Township charge raises allegations of harassment

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An Elder in this disputed band says they are being harassed after township members alleged a local contractor was shot at on their land.

The day after contractors hired by the Township of Bosanquet started to block entrances to Camp Ipperwash, former reserve of the Stony Point Band, township Reeve Fred Thomas reported one of his contractors had been shot at. The Nov. 15 complaint was investigated by the provincial police, who later indicated there was no evidence of a shot being fired.

Stoney Point Elder Melba George stated no one from the community was responsible and she considered this further harassment, similar to an 1993 incident in which they army claimed a helicopter had been shot at.

The band has been living on part of Canadian Forces Camp Ipperwash since 1992, some 50 years after the army took over their reserve and the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs declared the Stoney Point people had joined the Kettle Point Band.

George continued to say the township was erecting barriers on claimed land, not on township land, and she wondered whether the military were involved in the barriers or the act of provocation.

Stoney Point was chosen as an infantry training base in 1941 when the Department of National Defence decided it needed an infantry training base on the south shore of Lake Huron.

The move was seen as dealing with two issues; avoiding having to buy land from local land owners, and furbishing a reason to amalgamate the Stoney Point band with the Kettle Point band.

The eviction, which took place between May and July 1942, was accompanied by threats from DIAND officials that those who did not move would have their home burned around them, and was officially described as "the rehabilitation of the Stoney Point Indians."

Since then DIAND refuses to recognize the existence of the Stoney Point First Nations.

In 1990 the Stoney Point First Nation increased their efforts to recover confiscated reserve lands. In the spring of 1992 some member sof the community began to occupy part of Camp Ipperwash in the area where the original Stoney Point church was located.

In the summer of 1993 the Department of National Defence began a round-the-clock helicopter surveillance of the Stoney encampment, by night using floodlights, much as they did at Oka. Finally in mid-August there was a report of an attempt by Stoney Point members to shoot down a helicopter.

But speculation has it that the incident could have been an act of provocation on behalf of other parties. The single shot was alleged to have been fired from a .38 calibre pistol from the ground at a helicopter flying at about 75 metres. A member of the OPP, who requested anonymity, said it was unlikely the shot would have carried to that height and if it had, it would not have inflicted the damage seen on the helicopter.

In early 1994 the new Liberal Government announced that Camp Ipperwash was to be closed for economic reasons.

DIAND still refuses to recognize Stoney Point and all funding is administered by Kettle Point, creating a financial problem in the effort to begin litigation to gain recognition.

But on October 26, Charles Ross and Partners, a firm of London lawyers, agreed to take the case on a contingency basis and to begin a court action to have the First Nation recognized and to recover all the land, including Ipperwash Provincial Park, which contains the band's original burial ground.

The military has taken a different tactic, insisting much of the land comprised Canadian Forces Camp Ipperwash is believed to be contaminated with dangerous substances including unexploded munitions.

Clifford George, caretaker at Camp Ipperwash from 1947 to 1949, disagreed.

A veteran of World War II and the Korean War and member of the Stoney Point First Nation, George questioned the commander's source of information.

During his tenure as caretaker at Camp Ipperwash from 1947 to 1949, three engineers of the Canadian military cleared Camp Ipperwas of all explosives, said George. He helped dispose of the explosives by re-exploding all metals found during the clean-up exercise. The grenade-throwing area was strictly administered by professional senior instructors.

"Any time a thrown grenade does not explode, all exercises are immediately stopped until the instructors dispose of the unexploded grenade," stated George.