The Warriors BY Iroqua

to all Mohawk warriors and native warriors to honor them

URGENT!!!! Six Nations Man's Life is at risk due to incarceration

We are sending out this important message.  There are currently
approximately 15 people from Six Nations either detained or going
through the court process as a result of defending their land rights.
Information as to how you can contribute financially can be found at the
end of this message.

***PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY***
Thursday October 25, 2007

Incarcerated Six Nations Man Threatened by Institutional Staff
by Janie Jamieson
Six Nations

Skylar Williams, a Mohawk Wolf from Six Nations has been held without
bail at the Hamilton Barton St. Jail since the illegal arrests at
Stirling Street September 19, 2007. Today we held a rally for him
outside the jail where he has been in the "hole" for two days.

We have reason to believe if Skyler is harmed in anyway, we know he is
the target of planned and deliberate threats and violence by jail
institution staff members.

A few days ago Skylar woke up to find the plumbing in his cell on range
5 was backed up. He notified institution staff on his range. He was
accused by staff of backing up the plumbing. The mess was left.
Skylar asked for a drink of water, he was told by staff to drink from
the toilet. Skylar responded, "there's sh*t" in there. The institution
staff's paid professional advise to Skylar was to "take the sh*t out and
then have a drink." Skylar refused and notified his lawyer of the
situation. At this point Skyler was without clean water for
approximately 18 hours.

Skyler's lawyer then notified another institutional staff member with a
higher ranking position. The plumbing was fixed. Skyler left his cell
but at lockdown upon his return, Skyler discovered the plumbing
was mysteriously backed up again. The higher ranking institutional staff
attempted to solve the problem by moving Skyler to another cell.

After this incident Skyler was approached by an institutional staff
member and taken to a room with two other staff. At this point Skyler
was told by the one of the staff that that particular staff member
referred to himself as being "GOD" at Barton St. Jail. He then
threatened Skyler by telling him if he and his lawyer didn't stop
causing sh*$ for him, he was going to "fu*$" Skyler up. He also said he
would have it arranged so Skyler's lawyer would have no access to him.

This staff member went on to inform Skyler of his plan to "fu*$" him up.
(There were 2 other staff present when this threat occurred.) According
to the staff member Skyler's fate is supposed to happen in three steps...

1. Skyler would be given a "misconduct" by the institutional staff.

2. Skyler would then be sent to the "hole" for 3 days.

3. After Skyler was done in the "hole" he would immediately be sent to
the range 3 of the jail.

Range 3 is where the men who are waiting to be tried for rape, murder
and other serious crimes are held. Some of these men have already been
convicted of such crimes and are waiting to be shipped off to federal
institutions.

This is where men who have nothing left to lose are sent. In this range
the inmates do special favours for the institutional staff for as little
as an extra meal or coffee. It's a place where you simply do not "rat"
on the institutional staff. Inmates are pitted against one another.
 It's also a place where Skyler was told, there are men as big as 321
pounds that could really "fu*$" him up. (The jail staff asked Skyler how
much he weighed just to verify Skyler /would/ be quite smaller and at
greater risk of being injured if sent to Range 3.)

Skyler was also told by the institutional staff the last guy they had
"fu*$ed" up had to crawl to the jail cell door covered in blood. Skyler
was told there were men in Range 3 "waiting" for his arrival. Skyler was
advised by this paid government employee to "quit his bitc*ing" and "to
take his lumps."

Skyler's lawyer spoke with the high ranking institutional staff and was
told by him the only thing he could do to guarantee Skyler's safety was
to put him in isolation where he would be under 24 hour video
surveillance, however Skyler would have to give up the staff members'
names who were threatening him.

Skyler's lawyer has already filed a motion for "habeus corpus" to have
Skyler physically present in court tomorrow for his bail review.

Skyler's cell mate contacted his family this morning and informed them
in the last 24 hours Skyler has been given a "MISCONDUCT" by staff and
has been placed in "the hole" for 3 days.

The instituional staff member has kept his promise to  threaten Skyler's
life and safety. This staff member's plan is gone passed the first two
stages.

Something needs to be done immediately to guarantee Skyler's safety and
security. If there is interference in Skylers safety and security or if
his life is put at risk we believe it would be the direct result of
mistreatment at the discretion of institutional staff. We believe they
are abusing their authority to ensure Skyler's life and well being is
put at risk. We believe their attempts at intimidating Skyler are
deliberate and being somewhat overlooked by senior institutional staff.

Let's hope Skyler will gets out of Barton St. Jail safely with his life.
His bail review is at the Cayuga Courthouse tomorrow at 9:00am.

Please forward immediately.

niawen, skennen

Janie Jamieson
Six Nations


Donations for Skyler's legal defense can be sent to:

BMO Ohsweken Branch Transit # 37522
Legal Fund 3014-873
and Site Fund 3014-929

Signatories are Josephine Sandy
Donna Powless and Janie Jamieson

Cheques can be made payable to either the
Six Nations Reclamation Legal Fund or
the Six Nations Reclamation Site Fund

c/o Janie Jamieson RR#1 Ohsweken , ON.
N0A 1M0

For more info e-mail DubbleJ71@aol.com
or call (905) 768-8590
_______________________________________________

Crimson Tide

Crimson Tide
Song by: Dwayne Pamajewon
Nya:weh D for suggesting your song.


Crimson Tide
Written by: Dwayne Pamajewon

Take your rightful place
As you've done before
Bring forth the truth
That'll punish you no more

Dig up your racial slurs
Buried in the sand
Toss them at the sea of red
Then hide and wash your hands

No resolutions
Tempers are going to flare
Someone gets an itchy finger
Pulls the trigger among those who stare

Pre Chorus

Now here come's
Here comes the force
Here comes the rage to resistance
To even out the score
Now here come's the waves
The Redmans' waves

Chorus

Well, it's a Crimson Tide
Right before my eyes
Watching the Redman
Uncover the truth
Now watch this country come alive

Shawn Brant: Another Case of Kkkanada's Political Persecution of Indigenous People

Take note, Australian, Kkkanadian, New Zealand and the United States couldn't give a rats arse about Indigenous rights,so they not only share a minority racist attitude, but also share all the ways they have perfected oppressing us. Treating an Indigenous father and activist Shawn Bryant as some internal threat is the thin edge of the wedge and denies the legitimacy & justice of his and his peoples history, present and future.Thats State Sanctioned Genocide.

Much Aroha & Tautoko Shawn, Kia Kaha brother, Respect, Regards & Love to our Relations defending their ancestral rights for your generations to come.

by Justin Podur; September 19, 2007 - Znet

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=13830

On August 30, about two weeks before Canada became one of only four countries to vote against a UN declaration on indigenous rights, Tyendinaga Mohawk father and activist, Shawn Brant was released from Quinte Detention Centre on bail. Bail had been denied him twice before, when he first turned himself in on July 5th and again after a bail-review hearing on August 10th. The conditions of his bail were restrictive: $50,000 cash bond with another $50,000 surety, 30-day house arrest, curfew, no protests, and above all, no returning to the struggle for the Mohawk territory the government hoped to disrupt by putting him in jail in the first place. His trial will take place some time in 2008. He is to stand trial on 9 charges having to do with two blockades, one that occurred in April 2007 and the other in June 2007, including 6 charges of indictable mischief (for which the maximum penalty is 10 years in prison), and 3 charges of breach of bail. His actual crime, for which he is being persecuted, is being an articulate and militant spokesperson for his community and indigenous struggles in Canada more generally.

The bail hearing also featured massive, militarized security, all for a community activist who had been involved in activities no more violent than blockades of roads and reclamations of sites, and who had turned himself in. It was a disgraceful display by the state, an attempt to generate fear of violence as a diversion from the substantive issues.

