Trust. Integrity. Reputation.
July- 2000
The beginning of the end?
Have we heard the death rattle of British Columbia's treaty process? Sechelt, the first nation to reach Stage 5, the final stage of negotiations, has abondoned its agreement-in-principle and is heading back to court. A rally at the legislative grounds at the end of May focused on the discontent with governments over their requirement for extinguishment provisions in the treaties. Bad faith allegations against governments are the norm rather than the exception. Windspeaker takes a four-page look at the current state of treaty-making in British Columbia. See special coverage.Photo Credit: Troy Hunter
Residential school, holocaust effects similar
Premier accused of racismOKA: 10 years later
Camp Ipperwash occupation approaches seven-year mark
Peltier again denied parole
Young Horse takes up the charge
Get to the Olympics one stroke at a time
Relevance should be teachers' goal - Guest Column
Canada shifts to the right - Editorial
The above is only a partial list of all the stories featured in the July, 2000 issue of Windspeaker.
If you are not receiving your own copy of Windspeaker, then you have missed out on a great deal of news, information and humour.
Residential school, holocaust effects similar
By Paul Barnsley
Windspeaker Staff Writer
MONTREALThe psychiatric profession seems to be coming to some dramatic conclusions as it attempts to deal with mental health issues in Indigenous communities.
Three days of discussion at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital, sponsored by McGill University's Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry, revealed that mainstream medical practitioners are realizing they're going to have to confront the painful realities of colonial history before they can begin to effectively treat Indigenous people and communities.
Psychiatric practitioners and professors from across Canada and around the world spoke at the conference.
Moderator Lawrence Kirmayer, the director of the social and transcultural psychiatry division at McGill University's medical school, pointed out that statistical studies have shown that Indigenous communities have lower rates of psychiatric problems when they control their own government functions - the more control, the lower the rate of suffering.
The most contentious presentation was made by an Australian professor who has studied health problems in Indigenous people in his country.
Professor Ernest Hunter, a psychiatrist who is professor of public health (mental health) in the department of social and preventive medicine at the University of Queensland has studied the behavior of medical professionals during the Nazi years. He looked at physicians who collaborated with the Nazis as well as those who were victims and those who were in a position to speak up against the medical experimentation and the death camps but chose not to.
Having also studied mental health problems in Indigenous communities in Australia, he has seen similarities between the mental suffering of Indigenous people and holocaust victims.
As he delivered his paper - . . . the deep sleep of forgetfulness: Reflecting on Disremembering - to a lecture hall filled close to capacity with his peers, Hunter felt the need to explain why he was making that comparison.
"To consider the holocaust and the experiences of Australia's Indigenous population in the same study seemed reckless. Well, that's how I felt in 1991 after returning from Yad Va-Shem (holocaust memorial) in Jerusalem where I'd been studying medical professionals as perpetrators during the Nazi years and where I'd begun to consider the relationship between doctors and Indigenous Australians," he said. "At that time I felt that associating these issues was unfair and unlikely to gain a sympathetic hearing amongst my medical peers. Well, that proved to be true; sensitivity was very close to the surface. In this paper I return to the original project - to consider medical professionals as perpetrators, bystanders and victims of the trauma of the holocaust and colonization. I argue that this history is critical to understanding the social and political context of professional work with these traumatized populations, and that to not do so may lead to complicity in rationalizing and trivializing the harm done."
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Premier accused of racismBy Paul Barnsley
Windspeaker Staff Writer
ST. JOHN'S, Nfld.Newfoundland Premier Brian Tobin made remarks on June 8 that Indigenous leaders found very disturbing.
Speaking to the National Post, a newspaper that the Assembly of First Nations has criticized as anti-Native, Tobin said, "Alcohol isn't being openly acknowledged for the problem that it is, in significant part because members of the leadership of northern communities are themselves abusers of alcohol and are themselves in need of help.
"I really believe that I have an obligation to say that publicly, in effect to speak on behalf of those who can't speak themselves - who feel, quite frankly, intimidated about speaking for themselves. I really spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not I would even do this interview. [But] I can not, in conscience, stay silent."
Tobin claims he is genuinely concerned about the problem and not attempting to assign blame or use the issue to dismiss the legitimacy of Native leaders with whom he and his officials have been, and will continue to be, involved in very competitive land claim negotiations. Many Native leaders don't believe him.
Interestingly enough, Tobin made time to talk to a national newspaper that caters to the business establishment and other conservative groups to make his inflammatory remarks. He did not, however, return Windspeaker's numerous phone calls during the six days between the time when his office was first contacted and our publication deadline to address the matter head-on with the Windspeaker readership.
Assembly of First Nations Grand Chief Phil Fontaine accused Tobin of perpetuating racist stereotypes. He said Tobin's remarks were about blaming the victims. Some Native leaders say Tobin's remarks categorize them and could be - and probably will be - used in attempts to discredit them as they engage in negotiations with government officials.
