[A-List] [Al Pope] Native blockades: setting Canada straight

[Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby@xxxxxxxxx>]

NORDICITY
Writing from the Yukon, 30 miles south of Whitehorse
Al Pope, 5 June 2007
http://www.mytown.ca/nordicity/

Native blockades: setting Canada straight

Last week commissioner Sidney Lindon released his report into the 1995 
police attack on unarmed native protestors at Ipperwash Ontario, and the 
shooting death of protestor Dudley George. The report spreads the blame 
around, the Ontario Provincial Police, former premier Mike Harris, and a 
succession of federal governments who failed to settle land claims, each 
getting a portion.

There is no question who was in the right at Ipperwash. The Kettle and 
Stony Point First Nation had been displaced to make way for an army camp 
during World War Two. The camp had long sat abandoned despite decades of 
appeals by its owners for the return of their land. The occupation was 
peaceful, and later spread to a nearby provincial park, which was also a 
Native burial site. As the report points out, there's good reason to 
believe it could all have been settled with peaceful negotiations, had 
there been good will on the government side.

But these were in the days after the Oka confrontation, where a Quebec 
policeman had been killed in a stand-off over a native burial ground. 
Ontario had just elected Mike Harris, one of those right-wing bullies 
the Canadian political system continually tosses up and inevitably 
regrets. Harris had been elected on a get-tough-on-everything platform, 
and here was his first chance to prove himself a real cowboy.

Despite calls for a go-slow approach by police and civil servants, 
Harris pushed for confrontation. On the night before Dudley George was 
killed he told a high-level meeting, including several members of the 
OPP, "I want those fucking Indians out of the park." Harris emphatically 
denied the remark, but the commission found his denial implausible, 
essentially adding perjury to the list of crimes it places at his 
doorstep....



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MyTown Feature: http://www.mytown.ca/nordicity
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