Exclusion and Environmental Destruction

The Mohawks of Tyendinaga, and community members from sister Mohawk territories Kahnawake, Akwesasne, and Kanehsatake, are no strangers to repression and persecution by governments. Indeed, with borders transecting Quebec, Canada, and the US, the Mohawks have known three different flavors of violence. The variations, however, are less striking than the similarities. In the 1990s, these communities faced a military occupation, with thousands of Canadian troops besieging the Mohawks, who were protesting that their sacred sites were slated to become condominium developments and golf courses. An all-out invasion was planned for these communities in 1994, called off at the last minute because of concerns that the political fallout from the bloodshed would be too high. More recently, Kanehsatake, for example, has faced tense standoffs with Canada’s federal police and Quebec’s provincial police, including the creation of a privatized police force to invade the community in 2004 (1). Before that, the Canadian police and military presented these sieges of communities as “law-and-order” activities, using force to stamp out the crimes of Canada’s indigenous people. But the massive, ongoing crime is one committed against indigenous people, and the law-and-order posturing, to which we will return, is intended to present an inversion of reality.

The Canadian state and corporations view the country’s economic development in terms of extracting resources from the land and selling them off, mainly to the United States, for profit. In this model, indigenous people, who live on the land and have their own ideas about how to treat it, are an obstacle, and have been treated that way historically. Even though rights to exploit the land were as often won by negotiation and treaties that included mutual obligations by Canada and indigenous nations as by force, Canada has treated indigenous people as a colonizer treats its victim, disrespecting agreements with them, dispossessing and excluding them, and using force with impunity. “Development” on indigenous lands, whether of resources or, in more densely populated areas, of suburban housing construction projects, is a sort of development that provides no benefit at all to them. While indigenous people from the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory neighbouring Caledonia in Ontario watched their historic lands turned into suburban developments, and Mohawks in Tyendinaga watched trucks carting tons of gravel out of their lands, the majority of indigenous communities in Canada (75% in 2001) have substandard, dangerous water quality and inadequate housing.

Beyond merely excluding the indigenous, Canada has destroyed the very basis of their survival through environmental destruction. The Mohawk territory on the Ontario/Quebec/New York border has been thoroughly poisoned. Canadian authorities have been destroying Mohawk fishing grounds since they started manipulating the flow of the St.Lawrence River in the 1830s. When Canada opened the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s, it offered cheap hydro power to industrial investors, and heavy industry, from General Motors to Alcoa and Reynolds, responded, contaminating the rivers and lakes of the region and the groundwater table with PCBs, DDT, mercury, Mirex, and more. Poisoned water killed both the wildlife and the traditional economy. With no more hunting or fishing, there was no more traditional diet and, consequently, a whole set of new health problems (2).

Environmental destruction and exclusion from the economic benefits of their own territories has led to poverty and unemployment in indigenous communities. This has provided the state with another lever of control over the communities – small amounts of money distributed through the welfare system and through institutions of “self-government” that were imposed on indigenous communities, often at gunpoint. These meager and humiliating funds have an additional value to the state besides control: they also enable the state to sow racism by claiming that indigenous people are “lazy” and “don’t work”, living off of “handouts” from the state.

Adaptation of Tobacco

But the indigenous were never excluded quietly or easily, and the Mohawks found a way to adapt even to this narrowing of their options. Taking advantage of their position on the border, they created businesses selling a traditional sacred plant – tobacco cigarettes. Canada’s establishment treated the “native cigarette” trade as a major crime, alleging associations with organized crime and threatening brutal action. Indeed, from 2004-2006, the government threatened the Mohawk communities, repeatedly, on the basis of the tobacco trade. In an interview with the CBC in April 2006, Shawn Brant explained some of what the tobacco trade had meant for Tyendinaga:

“We have approximately 6 to 7 million dollars a month which comes into the community as new revenue from the outside, that we’ve been able to establish infrastructure within our community. We’ve been able to put forward our first institution of government, as we call it, the longhouse. We showed them that we were going to use the proceeds from tobacco in order to recreate ourselves within the society, that we would allow for something greater to come from it than just padding the pockets of a few people.

“So Tyendinaga now sits in a unique situation, where we have this money coming in, where the stores bring it in at retail level, where construction crews and workers are working, people are preparing their roofs and contributing in a way to, not only the local economy, but also to the surrounding economy in a way that we never had. We’re in position now where we are able to have, as a community, some influence in the outside world. When our people go out shopping, because of the availability of revenue within here, they’re not treated like shit anymore, they’re treated like consumers that have access to revenues, that are going out and making purchases. They’re treated in a way and a standard that we’ve never enjoyed before.” (3)

When the interviewer asked him about rumors of a Canadian military raid into Tyendinaga with cigarettes as a pretext, Shawn Brant answered:

“We’ve always known, and we’ve always been told to prepare for this time, when they would stop at nothing to remove us, to have us not exist. We’ve been through the assimilation process and it didn’t work, and now there’s one option that as a nation, a military option is very real. I believe the day will come, and with Kanesatake in 1990, when the people of that community stood up and everything changed, we talked about the transition time.

“Kanestake has got nothing in the 16 years since 1990: they haven’t settled the land claims, their status within the Indian act, they haven’t settled their financial and fiduciary responsibilities with them – it’s a community where schools barely exist, their programs are non-existent. While everything changed in people’s minds across Canada, and maybe the way in which people perceive us has changed, nothing has changed for them and that’s their punishment for 1990. If Tyendinaga can take on that responsibility, and take the brunt of the force and the government’s wrath, and it allows for some peace to exist in Kanesatake, then we’ll gladly shoulder that responsibility. We don’t just see it as being something just around us. It’s time for our sisters and brothers that have fought for so long to have a break and let them turn their attention to us, and we’ll welcome it.” (4)

Resistance to Dispossession

The tobacco trade is not the only indigenous adaptation to legal and economic exclusion and dispossession. The more direct adaptation has been to resist dispossession, using legal arguments and, when Canada ignored these, resorting to the very measured and restrained use of reclamations and blockades.

One such reclamation began in February 2006, at the Douglas Creek Estates bordering the town of Caledonia and the Six Nations reserve. The Douglas Creek Estates were in the process of being converted to a suburban subdivision when members of Six Nations reclaimed it. They wanted the land, which, like so many other pieces of indigenous territory, had been taken from them in a process of very dubious legality, to be returned to them (5). Instead of negotiating in good faith, the provincial police attempted to dislodge the indigenous people from the reclamation site in April 2006, and succeeded for several hours, after which the indigenous reclaimed the site yet again. Six Nations called on people outside the territory to speak up and to mobilize on their behalf. One community that heard the call was Tyendinaga.

The day after the police dislodged the Six Nations reclamation on the Douglas Creek Estates (April 21 2006), Mohawks from Tyendinaga blocked a CN Rail line that runs through their territories, both the Culbertson Tract and Surrender 24 (discussed below) demanding that the government negotiate with Six Nations in good faith. Later that year, the government would force the Mohawks of Tyendinaga to conduct a reclamation on their own behalf. The Culbertson tract, like the Douglas Creek Estates, had been stolen from the indigenous through a dubious swindle (6). When, on November 15 2006, Mohawks went to the site of a proposed subdivision on the Culbertson tract to publicize their claim and their intention to stop the construction of a subdivision there, coincidence had a convoy of Canadian Military vehicles just passing through the reserve. The Mohawks blocked the convoy with cars and trucks and asked them what they were doing. Provincial police eventually escorted the military away. In January 2007, Shawn Brant and another Mohawk activist, Mario Baptiste, were arrested. Shawn was charged with ‘uttering death threats’, Mario with ‘assault’ and ‘mischief’, in conjunction with the November 15 2006 incident (7).

