Katenies at the Superior Court in Cornwall, Ontario

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The following important news comes via No One Is Illegal Montreal:

[Included below are links and the text of some recent articles concerning Katenies and her refusal to recognize the jurisdiction of Canadian colonial courts and the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA). Katenies again refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the Superior Court in Cornwall, Ontario this past July 14, 2008. She is due to appear before a judge in the Superior Court of Ontario in Alexandria on October 21, 2008. It appears as if both Katenies and Kahentinetha will be charged criminally in relation to the CBSA attack on them on June 14, 2008. More updates to come.]

Mohawk Nation News: Stone Wall in Cornwall
Article linked HERE.

Cornwall Standard Freeholder: Protesters pack city courtroom
Article below and linked here: http://www.standard-freeholder.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1114035

Ottawa Indymedia/The Dominion: Mohawk Grandmother challenges border jurisdiction (Video)
Video linked here: http://www.dominionpaper.ca/weblogs/lia_tarachansky/1931

Statement: Solidarity with Katenies! "Canada" has no jurisdiction over Mohawk land
Statement below and also linked here: http://nooneisillegal-montreal.blogspot.com/2008/07/solidarite-with-katenies.html; to endorse the statement, e-mail indigenoussolidaritymontreal@gmail.com

Background Info/Previous Articles & Audio:

http://nooneisillegal-montreal.blogspot.com/2008/06/katenies-cbsa-background.html


INFO: indigenoussolidaritymontreal@gmail.com – 514-848-7583
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Protesters pack city courtroom;
Cornwall Standard Freeholder

Protesters from Ottawa, Montreal and Hamilton packed a Cornwall courtroom Monday in support of Janet Davis, a New York State Iroquois woman who was arrested on June 14 at the Cornwall border crossing in relation to three Customs Act charges from 2003.

Davis, 43, who is also known by her Iroquois name of Katenies, is facing two additional charges of failing to appear in court after she allegedly passed through the border in 2003 without stopping for a Canada Customs agent.

She claims the Canadian judicial system has no jurisdiction over her as an indigenous woman, and even filed a motion in January 2007 to dismiss the charges on those grounds.

The motion was denied, but Davis renewed her objections yesterday by demanding that the court provide written proof of their authority to arrest her and charge her based on what she calls "colonial law."

"My people never gave up their rights or their land to anyone, it was taken from us, these laws were forced on us," said Davis outside the Cornwall courthouse.

"They have no jurisdiction here. I've asked them a question and they have refused to answer it. Where do they get this authority?"

Davis added that she signed her official objection to the court with her fingerprint instead of a written signature as a statement of her individuality as a native woman.

About 30 people packed the courtroom yesterday morning as Davis, who has refused representation, addressed Justice of the Peace Linda Leblanc along with Frank Horn, a Cornwall defence lawyer who says he was only there with Davis as a friend of the court.

"Katenies stands by the Two Row Wampum Treaty," said Horn, referring to an agreement signed between the Dutch and the Iroquois Nation of northern New York in 1613.

"Two cultures may live side by side, but they will never cross. She feels that these charges are a crossover between our two cultures, and that's not right."

Horn was also present in court to object to the treatment of his sister, Kahentinetha Horn, who was with Davis in June.

Horn said both Davis and Kahentinetha, who is 68 years old, were handcuffed and wrestled to the ground by border guards, treatment he said led his sister to suffer a heart attack and be rushed by ambulance to Cornwall Community Hospital.

"She hasn't been the same since this happened," he said. "She won't leave the house, and she's already been back in the hospital once since June. It's just terrible what our family has been going through."

Horn said tensions have been mounting over the past few months between border guards and those from the Akwesasne reserve, adding that many believe the guards are unfairly targeting aboriginals as an excuse to beef up security.

"The Harper government has this whole strategy to get tough at the borders, and they're using our people as the means to stir up Canadians and say: 'Look, we've got this issue at the border, so we've got to increase security,'" he said. "My people don't appreciate being used in that manner."

Horn said many aboriginals are getting sick of the treatment, and protests such as yesterday's will continue until the message is received.

Davis' case will go to trial in Alexandria court starting Oct. 21, 2008.

Original article here: http://www.standard-freeholder.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1114035
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Solidarity with Katenies!
"Canada" has no jurisdiction over Mohawk land

On July 14, 2008, Mohawk grandmother and activist Katenies appeared before a judge in the Superior Court of Cornwall, Ontario. And again, Katenies refused to recognize the authority of the courts, and demanded that Canadian officials prove they have jurisdiction over her as an Indigenous woman. She has been ordered to appear in court again on October 21, 2008, in Alexandria, Ontario.

On June 14, 2008, Katenies -- accompanied by Kahentinetha of the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory – was targeted for arrest by Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) guards on an outstanding warrant for allegedly "running the border" in 2003, and offenses resulting from her refusal to appear in court and validate the colonial justice system.

Katenies has maintained since 2003 that border officials and the Canadian colonial courts have no jurisdiction over Kanion'ke:haka people or land. In January 2007, Katenies served court officials with a Motion to Dismiss, demanding that they establish jurisdiction, if any, over Mohawks and their ability to travel freely between "Canada" and the "United States".

During the CBSA attack, Katenies and Kahentinetha – who are both writers and contributors to Mohawk Nation News (MNN) – were treated brutally by border guards. Both were handcuffed and tackled to the ground. Katenies was jailed for three days. Kahentinetha suffered a heart attack and had to be hospitalized for several days.

As mainly non-native groups and collectives based in settler communities on or near Mohawk lands, we are publicly standing in support of Katenies, and demand all charges against her by the colonial courts be dropped. We also condemn the brutal attacks by the CBSA on both Katenies and Kahentinetha on June 14, 2008 and declare our solidarity with Indigenous struggles for land, freedom and self-determination.

Endorsed by:
Agitate (Ottawa)
Les Apatrides Anonymes (Montreal)
Block the Empire-Montreal
Coalition Guerre à la guerre (Quebec City)
Collectif opposé à la brutalité policière (Montreal)
Collectif pour l'Autonomie du Peuple Mapuche (Montreal)
Comité Solidarité Nouveau Equateur (Montreal)
Common Cause Ontario
CUPE Local 3906 (Hamilton)
DIRA Bibliothèque Anarchiste (Montreal)
Kingston Indigenous Solidarity Network
La Otra Campaña (Montreal)
NEFAC-Montreal
No One Is Illegal-Kingston
No One Is Illegal-Montreal
No One Is Illegal-Ottawa
No One Is Illegal-Toronto
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (Toronto)
OPIRG-Carleton
OPIRG/GRIPO-Ottawa
Ottawa Raging Grannies
People's Global Action Bloc (Ottawa)
Peterborough Coalition Against Poverty
Peterborough Coalition for Palestine Solidarity
Solidarity Across Borders (Montreal)
and others.

