Six Nations Standing Firm

(as published in the Fall '08 edition of GlobalAware's Molotove Rag)


It’s been over two years since a group of Six Nations women stood up and put a freeze on the Douglas Creek Estates (D.C.E.), a large housing development on the outskirts of Caledonia, Ontario. A lot of media attention was given to the blockade and to the skirmishes between Native people and area residents that ensued, but the media coverage has dried up over the last year. That’s not because anything has been settled. There is still a blockade, still aggressive towns folk and still many unsettled land claims.

Working a land claim site is a 24 hour a day job, so burn out is a very real concern. Now that the D.C.E. reclamation is in its 30th month, a small group of activists and I decided to visit the site to help keep up the protestors’ moral, show our support for them and hear about their experiences. After contacting a few Six Nations women who are involved in maintaining and organizing volunteers for the sites, we packed up some food and other donations and headed into Haudenosaunee land. With respect for the requested anonymity of all the people we met, names, street addresses and other descriptions have not been included. Six Nations activists live in constant fear of retaliation from angry towns folk, land developers and of groups such as CSIS maintain files on them to be used against them in the future.

The Caledonia area conflict goes back over two hundred years. In 1784, under the Haldimand Proclamation, a fraction of their ancestral land was set aside for the Iroquois people. The land was to be six miles on either side of the length of the Grand River, equalling about 950,000 acres. The government now only recognizes the small Six Nations reserve around Brantford which equals less than 5% of the original treaty land. Revenue from the sale of some of the land and compensation for flood damages caused by the construction of the Welland Canal were to be held ‘in trust’ by the government, but from as early as 1949 (Miller vs. The King) the Six Nations has been filing suits against the government over mismanagement of the funds and land.

Motivated by this mishandling and the lack of signs that anything was changing, the Six Nations women walked into the construction site of the Douglas Creek Estates on February 28, 2006 and halted construction then called for the provincial and federal government to negotiate with the Six Nations’ Haudenosaunee Confederacy chiefs. But despite ongoing negotiations, the OPP launched an early morning attack on the men, women and children who were camped out on the contested land. The OPP began arresting people and attempting to clear everyone off the land. It was a brutal confrontation. People were physically assaulted, pepper sprayed and many were arrested.

A rapid, unarmed response from the Six Nations community flushed OPP snipers back off the land. Hydro poles, gravel piles and tire fires provided road blocks and sent a clear message to the Canadian government, OPP and, by virtue of the extensive media coverage, to all of Canada that land claims can no longer be ignored. The First Peoples have had enough and will no longer be bullied, swindled or buried in bureaucracy.

Since then, the road blocks have been removed and the main street re-opened, but the housing development is still barricaded. On the site there is one structure left standing: the sales tool for the estates, its ‘model home’. The home is now inhabited at all times by Six Nations activists. When we visited, the home held four people and a friendly family of dogs. One man has been at the site since the reclamation began. He greeted us warmly and welcomed the donations we brought. He and the three others told us stories of the April 20 raid and of the subsequent attacks and threats by area residents. Negotiations are progressing slowly. In what seems like stalling tactics, the federal government has repeatedly changed its representatives. But, thanks to donations of furniture, food and other supplies, the model home functions well as both living quarters and a command post, the community is on alert, and our hosts made it clear that they are in it for the long haul.

There are two other sites just down the road from Caledonia. In Brantford, there is a proposed insulation factory and a luxury hotel on the outskirts of the city. In July of this year, Six Nations activists brought construction of the factory to a halt and although the hotel building continues, it is being closely monitored. Currently there are people camped out on these sites, keeping an eye on the activity and reporting back to the Six Nations council.

We met with one man in his tee-pee at the hotel site, then another man at the factory site. Each man shared with us his motivation for volunteering to work the sites. Between jokes and stories of his grandchildren, one of the men explained the Seven Generation idea: all decisions made by the community must always be made with deep concern for the impact they may have on future generations. He told us the environmental devastation that is occurring is wholly irresponsible and unacceptable. When referring to the proposed insulation factory, he suggested that industry clean up abandoned sites at the centre of town, rather than expanding further onto Haudenosaunee land.

Whether a fee and license system or a full scale moratorium is used to control new development, the Six Nations are demanding at least a seat at the table during negotiations. Unlike previous developments on their land, they want to have a say in what goes up and where. Until the day a truly equitable resolution is met, First Nations people will continue camping out and using their bodies to stop further land incursions.


For further reading on the land claim progress, please see:
Mohawk Nation News - http://www.mohawknationnews.com
Turtle Island News - http://www.theturtleislandnews.com
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) - http://ocap.ca/taxonomy_menu/1/11

Roberto Barrio

It was late, not sure how late, but it was totally dark. There was a raging thunder and lightening storm which had knocked out the electricity and the wind was threatening our meagre candle. The pounding rain was making a deafening sound on the corrugated tin roof. Every half hour or so a guard on his rounds shined his flash light into our space, he was checking to make sure no paramilitary thugs have jumped the fence and were messing with us.
It was our first night in Roberto Barrio, Chiapas, Mexico.

I travelled to Chiapas to meet and work along side the Zapatistas. I had read their declarations and essays about their resistance to the forces of neo-liberalism but wanted to learn more about what life ‘on the ground’ was like.

I joined a small delegation of like minded people organized by the San Diego group Schools for Chiapas. We met up in San Cristobal de las Casas, a beautiful colonial town that seems to be a hub for Mexican tourism. Roberto Barrio was our third stop on the two week trip and was the community that had experienced the most oppression from the surrounding paramilitary. The organizers sat us down the night before we headed to Roberto for a serious talk. They explained the situation in the area and told us that under no circumstances were we to go anywhere alone or leave the gated area where we would be staying. We had already spent one and a half weeks meeting and working with Zapatistas in the highlands but those are peaceful communities where Zapatistas and government supporters work side by side. This threat of conflict was new to us but sadly a daily occurrence for the residents of Roberto and many other communities.

Roberto Barrio is one of five Zapatista caracoles; a guarded civilian centre that functions as a safe place for Zapatistas to gather. There are offices of the Good Government (the Zapatista Government that is, not the bad Mexican one), a women’s co-operative store, a dentist, several classrooms and other school buildings, and the place we frequented the most, a small restaurant serving delicious rice and beans. Some families live in the caracole. They are internally displaced people who can not move back to their land due to threats of violence or the destruction of their homes. Living in the caracole is a temporary measure until they can find a community to move into but it’s a safe haven until then.

The Zapatista vision is based on ideals of justice, peace, liberty and democracy and also living in harmony with the earth. Al Gore’s slide presentation would be old news to these folks. Being mainly subsistence farmers, the Zapatistas know first hand the damage chemical fertilizers, pesticides and GMO seeds can do to the environment and are taking steps, independent of the government, to stem the environment’s deterioration.

As well as the people working in agriculture, we met with about 25 women from the women’s co-op (Co-operativa de Mujeres Compañera Lucha) and talked about their history, structure and struggles. The beautiful black bags they embroider with vibrant flowers are sold in a small store outside the gates of the caracole but it’s far from being a tourist destination which means the sales are very low and the women have little revenue coming in to buy basic necessities. Working in the communal structure the Zapatistas have established, is the only way these families can share enough of their resources to continue ‘la Lucha’ (the Fight).

My two weeks in Chiapas gave me a glimpse of the Zapatista way of life and some of the forces trying to end it. It was a beautiful, inspiring and challenging trip that I encourage anyone with a desire for social change to take.