much more of this if governments don't smarten up. Like I said, if you don't follow it, then it just seems like 'natives are gettting uppity again', that's thanks to media. This has been going on for forty years, heck I was reading blogs from conservatives that were ready to take up arms just over one liberal government bill!
Civil disobedience shouldn't just be allowed for rural gun owners you know (most of whom are still breaking the law by refusing to register their firearms).
Anon, good point about civil disobedience. In fact, some municipal councils in Ontario are actually daring to pray against a Court of Appeal ruling.
So when you frame it in the context of civil disobedience, I can actually get my head around it and start to understand where you're coming from.
Thanks for your patience. I think I've learned something here. I promise not to be so judgmental about native issues from now on.
Cool, I can respect that, and contrary to what some posters say, its a pretty fair and balanced blog, albeit politically biased, but at least that's plainly stated and there's nothing wrong with being that. I don't go to many blogs, and I just happened across this one, and I'm sure I'll stop back.
Thanks, Anon. I appreciate that. My stand has usually been that the government (especially provincial) is at fault here. However, I think a lot of the frustration of the non-natives is due to ignorance (i.e. not knowing all the facts).
Thanks for taking the time to clarify your side of the story. It will help me when I do future posts on native issues.
A couple more facts then, it was the MUNICIPAL government that sold the land, even know they knew full well it was in dispute. That's not the province's fault. Just like Oka's golf course was a MUNICIPAL decision.
The other untold story, mentioned somewhere here by a poster I think, is that a good news story is that many municipalities are taken it on themselves to deal with these disputes with their local councils-unfortunately not at all.
At the next level is the province,however, they don't have the authority to deal with native disputes. For another thing, natives don't trust provincial police, and for good reason, many the same as posters here.
So that's all the feds, remember Mulroneys 'waffling' during Oka? The buck stops with Harper when it comes to native rights. But of course that's why we have three confusing levels of government with multiple departments, so they can bounce native rights around for forty years.
it was the MUNICIPAL government that sold the land, even know they knew full well it was in dispute.
That's what puzzles me - how was it even sold in the first place? Normally if you want to buy or sell property there are all kinds of searches at the Ontario land registry that have to be done.
Ah, but that's the 'hidden secret' in canada. In fact, one of the often overlooked issues as concerns new 'property rights' legislation being put forward in Ontario is to restrict searches. It's been awhile since I looked at the issue, but essentially they are trying to make it easier to say that person or corporation X owns land, even without resorting to searches-also meaning they'll have another reason to try to ignore native claims.
Take that with some salt, its been awhile since I looked at the issue, but if you dislike the current ontario government, you might want to look into property searches and property rights a little more and you'll find even more reason to not like them.
Currently much of the land where all the mennonites (and others) live in waterloo and grey counties were once owned by blacks who had left america 'back in the day'. Shyster land developers prayed on their lack of education and obtained most of the land by proxy, then resold it, then later sold it again to new mennononites. In many cases they got blacks to sign over the land, then rented it back to them- these people were tenants on land they owned.
You can still go through the area and find many black cemetaries, most of them left, as you can see from a look around waterloo region there aren't many of those blacks left. There was an excellent book published on it, I can't remember its name, check your library in the ontario history section.
However, I checked and remembered that the province does now own the land, so you are right that it rests on their shoulders, no doubt fearing the native consequences if they try giving it to the municipality, and the white vote, if they try 'giving in' to the natives.
Finally, the man at the centre of this blog was actually arrested for "breaching the peace".
Check this out:
"Fighting words doctrine. The First Amendment doctrine that holds that certain utterances are not constitutionally protected as free speech if they are inherently likely to provoke a violent response from the audience."
So I can EASILY see why this would constitute a breach of the peace, so I would debate that this is a case of two tiered justice, though like I said, there are ample examples of that. Compare that to a court case just dismissed in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where peaceful protestors were arrested, not read any rights, told by one officer "you think I need a reason to arrest you", and another officer "when I tell you to leave you better f(*&^ing leave".
That's why I tend not to get too broken up in cases like this guys. OK, that's enough on this issue!:) Promise.