On another part of Tyendinaga territory, a gravel quarry owned by Thurlow Aggregates, the corporation busily strived to make off with as much of the land as possible, while the government of Canada took a decade to even sit down to land claim negotiations. Strikingly, the Mohawks had submitted an official land claim in 1995, after the claims process was finally created by Canada, and in 2003, this claim had been acknowledged as legitimate by the Canadian government - in many land claim disputes, achieving this recognition of legitimacy from the colonial government is in and of itself a huge battle. Negotiations around the Mohawk’s claim did not begin for several years after that, during which time the Government of Ontario continued to renew the license to Thurlow Aggregates to ravage the now-recognized Mohawk land. So, on March 22, 2007, 125 members of Tyendinaga took control of the quarry. Shawn Brant explained the reclamation: “It’s very difficult to have negotiations at a time when they’re taking out 10,000 truckloads of our land. It’s an affront to our process.” (8). The Mohawks announced a campaign of blockades if the quarry’s license was not revoked. On April 20, 2007, they blocked the CN Rail line again. The Mohawks held the line for 30 hours and packed up, having negotiated with the police that no one would be charged. The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Commissioner, an aggressive and militaristic former chief of Toronto’s police named Julian Fantino, ordered the arrest of Shawn Brant for mischief, disobeying a court order, and breach of recognizance – ignoring the agreement made on April 21 2007. On May 9, CN Rail announced a civil suit for damages for the rail stoppage – the authors of the essay “What Landed Shawn Brant in Jail” said the following about CN’s lawsuit:

“The civil case will likely bring to light some of the checkered history of railway construction in Canada, from forced expropriations to illegal seizures of land; CN’s lawyers may find themselves arguing a case that does the company more harm than good.” (9) The rail line CN is suing over runs through both the Culbertson Tract and what is called “Surrender 24”, a 33,000 acre tract that was stolen from the Mohawks in 1820 by force, and despite much resistance (10).

The final set of charges against Shawn Brant stem from June 29, 2007, which was planned as a national aboriginal day of action. Originally conceived and presented as a day of militant action to show that indigenous communities would not be shunted aside or disappeared, the day of action was weakened by Canada’s threats and successful isolation of communities from one another. Tyendinaga took the call to action seriously. Via Rail cancelled its rail service, anticipating a shutdown. The Tyendinaga Mohawks blocked Highway 2. The OPP blocked the Highway 401 pre-emptively, and the Tyendinaga Mohawks moved on to the highway and the CN tracks. The blockades were all lifted by the end of the 29th, and no one was hurt. Shawn Brant, however, was charged with mischief and breach of bail, and turned himself in on July 5 (11).

Shawn Brant’s trial, and the civil suit by CN Rail, could indeed prove counterproductive to the Canadian state and corporations. At a public event on August 29, 2007 in support of Shawn Brant, author Naomi Klein suggested that part of why the Canadian establishment, from Ontario’s police commissioner to the mainstream media, seems to be so vindictive against him is because he has had some success raising indigenous issues not only inside, but also outside of native communities. Sue Collis, an activist who has been instrumental in building this bridge between native and non-native activists (and who is also Shawn Brant’s wife), noted that the colonial relationship between settler and indigenous in Canada could not occur without the participation and complicity of the citizens. Racist myths about native people being “lazy” or “lawless” can’t hold up to reality, and the indigenous actions have been about confronting Canadians with the reality. If the myths collapse, could the whole project of dispossessing the indigenous be at risk?

The colonial playbook is a limited one. In 1990 and 1994, Canada used the military and the police against the Mohawks. It also mobilized racist whites to press a counter-claim against indigenous people, and then presented itself as an honest broker between the two extremes, allowing the racists plenty of leeway and persecuting indigenous people whenever possible. This strategy also allowed plausible deniability. The same thing occurred in 2006 on Six Nations land, with “residents of Caledonia” rallying to demand action against the indigenous (12). Other standard plays include attempts to sow divisions in the community, arming some indigenous people against others, offering money in exchange for land, and presenting small sacrifices as immense in order to create obstacles for future negotiations. The repetitiveness of these standard tactics is frustrating, but it could also make them more transparent, for those who wish to see. If there were enough such people (13), Canada would have to back off, and perhaps actually change its relationship with indigenous people.

Notes

http://mostlywater.org/shawn_brant_another_case_of_canadas_political_persecution_of_indigenous_people

1) See my “Kanehsatake”, 2004, ZNet, for a discussion of what was going on at the time: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=5556. See also the following leaflet: http://arab.sa.utoronto.ca/preparing.for.invasion.pdf

2) See chapter 2 of Bruce E. Johansen (1993), “Life and Death in Mohawk Country”, North American Press, Colorado. See also the work of Boyce Richardson, including “The People of Terra Nullius” and “Drumbeat: Anger and Renewal in Indian Country”.

3) CBC Interview, April 23, 2006.

4) CBC Interview, April 23, 2006.

5) For an overview of the Six Nations reclamation, see my “Six Nations Does Not Stand Alone”, 2006, ZNet. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10152

6) See the excellent pamphlet, “In Support of the Mohawks of Tyendinaga”, from which much of this article was drawn. See specifically two essays: “What Landed Shawn Brant in Jail?”, and “Surrender 24 and the Culbertson Tract: How Tyendinaga’s Land Was Stolen”. The PDF of the pamphlet is here: http://www.ocap.ca/files/fsb-rgb-final.pdf

7) “What Landed Shawn Brant in Jail?” - http://www.ocap.ca/files/fsb-rgb-final.pdf

8) “What Landed Shawn Brant in Jail?” - http://www.ocap.ca/files/fsb-rgb-final.pdf

9) “What Landed Shawn Brant in Jail?” - http://www.ocap.ca/files/fsb-rgb-final.pdf

10) “Surrender 24 and the Culbertson Tract: How Tyendinaga’s Land Was Stolen”. http://www.ocap.ca/files/fsb-rgb-final.pdf

11) “What Landed Shawn Brant in Jail?” - http://www.ocap.ca/files/fsb-rgb-final.pdf

12) See my “In whose interests are the ‘residents’ rallies’ in Caledonia?” ZNet, 2006, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10313

13) There are people working on this, and there should be many more. Join the Tyendinaga Support Committee, visit their site, sign the petition, work wherever you are on this. http://www.ocap.ca/supporttmt.html

see also:

http://uriohau.blogspot.com/2007/04/canadas-military-manual-exposed-to.html

http://uriohau.blogspot.com/2007/05/canadas-military-plots-war-crimes.html

Six Nations Youth Assaulted By Colonial Thugs

author: untamed indian

Not all white people are annoying.
Some are dead.

We must reject all ways of the colonial pests, even though we are surrounded by them. Our people are disappearing.....more and more
they are looking like white people, behaving like white people...they are being assimilated by the Borg.

********************************************************************************
We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Mystery gave us this country as a home.You had yours. We did not interfere with you. The Great Mystery gave us plenty of land to live on, and buffalo, deer, antelope and other game. But you have come here; you are taking my land from me; you are killing off our game, so it is hard for us to live. Now, you tell us to work for a living, but the Great Mystery did not make us to work, but to live by hunting. You white men can work if you want to. We did not interfere with you, and again you say, why do you not become civilized?
We do not want your civilization! We would live as our fathers did, and their fathers before them.
--- Crazy Horse
********************************************************************************

On Thursday, September 13, 2007, while Indigenous people were protesting yet another illegal colonial housing project, two Six Nations youth entered an unfinished house, from two entrances. The older brother found colonial citizen Sam Gualtieri holding his younger brother against the wall with a crowbar pressed against his throat, beating him with his other hand, and threatening to kill him. Brother Joe Gualtieri and three nephews were enjoying the show. The older brother picked up what he could and prevented Sam Gualtieri from further assaulting his brother, seriously injuring him.

At about 4:00 pm. witnesses saw 5 non-native men running out, picking up weapons and going back into the unfinished house. The two boys had surprised the 5 colonials inside the house, Sam & Joe Gualtieri and their three nephews. They found the younger boy first and began to assault him. The older brother gave Sam a beating he deserved, while the other 4 partners in crime looked on fearfully.

The demonstration was peaceful until the assault by the Gualtieri's on the younger boy. Indigenous people are continuing to maintain the protest at a southern "Ontario" housing development along the Grand River, one and a half kilometres from another illegal colonial housing development. The Oppressive Provincial Police (OPP) continue to keep a watchful eye on the Six Nations blockade.

