Why Canadians Side With Militant Indigenous

Native protest an effort to get people 'to think'

By Laura Stradiotto/The Sudbury Star
Local News - Friday, June 29, 2007 Updated @ 11:04:31 PM

Native protesters from Manitoulin Island and the North Shore set up barricades on a major Northern highway on Friday and hoped motorists would see past the inconvenience.

"The whole idea is to slow people down to make them think of what's going on," said Forry Hare, who initiated a blockade at Highway 17 at the Espanola turnoff.

"Most non-natives don't think about it — it's not in their lives, they don't go by reserves or they live in the city.
This way, they have to think about it. They have to wonder why we are here."

Hare is a councillor from M'Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island.

Traffic was at a standstill on Highway 17 for most part of Friday afternoon and early evening, disrupting travel plans on the first day of the Canada Day long weekend.

About 60 protesters gathered on Highway 17 at the Highway 6 turnoff to Espanola around noon, and for an hour, were not allowing any traffic through. Ontario Provincial Police arrived and worked with protesters to direct traffic through the blockade.

"It's going peaceful, orderly, there are no confrontations," Staff Sgt. Gary Mills said at the intersection.

Protesters left the roadblock peacefully shortly before 3 p.m. No one was arrested.

An hour and a half later, about 200 people gathered on Highway 17 at Serpent River First Nation in Cutler and stopped eastbound traffic completely.

The Ontario Provincial Police reported a vehicle was parked on railroad tracks, blocking Huron Central Railway, which runs between Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury.

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Why Canadians side with militant Indians
TheStar.com

By any measure, indigenous people are right on several major issues

May 20, 2007
Richard Day

It is well known in all quarters that the job of Phil Fontaine, as the head of the Assembly of First Nations, is to moderate long-standing tensions between his constituents and the Canadian government.

That's why it was rather surprising when Fontaine, speaking recently to the harrumphing curmudgeons at the Canadian Club, said that indigenous peoples and agents of the Canadian state are more likely to be meeting on the barricades than in the boardrooms this summer. That's enough to put any captain of industry off his lunch, to be sure, and it should be of concern to all of us.

No one can deny that there has been a gathering wave of direct action over the past months, from the ongoing Six Nations standoff to the more recent occupation of a quarry by the Tyendinaga Mohawk.

Out west, resistance to the Olympics is being spearheaded by the Native Youth Movement and Harriet Nahanee, a Squamish elder, was imprisoned for protesting against the expansion of the ironically named Sea to Sky highway (the road to Whistler actually leads to a town-sized shopping mall).

Last week, a group calling itself the Railway Ties Collective sent out a news release inviting people to view a video posted on YouTube that showed how one might, with a single wire, cause all of the trains on a line to come to a halt. No one knows who produced the video, but there are indications it originated from settlers who support indigenous struggles at Tyendinaga and beyond, and that it was aimed at eliciting further support from non-indigenous activists.

Transport Canada asked YouTube to pull the video, and they complied. It is very likely, however, that it is circulating on other sites and will make its way through the Web to those who want to view it.

What is happening here? Why are so many people, all over the country, apparently giving up on due process and the rule of law? Why are we seeing this resurgence of the "Indian problem," just when we thought we were beyond all of that?

And, perhaps more importantly for the Canadian government, why are so many members of the settler society – non-indigenous Canadians – adding their voices and bodies to this tide of militancy? A simple answer might be: The Canadian state is not itself following the rule of law, nor has it ever done so with regard to indigenous peoples.

The double standards are many and obvious, but this does not stop them from being applied. One need only reverse the roles to see the violence and absurdity of the situation.

Imagine that someone walked up to your front door with a gun, told you to get out of your house, and took it and everything you own. You go to the police, and they tell you to get in a line, they'll deal with you soon. You stand there for a day, a month, a year, several decades, while generations of invaders run your formerly well-kept home into the ground.

This would never happen, of course, to a member of the settler society, but it is, and has been, the norm for the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

If it did ever happen to a "mainstream" Canadian, I imagine most people would understand if they decided, even after only a day or two – rather than several centuries – to simply take the house back.

Railway lines have long been iconic fibres, making geographical and symbolic connections that could be said to constitute Canada as we know it. It is therefore fitting that they now are being used to demand justice for the indigenous peoples of this continent, without whose help we would not be here today.

Obviously, disrupting a railway line is an imposition on travellers. Probably commerce will be slowed. It is doubtful, however, that Canadian society will be all but destroyed by these kinds of actions, as so many indigenous societies have been.

Rather, we can hope that it will be improved, that the Canadian government will take this as a clear message to stand by the rule of law, in every case, for every race.

Given the shameful behaviour of our economic and political leaders, it is not at all surprising that many Canadians are siding with militant indigenous groups.

For, by all of the principles that Western civilization holds dear, they are in the right and we are in the wrong.

http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/215548

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/06/25/ont-blockade-070625.htm

http://www.wasase.blogspot.com

http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/National/2007/06/28/4296705-sun.html