Some observers who are familiar with the root causes of mental diseases such as alcoholism in Indigenous communities, including but not limited to trauma experienced at government residential schools, loss of control over community and self, forced relocation, and loss of dignity, say Tobin's remarks are like shooting someone in the head and then saying he is not competent to discuss the matter because he's suffered a head wound.
"I'm really disappointed that someone like Mr. Tobin would put forward such outdated views of Aboriginal peoples," Fontaine said.
Inuit leaders in Labrador responded by saying Tobin has labeled Aboriginal leaders as alcoholics in a bid to undermine land claim negotiations. A Native leader in another part of the country said there's no way to justify Tobin's remarks but he still has mixed feelings about the issue.
"Number one, I'm a recovering alcoholic myself," said Stewart Phillip, chief of British Columbia's Penticton Indian Band. "Number two, I've been in this business for 26 years and I remember the heyday of Indian politics when conferences and conventions were notorious for the amount of drinking that went on. I remember those days."
But he said things have changed a lot in recent years.
"There's a greater sensitivity to the need to heal our communities. A lot of the contemporary leadership has understood the need to act as role models for our communities and have clean and sober lifestyles," he said.
He and his wife Joan, a Penticton band councillor, went into treatment 13 years ago and have been sober since then. He said a majority of the adult population in his community has also taken that step. What Phillip finds encouraging is that, while people in his generation waited until they were in their 30s or 40s to get help, he's seeing that the younger generation isn't waiting that long.
"We have a lot of young people around 20 years of age or thereabouts who are going into treatment. So the cycle is not as long. But there is a very serious problem with drugs and alcohol in communities, particularly with drugs with the younger people," he said. "It's something our leaders are not inclined to discuss publicly. They don't want to admit there's a lot of these problems in our communities and that's certainly generated a thriving drug trade. The outside criminal element recognize that Aboriginal communities are difficult to police so they're attracted to our communities. It's a serious situation that needs to be addressed and acknowledged but that hasn't happened."
But he doesn't believe Brian Tobin is the person to start the process.
"No, no, no. Absolutely not. It was a senseless racist remark. He made no distinctions. At the same time I do know this situation does exist and we're all very deeply concerned when we discuss the issue of teen suicide and that's one of the collateral issues with drug and alcohol abuse. It needs to be addressed but I don't support Tobin and his racist rhetoric," he said.
Phillip added that poverty, being denied access to lands and resources, is the biggest contributing factor to social ills in First Nations, and outside governments, including the Newfoundland government, have had a hand in creating that situation.
Dr. Lawrence Kirmayer, the director of the social and transcultural psychiatry division at McGill University's medical school, thinks Tobin could have done a bit more research before he spoke if he really wanted to help.
"What he was expressing was what many people would think of stereotypically, but it's not in tune with things," said Kirmayer. "I don't really think that there's much to be done in terms of addressing him because this is a much broader issue. I just think it would be helpful to bring the message of the actual history to people."
Research by University of British Columbia psychiatrist Micheal Chandler reveals the best way to deal with the problem. Chandler studied coroner's reports of suicides and was able to identify a trend. He found that the more local control of governance there was in an Indigenous community, the fewer suicides there were. Phillip agreed. He said that real self government will restore dignity and get rid of many of the causes of the problem.
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By Paul Barnsley
Windspeaker Staff Writer
MONTREALIt's been 10 years since the world watched as Canadian soldiers rolled their tanks into a small town in Quebec, called into action to end a dispute between Mohawks and a town council that wanted to build a golf course on a Native burial site.
The Oka Crisis, or as Native leaders prefer to call the 78-day standoff in 1990, the confrontation at Oka, shook the entire country as activists took to the barricades and took up arms to defend their land rights.
To mark the 10-year anniversary, a panel of speakers gathered in a small cafeteria to discuss the legacy of the confrontation. The panel of five included Kenneth Deer, publisher of Kahnawake's Eastern Door, and Ellen Gabriel, whose face became the Canada-wide symbol of the Mohawk people in Oka, the person who explained the Mohawk position to the press during those tense and uncertain days.
The panelists were asked if the federal and provincial governments have changed their ways in the years since the confrontation.
"If you look at 10 years before the Oka crisis and the conditions and relationship that we had with government in 1980 and you compare it to the conditions and relationships in the year 2000, there's a definite difference," Deer said. "I think that 1990 was a wake-up call to Quebec, the Canadian government and to people in general about how non-Natives perceive Native people. Of course, how we perceive government hasn't changed. Our perception of government hasn't changed in the last 10 years, 20 years or 100 years."
Mohawk people still look to the Two-Row Wampum treaty which states that the relationship with the Crown is a nation-to-nation relationship and that Mohawk people have a right to be sovereign on their traditional territory, he said.
"That'll never change," Deer added. "It's always our stand. Governments, before 1990, had a difficult time with the concept of self-determination for Native people."
