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Crashing it in Caledonia

By Kevin Steel ⋅ June 19, 2006 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

How a hodge-podge of radical Toronto groups ended up hijacking the land-claims standoff–and the Six Nations’ message

From the outside, the conflict in Caledonia, Ont., looked like a straightforward confrontation over native land rights. On one side of the barricade were members of the Six Nations reserve, opposed to a housing development on 40 hectares of land they said was theirs. On the other side, townsfolk and developers who wanted Highway 6 unblocked so construction could begin on a new subdivision on land the developers claimed they’d purchased fair and square. But behind the scenes, both groups were being manipulated by a hodge-podge of radicals, including Arab groups, labour unions and anti-capitalist activists. And many natives are as disturbed by the way things went down as those on the other side of the roadblocks.

On Sunday, May 21, as the Six Nations leadership agreed to take down the barricade in a gesture of goodwill, six buses filled with 300 angry protestors rolled into Caledonia, 25 kilometres south of Hamilton. Word spread around town that they were reinforcements for the natives. The convoy spooked residents, who tried blocking it from reaching the reserve, but the newcomers found an alternate route and joined the protest, which had, up to that point, been gradually abating.

From the start, it was clear they came for a fight and the situation escalated as the newcomers began physically confronting the Caledonia residents. Vandals sabotaged an electrical transformer station, cutting power to thousands of residents in the area, and forcing 17 schools to cancel classes the next day. Provincial police sent in an Emergency Response Team in full riot gear.

What was unusual about the 300 arrivals is that they were representatives of eight Toronto groups, all almost entirely disconnected from anything to do with native issues. The pilgrimage to Caledonia was organized by the Al-Awda Palestine Right to Return Coalition, the University of Toronto’s Arab Students’ Collective, the “anti-capitalist” (their term) Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, Ryerson University’s CKLN community radio, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 3903, and the pro-immigration group No One Is Illegal. Explaining the varied groups’ interest, Zainab Amadahy, speaking for the eighth group, the Coalition in Support of Indigenous Sovereignty-Indigenous Caucus, says all parties share “a commitment to support the Six Nation land reclamation . . . They support in a general way social justice, and [also] in a global way.”

But Janice Switlo, a Vancouver native lawyer advising the council of hereditary chiefs of the Six Nations, says the groups came at the behest of radicals within the community. Native journalist Kahentinetha Horn, a reporter for Mohawk Nation News, had been issuing what Switlo calls “very provocative press releases and statements on the Internet” about the standoff, encouraging a broader conflict, though she hadn’t been asked by Six Nations leaders to speak on their behalf. “The language that she used was quite inciting and inflammatory, and appeared in my professional judgment to be encouraging a confrontation,” Switlo says. When on May 2, in her article, “Evil Canada violates domestic and international law,” Horn asked: “Is this an invasion of our nation by Canada? You must have declared war on us,” the Six Nations leadership had to issue a clarifying press release in response, assuring the public that Six Nations had not declared war on anyone.

(This wasn’t the first time Horn had embarrassed native leaders. Last year, she publicly defended the pro-Holocaust remarks of David Ahenakew, the former Assembly of First Nations national chief. Ahenakew told a reporter that Jews were a “disease” and that Hitler was right to have “fried six million of those guys,” Horn wrote in the MNN that Ahenakew was referring only to Jewish “financial and media barons” and argued that Hitler deserved admiration because he “made sure the people had employment and good health.”)

Far from supporting Horn and the agitators, Six Nations leaders were incensed. (On May 22, the situation cooled off, and the roadblock was removed, though the land dispute has yet to be settled). It’s a grave offence in native culture to claim to speak on someone’s behalf when you don’t, explains Switlo. Besides that, native leaders were opposed to making the dispute–which centres on the authenticity of an 1844 land sale–into a racial and class conflict. “The people that I’ve spoken to and counselled and advised, they’re very peaceful,” she says. “They’ve been just as frightened by these elements arriving as some of the Caledonia townsfolk.”

[This article appeared in the June 19, 2006 issue of the Western Standard.]