The "owners" of the illegal housing project, Stirling Construction, said that work on the housing development would be temporarily suspended. The OPP said that they had shut down construction at the site on Thursday morning at 9:00 am, and left officers to watch the Six Nations blockade and maintain the peace. However, the police stood by and did nothing while they watched the 5 colonial thugs re-enter the house with weapons. The OPP claimed that they were caught off guard and were unable to help the two Six Nations youth inside the house. The OPP watched the Gualtieri's sneak into the housing development, knowing that the colonial settlers were only there to create trouble.

The police and the Gualtieri's claim that they were only there to check on the house, and were only protecting themselves and the property
from the two boys.

Joe Gualtieri and his three nephews loudly clamoured that they entered into the fight willingly because the two boys has challenged them to have schoolyard fight. The Gualtieri's said that they were provoked by the two boys, and that they were not guilty of assaulting them.

It is still standard practice for the so-called civilized colonials to blame others for the problems they create.

Constable Paula Wright of the OPP, appearing on the Colonial Bullshitting Channel (CBC), and other corporate medias, said that the police discovered Sam Gualtieri, 52, lying unconscious inside the house after being viciously attacked by several aboriginal youths. Gualtieri was taken to a hospital in Hamilton for testing for his life-threatening injuries, a broken nose & a bruise on his skull.

Constable Wright said that the OPP will be investigating the incident "around the clock" to conduct interviews and gather information and evidence before deciding to charge and arrest the "several aboriginal youth involved."

The cbc reported that that the Gualtieri family were furious that the "several savage Indigenous youth" assaulted Sam Gualtieri, and that they had not been arrested and charged by the police.

The Gualtieri family were "furious" because the Indigenous youth had defended themselves against an unprovoked assault by by colonial trespassers and instigators?

The Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island are furious because the colonial europeans continue to destroy the land, water, and air in pursuit of their true god ---Money!

Every Indigenous across Turtle Island has the duty to protect the land, and we have no sympathy for the Gualtieri's or any other colonial settler who commit these acts of violence.

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/09/365445.shtml

The Politics of Solidarity: Six Nations, Leadership, and the Settler Left

This article was originally published in Upping the Anti issue #4, its author's name is Tom Keefer, and it was originally reproduced online here.http://auto_sol.tao.ca/node/view/2604


This article will address some issues which have arisen in the context of non-native activists doing solidarity work with the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) people of the Grand River Territory who recently reclaimed land near Caledonia, Ontario.1 I will begin by discussing the problems with how many non-native activists have used the concept of “taking leadership” to guide their activism around this struggle, and I then will look at the spaces and places where I think non-native activists should focus their efforts in support of indigenous sovereignty. In order to do so, I will draw on the work of black power activists Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton as their work provides a relevant model for non-native activists looking to build solidarity with Six Nations. I will conclude by addressing the importance of the work being done by trade union activists supporting the people of Six Nations.2

At the outset, I want to suggest that the theoretical claims that I am advancing are contingent on the historical specificity of the Six Nations community of the Grand River Territory. And so, while there are aspects of my argument that may be relevant to other indigenous struggles and aspects of solidarity work more generally, the Six Nations community is unique in many ways. With over 20 000 registered residents, the Six Nations people of the Grand River Territory comprise the single largest indigenous community in Canada and, in certain regards, they have managed to withstand the pressures of Canadian colonialism better than many other indigenous nations in the south of Canada. The alliances the Iroquois Confederacy made as equals with European nations and the cosmology which frames their constitution – the Great Law of Peace – provide them with a clear political framework to guide contemporary relations with settler society. Finally, their claim to the Haldimand tract – almost a million acres of prime agricultural land in southern Ontario on the outskirts of one of Canada’s greatest industrial and commercial conurbations – strikes at the heart of Canadian capitalism and the state’s appropriation of indigenous lands. For these reasons, and in light of the fact that indigenous resistance and the solidarity movements that support it are constantly evolving, it is important not to mechanically extend the claims I advance here to other contexts where they may not be applicable.

The Problems With “Taking Leadership”

The question of how to relate to the struggle at Six Nations has been of great concern to many non-native solidarity activists. Discussions about how to get involved have largely been framed around the notion of “taking leadership” from the people of Six Nations.3 This approach stems from an anti-oppression perspective that grants epistemic privilege to those most oppressed by Canadian colonialism, those seen as best able to identify the kind of support they need. From this perspective, the primary role of non-natives is to act as allies standing in solidarity with a struggle whose decisive battles will be fought outside their own location in Canadian settler society.

While I would be the first to argue that any non-native activist interested in doing solidarity activism needs to work in close collaboration with indigenous activists and must be responsive to indigenous experiences and political perspectives, the notion of “taking leadership” has not been very helpful in building meaningful support for the people of Six Nations. As I will explain below, this is principally because the people of Six Nations have not operated on the basis of considering themselves to be “giving leadership” to their non-native allies. In practical terms, waiting for “leadership” has often meant that non-native activists have avoided looking at how their own social location implicates them in Canadian colonialism while simultaneously providing them with opportunities to disrupt it. By waiting for indigenous people to provide “leadership,” and by assuming that successful resistance to colonialism can only happen through high-profile barricades or occupations, many crucial opportunities to build non-indigenous support for the struggle at Six Nations have been missed.

Fundamental problems have arisen for solidarity activists who have determined that their activity can only take place with the permission of, and under the leadership of, indigenous people. The biggest difficulty has been finding an appropriate indigenous political group to lead them. For example, the Toronto-based Coalition In Support of Indigenous Sovereignty (CSIS) – through which anti-capitalist groups including the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), No One Is Illegal, the Arab Students Collective, and the Canadian Union Public Employees (CUPE) Local 3903 International Solidarity Working Group have coordinated their efforts – was deliberately structured to be small, inwardly focused, and closed to new membership so as to better function “under the leadership” of the small Indigenous Caucus of the organization.

Unfortunately, the organization was limited by the fact that its Indigenous Caucus never consisted of more than three active members, none of whom were from Six Nations. Although the coalition engaged in some important activities like fundraising, organizing events, and bringing supporters to the reclamation site, group member Stefanie Gude points out that deliberately limiting the membership to “ensure that the group was not overwhelmingly non-native” contributed to the fact that it “failed to pursue the interest and energy being felt by countless people from all different sectors and populations outside of that structure and outside of OCAP.”4

The situation has been no less complex when solidarity activists have sought to take direction from the Six Nations community itself. Here, the difficulty arises from three particular dynamics. First, the existence of a wide and conflicting range of opinions and perspectives within the Six Nations community as to how their struggle should be advanced; second, the distinct and overlapping decision-making processes that produce many different layers of leadership within Six Nations; and finally and most fundamentally, the principles of the Two Row Wampum which govern the traditional Six Nations relationship with European settler societies and indicate that neither nation should interfere with the internal affairs of the other.

It should not be a surprise that, just as in any community, there are divisions within Six Nations. The community is not monolithic, and it is divided along lines of religion, occupation, and class, as well as by family networks and business interests. There are divisions between an older generation of traditionalists who have little interaction with non-native society and younger activists who use the internet to share their opinions and perspectives. On top of that, there are different and conflicting interpretations of the Great Law, or guiding constitution, of the Six Nations; tensions between the different nations that make up the Confederacy; political differences between warrior society-inspired groupings and some traditional Confederacy leaders; and differences based on people’s positions at the reclamation site and the length of time they have spent there.

When such a complex situation is refracted by the diverse channels through which political power is exercised within the community (including clan mothers and traditional chiefs, the band council, men’s and women’s councils, NGOs, and various levels of formal and informal on-site leadership), it is impossible to maintain that a particular person or grouping speaks on behalf of the people of Six Nations of the Grand River. The Six Nations Confederacy is perhaps the body that comes closest to functioning as a “traditional leadership” for the people, but it is important to keep in mind that Confederacy process and leaders operate in a very different way than “leaders” and government in non-native society do, and that even within the community there is debate about how “traditional” (and thus legitimate) the Confederacy leadership actually is.