The newspaper publisher believes the ugliness of Oka, the racial tensions that reached fever pitch between Native and non-Native, exposed attitudes in Canada that had previously gone unexamined and unchallenged.
"The Canadian and Quebec governments looked at us as subordinate, as dependent, as, perhaps, a lesser society. They were racist without realizing how racist they were. In 1990, what it did was bring out the racism within the general public. The racism that was always beneath the surface came to the surface and we all saw what it was like," he said.
A book about hate groups in Canada discovered that Ku Klux Klan organizers were responsible for creating and encouraging the hate and anger that led to rock throwing and other demonstrations directed against Mohawk people in Kahnawake, where a vital commuter link - the Mercier Bridge - was blocked in support of the Mohawk community of Kanesatake (Oka), an hour's drive to the north.
Deer believes the intensity of the hatred and anger scared government officials enough to back away from the hard line approach that saw Canadian military personnel ordered into action outside the picturesque town of Oka on the shores of Lac des Deux Montagnes (Lake of Two Mountains).
After the shooting death of Quebec provincial police officer Marcel Lemay and daily confrontations between Mohawk warriors and Canadian soldiers, then-prime minister Brian Mulroney made a series of promises that brought the impasse to a peaceful conclusion.
"Brian Mulroney referred to his four solutions to the quote unquote Indian problem," Deer said. "One was that he would strike a Royal Commission. The second was that he would speed up the rate of land claims because at the rate they were going it would have taken more than 100 years to settle them. The third was that he would improve conditions on reserves and the fourth was he would include Native people in the constitutional process, which was the Charlottetown Accord."
He noted that the Charlottetown Accord was a complete failure, voted down in a national referendum in 1992.
There has been some progress on the promise to improve conditions on reserves, Deer noted.
"The Canadian government has increased and continues to brag around the world about how much money it spends on Native people. Canada does pay more per capita than any other country that has Indigenous people. But how much of that money is benefiting the Indigenous people? In general, we are still on the low end of the economic ladder; we still have the highest suicide rate in the country and we still are victims of a certain amount of racism," he said.
Deer agrees with Native leaders who say the Royal Commission has not lived up to its original promise.
"Basically, the Royal Commission's been ignored. It's not been activated by the government. Their solution was to pay us $350 million as a healing fund. That was Canada's response to the Royal Commission, which is ludicrous. Canada spent $500 million to cancel a helicopter contract."
He noted there has been some progress on speeding up the land claim process, although less than a week after the panel met, that process may have suffered a critical blow. Sechelt First Nation pulled out of the treaty process in British Columbia and threatened to force a total redesign of Canada's plan to solve land disputes, including government's insistence of extinguishment of Native rights in exchange for settlements.
"There has been some progress. A land claims commission was set up that was semi-independent but not truly independent," he said. "A treaty process was set up in British Columbia that was questionable to many people. It was a treaty process that wasn't really a treaty process. A treaty process recognizes the two signatories as equals. The B.C. process does not. Canada is still superior and the Indigenous people are still not equal. However, they still try to disguise these things as treaties."
He noted that it was a provincial Liberal government in power in Quebec at the time of Oka and the Parti Quebecois has made agreements with Native leaders in the province in order to pursue its separatist agenda. But Deer pointed out the agreements have yet to be implemented and probably won't be until after the next provincial election.
Talk of raising cigarette taxes has been heard in Quebec in recent months and, Deer said, that could encourage a renewal of the cross-border traffic in cigarettes that played a role in the Oka confrontation where Mohawk businessmen (called smugglers by Canadian authorities) used the Mohawk sovereignty issue to prevent authorities from stopping their lucrative trade.
Many traditional observers have said, during the last 10 years, that many of the armed warriors at Oka hijacked the sovereignty agenda for their own purposes and didn't represent the Mohawk leaders or people. Deer said there could be another confrontation if cigarette taxes go up.
"It's yet to be seen. Ten years is just a blink of an eye for us. We've been here for centuries and we expect to be here for a few more centuries. I'm not convinced that Canada has learned, that Quebec has learned, the lesson of 1990," he said. "Government memories are short. They say one week in politics is a long time; 10 years is a longer time. There will be a time when, because these agreements do not recognize us as equals, do not recognize us as sovereign peoples, that sooner or later it will come to confrontation."
Ellen Gabriel still lives and works on the Kanesatake territory. She said nothing important has changed since Oka.
"In the community of Kanesatake, I think, in many ways, we're still feeling like we're under siege. The physical barricades came down and the army left. However, we're still oppressed. The issue of the land that we were protecting is still in question. The government keeps saying, 'We have negotiations underway.' They have the band council that they're negotiating with. And the traditional people, the longhouse people whose government predates European arrival on this continent, is still not recognized and is still outlawed," she said.
Children of traditional people who refuse to recognize the band council's authority are issued temporary band numbers until they reach the age of 18 when they lose their status, she said.