Reports about the CBSA attack, and background information, are linked at the following
website: http://nooneisillegal-montreal.blogspot.com/2008/06/katenies-cbsa-background.html

To endorse this statement, please e-mail indigenoussolidaritymontreal@gmail.com; Katenies' next scheduled court date is October 21, 2008 in Alexandria, Ontario.

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COLLAPSE POST

Man Being Starved by U.S. Prison

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The following from Philly's Human Rights Coalition/Fed Up! Chapter:

Distribute Far and Wide and Please Take Immediate Action

HRC/Fed Up! has received correspondence from five prisoners in the Special Management Unit (SMU--the most restrictive hole in Pennsylvania) in the last week to report that prison guards and the Unit Manager are starving an inmate as a means of retaliation. We have also been contacted by the inmate's family.

Gary Tucker #FG8520 has been denied breakfast and lunch since 6/19/08, and not been fed at all since 6/26/08. Mr. Tucker was brutally assaulted by 5 or 6 prison guards on 1/29/08, and his efforts at pursuing a grievance in the matter were officially exhausted on 6/18/08.

Unit Manager Chambers, Correctional Officer Bankes, and Sgt. Jones have been implicated as the ringleaders of this targeted starvation. The official rationale given for depriving Mr. Tucker of his human rights--and potentially his life--is that he has been wearing a t-shirt wrapped around his head. Mr. Tucker claims to have been doing this since 2006, and other prisoners in the SMU have written to HRC that they too have wrapped t-shirts around their heads to test the policy. They still receive food.

Given the urgency of the situation we are asking that our allies and all those in solidarity with prisoners and advocates of fundamental human rights call SCI Camp HIll immediateley. Our brothers in the SMU have taken considerable risk to coordinate a letter-writing campaign on behalf of their fellow prisoner. Now it is up to us to do our part and demonstrate that their trust was well placed.

Contact SCI Camp Hill (717-737-4531) and ask for the Superintendent's Office, or ask to speak with Robert Volcheck or Unit Manager Chambers. I spoke with Volcheck last week and he claimed that prison guards feared that Mr. Tucker had concealed bodily waste within the towel wrapped around his head and was potentially planning to rush the door and jam his arm out the tiny tray slot and throw it at them. . . . Honestly, it was the most preposterous and downright stupid things I have ever heard.

When we call we should demand the following:

1-Stop Starving Gary Tucker! Give Mr. Tucker all his meals, everyday.
2-Remove Sgt. Jones and C/O Bankes from having contact with Mr. Tucker. These two were involved in the January assault, and while they need to have their employment terminated, for now let's insist that they be removed from proximity to Mr. Tucker.

Any additional questions, suggestions, or approaches are welcomed. Thanks to those who called for Michael Edwards and sent us feedback. We encourage others to send word and let us know that you called.

Solidarity,

Bret
HRC/Fed Up! Family

--
Human Rights Coalition - FedUp! Chapter
5125 Penn Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15224
412-361-3022 xt.4 hrcfedup@gmail.com
www.thomasmertoncenter.org/fedup/

An alert from the Friends and Families of Prisoners Emergency Response Network

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COLLAPSE POST

Iraqi Uranium Comes thru Montreal

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The following just out on CBC:

Uranium shipped to Montreal from Iraq in top secret mission
Last Updated: Saturday, July 5, 2008 | 7:27 PM ET Comments84Recommend54
The Associated Press

The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program, a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium, reached Montreal on Saturday to complete a top-secret U.S. operation.

The removal of 550 metric tonnes of "yellowcake," the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment, included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a voyage across two oceans.

The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth "tens of millions of dollars."

A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors.

"We are pleased … that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity," Krahn said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 9,300-hectare yellowcake site since its discovery.

The deal culminated more than a year of intense diplomatic and military initiatives — kept hushed in fear of ambushes or attacks once the convoys were under way.

It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.

Diplomats and military leaders first weighed the idea of shipping the yellowcake overland to Kuwait's port on the Persian Gulf.

Such a route, however, would pass through Iraq's Shiite heartland and be within easy range of extremists.

The ship also would need to clear the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, where U.S. and Iranian ships often come in close contact.

Kuwaiti authorities, too, were reluctant to open their borders to the shipment despite top-level lobbying from Washington.
Deal reached earlier this year

The yellowcake still needed a final destination. Iraqi government officials sought buyers on the commercial market, where uranium prices spiked at about $120 per pound last year. It's currently selling for about half that.

The Cameco deal was reached earlier this year, the official said.

At that point, U.S.-led crews began removing the yellowcake from the Saddam-era containers, some leaking or weakened by corrosion, and reloading the material into about 3,500 secure barrels.

In April, truck convoys started moving the yellowcake from Tuwaitha to Baghdad's international airport.

Then, for two weeks in May, it was ferried on 37 flights to Diego Garcia, a speck of British territory in the Indian Ocean where the U.S. military maintains a base.

On June 3, an American ship left the island for Montreal.

While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called "dirty bomb" — a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material — it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast.

Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment.

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COLLAPSE POST

An Historic Non-Apology, Completely and Utterly Not Accepted

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An excellent response to Prime Minister Harper's recent "apology" to Indigenous people on behalf of the canadian state:

An Historic Non-Apology, Completely and Utterly Not Accepted

The Maze of Rhetoric

We hope our title is sufficiently unequivocal to convey our reaction to the events of Wednesday June 11, 2008. Maybe by example we can show how one must approach issues which require the utmost clarity. On the other hand, this probably won’t work, especially when it’s clear the predominant intention behind a communication is to obscure. Whatever… in any event, for us, sitting on a spiky metal fence is uncomfortable posture.

We listened with attention to what Stephen Harper had to say yesterday, and we did not hear what we needed to hear. Instead, again we watched and heard one more opportunity being thrown away, this one with more ceremony than those preceding it. We watched and heard the studious avoidance of truth, in what we can only regard as the hope that the repetition of a lie will somehow substitute for reality, a concept now reduced to another mantra (as is nowadays the case for, for example, “truth” or “reconciliation”).

To those surprised or appalled by our reaction, or to people who simply have no idea that there’s an issue here at all, let us begin by pointing to at least a few of the facts we had to keep in mind when listening to the statement of the current head of a political process that has, since it origin (Confederation in 1867), had the elimination of aboriginal peoples as its consistent policy:

(1) the “settler” population of Canada has had, from the point of its inception, a qualitatively different relation with indigenous peoples than the remote colonial bureaucracy that preceded it: for England, the Indian Nations were allies (who, arguably, saved Canada on more than one occasion); for the newly-formed Dominion of Canada, they were impediments to expansion, like swamps and vermin. However, in the transfer of authority, the Dominion was honor-bound to respect them, their rights, and their historical status.