The second aspect of this problem arises from the fact that, as Six Nations activist Brian Skye pointed out in a recent interview, outside organizations can and should relate to several different decision making bodies involved in the reclamation. Grassroots non-native organizations should, he argues, relate to the grassroots people present at the reclamation site. Skye suggests that more established “funded organizations,” including NGO’s and trade unions, would more appropriately relate to the negotiation table and its various side tables (including the archaeological, educational, and consultation side tables). For Skye, the highest level of interrelationship between settlers and Six Nations must take place at the national level where the Canadian government should relate to the Six Nations Confederacy on a nation-to-nation basis.5

If grassroots activists accept Skye’s framework of mutual and overlapping levels of Six Nations decision making, then it would seem most appropriate for them to build links with those people at the reclamation site. However, in building these relationships, it is important not to conflate the perspectives or politics of the individuals most active at the site with those of the traditional Confederacy leadership or the community as a whole. The composition of the people at the site is often in a state of flux, and there have been significant areas of disagreement between Six Nations activists and the Confederacy leadership.

In some cases, such as in the decision of Confederacy leaders to bring down the barricades (against the wishes of many site activists, and without following the established consensus-based process), it was relatively easy for non-native activists to get out of the way and allow the internal politics to work themselves out. However, another problem arose several months later when longstanding divisions between different traditionalist elements in the community became apparent. This time, it was not so easy for non-native activists to remain uninvolved. The divisions stemmed from wording in the Haldimand tract document that promises the granted land to “the Mohawks and their followers” – a phrase that has provoked disagreements between the Confederacy and a group of Mohawks within the community over who holds the title to the Haldimand tract and with whom the Canadian government should be negotiating.

Matters came to a head with the case of Trevor Miller, a Mohawk man arrested at another indigenous blockade near Grassy Narrows in August of 2006 for his actions in defense of the Six Nations reclamation site. Miller and his family felt that they had not received adequate community support because of their political differences with the Confederacy. Several months into his imprisonment, they turned to members of the Traditional Mohawk Council of Kanehsatake and to non-native solidarity activists for support. Because non-native activists felt that it was important to demand that the Canadian government cease its criminalization of indigenous activists, the matter quickly became an important area of solidarity work. Groups like the Caledonia based Community Friends organized demonstrations and vigils outside the Hamilton jail where Miller was being held.

At the same time, and because of longstanding political and personal differences they had with Miller’s friends and family, many people at the reclamation site were skeptical of the solidarity campaign. The situation was made all the more difficult by the fact that – in addition to the charges he faced for defending the reclamation site – Miller also faced an earlier set of charges relating to an alleged physical assault of his ex-partner who did not want him to be released from custody.

Although activists from groups like OCAP (Toronto), Community Friends (Caledonia) and the Committee in Solidarity with Six Nations (Montreal) made a distinction between their support of indigenous political prisoners and the actions of these prisoners in matters unrelated to their struggle against the Canadian state, the situation again intensified when a group of Mohawks associated with the Trevor Miller defense campaign launched a $4.5 trillion lawsuit against both the Canadian government and the Six Nations Confederacy. The case was filed by the same lawyer who had represented Miller in court and was backed by many of the Six Nations Mohawks who had been instrumental in building the campaign for Miller’s release, some of whom have radical politics and long-standing ties to indigenous and anti-racist movements in the US and Canada. Key in the debate over both the lawsuit and the question of legal defense for Miller was a critique raised against the Confederacy for having a non-traditional leadership because it followed the “Code of Handsome Lake” which mixes religious principles derived from Christianity with traditional teachings.

Since they needed to choose with which set of radical indigenous activists they would ally themselves, solidarity activists were left in in a quandary. In this kind of a situation, the question of “taking leadership” from the affected community becomes very complex. Because “leadership” in concrete situations always comes from specific individuals and groups operating in particular contexts, any solidarity group claiming to “take leadership” from the community must (whether they admit it or not) first make the political choice as to which element of the community they will take leadership from. This choice is based on what is perceived to constitute appropriate leadership within the community and is made all the more difficult given that non-native activists can only have a limited understanding of the internal debates and politics taking place within the community. Furthermore, the decision of outside activists to “take leadership” from a particular grouping also has ramifications within the community. Since the side with access to outside support and resources is strengthened, the support of non-native groups can often distort the internal dynamics of the community.

There is a third factor that makes the concept of “taking leadership” even less tenable. The Two Row Wampum agreement, which has historically defined the Six Nations relationship with settlers, holds that both the Six Nations community and the settler communities are to “steer their own boats” and not interfere with each other’s internal affairs. Since their first contact with Europeans, the history of Six Nations has been one of continuous struggle against encroachment on their lands and their systems of government. The political response of Six Nations has been to insist on the primacy of the Two Row Wampum and to demand that each nation mind its own internal business.

Given the principles of the Two Row Wampum, it is easy to understand why neither the Six Nations Confederacy leadership nor the Six Nations community more generally has stepped forward to “provide leadership” to the non-indigenous peoples that support them. The theoretical framework guiding their understanding of the inter-relationship between native and non-native communities works against it. Non-native grassroots activists at the reclamation site can clearly interact as individuals with native activists but, according to the Two Row Wampum, it would be inappropriate for the Confederacy – the traditional Six Nations leadership – to tell those activists and their organizations what to do within the Canadian state to push their government to come to a position in support of Six Nations. To do so would be a violation of the Two Row Wampum that would legitimize attempts by the Canadian government or its agents to meddle with the internal affairs of Six Nations.

Learning from Black Liberation

If the principle of “taking leadership” from Six Nations is deeply flawed, then what kind of model can guide the actions of non-native solidarity activists? I believe that one of the best parallels for understanding the situation can be found in the difficult relationship between the black liberation struggle and the radical white left in the US during the 1960s and 1970s. During this period, the black liberation movement became a focal point for many different communities and political struggles. As black liberation moved from “non-violent” civil rights struggles to ghetto uprisings and revolutionary political formations like the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, white activists grappled with how they should relate to a clearly revolutionary struggle happening outside of their own communities.

Significant theoretical elaboration of this dynamic occurred within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an important civil rights organization that spearheaded voter registration drives in the US South. SNCC leader (and later honorary Black Panther Party Prime Minister) Stokely Carmichael wrote and spoke extensively about the relationship between white radicals and the black liberation struggle. Although written in a different political context, much of what he argued is of great relevance to the question of how non-native activists should relate to the struggle of indigenous people within the Canadian state.

In a book Carmichael co-wrote with Charles Hamilton entitled Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, they argued that black people must build their own organizations to represent their own interests. According to Carmichael, only once black people have their own “genuine power base” should they enter into coalition with white allies who, in turn, must also have their “own independent base of power.” Once each group had a power base and a political organization, they could come together in coalition to work for specific and identifiable goals.

The people of Six Nations are clearly working to build and strengthen their own organizations and “genuine power bases” on their territory. That this process has been strengthened by the reclamation is clear by the growing level of community mobilization and the fact that the Canadian government has been forced to negotiate with the Six Nations Confederacy – a body that continues to gain support within the community. Unfortunately, a comparable process of radicalization and organization is not taking place in nearby non-native communities where the left remains fractured, tiny, or simply nonexistent.