"Where I come from, it's considered Crown land. It's not a reserve, which means the Queen, in Canadian law, owns the community where I come from. They're only letting us live there out of their gracious generosity," she said. "We do not own our land. Yet a person who comes from anywhere else in the world and buys land has more rights than we do. So what has changed in 10 years? Very little and yet a lot."
Gabriel asked the audience if they were familiar with the details of the beginning of the confrontation in her community in 1990.
"Ten years ago, a group of us decided to block a secondary road - a road which was not used at all except by the local people - because they were going to expand a golf course," she said.
She said the historic attitudes of the French colonists towards Mohawk people was unfriendly and antagonistic from the start.
"They didn't look at the Mohawk people living in Kanesatake as human beings. We were expendable and if we died, who cared? The attitude is still the same today."
She said the residential school system is a clear example of that attitude.
"The whole point of the residential school system was to take away the identity of our people. They were practising genocide against Aboriginal people and today we are left with that legacy and we are trying to stop that cycle of abuse that exists in our community," she said.
As in most Mohawk communities and, indeed, to some extent in all Indigenous communities, Gabriel's home is divided between traditional people who refuse to recognize the Indian Act system and those who do recognize it. That division is the fault of the colonizers, she believes, but non-Native people use the division as another weapon to wear down the Native sovereignty activists.
"That is why, when you see in the news people talking about, 'Why can't Aboriginal people get together? Why can't they speak with one voice?' Do non-Natives speak with one voice? How many political parties do you all have? How many cultures and how many races are living in our communities here on Turtle Island? Do you all speak with one voice? No. Yet we are expected to speak with one voice," she said. "If you look at this legacy that we have, how do you expect us to have unity? How do you expect us to unite once again the way we did in 1990? In 1990, it was easy to unite because we were all being attacked and it didn't matter what political faction you worked for. Our people stood together because the racism was against the red race and the racism is still against the red race."
She noted that well-meaning people ask her how they can help her people.
"It's not up to us to tell you how to help us," she said. "It's up to you to decide how you want to live in a society, how you want to have a peaceful coexistence. Your governments definitely don't care. They've shown that many times. Do you live in a democracy? What does a democracy mean, can anyone tell me? It doesn't mean just voting. It means having a voice. It means having a voice in the decision-making process. You don't have that in Canada."
She said the Canadian system isn't designed to include all the people, no matter what politicians or others may say.
"Your government doesn't care about us. It doesn't care about you. It cares about big business," she said.
She told the audience that a toxic dump on her territory was only stopped because the trucks travelling to the dump were destroying the roads.
"Not because of the health reasons, because of the roads," she said. "So we see that money is more important than people's lives and in 1990 we saw the same thing, inconvenienced motorists were more important than people's lives."
She challenged non-Native people to learn more about the issues.
"People talk about . . . oh, you don't pay taxes, you get a free education. Well, you don't understand anything about what being Aboriginal is if you say that to us. It's on the backs of Aboriginal people that Canada became a country. It's on the blood of Aboriginal people that Canada became a country. Until people understand this, until people start opening their minds and start trying to understand our points of view and not listening to just the skimpy little headlines you see in the newspapers . . . but actually come and meet us and talk to us and learn your history. Learn the history of genocide in the Americas," she said. "I would that you help yourselves at this time and make your country a true democracy like they say it is because they borrowed it from us, they borrowed it from the Iroquois people."
After listening to the speakers, Rob Murdoch, a 25-year-old would-be film-maker asked an important question.
"This doesn't make the evening news every night and it should," he said. "There should be thousands of people here in this room. People should be packed in here like sardines. What do you have to do to get people to pay attention?"
He later told Windspeaker that his girlfriend is intensely interested in the abortion debate. She and her friends can talk for hours about that issue.
"She's an intelligent, educated person. If this was about abortion, she probably would be here. But as soon as I bring up the Native issues, you can see them all tune out," he said. "They don't care and I don't understand why not."
Kenneth Deer answered the question on behalf of the panel.
"It's not a new question," he said, obviously amused and even touched by the young non-Native man's passion. "In the days of Columbus the debate was whether Indigenous people were human. In the European view, because we weren't Christian, papal bulls [decrees] were issued that said we were fair game. That attitude of divine right still permeates the thinking of Canadians today. You can see it still in the expression 'Crown land.' We're still a problem. Five hundred years after Christopher Columbus, we're still a threat because we have a legitimate claim. They really, really wish we'd go away."
Murdoch, who recently moved from his home town of Toronto to Montreal, plans to work on a project that will show Canadians how inconsistent their attitudes towards Native people are when compared to professed Canadian values of tolerance and compassion. He believes there's a powerful form of denial at work in the Canadian public about an important part of the country's history and he wants to find a way to make regular people face up to that history and come to grips with it, he said.
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Camp Ipperwash occupation approaches seven-year markBy Paul Barnsley
Windspeaker Staff Writer
AAZHOODENAANG, Ont.The Warrior Society flag now flies where the Canadian flag used to wave above the guardhouse at the main gate of the former CFB Ipperwash and, since 1993, it's been a kind of no-man's-land in the cold war between traditional Pottawami protesters and Canadian authorities.