(2) with legal and ethical limits placed upon their treatment of indigenous nations (so that, for example, the Dominion couldn’t just set out to slaughter them all, as became the policy in the United States), tactics had to be adopted that had the effect of extermination without giving its appearance (and the British empire had many models to emulate, particularly Tasmania). A simple but accurate characterization of the array of government programs, policies, and laws aimed at indigenous peoples and nations, then, is that they were a range of “carrots” and “sticks” deployed to turn those of us (if any) who survived these artifices from “Indians” into “Canadians” (or, after the era of multiculturalism began, “Indian-Canadians”). Residential school was only one of those programs, one that was heavy on the “stick” and light on the “carrot.”

(3) church officials and government officials have, from time to time since the mid-1980’s, offered what they (and others) have characterized as “apologies.” These have not been apologies. An apology is not made an apology by the person offering it saying it is an apology; it is only an apology when those who have been offered it accept it as an apology. The fact that the rhetoric of pseudo-apologies has become more twisted as time has gone on should make all of us vigilant against immediately accepting what sounds like an apology without careful examination of exactly what was said, how it was said, and what was not said. And repetition is not an argument.

So, what happened Wednesday afternoon? Stephen Harper described the history of actions undertaken by the government of Canada against the children of indigenous peoples, specifically, their forcible removal from their families and communities and their placement under the unsupervised control of four major Canadian churches. Various aspects of these actions, characterized as “abuse” (including physical, mental, and sexual abuse), were enumerated, followed by variations on the refrain of “for this, we apologize” (or “we are sorry”) and “we were wrong” (or “this should never have happened”). That it happened was attributed to bad, arrogant attitudes of superiority. Finally, when mention was made concerning where “we” go from here, the upcoming work of the so-called “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” was proffered as the most appropriate forum. Afterwards, this performance was, by-and-large, repeated by the leaders of the other political parties.

The presentation was offered with every indication of honesty and sincerity. We do not doubt the honesty of what was said, for reasons we will give below. But for those who take honesty as evidence of truth, it would be good to remember what Marx once said: “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” Groucho Marx, that is.

So what’s our problem? Actually, we have several: we did not hear an apology, we dispute characterizations that were made, and we do not believe the putative mechanism of resolution (the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”) will resolve anything useful.

An apology has at least three characteristics (some people will say there are more, some will list more specific traits… this doesn’t matter for present purposes). The absence of any of these three characteristics immediately disqualifies a statement as an apology: a sincere expression of remorse for the behavior, the promise never to repeat the behavior, and the undertaking to undo, as far as possible, the damage done by the behavior.

“Well,” we hear some say, “the first conditions was obviously met… we all heard Mr. Harper recount a comprehensive list of offenses, halting at each one and saying ‘Canada apologizes’ and ‘it was wrong,’ didn’t we?”

Suppose, after beating his wife to the point of hospitalizing her, a man attempted to make amends in the following manner: “I’m sorry I gave you a black eye… it was wrong; I’m sorry I chipped your teeth… it never should have happened; I apologize for breaking your arm… it never should have happened; I apologize for bruising your ribs… it was wrong;” and so on.

Does this sound odd to you? It does to us. Why would anyone choose to express his remorse in such a fashion? In “apologizing” to his wife, has the man adopted this manner of speaking, perhaps, to be more thorough (the list could go on and on…)? We think not. In this instance, the specificity of the list helps him avoid saying something, something more comprehensive, something more general, but in this case, something much more accurate: “I’m sorry I physically assaulted you. It was a criminal action on my part.”

We don’t believe Prime Minister Harper adopted this obscurantist form of address to be more comprehensive; we believe he did so to avoid saying I’m sorry the Canadian government committed genocide against you. It was a criminal action on our part.

(Of course, Mr. Harper was unauthorized to avoid saying something similar on behalf of the churches; they’ve been doing their own artful dodging for years.)

Consequently, if we’re right the sincerity of what was said evaporates as an apology for residential schooling. Thus it was no apology at all, but bluff and continued evasion. We believe he said what he said honestly; that is, that he sincerely believed in what he was saying, but only because, for the governments and individuals he was representing (past and present), he had to craft an evasive statement that he could, in all sincerity, endorse. Did Mr. Harper, all on his own, come up with this muddied, tortured declaration right off the cuff, or perhaps just a few minutes before he came down the stairs with his escorts in tow? Well, since Indian Affairs Minister Strahl has been telling us for weeks now what Harper was going to say, we doubt it. We also doubt that the Conservative party didn’t have a team of lawyers, rhetoricians, and spin doctors, if not writing the statement, at least agonizing over every phrase, every word, every revelation in the evolving document, considering in detail every implication and weighing each possible consequence. Someone was even counting the number of words. No, what we saw was carefully considered, and when such a carefully prepared and comprehensively vetted document does some things (and not others) it is no accident.

So then, is our “belief” about what Mr. Harper was evading correct? We had no trouble seeing through the Prime Minister’s tortured prose because we’re well aware of related issues (such as the ones we began this essay with) that are no part of what the average Canadian is supposed to know and what government and church officials know all too well: the United Nations Genocide Convention and Canada’s role in it.

Take a moment and judge for yourself: go online (if you’re not online already) and find the text of the UN Genocide Convention. If you know anything about the internet you’ll have no trouble finding it; we give the text of Article II below:
Art. 2. In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Many of you will be reading this for the first time. You aren’t supposed to be reading it at all. We call attention to sections (b) and, especially, (e), which we call the “Slam Dunk.” If pressed we’d be willing to argue the entire list, but we don’t have to: the Article says any, not all. Even Mr. Harper in his statement comes perilously close to the Slam Dunk a couple of times:

“…very young children were often forcibly removed from their homes…”

and

“…it was wrong to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this.”

Was he, in subconscious guilt, aping a phrase he had read a million times before with the understanding he must avoid it at all costs? … or, perhaps, intentionally teetering along the edge of a precipice, in order to mock the dozen or so of us who were waiting to see if he used the correct word? We don’t know. He creeps into another neighborhood (b) once again when he mentions:

“…emotional, physical and sexual abuse and neglect of helpless children…”

but that’s as close as he gets to any of the other categories of acts constituting genocide in international law. It isn’t crucial, however; we already have the Slam Dunk.

Well, isn’t there some way around this… this… embarrassing fact? No. One of the contributors to the current document wrote a book 14 years ago that established the genocide that was Indian residential schooling, and the absence of ways around it was thoroughly dealt with there. However, no one read it then and no one is going to read it now (although it’s still available in print form, and free on the internet at www.nativestudies.org), particularly when we’ve gone and spoiled the ending for everyone.