Wow, Anon. Lots here to digest. Thanks. I'll have to give this some thought. You've obviously done a lot of research.
Dinner time now! :)
Sorry, I wasn't clear, the guy in Caledonia was charged with a 'breach of the peace', not for exercising his 'freedom of speech'.
Anon - Very interesting stuff here.
First of all, I had no idea about this - One of the often overlooked issues as concerns new 'property rights' legislation being put forward in Ontario is to restrict searches; and the black & Mennonite land purchases, etc.
However, I checked and remembered that the province does now own the land, so you are right that it rests on their shoulders,
Yes, that part I remembered, but on what basis the province had the right to stick their nose in here, I'm not sure. Then they still say it's a federal issue. No doubt they were trying to diffuse the situation as you suggest. I do recall Jim Prentice saying something a while back that the Six Nation deal was made before Confederation and so is more of a provincial than federal issue. I wonder what the legal take on that is.
In any case, you have made an excellent case to explain why this is not "two-tier justice" in Caledonia.
Obviously you are on the native side. Do you have any suggestions for credible native blogs or other sites for unbiased information to help non-natives understand the issues? I find when I read some of the "native" blogs, I get upset with the anti-white comments. It is almost a reverse form of racism. I think that turns a lot of people off and causes divisiveness.
There is a whole list of interesting youtube videos at:
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/forum
/viewtopic.php?
forum=10&showtopic=17495
I think many are done by this woman:
http://somenamedia.blogspot.com/
http://turtleislandnews.com is the media for Six Nations. I'm not sure what sites you are at because although its been awhile the native ones I was at were pretty restrained.
Most natives seem to understand something that confuses 'our' people sometimes, and that's that 'people' and 'peoples organizations' need to be separated from 'government' and 'governments organizations'. That's why the Assembly of First Nations never gets radical, although they will stand up nominally for native rights so long as nobody does anything wrong. They get their cheque from the government, and its usually a pretty nice one.
This is why natives want 'self determination', and why a lot of Quebecers want 'self determination', because we live under a *&^%ed up government. As conservatives you guys at this site know this, its usually just for different reasons.
Natives want 'democracy', which is what they always had before the King came over. Now, we don't have a King, but we essentially elect a King, and they usually get to rule even though they've only been elected by a minority of Canadians. King Chretien ruled absolutely with the actual support of 20% of canadians. King Harper's powers are a little more restricted, but he still has lots of them, and that's with even less.
The 'native' problem is EXACTLY the same as our problem-self determination. When Quebecers want 'self determination' our immediate reaction is anger-why don't they want to stay under our *&^%ed dictatorial government? It's because WE live under the impression that the government represents us, but that's not even close. Quebecers and natives, and some westerners aren't 'rejecting Canada', they are rejecting the system of rules that WE played no part in setting up. So I'm not on the 'native side', its just that the native side here just happens to be on MY side-the one that wants democracy and self determination.
That doesn't mean I'm always 'on their side'. At Six Nations they just had a drug bust by their own police force, and two people were killed. Now, what courses of investigation are open to make sure some native cop didn't get out of line? Typically Indian Affairs is 'nicer' to bands the more they act like our own government. So the less they tolerate deviations from the norm, the more corrupt their leaders are, then the more perks they get from IA. The more their businesses mirror ours, and the more damaging to the environment, the more IA likes them. That's the next phase in 'cultural approbation'. If you can get their governments to look and act exactly like 'ours', meaning the less responsive they are to their own populations, then the more financial aid they will get.
But don't believe me, start checking out websites and reading books for yourselves. There's a native woman who does documentaries who is world famous, yet unknown in Canada. She gets swamped in Japan, but nobody knows her here-and for good reason. Go to the library and check out "Is the crown at war with us?", its a very interesting documentary.
Thanks, Anon. That will keep me busy for a while. Lots of food for thought and plenty of research suggestions.
Two tier is not the proper two words ( Its PASS THE BUCK )As long as there is more than one government, company,person,organizatin Lion inthe pack ,or just to put it simpler, grama,mother,daughter,Mother-in-law Thats 4 tier and they don't pass the Buck
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