The world's attention was focused on this camp and on Ipperwash Provincial Park, just a kilometre down Army Camp Rd. to the west, on Sept. 6, 1995, when Dudley George was shot and killed by Ontario Provincial Police Acting Sgt. Kenneth Deane, an act Amnesty International has called an "extra-judicial execution."
Deane was convicted of criminal negligence causing death, but he was sentenced to community service and kept his job.
On June 1, the talk was about Warren George being in jail while Deane walked around free. None of the Stoney Pointers, as the residents call themselves, thought there was any justice in that.
Pierre George, Dudley's brother, lives at the camp. He told Windspeaker it's a place where violence is frequently used to solve disagreements and where fear and suspicion is always in the background.
It could be the only place in the country where there is true Native sovereignty but it comes at a price. Divisions between the residents of the camp and their relatives who live on the nearby Kettle and Stony Point reserve are bitter. Federal, provincial and local governments - as well as provincial police and federal intelligence agencies - watch closely, it seems, at all times, looking for an opportunity to end the seven-year-old occupation. Tensions exist between local residents and the Stoney Pointers. Late at night, bottles get tossed through windows of the barracks that are within throwing distance of Highway 21, especially on weekends when alcohol increases the courage of non-Native locals.
Everywhere along the main highway, the camp's buildings are decorated with spray-painted graffiti that reveals the rage that simmers within the hearts of Dudley George's surviving friends and relatives.
The place is a black eye for Ontario Premier Mike Harris, the Ontario Provincial Police, the Department of National Defence and the Department of Indian Affairs, which have all played a role in the events that led to the standoff.
Harris continues to be haunted by the memory of Dudley George. Five years later, he has still resisted the call for a public inquiry into the events of the night of the shooting. Many people, not just Stoney Pointers by any means, believe Harris had a hand in the death of Dudley George. They believe he is stone-walling the inquiry to protect himself from justice.
But even the pursuit of the truth about the night of Sept. 6 can't unite the camp residents with their band council supporting friends and relatives. The George family itself is bitterly split.
Pierre George has asked his brother Sam to remove his name from the $7 million wrongful death lawsuit that was filed against the premier, the attorney general, the solicitor general, the OPP commissioner and several police officers. He believes it's "blood money."
The story has its beginnings in the early 1940s when the federal government expropriated the Stoney Point people's land under the War Measures Act in order to construct the base. It was war time and the people were expected to do their part for the war effort. The government promised the land would be cleaned up and returned when the military no longer had a use for it. The Stoney Point community was merged with the nearby Kettle Point community and the people were relocated. But, as former Indian Affairs minister Ron Irwin verified in the chaotic days following Dudley's shooting, there was a burial ground left behind.
The Stoney Pointers never forgot where home was and, after half a century of waiting for the government to keep their word about returning the land, they took action and reclaimed the camp in 1993. Things stayed more or less peaceful for two years until the Stoney Pointers, in an attempt to force the government to deal with them, extended their occupation into the provincial park to the west of the military base.
"A lot of people might say the government owns that [the military base]. Well, I say they don't because in 1993 the people moved on there and they never tried to move 'em off. They harassed us at different times. They must know," Pierre George said. "We have a birthright to be there. And I would also say that from a legal standpoint, there's that color of right defence. We know we belong there. And that stood up down at the park, too. They know they can't remove us, we belong there."
The police and the army have stayed away, saying they don't want a confrontation. The state of limbo caused by the lack of recognition of the traditional people, whose claim to the land is disputed by the band council, has left things hanging in a very unsettling way. The band council claims that many of the occupiers are opportunists who have no legitimate connection to the land. George claims that's a smokescreen designed to ensure that any payment related to the restoration and return of the land will go to the band rather than the Stoney Pointers. He said it wouldn't be that hard to trace the family ties and decide who has a legitimate claim to the land.
"They know who belongs there. Some of the people in Kettle Point say, 'Well everybody's intermarried and all that.' Well, that's still not hard to figure out. You just go back to the grandfathers who were there at that time," he said.
Meanwhile, the impasse continues. The toxic waste and other debris that accumulated from half a century of military training exercises remains in the woods that form the majority of the expansive base's grounds. And the question of legitimate ownership remains undecided.
"That's the sad part about it," said Pierre George. "Nothing's been resolved. If the government would have returned it to the people they took it from, things would have been different."
Stoney Pointers know the band council didn't approve of them in 1995. Glenn George, one of the leaders of the occupation, accuses former Kettle and Stony Point Chief Tom Bressette, now the Ontario regional sub-chief for the Assembly of First Nations, of allowing the OPP build up that led to Dudley George's death. Like most traditional people, he sees the people who participate in the band council system as government employees. He said the government rewards loyalty to that system with money and, likewise, punishes those who won't conform to the system.