Carmichael and Hamilton were writing in a context of a significant upsurge of white radicalism. The problem was that, too often, the white left would ride on the coat-tails of black radicalism rather than confront sources of exploitation and oppression coming from within their own communities. As Carmichael and Hamilton noted:

One of the most disturbing things about almost all white supporters has been that they are reluctant to go into their own communities – which is where the racism exists – and work to get rid of it. We are not now speaking of whites who have worked to get black people “accepted” on an individual basis, by the white society. Of these there have been many; their efforts are undoubtedly well intended and individually helpful. But too often these efforts are geared to the same false premises as integration; too often the society in which they seek acceptance of a few black people can afford to make the gesture. We are speaking, rather, of those whites who see the need for basic change and have hooked up with the black liberation movement because it seemed the most promising agent of such change.6

In the context of ongoing anti-native agitation against the Six Nations land reclamation within pre-dominantly white communities such as Caledonia, the failure of the white left7 to intervene has been nothing short of scandalous. Slick media savvy personalities like Gary McHale have organized dozens of rallies and public meetings based on David Duke-type arguments against “two-tiered justice” where they have effectively demanded “equal rights for whites” who are seen as oppressed because the Canadian state has not moved in to stop the “terroristic” natives. Dozens of open neo-Nazis have participated in public events organized by McHale.

Despite this, the white left has not come up with a single meaningful response to the situation. While Toronto leftists tormented themselves with the question of whether or not it would be appropriate to organize in small communities where they have no pre-existing base, neo-Nazis and far right organizers plunged in, building networks and alliances that have successfully brought ever more pressure to bear on both Six Nations and the federal and provincial governments. By failing to organize within the predominantly white communities surrounding Six Nations, the white left has effectively ceded this terrain to racist demagogues and allowed McHale and his cronies to speak unopposed on behalf of the “average hard-working, taxpaying, middle-class Canadian” of the area.

Despite the privilege historically enjoyed by US whites in relation to black people, Carmichael and Hamilton did not simply write them off. Unlike many leftists today, Carmichael and Hamilton did not consider white settlers incapable of leftist activity or unworthy of political organization. Not only did they view poor and working-class whites as potential allies to the black liberation struggle, they argued that even white middle-class communities needed to be organized:

Across the country, smug white communities show a poverty of awareness, a poverty of humanity, indeed, a poverty of ability to act in a civilized manner toward non-Anglo human beings. The white middle-class suburbs need “freedom schools” as badly as the black communities. Anglo conformity is a dead weight on their necks too. All this is an educative role crying to be performed by those whites so inclined.8

While recognizing that white people can make certain important contributions to non-white struggles, Carmichael and Hamilton insisted that white people must not seek to live vicariously through the radical struggle of black people, but rather must take responsibility for their own communities and their role in their own liberation:

It is our position that black organizations should be black-led and essentially black-staffed, with the policy being made by black people. White people can and do play very important supportive roles in these organizations. Where they come with specific skills and techniques, they will be evaluated in those terms. All too frequently, however, many young, middle-class, white Americans, like some sort of Pepsi generation, have wanted to “come alive” through the black community and black groups. They have wanted to be where the action is – and the action has been in those places. They have sought refuge among blacks from a sterile, meaningless, irrelevant life in middle-class America. They have been unable to deal with the stifling, racist, parochial, split-level mentality of their parents, teachers, preachers and friends.

Carmichael and Hamilton’s words are of particular relevance to the white activists that came out to support the reclamation site during the tense period of the standoff when barricades blocked nearby highways and rail lines. For many white activists, this was the revolution, the high point of struggle, and they were living it by washing dishes or doing menial labour around the camp, or just by being there as physical or moral support. Very few of these activists made an attempt to understand why thousands of white people not so different from themselves were protesting against the reclamation site only a couple hundred yards away, or to figure out how this racism could be effectively combated.

While cooking and cleaning did make a contribution to the camp, I believe that it was more effective in assuaging white guilt than it was in shifting the balance of forces arrayed against Six Nations. The focus on cooking and cleaning as the most appropriate expression of non-native solidarity flowed from the premise of “taking leadership” from Six Nations. When faced with dozens of (mostly) white hippie/punk youth with few camp-related skills and no prior contact with people at Six Nations, it is not surprising that Six Nations people directed them to do menial labour around the camp. Because this is what they were told to do, and because many of these white and/or middle-class activists were uncomfortable talking to white working-class Caledonians that they perceived as the enemy, food preparation was fetishized as the primary way for non-natives to contribute to the struggle. The possibilities of leftist non-natives intervening in the anti-native protests was never openly broached as a potential political strategy. Given that it was not safe for indigenous people to intervene in the Caledonia protests or to organize within the Caledonia community, and given that the indigenous activists at the reclamation site had their own community to organize, people from Six Nations stayed within the perimeter they had set up. Most white activists assumed that they should do the same.

Like the rest of settler Canada, and like Six Nations, Caledonia is not monolithic. From the very beginning of the standoff, it was Caledonian business interests that organized resistance to the land reclamation and purported to speak on behalf of the whole community. The Caledonia Citizens Alliance was formed and funded by the Caledonia Chamber of Commerce and represents the bankers, lawyers, and realtors who stood to make vast profits from “developing” Six Nations land. Middle-class and business-oriented political organizations with deep ties to local government also played key roles in attacking Six Nations and providing support for individuals from outside of Caledonia like Gary McHale.

There are certainly deep currents of anti-native racism within the community. Nevertheless, it would be truly shortsighted to label all Caledonians and settlers in the nearby area as racists or as people with interests objectively opposed to Six Nations people. First of all, there are people from Six Nations and various different ethnic groups living in Caledonia. Although they have tried for the most part to keep their heads down during the standoff, they form a potential base of support for anti-racist activity. There are also many white Caledonians who do not support the growing racism in their community and who would be willing to take action in support of Six Nations if they had a framework from within which to work.

Unfortunately, because most of Caledonia’s “civil society” organizations are connected to the business interests that want to develop the Haldimand tract, such organizations must be built from the ground up. In the words of Carmichael and Hamilton: “this job cannot be left to the existing institutions and agencies, because those structures, for the most part, are reflections of institutional racism.”9 The unorganized and atomized people of Caledonia who support Six Nations include people with indigenous friends and family, church goers, high school youth, and people with no personal connection to the issue but who to varying degrees support Six Nations. Anti-native racism no doubt poses serious barriers to building solidarity with Six Nations. Nevertheless, we must recognize that white people in Caledonia are not intrinsically any more racist than white Canadians anywhere else.

Caledonia is located in Ontario’s “golden horseshoe” – an area with one of the largest unionized populations per capita in North America. This concentration of trade unionists has influenced the nature of support for Six Nations. Not only have significant union organizations supported the reclamation by passing motions and sending donations, but the majority of solidarity activists involved in building groups like Community Friends are unionized workers even when they are not actively involved in the trade union movement.

There are many possibilities for organizing in support of Six Nations in Caledonia and other metropolitan communities. Of particular importance are the large racialized communities in nearby cities like Hamilton, Kitchener Waterloo, and Toronto whose members experience many of the same kinds of racism and class oppression faced by the people of Six Nations. Especially because these groups live in such close proximity to one another (Six Nations is a one hour drive from each of these large population centers), it is a lot easier to build links and connections with Six Nations than with indigenous communities located thousands of miles away.

In Carmichael and Hamilton’s analysis, various communities interested in working with each other should operate on the basis of developing political organizations rooted in each community that are able to work together as allies – not on the basis of one organized community providing a one-sided “leadership” to an another atomized and disorganized community:

It is hoped that eventually there will be a coalition of poor blacks and poor whites. This is the only coalition which seems acceptable to us, and we see such a coalition as the major internal instrument of change in the American society. It is purely academic today to talk about bringing poor blacks and poor whites together, but the task of creating a poor white power bloc dedicated to the goals of the free open society – not one based on racism and subordination – must be attempted. The main responsibility for this task falls upon whites. Black and white can work together in the white community where possible; it is not possible, however, to go into a poor white southern town and talk about “integration,” or even desegregation together. Poor white people are becoming more hostile –not less – toward black people, partly because they see the nation’s attention focused on black poverty and few, if any, people coming to them.10

The situation today is analogous. Racism is growing in towns like Caledonia, and recent polls have suggested that non-native support for indigenous rights is decreasing as conflicts intensify. While some of this backlash clearly arises due to racism and fear that their own standard of living will inevitably decline if indigenous people gain rights, this erroneous position remains unchallenged precisely because there is so little anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist work taking place within non-native communities. Non-native people do not have to suffer in order for the rights of indigenous peoples to be respected, and the left needs to make the argument that the funds needed to pay reparations to native people should come from the coffers of the corporations that have profited from the plunder of native lands and the exploited labour of all workers. A radical approach to actualizing indigenous sovereignty requires both political and economic transformation – the full sovereignty of indigenous nations must be recognized and the capitalist economic system that exploits both non-natives and natives must be overturned.