But then, is there no “responsible” authority (not just a dozen or so Indians, and worse, Indian-lovers, who can read and add and reason) who can tell you, our present readership, whether our “interpretation” is right or wrong? (Over the years, time and again, work on this issue has been slighted by phrases like “X believes that the residential schools were genocide,” or “In X’s opinion, Canada and the churches are guilty of genocide,” like it was some disputable quirk on X’s part that is at issue. Well, it’s the United Nations “opinion,” as expressed in the black-and-white of the Convention, that Canada and the churches committed genocide, and the UN is the body that in 1948 got to say what genocide was.) Okay. In support of our “interpretation,” we call what all must agree is a “responsible” authority… the government of Canada.

Also available on the above web site is a paper that provides more detail and references concerning Canada’s disreputable collusion with the United States in gutting a form of the genocide convention that would have been much more explicit with respect to the point we’re making. The current convention is a watered-down version of the proposals of Raphael Lemkin (the man who coined the term “genocide” in 1944), but even watered down it is sufficient. So sufficient that, when it came time to implement the Genocide Convention in Canada’s criminal code (which was what each nation of the United Nations was supposed to do), Canada omitted entire subsections of the UN Convention (by 1970, (b), (d), and (e) were gone, Canada telling anyone who asked that the laws against murder and manslaughter already banned genocide – reducing genocide, as they discussed in the early 50’s, to outright killing). No less an authority than eventual Prime Minister Lester Pearson had suggested that surgery had to be performed on the UN Genocide Convention, or otherwise Canada and its churches would be in violation of it… and, for heavens’ sake, Indians might someday learn to read!

It’s true that even the Convention as articulated provided sufficient wiggle room to allow countries to adopt modified versions of it. But, as remarked by a commentator who first encountered the Convention last Wednesday, Canada’s excisions and elisions betoken a guilty conscience about what it had been up to. After all, this is what the US, with Canada’s aid, had forced through the conference dealing with this particular issue, and if it was good enough in principle for everyone else in the world, why was it inappropriate for Canada?

Finally, sometime in the late 1990’s, Canada quietly, surreptitiously, and without ceremony removed genocide as a chargeable offense from its criminal code, leaving mention of it now solely in the provisions against hate crimes.

We find it interesting how closely the vaporization of genocide in Canadian law coincided with rising consciousness in Native America on the distance between what international law said and what governments had done, and with a government-commissioned secret study that warned the Chrétien government that Canada was liable with respect to the “genocide issue” and recommended it bite the bullet and ‘fess up. As always, Canada provided itself with some explanatory “wiggle room” about why they did what they did, but we would certainly like to ask some direct questions of the officials involved, as well as examine documents and internal correspondence on these subjects (but see below). But, to summarize in a fashion both short and blunt, the history of Canada’s involvement in the creation and implementation of genocide law, nationally and internationally, betokens an overriding concern with its culpability and liability with respect to its treatment of indigenous peoples in general, and its operation of Indian residential schools in particular.

So, Canada itself agrees that our reading of the UN Genocide Convention is correct, and that it accurately characterizes its behavior towards Native Peoples.

Okay, you might say, Canada’s behavior is at variance with international genocide law… but didn’t implementing what they did, however maimed and deformed, into Canadian law remove all future problems? After all, aren’t their actions simply a version of what the United States, also worried about the possibility of being charged with genocide, undertook… adopting a limited version of the Convention, finally, at the end of the Regan administration, and then subjecting it to interpretation by American courts?

It’s true it was pure evasion, but it isn’t true that it lets Canada off any hook. Apart from the “guilty conscious” their behavior evidences, putting aside any question of legal liability that might or might not be attached, and forgoing any discussion of what jurists have long ago established concerning the priority of international law (e.g., that countries and government officials can’t exempt themselves from accountability to international law); instead of all that, just ask yourself: was it merely the failure of the corrupt powers of Rwanda (or Slobodan Milosevic) to exempt themselves (or himself) from the Genocide Convention that got them (or him) into trouble? Suppose the Genocide Convention was in force during the Holocaust… would Hitler’s declaring himself and his chums “immune” have rendered it inoperative? Is that the length the average Canadian is willing to have her or his government go to avoid having to deal with its genocide of indigenous peoples?

It has taken us some time, but Mr. Harper’s statement:

“…it was wrong to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this.”

…must be amended to say:

“…it was wrong for the government of Canada to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this. And it was a crime.”

Bank robbers, thieves, drunk drivers… all criminals, in fact… don’t get to erase their crimes by saying “I’m sorry,” regardless of how sincerely they might say it.

Genocide on the Table

A television snippet from country-wide reaction on Wednesday featured Diane Blair crying out “It was genocide! Why not just admit it?!”

A fair question, and one well-put. As we have seen, Mr. Harper could have used the term, and it was a deliberate act not to. What motivated him? Without too much thought we can see several reasons, grounds sufficient for us to have anticipated long before Wednesday’s circus that what we weren’t going to hear would be a genuine apology. To answer the woman’s question, first, keep on reading the Convention; immediately you will find:
Art. 3. The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.
Art. 4. Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.
So we have Reason 1: rulers, public officials, and private individuals, criminals all, prefer to avoid being punished for their actions. It is very common, we think, for criminals to not want to be punished. In most cases, however, and unlike the case under consideration (i.e., the Indian residential schools), criminals are not in charge of the political, economic, legal, and journalistic controls of a nation. Journalistic control, of course, is particularly necessary if one is going to maintain the manufactured ignorance of multiple millions of Canadians.
Reason 2: Canada has held other nations accountable to a standard of international law that it has itself evaded. That is hypocrisy. Canada wants to complain to China about its human rights abuses; it does not want its own abuses thrown back into its face.
Reason 3: Assaults, rapes, and every other form of abuse expire in national law, perhaps even in international law, according to their Statute of Limitation. Genocide has no Statute of Limitation.

Reason 4: Canada presents itself as a good world citizen, a paragon of virtue. However, a country that bears comparison with Nazi Germany is a paragon of virtue like Charles Manson is a boy scout leader.

Reason 5: Speaking like a psychologist for a moment, abusers frequently tell themselves they have good grounds for the abuses they perpetrate. Often they repeat the lie to themselves with such regularity that they come to believe it.

Reason 6: This is a reason the head of the United Church gave us in a public meeting in 2002: “genocide” is such a harsh word that the membership of his church would be upset by its use, however appropriate. Thus, it’s better to perform genocide than give it its proper name. So perhaps Canada is similarly just thinking about the tender sensibilities of its real citizens, and not those of its pseudo-citizens against whom the genocide was implemented.

Reason 7: The lengths Canada has gone (first, to limit the definition of genocide, and second, to obstruct every way there might have been for indigenous peoples to even raise it as an issue) shows the fear that, if the governments and churches show “weakness,” Indians will treat them with the same rapacity Westerners show weaknesses detected in one another. That is, that Indians will behave like Westerners (the irony that this transformation is what the residential schools were trying to institute has not escaped our notice). It is to our credit that there is no evidence at all that we would behave in such an inhuman manner. More than for any other reason, the moves that have been made toward litigation have been motivated by the government and churches closing off any other ways of seeking redress. From the beginning, all the survivors wanted was a genuine apology, along the criteria we’ve mentioned at the beginning of this commentary.