"They're sellouts. They speak on behalf of whom? I never elected them. They weren't given no right to speak for nobody," he said.
Glenn George believes that the spirits will exact their form of justice on those who have turned their backs on the traditional ways.
"Our people have endured this nightmare for more than 500 years," he said. "We were promised these people would be made peaceful and I know that will happen."
Pierre George shares the distrust of the band council and that's one reason why he won't support his brother's lawsuit against the premier. The lawsuit was financed in part by the band council and he strongly resents his brother for taking that money.
He, along with his sister Caroline, drove his fatally wounded brother to Strathroy Middlesex General Hospital on that fateful night. A half-hour drive in a 1977 Chevy with only three tires - they suffered a blowout early in the journey and had no time to fix it - during which they were shadowed by police officers who did not step in to help. He feels that Dudley would not have approved of accepting the band council's help and he can't bring himself to look the other way.
"Sam and them do not recognize what Dudley was doing there," he said.
Sam George's supporters say he made the decision to get justice for his late brother by forcing the government to be accountable and that kind of a struggle isn't cheap. Members of the coalition pushing for an inquiry into Dudley George's death say Pierre is angry and traumatized by the events of that night but he will eventually reconcile with his siblings. Sam George could not be reached for comment.
Pierre believes the Stoney Pointers have a right to the land and he'll fight anyone who tries to deny them.
"I have a brother who died for that land," he said.
Glenn George is furious that the band council has been engaged in talks with the government to settle the land question.
"They're treating it like it's a land claim when it's a repossession," he said.
He said he's confident it will eventually come down to talks between his group and the Department of National Defence, who took the land from the original residents so long ago and made the promises about its eventual return.
"When you have an argument it's between two people and in this case it's the people here and DND," he said.
Since the federal authorities only recognize band council governments and have a big political stake in continuing that practice, that face-off with DND isn't going to happen anytime soon.
Asked if he and the others are willing to continue to stare down the government and deal with the constant threat that someone in authority somewhere could at any time decide things have gone on long enough, he shruggs off that risk.
"You take a risk driving down the road these days," he said.
And nobody knows how it will all end.Peltier again denied parole
By Cheryl Petten
Windspeaker Staff Writer
LEAVENWORTH PRISONIn a surprisingly swift decision, the United States parole examiner has crushed the latest hope for freedom for Leonard Peltier, recommending that Peltier's sentence be continued until his next full parole hearing in 2008.
The recommendation came during an interim parole hearing held for Peltier June 12 at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas.
Peltier, a activist with the American Indian Movement, is serving two consecutive life terms following his 1977 conviction for the murder of two FBI agents killed on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota on June 26, 1975. The two agents were wounded during a gunfight between the FBI and Indian activists.
Peltier has been in prison in the United States since 1977, when he was convicted of two counts of first degree murder, and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences. Peltier was arrested in Hinton, Alta. in February 1976 and extradited to the U.S., under suspicious circumstances, in June 1976 to face the murder charges. Many human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, have been calling for Peltier's release, suggesting evidence that would have been favorable to his release had been suppressed. Also joining in on the call for Peltier's release have been the Assembly of First Nations, the National Congress of American Indians, and the National Council of Churches. The Canadian Labour Congress has also joined the fight, and has launched a campaign among its membership, urging clemency for Peltier.
Peltier last had a parole hearing in 1994, but the parole commission must hold an interim parole hearing every two years to re-examine the case to see if there are reasons to change their original ruling to deny parole.
According to information provided by the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, the parole examiner made the decision to continue Peltier's sentence without examining any of the evidence presented at the hearing, including a doctor's report citing problems with Peltier's health, 10,000 letters in support of Peltier's release, and eight parole plans offering Peltier housing and employment on his release from prison.
Anne Dreaver is national co-ordinator with the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee of Canada.
"People are absolutely outraged," Dreaver said of the latest decision not to grant parole to Peltier. "They saw the parole commissioner writing his decision to deny parole before the evidence was even read or considered, and that is a denial of a fair hearing. It also constitutes a due process violation of Leonard Peltier's rights," Dreaver said.
Dreaver explained the American justice system is continuing to keep Peltier behind bars, despite the fact that prosecutors have admitted in court they have no real evidence linking Peltier to the killings of the two agents.
In the time since his incarceration, the validity of much of the evidence used against Peltier has been called into question, with concerns raised about the credibility of a witness whose testimony was used to secure Peltier's extradition, and inconsistencies uncovered in ballistics evidence used against Peltier during his trial.
"It's a continuous rubber stamping of denial, rubber stamping an existing position that they just don't want him out, despite all the growing evidence, including the government testimony in court, several times, that they just don't have any evidence linking him to those murders, to those killings," Dreaver said.
Now that the interim parole hearing has failed to lead to Peltier's release, Dreaver said efforts by his supporters in both Canada and the U.S. will now focus their efforts on attempts to convince U.S. President Bill Clinton to grant clemency for Peltier. The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee of Canada will also be working to set up an independent inquiry into the Peltier case in Canada, which organizers hope to hold in Toronto in October.
