Canada sends two female "Agents of Repression" and three "Pacifiers" into Six Nations

This from Kahentinetha Horn:

MNN. [May] 6, 2006. Canada and Ontario appointed Jane Stewart and Barbara McDougall to come up with long term solutions to Canada’s claims to our lands in Haldimand County. The standoff at Six Nations is now in its 68th day. We have been barricading the construction of an illegal housing project by Henco Industries on our land. One of our Women sent Queen Elizabeth a letter asking if she gave these two women the right to speak on her behalf to us on a nation-to-nation basis. We want to know their mandate and who it came from. If it’s not the Queen, then it’s no use talking to them. At the very least, it should be Governor General of Canada, Michaele Jean, who also needs the Queen’s permission. Actually what we really need is proof that they represent the opinion of the Canadian people. We know they don’t have that. So who do they represent?

Read more…

We remember the Mohawk-Oka Crisis of 1990 when Canada and Quebec sent in Bernard Roy and Alex Paterson with only one mandate, to make us to take down our barricades. To this day, that land issue has never been settled. In the end, they refused to settle it and sent in the armed forces to kill us all. That’s when we came out. We didn’t surrender. They had to physically capture us, beat us up, put us in army vehicles and stash us in the barracks under guard in the Farnhan Army Base.  Jane Stewart, a former Minister of Indian Affairs in the Liberal government, has land in the disputed area. This would place her in a conflict of interest. She was the Chief of staff to the interim Liberal leader, Bill Graham, who was formerly the Minister of Defense. Stewart did say something interesting, “These claims are true”.

The powers that be are trying to make us think that these women are like our clan mothers, but have a short memory about what happened in the past? Our clan mothers have to acknowledge the past and present and our duties and responsibilities for the future “faces to come”. We remember that Jane “I’m sorry, so sorry” Stewart apologized to us about the genocide that was conducted to kill us off through the residential school pogrom, “Sorry I took your candy but I am still going to eat it”. There was no remorse expressed. How can there be when they’re still committing genocide?

As far as we can see they are being sent in to implement the colonial agenda. Their being women doesn’t change the substance of Canada’s longstanding policy of stonewalling Six Nations legal claims. As women they have no authority in their society except through the hierarchical lines of command that governs colonial society. We look to our connectedness to the past, present and future generations of our people and the environment. Based on our past experience with colonial society, agreements made by one representative have not been honored by succeeding representatives. They break their agreements almost the minute after they make it.

Twelve years after the Haldimand Proclamation of 1784 was made, 3/4 of our land was already stolen. This is their record of broken promises since colonization began. Will they live up to any agreements they’ve made. Or are they like Condoleeza Rice, U.S. Secretary of Foreign Affairs. She is showing that putting a skirt on the general of the colonial power does not change its imperial agenda. She assimilated from black to white and from female to male. She agrees with anything the men want her to do to stay in power.

Barbara McDougall was a former Minister of External Affairs for the Conservative government. The main interest of this department is to conduct business, which is to sell off our resources.

In the meantime former OPP [Ontario Provincial Premier] David Peterson continues to work to “bring an end to the standoff” to their satisfaction, not ours. They all say it’s too early to say what the outcome will be. He has to look at the lay of the land to see which Injuns he has to buy flowers and steak dinners for and take to the hockey game.  Here’s an idea. To show their good faith in a just, legal and fair settlement of their theft, rather than sending them all off to jail where they belong, they should pay us what they owe. They should pay us right off the bat a 2% royalty on the nation’s Gross Domestic Product which for 2005 was $1.4 Trillion. This all comes from the sale and exploitation of our assets which we legally own. So put the $28 billion on the table first and then we’ll talk!

Then stop your hysteria. A lot of Canadians seem to need a shrink. Pull your gun toting cops out of our sight. Kick out those racist mobs like those KKKaledonians who were rallying in front of us at the Canadian Tire at the weekly “Friday Night Fights”. We suspect that someone is trying to generate enough violence to bring in more than the SWAT Team that were hiding in the bushes that night. One of our men slammed the fence and they jumped out of the bushes. Why weren’t those 500 ralliers arrested? If we did that, we’d be put in jail mighty fast. This is state terrorism!  We have filed 29 claims in 1980 for payment of our leases and rents which are long overdue. Our lands continue to be squatted upon by the colonizers. Britain did not give this land to us. The British unilaterally proclaimed in 1784 that this tract of land would never be encroached upon. Since then we have been lied to and cheated. We are the victims of a monumental theft and fraud. Instead of paying your rent, we were attacked in a predawn raid by the Ontario Provincial Police on April 20th. We are now being held hostage on our land by the state until we capitulate.

We need an international mediator who would be an independent third party, not a white Canadian or someone who has land in the disputed area like Jane Stewart. She is in a conflict of interest situation. Stewart, McDougall and Peterson are part of the Canadian Team and they cannot be impartial. How can Six Nations come to this table? As we said, we cannot negotiate with terrorists. Are they negotiating on behalf of their own real estate interests? If the negotiations come to a stand still, is there a neutral party out who has not been implicated in colonialism and would be able to act as a neutral arbiter if these negotiations don’t work? If the people representing Canada don’t get the Six nations people to back down, are they going to withdraw in a snit and start playing “hardball”. This is exactly what they did in Oka. So far, except for the gender of the Canadian negotiators, everything has been following the blueprint already.  Paid federally registered “medicine men” have arrived on the scene. Bob Antone, Bruce Elijah and Howard Elijah from Oneida of the Thames work through band councils’ social services on Indigenous territories. They are sent in to pacify the people. They tell them, “don’t fight”, “don’t resist” and here’s a “turn-the-other-cheek” pill for you. They came in uninvited in 1990 and practically took over our agenda, split us up and created confusion. We’re afraid that Mike Myers and Terry Doxtater can’t be far behind.

One of the complaints is that some of our people at the site cover their faces with scarves. In 1990 the authorities complained about us doing this in Kanehsatake. One of our young men explained, “We wear these masks as a symbol of how we are forced to live on our own land — we are forced to speak like you, to dress like, to eat like you, to be windbags like you — to completely cover up who we are because you do not want to see us”.

The Zapatistas said, “We had to put masks on in order to be seen”. When will the government that pretends to represent the Canadian people take off its mask instead of taking off its gloves and trying to punch our teeth out?

Kahentinetha Horn
Mohawk Nation News