Reason 8: For us, Reason 1 and its first cousin, Reason 7 are is the overriding motivations behind avoiding the word “genocide.” But it takes not a moments reflection to appreciate that, once “genocide” is on the table, its application across the entire range of policies and programs affecting Native Peoples, historically and contemporaneously, must be considered.

Let’s briefly look at some specific cases in light of Reason 8. So; how well does “genocide” fit the various incentives manufactured over the years for Indians to enfranchise themselves or to be enfranchised? Perfectly, we think. So; how descriptive is “genocide” concerning the 60’s and 70’s Scoops, where uncounted numbers of indigenous children were adopted out, some overseas, to non-Native foster parents? Flawlessly, in our opinion. (Sterilization? Who said that?) Or, can “genocide” accurately characterize the current status of suicide in aboriginal communities? It can and it does, we would argue.

And on and on. Maybe some of you would prefer to argue the point, but that’s our point: the Indian residential schools were not isolated idiosyncrasies of a few members of a governmental department or two. Genocides involve a host of interrelated and interwoven policies and programs, the understanding of which requires sustained effort and the application of all 5 of the specific headings given under Article II. The Nazis, for goodness’ sake, made it illegal for Jews to own parrots!

Bringing genocide to the table would take the churches, but more centrally the government of Canada, into the exhaustive examination of additional regions of its policies and programs with respect to indigenous peoples, regions that, up until now, it has successfully avoided (or at least, as it is now trying to do with residential school, managed to isolate from other policies). And, what is perhaps even more important, establishing that Canada’s policies toward indigenous peoples constitute an historic and ongoing genocide rules out Mr. Harper’s statement as an apology, since such would violate the second feature of a genuine apology; someone who is still doing it can’t be promising not to do it again.

If Genocide, Why?

So far we have only dealt with why what Mr. Harper said on Wednesday was not an apology (to summarize, he meticulously avoided using the proper term “genocide” to characterize Canada’s actions, thereby impugning the sincerity with which he had worked so hard to infuse his words). But at the outset we objected to more than the non-apologetic nature of his statement; we took exception with characterizations he made of the actions of the churches and governments.

We don’t dispute his repeated assertions that “it was wrong.” For us, this was a no-brainer: genocide is wrong. Mr. Harper’s pathetic attempt to insinuate mitigating circumstances (“While some former students have spoken positively about their experiences at residential schools…”), another evasion which disqualifies his statement as an apology (just try to apologize for killing someone while driving under the influence of alcohol by saying “I always do silly things when I’m drunk”), also boomerangs when we consider the irrelevance of the specifics of a genocide to decide upon its “wrongness.” After all, some Jews learned a useful trade working as slave labor in concentration camps; some made new friends; many lost weight; and some even had their metabolisms re-set, so that they were able to maintain a healthy weight for the rest of their lives! But when you make the moral decision that genocide is wrong, you don’t have to listen to sophistry that tries to turn the task of making moral judgments into an accounting of the “goods” and “bads” of a particular program.

There are numerous other places we could be picayune. Calling residential schools “educational institutions” grated on us, for example. But in at least one more point the presentation descended much too far into pure fiction for us to leave it uncommented. With genocide now revealed as the accurate term to characterize the governments’ and the churches’ actions, the question of why arises. Even Mr. Harper, in evading the issue of genocide, still felt compelled to provide his listeners with an historical vignette of the underlying cause of creation and operation of the schools:

“Two primary objectives of the residential schools system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. These objectives were based on the assumption that aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal.”

There you have it; the objective was to assimilate Indians, because we were believed to have inferior cultures (spiritual beliefs are an expression of culture, and thus redundantly included in Mr. Harper’s statement). This was “wrong,” “caused great harm,” and has “no place in our country.”

We have no doubt about the “great harm” part of his statement; however, you should notice how it leaves the agents of all this misery unnamed. It was “the residential school system” that had objectives (and not people working for the churches and governments), and the “inferiority assumption” apparently just hung in mid-air during the years of operation of residential schools, unattached to anything identifiable as a human being wearing a frock or business suit.

Are things any better when we supply warm bodies to this dodge? Well, inserting human beings into all this would at least make explicit that it was people who had the objectives of (1) removing Indian children from their forms of life and (2) insinuating them into mainstream culture, and that people had the (now more obviously racist) assumption that Indians were inferior. So now, our agreeing that this was “wrong” allows us to encapsulate and restate this part of Mr. Harper’s little history lesson into “people did harmful things to Indians because those people were racists.”

But anyone who thinks we are satisfied with this rendering is much too used to bad movie scripts, where bad people do bad things because they are bad. As if the clergy and governmental officials responsible were all wearing black hats. Life is not so simple.

First, the image that in Indian residential schools an “inferior” culture was being replaced with a “superior” culture (which thinking, thanks to the P. M., we now know has “no place” in Canada) is simply wrong. Indian children were not being taught to drink tea with their pinkies extended, speak with an affected English accent, or appreciate poetry and opera; they were being taught to perform as menials (domestics, farm hands, cooks, etc.) for members of the superior culture (and even the not-so-elevated members of that culture). If they were expected to learn anything in residential schools, it was to learn their place; to perform, without question and with dispatch, the commands of their betters. If this was assimilation into “dominant culture” it was into its lowest, most wretched, most disposable stratum, where the inhabitants moiled to eke out a marginal existence. It was alright that these serfs would be Indians; after all, our “betters” have never really concerned themselves with the color of their peons.

Second, attributing this all to “the racists” (who, thank heaven, no longer have a place in Canada) erects a faceless, nameless straw man we’re all supposed to take a turn at pummeling. But this piece of misdirection insinuates that ideology determines actions, rather than actions determining ideology. This is too big a subject to go into here, but ideologies of race, race inferiority, and sub-humanity arise from the material needs to dispossess and expropriate, and not vice versa. Canada’s wealth has arisen from the willingness of the settler society to simply take what they want from indigenous populations (just ask the Lubicon, the Cree of Northern Quebec, and the Labrador Innu, for recent examples). It’s in casting about for some excuse to justify satisfying a material agenda that Canadians have had to create and then invoked the non-humanity of the real owners of Canada.

Consequently, holding anonymous racists responsible for the woes of Indians and assuring us they no longer abide here is nothing but additional falsification on a heroic level. For banishing faceless and nameless spirits to some vasty deep does no such thing as long as the material need to do away with Indian rights and claims continues to abide here. Thus Mr. Harper’s history lesson is nothing more than another kind of bribe… like the forthcoming Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “Just let us insinuate a comic-book version of Canada,” it says. “We don’t have to name the ghosts in the story; we all know who they were anyway. We’ll just pretend they’re all gone now, so you can sleep better at nights. And we get to pretend there’s a clean and complete split with this admittedly reprehensible past.” But the past is present, and it seems, the future.