"People feel affronted by the fact that Leonard's rights are totally denied to him," Dreaver said. "They want answers. They want the truth to come out, and they want the Canadian government to be accountable for that truth."
Young Horse takes up the chargeBy Pamela Sexsmith
Windspeaker Contributor
EDMONTONBorn into Mistawasis First Nation in 1976, Lorne Horse Duquette grew up street-wise and nomadic, moving from city to reserve and back again, serving time in residential school as a child and prison as a teenager.
He is a young man whose life journey has taken him from a boyhood spent in the wilds of Saskatchewan to the bright lights of Montreal, and then national exposure as an actor in Big Bear, the CBC television film.
Two threads run through Lorne's transient life - his mother Bertha's struggle to raise five children on her own and the compelling stories of his family's commitment in the political struggle to free activist Leonard Peltier.
Lorne had been raised on the stories of the political struggle, oppression and deaths that took place in South Dakota at Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee. They were tales told of the battles fought by North American Indians, their struggles to defend their lands and treaty rights, their culture, language and traditional ways and to regain the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota.
"The story of Pine Ridge has always had a great effect on me, in the sense that throughout my life, my family has always been there, always a part of the struggle. I grew up listening to the stories of our stand against oppression, the role my uncle Frank Dreaver is still playing in that struggle. Over the years, I asked myself, 'what can I do, a young Native boy living on the rez? How can I contribute to the plight of Leonard Peltier?' Reflecting on my experience as an actor, I realized that I could use my career choice as a tool. Take my proposal for a stage play about the life of Leonard Peltier, present it to Anne and Frank and seek their approval and blessing," said Lorne.
In May, Lorne backpacked to Edmonton to visit the Dreavers, speakers at the International Human Rights Conference at the University of Alberta. As well as renewing family ties, Lorne presented his proposal to write a stage play based on the book by Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings - My Life Is My Sun Dance.
Frank Dreaver, political activist and head of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee of Canada, had also been born in Mistawasis First Nation. A resident of Toronto for 20 years, Dreaver has always maintained strong ties with his family and band in Saskatchewan. Making the connection with Lorne in Edmonton was a case of fate kicking in for the young actor.
"Meeting up with the Dreavers has tied it all together, given me a powerful focus. Having an opportunity to hear Frank speak out about the political imprisonment of Peltier was amazing. I had been searching for a strong role model, someone who is true to what he believes in. No one has ever come across to me the way Frank Dreaver has. His fire, the warmth he emits and shares with people throughout the world, has encouraged me to build my own fire, gather truth. Hearing his life story, the 25-year battle to free Leonard Peltier, all the good that has come from the all negativity in his life, I realized that Frank is a fire that will continue to burn long after we are gone," said Lorne.
Like his uncle, Lorne's early family life had been disrupted by alcohol, drug addiction, the multi-generational effects of the residential school system and time spent in prison. Like his uncle, he has turned it all around.
As a youngster, Lorne experienced deep regret at having had so little contact with his father, Maxwell Horse, a band councillor at Thunderchild First Nation and a well-known orator and Cree speaker.
It was only recently that he came to realize that he had received a real gift from his dad, the gift of speaking, of holding the attention and imagination of an audience.
An early interest in grass dancing and theatre led to acting classes, auditions and his big break, the role of Round The Sky in Gil Cardinal's production of Big Bear.
Playing the role of Round the Sky in Big Bear was a real eye-opener for Lorne.
"Landing the part, learning to deliver my lines, facing the cameras was totally mind-boggling, something you only dream about. Standing on real gallows with a real wooden lever in place [clamped down to prevent the accidental real life hanging of actors Michael Greyeyes, Ben Cardinal, Michael Obey and Lorne Horse Duquette] was an almost unexplainable experience.
"When they tied those rope nooses and black hoods around our heads, I felt an uncanny connection to the warriors hanged in the rebellion, to Round the Sky, who died fighting for something he believed in," said Lorne.
Success followed with the CBC documentary, Big Bear History Series, music videos, TV commercials, and a stage role.
"Stage acting is a great way to leave the world behind for an hour or two, create your own world, realm and atmosphere; share it with the audience; give them a sense of what is in your mind, in your words, how you portray your character. That's exactly how I'm hoping to take the struggle of Leonard Peltier to the stage. Show what he has endured in prison. Help people to understand and take on a commitment to demand justice and freedom for Peltier. A play with a foundation of spirituality at the root for all of my Native brothers and sisters who are struggling to be free," said Lorne.
In April last year, Lorne was invited to visit the Pine Ridge Reserve in South Dakota by Lakota doctor, Sarah Jumping Eagle, to speak as a role model to youth at the Little Wound School. He talked about overcoming his addiction to drugs, alcohol and the terrible abuse and overuse of tobacco, a sacred plant of the people.