Organizing Our Own

For non-native radicals, the fundamental question raised by the reclamation relates not only to how we organize as non-natives in solidarity with oppressed people, but also to our vision of a movement that can challenge the oppression facing the working class majority of Canadian settler society. This requires overcoming the dichotomy between two disparate positions that have long afflicted the radical left. One position holds that it is impossible to build a mass based radical movement among the (predominantly white) Canadian working class due to its relatively privileged status, while the other maintains a narrow and economistic focus on specific (white) working-class struggles without making links to the intersecting relations of race, sexuality and gender that concretely define the reality of class oppression.

If we can transcend this dichotomy – that is, if we can accept that non-native North Americans can be mobilized around social and economic issues that are connected to a project of social liberation that we share with indigenous people – then new forms of solidarity and resistance can emerge. In the case of the Six Nations struggle, one urgent task is to organize among southern Ontario union activists who are supportive of the struggle for sovereignty and to build a grassroots organization that can advance indigenous and working class struggles. This strategy is not about abstractly “showing solidarity” with Six Nations. It is about building an independent and radical base in the union movement that can unite a wide range of anti-racist, anti-poverty, and class struggles which affect its members personally.

Looking to organized labour for support for Six Nations is not a fantasy. In fact, some of the best and most sustained support for Six Nations has come from labour activists. One of the most notable examples of this support has come from United Steel Workers Local 1005 at the Hamilton Stelco plant which has not only conducted intensive and ongoing internal educationals on indigenous sovereignty and the Six Nations struggle, but has regularly sent dozens of their members to bolster protest lines at the reclamation site. In addition to providing financial assistance, members of the local have also regularly attended solidarity demonstrations in Hamilton to support Six Nations political prisoners and helped to organize a contingent of people from Six Nations to participate in the Hamilton Labor Day parade. Enthusiastic support and significant financial donations have come from CUPE locals 3903 and 3906, who have also been active in organizing demonstrations and activities in Toronto and Hamilton. Many other unions have sent delegations to the site to learn more about the Six Nations struggle. Rank-and-file trade unionist involvement continues to be central to the Caledonia-based Community Friends group, which benefits from the regular participation of workers belonging to more than a dozen different trade union locals.

So, while there is obviously a disconnect between the press releases and sympathetic motions passed by the labour leadership and the need for committed and long term solidarity at the grassroots level, real connections between indigenous and labour struggles exist and they provide a basis upon which real solidarity can be built. Both Lindsay Hinshelwood (a rank and file factory worker at Ford with CAW 707) and Steve Watson (a CAW leader) have on separate occasions made the following observations about the connections between indigenous and trade union struggles:

- Governments and the corporations they represent seek to exploit workers and regularly seek to roll back or disregard the collective agreements which are intended to safeguard workers’ rights. Like the contracts of unionized workers, indigenous people have treaties which outline their collective rights. Governments and corporations constantly disregard these treaties in their search for power and profits.

- When workers feel like their contract isn’t being respected or needs to be improved and bargaining isn’t working, they set up a picket line, demand that no-one crosses, and are often required to use direct action (in contravention to the law) in order to win their demands. When indigenous people can’t get their rights respected they take similar direct action through organizing blockades or occupations of disputed land which similarly disrupt the economy.

- One of the fundamental axioms of trade unionism is that “an injury to one is an injury to all” and unions have become increasingly concerned with issues that matter to all people – sexism, racism, the environment, queer rights, support for indigenous struggles, and resistance to capitalist globalization. The worldview of indigenous peoples rejects the commodification of land and labour and is similarly concerned with universal questions of human freedom and self expression in the context of harmony with the natural environment.

Other parallels can be drawn. The European settlers who colonized most of North America, were themselves uprooted from the land through capitalist enclosure and the commodification of land and labour – a process later exported to the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the rest of the world. By becoming small farmers and independent commodity producers in the early stages of Canadian development, poor and working class settlers in North America clearly benefited from the theft of indigenous lands. However, over the past 100 years, capitalism has extended and intensified its reach. Non-native people have become increasingly concentrated in large cities (Canada has the most urbanized population per capita in the world) and have been integrated into the capitalist system as workers. Because of the inherently exploitative dynamics of capitalism, workers in North America have faced a decline in living standards since the neo-liberal offensive of the late 1970s.

As William Robinson has argued, the contemporary resurgence of indigenous struggle in the Americas is happening as the few remaining autonomous indigenous communities are being forced into compliance with the demands of capitalist world market. This market seeks to commodify their labour and their land. At the same time, it seeks to drive down living standards and commodify the lives of non-native people as well.11 These pressures are just as evident on the Haldimand tract as they are in Canada’s far north, in the mountains of Chiapas, or in the jungles of the Amazon. Traditional indigenous resistance to enclosure and commodification is increasingly assuming a directly anti-capitalist character. When this resistance takes place in large urban areas where a relatively small proportion of settlers directly occupy the land in question, new opportunities for joint struggles arise. Doing this kind of work will not be easy. Building radical organizations and combating white racism within predominantly white communities, workplaces, and political organization will be particularly hard. But it remains necessary task as a pre-condition to building meaningful solidarity with indigenous struggles.

Work to build and consolidate networks of grassroots union activists must be prioritized. This force can push the trade union bureaucracy both to give more meaningful support to indigenous struggles and to build autonomous rank and file networks to fight for their own interests. Unionized workers represent only one sector of the working class – but it is the sector which today can be most easily moved into political action. There is already a small but real base in the union movement of southern Ontario that can begin this project. The Six Nations struggle offers an important opportunity to build a solidarity movement with the social power and the long-term interest needed to challenge both colonialism and capitalism in Canada. We need to take the initative in building that movement. H

Notes

1 For more information and background about the Six Nations struggle, please see the various articles and interviews relating to Six Nations in Upping The Anti #3 as well as the online resources compiled at the A&S Six Nations Caledonia Resource webpage at http://auto_sol.tao.ca/node/view/2012.

2 In terms of situating my own experiences in this struggle as a non-native person, for the past year my work in this area has centered on working with a coalition of rank-and-file trade union activists drawn from the surrounding area, non-native people from Caledonia, and people from Six Nations who have come together in a group called “Community Friends for Peace and Understanding with Six Nations.” The group, which has a core membership of around a dozen people and which has had more than 150 people attend its twice-monthly organizing meetings over the past year, has worked in a number of ways to organize solidarity with Six Nations. Although most meetings have a significant presence of indigenous people (one third to half of the room is usually from Six Nations) the work of the group has primarily focused on strategies to identify and build non-native sources of support for Six Nations within surrounding settler communities. This has taken on a variety of forms including going door to door in Caledonia to meet and talk with residents, trying to organize funding and support from trade unions, and has also involved the holding of a number of educational meetings directed at the nearby settler population as well as attempting to raise awareness about the situation of Six Nations political prisoners.

3 See especially “From Anti-Poverty to Indigenous Sovereignty: a Roundtable with OCAP Organizers,” with Stefanie Gude, AJ Withers, and Josh Zucker in Upping The Anti #3.

4 Stefanie Gude, “From Anti-Poverty to Indigenous Sovereignty,” Upping the Anti #3, p. 162.

5 See “The Political Significance of the Reclamation: an Interview with Brian Skye,” Upping the Anti #3, pp. 135-142.

6 Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, Black Power: the Politics of Liberation in America, pp. 81-82.