Resolving Anything Useful?

For a “clean break” the events of Wednesday leave an enormous number of loose ends (some thicker than the Atlantic Cable) flailing around, at least for us. Even several of the leaders of the other political parties, in their responses to Mr. Harper’s statement, noted on Wednesday that it was short on detail. That may be true; however, directly by Mr. Harper’s words and indirectly by implication the upcoming Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been accorded the task of sorting out the remaining specifics.

Is it up to the task? Not even in the cartoon world Mr. Harper has created, much less in the real world.

As already mentioned the statement not only said things we dispute, it left unmentioned a host of issues we needed to see addressed. Let’s run through a few of the omissions:

(1) Genocide. Is the commission going to bring this up? And so what if it does? Canada has already demonstrated it will simply ignore the charge if it’s made, and has been careful to eliminate any possibility of treating the matter in a serious way. Minister Strahl, for example, stated repeatedly in the run-up to Wednesday that nothing Mr. Harper would say would prohibit an ongoing, aggressive investigation into crimes associated with the residential school. But he knew, as we did, that the central crime had already been removed from consideration. Even if Indian after Indian stands before the commission and charges genocide, nothing will happen about it. Most of all, such repetition will only dispose the “average” Canadian, who is supposed to be getting an education on these things, into the familiar stupor of “there go those damned Indians again, always complaining about something.”

(2) The Cover-Ups. Once “wrongs” are correctly identified as “crimes,” can anyone else see that Canada and its churches have been covering up the crimes of the residential schools for quite some time now? The pattern of responding to charges made by former prisoners of Indian residential schools was predictable and familiar: stonewall, then impugn the testimony and motives of the victims (“those troublemakers just like to make noise, or they’re looking for another handout”), then admit that maybe, just maybe there was a “bad apple” here and there in a gigantic barrel of nice apples (“some bad things may have happened, but it was all done with the best of intentions”), then throw a sacrifice (preferably one already dead) to a dissatisfied and growing crowd of lawyers, and then go back to stonewalling (“Hey, enough already! The issue has been settled!”).

Canada and the churches have worked long and hard to avoid admitting anything (in 1998 it was estimated that the Anglican Church, for one, had spent the overwhelming bulk of their budget for dealing with residential schooling on advice from publicity agencies), much less general and specific criminal acts. As anyone paying attention could probably guess, here the government has long ago moved to limit its own possible damages from colluding in knowingly hiding crimes and hindering investigations, so that, for example, while it’s illegal in Canada to destroy documents needed for criminal investigations the people who do the destroying can’t be charged with anything (the “Naughty-Naughty” Principle).

But the churches have long looked out for their own, with known pedophiles in their ranks given a “time out” and then transferred to a new assignment without the inconvenience of having to face a criminal charge. By the way, isn’t this what Becket and King Henry were arguing about back in the 13th century? Eventually, didn’t English law come down on Henry’s side? We have to agree with Henry on this one.

The victims of abuse at residential schools have had to endure not only the original abuse, but the vituperation and calumny of criminals and those assisting criminals in evading disclosure and prosecution. And, for parliamentarians and bureaucrats, even if they’ve removed themselves from the possibility of formal criminal charges under the existing criminal code, justice demands an accounting and acknowledgement of the cover-up as much as it demands them of the original crimes.

(3) The Secret Histories. Attention has been focused so much on church and governmental abuses that there is a clear and present danger that an additional unknown number of malefactors will slip through the cracks. It has already been acknowledged that, for example, in the 50’s the Canadian Medical Association asked for, and received, permission to study the distribution and growth of tuberculosis in “human” populations by giving unpasteurized milk to the children in residential schools. Around the same time, the Canadian Dental Association asked for, and received, permission to study the lifelong development and growth of caries (tooth decay) in “human” populations by giving “sham treatments” to Indian children in residential schools. Here, not only are the people who “authorized” these child abuses culpable, so are the people who ask for them. Both these cases, of course, took place long after the Nuremburg Protocols for ethical research with human beings had been articulated and accepted.

Nor does it end here. The notorious Dr. Cameron, who, while in the pay of the Central Intelligence Agency, used electroshock and mind-altering drugs to experiment on innocent Canadians (a chapter in Canadian history immortalized, so to speak, in a CBC movie), also had some kind of involvement with Indian residential schools, mainly in the Prairie provinces. Rumors abound (since at least the early 90’s), but there has never been enough hard evidence to sustain charges. Doesn’t this bear investigation?

In fact, with a captive population and a supervening authority at best indifferent to their well-being and without any mechanism of complaint or due process available to the victims, what could not have happened? On this subject our imaginations have already been far outstripped by what everyone admits actually did happen; what a broadly-thrown finely-gauged net might dredge up is, in our opinion, anybody’s guess. The (now, finally, at last) movement to start digging in church graveyards and remote, unmarked locations is merely the tip of an iceberg, one that could well nail, even for those Canadians at the utmost levels of denial, the concept of genocide to Canada’s treatment of indigenous peoples.

There’s more (Sterilization? Who said that?), but this is enough for now. These three loose ends, rather than “details” that can be dealt with summarily, are, we predict, Hydra’s Heads that will sprout hundreds or even thousands of additional inquiries if pursued with due diligence. We have a number of problems with the upstart commission, but our question here is: Is the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” equal to this task?

This commission can (1) subpoena no witnesses, (2) compel no testimony, (3) requisition no document. It cannot find, charge, fine, or imprison. Thus far, the only ones lining up to testify are members of groups who have already testified (the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples generated thousands of pages of testimony from school survivors, a corpus, we must add, that has not in the slightest way entered into the consciousness of the average Canadian in the 12 years since its publication) and those who still maintain sufficient plausible deniability to publicly defend its inactions (the RCMP, for example). Those most obviously culpable have already stated their intentions not to bother showing up.

Will, somehow, the victims of residential schooling show up dragging bales of documents proving abusive actions, abusive policies, collusion, cover-ups, etc. on the part of ministers, bureaucrats, clergy, professors, bag-men, pedophiles, and the full host of assorted miscreants? They’d better, for the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” won’t have them.

Or maybe we just need to pray for our own version of a governmental or ecclesiastical “Valachi,” who will show up and rat out the Dons, all the way up to and including the Capo de Tutti Capi. However, not only is this an extremely thin thread upon which to hang our hopes for truth (and more importantly, JUSTICE); what “witness protection program” is going to protect him or her?

“Truth” is an odd name for a body that can trade not at all in that particular commodity. “Reconciliation,” too, is an odd word for five years of allegations that can be either scorned or ignored, according to the tastes of those who are its subject. It invokes the same fantasy world Mr. Harper constructed, where Canadian and indigenous peoples are returned to that happy state of mutual respect and cooperation that existed before the bad old residential schools came along and ruined everything. In “truth,” however, there never has been any “conciliation” to “re.”