"It was during my visit to Pine Ridge that the stories told by my uncles Frank and Wally back at Mistawasis really came to life. I was in 'the place,' like reaching Mecca or the Taj Mahal. I was amazed to be there, to visit Wounded Knee, the Oglala people, the location of the Jumping Bull compound where the shootout [with FBI agents] took place 25 years ago. It was on my birthday, Jan. 1, 2000, that the vision came to me to pull it all together. Write a play about Leonard as a sacrifice and symbol of Indian people's rights to defend their lands and ancestral treaty rights, their culture, languages and traditional ways - Leonard as a wake up call. It could be you, it could be me or anyone who has the courage to stand up and fight for their beliefs. When Leonard is free, a lot of Indian people will be free as well, within themselves, within their communities. Leonard's freedom will be a huge step for Indian people," said Lorne.
After meeting with Lorne in Edmonton, the Dreavers not only gave their permission and blessing for the stage play project, they also invited Lorne to come to Toronto to work on his vision.
"To have Lorne come forward like this is very important, because youth have a clarity. They can see beyond the rigid mindset of the older generations and despite the fact that youth today is not rooted in any direct experience of the mobilization of those times, Leonard's political imprisonment has left a legacy that needs to be addressed today by all Aboriginal peoples of North America," said Anne Dreaver.
Get to the Olympics one stroke at a time
By Marj Roden
Windspeaker Contributor
PRINCE ALBERT, Sask.For 14-year-old Rose Brass she wasn't always the championship swimmer that she is today.
"She tried hockey first of all, then soccer, gymnastics, dancing, and finally swimming," said Giff Brass of his daughter's athletic endeavors. "Swimming seems to be her thing."
Her mother Jean agreed with her husband, adding, "When she first started swimming, her dad would take her to the pool, get her in the water and stuff. She was two when she started.
"She's been in the water for a long time. A little water baby, they all call her, because she so likes the water. Thanks to one of her teachers, Rose joined the Special Olympics swimming program this fall, an avenue her parents were not aware of.
"This is her first year with Special O," said Jean. "It was actually because of an educational consultant, who moved her from the mainstream classroom into a specialized one. Her daughter also competed in Special O, and she just informed us of what was out there. We had no idea that [Rose] would qualify. I always thought Special Olympics was for [people with] severe physical disability. I didn't realize that she would fit into this category."
That was in the fall of 1999. The Special Olympics' swim coach, Cathy Hoffman, recognized Rose's potential, and recommended her to another team.
"Her coach for the Special Olympics team thought that Rose's talent would exceed the capabilities of the team she had there, and then she gave us the number of Gord Shields," head coach of the Prince Albert Sharks Swim Club.
"Her coach brought her here," said Shields, "and we had her try out at a practice and see what we thought. We had a chance to meet the parents and talk to the parents about the program and what we have to offer, and what benefits we would get out of participating in the program, and so it has carried on since then.
"That was about in January of this year."
The end result of the tryout in the New Year was that Rose earned herself a spot on the Sharks' swim team.
Coach Maureen Strathdee, who is also a triathlete and a high school teacher, said, "Rose is a really fun student to have in the class. She tries hard, she wants to learn, and is anxious to do well. She likes to do well, so in that aspect, it's nice to coach someone who is always looking to improve and do well."
Coach Shields said Rose listens, "and she does pick things up fairly quickly. She has the ability to develop because she does take what the coaches have instructed her and put it into practice with what she's doing in the water with her technique."
In a few short months, Rose has earned a lot about technique and has also improved her speed, said Strathdee.
"Rose has really improved because her freestyle speed is getting better and she knew the stroke quite well. For example, she's picked up the technique for the butterfly this year, which is a really hard stroke to learn. So as well as getting faster on the strokes that she did know, she was able to learn some more strokes, and also the racing turns, the starts, relays, and being part of a team."
Then came Rose's first swim meet with Special Olympics, and everyone - including Rose - was in for a huge surprise.
"I think she surprised the coaches, too," said Jean Brass. "They just timed her once, and realized they had never timed her before, so I think that she surprised them too that she already had qualified (for the Canadian ParOlympic Team trials). Nobody was prepared for it, it was sort of 'we've got this kid who can make it,' and no one knew."
Thanks to some last-minute fund-raising done on Rose's behalf by the Special Olympics and the Shriners of Prince Albert, Rose was able to try out for a spot on the Canadian ParOlympic team that will be competing in the World ParOlympic Summer Games in Sydney, Australia. The ParOlympic games immediately follow the main Olympic Games this September.
"They raised the money," said Jean Brass on Rose's first day of the team tryouts in Montreal. "It was pretty fast. We were told Wednesday and had to leave Thursday."
Her first event on May 29 was the 100 metre backstroke, and she surprised many people there.
"She took just about 20 minutes off her backstroke time," said Jean in a phone interview that evening. "She made it through all the heats and made it right to the final."
Results of the competition were not available by press time.