7 I should note that in using terms such as the “white left” and the broader term “non-native activists” I am making a distinction between activists groups which are primarily made up of white activists such as OCAP or various trade union or socialist formations, and groups primarily made up of people of colour such as No One Is Illegal, the Black Action Defence Committee, and the Arab Students Collective. I am arguing that predominantly white organizations have a special responsibility and ability to organize in predominantly white communities such as Caledonia and that people of colour groups often have a different set of priorities and responsibilities in terms of how they relate to indigenous struggles.

8 Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power, p. 82.

9 Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power p. 83.

10 Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power p. 83.

11 See the interview with William Robinson “Latin America, State Power, and the Challen

Only Struggle Will Set Us free

Mohawk leader

Mohawk Indian leader Shawn Brant is seen at a railroad line blockade near Deseronto Ontario, June 29, 2007.



Mohawk leader Shawn Brant
REUTERS


NAPANEE, Ont. — The man who led aboriginal protests that snarled traffic on Canada’s busiest highway and blocked a major rail line is in custody after turning himself in to Ontario Provincial Police today.

“I am handing myself in,” Mohawk protester Shawn Brant, 43, told reporters who had gathered outside the provincial police station in this eastern Ontario town for the scheduled surrender.

“It’s tough on people. It’s hard on the family, it’s hard on the kids.”

Brant appeared calm as he arrived at the station in a convoy with fatigue-clad supporters and his lawyers, taking questions from reporters before heading towards the detachment.

Accompanied by his lawyer Peter Rosenthal, Brant was arrested at the doors on a warrant stemming from a blockade of Highway 2 near Deseronto, Ont., last Friday during the national aboriginal day of action.

He has been charged with mischief and breach of his bail conditions. Brant had been out on bail on previous charges related to a 30-hour blockade of the CN rail line near Deseronto in April. One of the conditions of his being granted bail was that he not incite or be involved in any type of unlawful protest.

However, his supporters, who have staged a number of demonstrations to protest an outstanding land claim in the area and poor conditions on native reserves, blocked the rail line again last Friday.

Brant has served jail time before for trashing the offices of politicians.

He is also facing a second lawsuit by CN stemming from his group’s most recent blockade of the rail line, Rosenthal said.

Brant is expected to appear in a Toronto court on Friday. He was denied bail at a hearing in Napanee today.

“We’re just happy that he’s here and we’re dealing with the issues and we’ll move on,” said Const. Jackie Perry. “We’re pleased that things were peaceful. Nobody got hurt.”

Perry declined to comment on reports that police had tried to arrest Brant before he turned himself in, saying it was part of an ongoing investigation.

While Brant may wind up behind bars, he said a 20-year-old successor is waiting in the wings to continue efforts to raise awareness about aboriginal land claims and poverty.

He said no more protests are imminent, but he hopes his actions thus far will be a catalyst for change.

“We came out clearly that we wanted a new direction on First Nation issues and the crises facing our kids, and we can only hope that our actions cause that to happen,” he said.

Before entering the police station, Brant embraced a woman and shook hands with other supporters.

A charge of mischief carries a range of sentence between two and 10 years under the Criminal Code

Yesterday: KANONHSTATON. Today: TYENDINAGA. Tomorrow: BEYOND THE ANDES...

Whanau Maori & Mapuche solidarity

by:Viviana Avila.

There have been a series of recent events that have directly affected indigenous communities, within the Latin American and continental context. This is not a new occurrence; everything started more than 500 years ago, and everyone knows what the armed, cultural invasion brought to our continent. The damage has not been repaired, despite all the time that has passed by, and the regrets that have been said by western civilization.

The dignity of the indigenous peoples and nations of the continent has not been crushed, despite the planned genocide of assimilation imposed upon these millennial cultures. On the contrary in the last few decades, the organization and struggle for their intrinsic rights has been more vigilant with each passing day, as with the increasing grades of consciousness and disposal to struggle for their sovereignty and self-determination. Some more than others, but incentive is alive and has begun to go forward.

We see it end to end in our continent, in the south beyond the Andes; that long and narrow stretch of land, bathed along a contaminated ocean by transnational corporations known as Chile. Those who lust for power have taken over our territories, thanks to the permission given by the cowardly governments that have opened their doors to these companies in exchange for the scraps the empire throws at them, so they can thicken their dirty filthy pockets. They are traitors to their people and to their roots; they wallow in their corrupt state of lies and unbounded ambition. Inheritors of the Pinochet regime, and administrators of his politics and fascist constitution.

Immoral, racist representatives of a sick society that have launched themselves against an unarmed people; intimidating, incarcerating and murdering youth and elders. Assaulting and terrorizing entire communities, on the search for young liberators wearing military boots, worse than in the times of the dictatorship. Mapuche is the name that is criminalized; their courageous organizations, the men and women dignified of their race. What a historical shame for those in the government calling themselves socialist. What a shame for women to have representatives as deceitful as that who leads the country of Chile. You would have to be deceitful to lie and say to the UN that the Mapuches incarcerated by her neo-liberal system are not political prisoners, but "common delinquents."

The shame that they forgot about their history. The shame of being the legal crooks of lands that do not belong to them; for wanting to develop a second colonization on Mapuche territory, that is nothing more than the extermination of a noble millennial people. One day they will be judged by history. Meanwhile, we leave the natural forces to look after and protect the ancient people with their part in this history. We men and women hold the other part, those that are not willing to let a second colonization happen in Arauco, in Malleco, nor in any other part of Mapuche territory.

Here in Canada, the same thing is happening. Perhaps in a different form, but the pillaging is seen despite the camouflage of grand terrains of flora; immensities of incalculable beauty. Large... everything is large. When one comes to this country everything shines, deceiving, as were the colonizers, as is the current empire, unnecessarily large, inflated with arrogance.... Savage; when it arrives at the indigenous reservations in the darkness, assaulting, clawing, submitting defenseless beings, seizing children, hitting elders and women, arresting youth... Advancing through ancient territory with their infernal machinery. Their factories poisoning the water. The contamination and indigenous poverty makes you shudder in the north, where the great cellulose companies destroy the forest and turn the water that runs through the streams into the color of oxide; burning eyes as you look, and your insides as you drink....

This may seem like a fable, an odyssey, but it is not. It is present north to south, east to west, in this immense show model known as Canada. Here as in the south of the continent, history repeats itself. The repression and displacement of cultures and territories are the product of the same patron of values: money. Universal corrupter of consciouses. The most horrendous injustices that a human being could conceive have been committed in its name. However the peoples and nations have said enough, and have begun to go forward as Che Guevara once said; their march of giants will not be detained. Forced for years to dwell in sacrifice and misery, the indigenous Nations throughout the entire territory have begun their march...

A little more than a year a ago on February 28, 2006, Hadonashonee, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory had to take over their own lands to stop the illegal construction of a housing development (the Douglas Creek Estates), in Kanonhstaton, the protected place. To this day, men and women confront with great courage and dignity, the defense of their territory in harsh climatic conditions and economic pressures on behalf of the government in the talks to recover their land. They are in constant harassment from the police authorities, and the racist population in its surroundings. Despite all the pressures and efforts remove and divide them, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory are more solid and united as ever under the banner of truth, dignity, and solidarity of their own people, and of brotherly peoples that have not been absent from the Reclamation site.

Recently, another front of struggle has arisen from the heart of the Mohawk peoples in Tyendinaga, in defense of their territory and displacement... The taking over of land in their own territory, protest through highway and rail blockades; the different actions of the indigenous peoples have the same cause:the struggle for the defense of their ancient territories, the preservation of their culture, autonomy and the right to decide and influence in their own matters.

That is why we say with much strength: yesterday Kanonhstaton, today Tyendinaga, tomorrow Beyond the Andes. The prophesy of the Eagle and the Condor will yet be realized.


The Women's Coordinating Committee Chile-Canada

email: wccc_98@hotmail.com

OPP Raid Aniversary-A ceremony, a gathering, and a 48 hour blockade

OPP Raid Anniversary - A Ceremony, a Gathering, and an 48 hour blockade