Conclusions

We don’t know about you, but we’ve been unable to swing a dead cat since Wednesday without whacking someone telling us about how the “apology” has “closed a painful chapter” and signals “a new beginning in relations” between “Canadians and Indian-Canadians” (sic). Like someone tearing apart a picture of a former boyfriend or girlfriend, spitting on it, and walking away from the pieces tossed over the shoulder, however, we’ve been witnessing a made-up ceremony, one where the participants, for various reasons, are trying more to convince themselves they’ve dealt with all the serious issues rather than actually putting an end to them.

Canada has, once again, missed a truly historic opportunity, putting paste on display rather than an authentic diamond, because the diamond, in someone’s estimation, would have been far too expensive. Already, after the patina of ceremony has worn off, there have been some rumblings, primarily around the fact the Mr. Harper’s statement was long on being sorry and short on being active. And as we pointed out at the start, a real apology promises to undo, as far as possible, the damage done. But now that the statement is revealed as just another evasion, we must caution against whatever action the governments of Canada would propose; as we’ve tried to make clear, the “action” Mr. Harper’s statement endorses, the “Truth” and “Reconciliation” Commission, is no action at all. And someone who steals your car, wrecks it, and is unrepentant about his/her actions is most definitely not the person you’d choose to repair it or replace it.

But that person most certainly at the very least would be responsible to pay the costs of repair or replacement. If this be genocide, the role of Canada’s government (and churches) is to make it possible for us to once again make ourselves whole, nothing more and nothing less. How should we do this, how long it will take us, where do we start… these questions and more crowd in on us all. But they are questions we must identify, discuss, and answer ourselves.

Those of you who saw clearly and immediately the farce that was being played out; those of you who felt in your heart of hearts that the whole orchestration was out of tune but couldn’t identify the offending instruments until now; and those of you who were misled until you brought the powers of your own intellect to the examination of this exercise in rhetorical excess; whatever your history is that led you to complete this overlong commentary; we invite you to join in the task of building what ultimately must replace this charade, some kind of response authentically committed to truth in this history and justice in its resolution.

Roland Chrisjohn
Andrea Bear Nicholas
Karen Stote
James Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi)
Tanya Wasacase
Pierre Loiselle
Andrea O. Smith

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Canadian Troops Complicit in Rape of Afghan Children

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From Monday's Toronto Star - sadly, nothing surprising here:

Don't look, don't tell, troops told
Civilian sex assaults by Afghan soldiers ignored

Jun 16, 2008 04:30 AM
Rick Westhead
Staff Reporter

Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan have been ordered by commanding officers "to ignore" incidents of sexual assault among the civilian population, says a military chaplain who counsels troops returning home with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The chaplain, Jean Johns, says she recently counselled a Canadian soldier who said he witnessed a boy being raped by an Afghan soldier, then wrote a report on the allegation for her brigade chaplain.

In her March report, which she says should have been advanced "up the chain of command," Johns says the corporal told her that Canadian troops have been ordered by commanding officers "to ignore" incidents of sexual assault. Johns hasn't received a reply to the report.

While several Canadian Forces chaplains say other soldiers have made similar claims, Department of National Defence lawyers have argued Canada isn't obliged to investigate because none of the soldiers has made a formal complaint, says a senior Canadian officer familiar with the matter.

"It's ridiculous," the officer says. "We have an ethical and moral responsibility to pursue this, not to shut our eyes to it because it would make it more difficult to work with the Afghan government.

"We're supposed to be in Afghanistan to help people who are being victimized."

The independent claims bolster the credibility of an account provided by Cpl. Travis Schouten, a Canadian soldier who served in Afghanistan from September 2006 through early 2007 and now suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

A Star story Saturday detailed an allegation levelled by Schouten that during his tour, he heard an Afghan national army soldier abusing a young boy and then saw the boy afterwards with visible signs of rape trauma, his bowels and lower intestines falling out of his body.

The alleged abuse occurred in late 2006 near a forward operation base, some 20 kilometres from the Kandahar Airfield. Another chaplain at CFB Petawawa, Joe Johns, said a third chaplain told a group meeting last summer about having been approached by several Canadian military police officers who asked for help reconciling the fact they hadn't done anything to stop abuses. That chaplain declined to comment.

Bryon Wilfert, the Liberal critic for national defence, says he has asked party officials for approval to grill Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson about the sex-abuse allegations today during Question Period.

Wilfert called Schouten's claims "very serious and disturbing" and says Canada at least should have sent the Afghan government a diplomatic note about the allegations. "Anybody who says this is about cultural differences should have their head examined," he says.

Maj. Paul Doucette, a Canadian Forces spokesperson, says the military is aware only of Schouten's allegation and intends to investigate. Doucette didn't say why an investigation hasn't already taken place. Schouten last month described the assault while testifying to the parliamentary subcommittee on national defence.

The testimony was given behind closed doors during a meeting in camera.

Doucette said in an emailed statement that "specific additional information would be required before any such issue could be raised with Afghan officials. However, allegations of this type of behaviour would be an issue for Afghan authorities to address under Afghan law."

Asked if Canadian Forces personnel are prevented from intervening in cases of abuse because of rules of engagement, Doucette wrote, "the general purpose of ROEs is to control the use of force by military forces in conducting their operations.

"All Canadian Forces members, whatever their rank and trade, are trained to inform their chain of command of significant incidents, especially when an incident clearly calls for decisions beyond their level of authority."

Lt. Col. Stéphane Grenier says he has spoken to Schouten, believes his story, and adds he has talked to another Canadian soldier who claims to have witnessed a similar assault. Grenier has also counselled a British soldier who said he watched a young boy being raped by an Afghan soldier while his senior officer concluded a meeting nearby with Afghan army officers.

The sexual-abuse allegations put Canada in a thorny position with the local Afghan government and rekindle memories of some past deployments that led to Canadian soldiers developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

After serving in Bosnia, some soldiers were diagnosed with PTSD after rules of engagement prevented them from interfering when they witnessed civilians being raped by soldiers. Retired general Roméo Dallaire famously struggled with PTSD after the United Nations thwarted his efforts to stop a genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

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Mohawk Kahentinetha Horn beaten and hospitalized at border

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Kahentinetha Horn in happier times, speaking at a demonstration in solidarity with the people of Six Nations

The following by Brenda Norrell - for updates check her blog Censored News:

Mohawk Kahentinetha Horn beaten and hospitalized at border
By Brenda Norrell

Kahentinetha Horn, publisher of Mohawk Nation News, was beaten by special forces at the US/Canadian border. Kahentinetha suffered a heart attack and is currently hospitalized in Canada. Katenies, who was accompanying her, was taken to prison at an undisclosed location. Please read the following message, which has been confirmed as true, and contact the leaders of Canada and demand both women be released and justice served to the perpetrators.

Kahentinetha’s articles on sovereignty, mining on Indigenous lands, corruption and border rights have made her a priority target of the Canadian government for assassination. While on the Arizona border in November, at the Indigenous Border Summit of the Americas II, she challenged the Tohono O’odham Nation’s incarceration of Indigenous migrants in the outdoor “cage,” construction of the border vehicle barrier through the ceremonial route and the digging up of O’odham ancestors for the border wall by the contractor Boeing.

As the borders were increasingly militarized by Homeland Security and Canadian corporations increasingly seized Indigenous Peoples lands for mining, Kahentinetha and Katenies, were targeted with death threats.

Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 4:42 pm Post subject: Kahentinetha Horn, Katenies attacked at the border!

ONE ELDER SAVED BY A HEART ATTACK - ANOTHER ELDER MISSING IN ACTION: MOHAWK GRANDMOTHERS ATTACKED AT CANADA-US BORDER CROSSING ON UNCEDED HAUDENOSAUNEE LAND
Monday, June 16, 2008

Mohawk Elder and Grandmother, Kahentinetha Horn suffered a heart attack, Saturday, June 14, 2008 during a vicious, unprovoked assault by OPP and border agents at Cornwall, in Akwesasne community. She had been beaten and handcuffed when she collapsed. Earlier when she was pulled over, Kahentinetha immediately contacted her brother, a lawyer, on her cellphone. The entire incident was being filmed as her brother rushed to the scene just in time to call an ambulance for her.

Meanwhile, Elder and Grandmother Katenies of Akwesasne was beaten and taken prisoner to an as yet undisclosed location. We are very concerned about her safety. We demand to know of her whereabouts and that she be> released immediately. A few months ago, Julian Fantino put out the word, warning Kahentinetha not to set foot in Ontario or else. She is the publisher of MNN and regular internet reports that are very critical of police and government actions toward Indigenous people. Her articles often clearly state the legalities/realities of the situation that Canada is a corporation plundering unceded Turtle Island. The land and resources belong to the Ongwehoneh people. Canada’s huge debt to us will bankrupt them forever.

The other day, while Stephen Harper was making a public apology to Indigenous for the crimes of the residential schools, he was also preparing to send the army in at 6 nations. Brantford city mayor has requested it, stating his city police cannot handle another “Mohawk uprising”, in other words, peaceful protests against housing development where non resident, non Natives attack the protesters while the police watch. The Ontario Conservatives call for military intervention every day. On Saturday, border agents were pulling over every Native person. Kahentinetha and Katenies were traveling in Akwesasne in the course of their regular activities and were caught up in the dragnet. Did Fantino set up a trap for the two outspoken, Mohawk grandmothers? We suspect that Kahentinetha would have been killed at a secret location had she not had a heart attack and been taken to hospital. Immediately following this incident, many Mohawks and supporters started to gather at Akwesasne. Kahentinetha and Katenies’ attackers want them to accept being Canadian or else they will kill them and anyone else who resists colonization. This low level warfare is playing out on the “border” between Canada and the US, an imaginary line drawn right through the Mohawk community of Akwesasne and through Haudenosaunee territory which is a vast area on BOTH sides of the Great Lakes. This Great Lakes area is also a proposed center for the NWO. Many military plans are underway including nuclear submarines in the Great Lakes and JTF2, Aerospace Warfare Center and NATO FOB (Forward Operating> Base) at a new base being built at Trenton, near Tyendinaga Mohawk community. Tyendinaga was attacked by OPP/SWAT in April when Mohawks protested housing development there. If Canadians are so damned sorry about the abuse of Native people, why is this still happening? Why do people remain silent when Mohawk elders and grandmothers are attacked like this? We are under constant surveillance> and threats and attacks while our land continues to be plundered and pillaged. Was this a failed assassination attempt ordered by Julian> Fantino, commissioner of OPP and head of the biggest gang in the area? We must demand answers and get answers. This attempted genocide must cease. We will never give up.>> Call or write to politicians, media, action lists including international. Get the word out now!!! K..... will be speaking with Kevin Annett on live radio today at 4:30 pm - Montreal time. - Iakoha’ko:waSharbot Lake, Haudenosaunee Territory

Update: Kahentinetha Horn - Mohawk Grandmothers Attacked at Canada-US Border Crossing June 16, 2008 1pm

Kahentinetha Horn has been transferred to an Ottawa hospital while the whereabouts of Katenies remain unknown. Outrage is growing in Indian country. Who will be next in the roundups? There is no doubt that this incident ‘an attempt to take a human life’, of Kahentinetha Horn - makes the false apology given by the Harper government to Native peoples for past tortures and maltreatment completely null and void.

Token drugstore Indians like Phil Fontaine paraded around on TV to receive this apology are all on government payrolls. They represent and speak for no one but the government. It shows the hypocrisy insidiously embedded in the Harper government.This incident was not carried out by regular border patrol personnel. It was carried out by a team of professionals who are installed at this particular border crossing for the sole purpose of apprehending Miss Horn and doing away with her permanently.

Behaviours and actions like this only come about when ordered and sanctioned by the highest levels of Harper’s government and CSIS. This attempt on Miss Horn’s life failed this time, but we are confident that Harper, CSIS and Fantino will continue in their efforts to silence Ms Horn forever. This attempt is just a variation of extraordinary rendition where one is whisked away to an undisclosed location, tortured and later found dead in a ditch somewhere.

Karakwine will be speaking with Kevin Annett on live radio today at 4:30 pm Montreal time. Stop the Genocide. Speak out while you still can!!! - Iakoha’ko:waSharbot Lake, Haudenosaunee Territory

PLEASE SEND YOUR OBJECTIONS TO:

QUEENIE ELIZABETH II, Buckingham Palace, LONDON UK;
Governor General MICHAELLE “Haitian-Against-the-Nation” JEAN, 1Rideau Hall, OTTAWA, ONTARIO info@gg.ca;
Canada Prime Minister STEPHENHARPER, House of Commons, OTTAWA, ONTARIO harper.s@parl.gc.ca;
OntarioPremier DALTON McGUINTY, Queen’s Park, TORONTO, ONTARIO mcguinty.D@parl.gc.ca;
United Nations unat@un.org;
Indian Affairs MinisterStrahl. c@parl.gc.ca;
Brantford Mayor Michael Hancock 519-759-3330 nborowicz@brantford.ca;
Ontario Attorney General 416-326-2220 or 1-800-518-7901;
Minister Ontario Aboriginal Affairs Michael Bryant Lars.Eedy@ontario.ca ;
Neil Smitheman, Brantford ambulance chaser n.smitheman@fasken.com 416-868-3441;
Aaron Detlor adetlor@sympatico.ca;
Bev Jacobs bjacobs@nwac.hq.org;
Julian FantinoOPP Commissioner julian.fantino@jus.gov.on.ca;
Paul Leblanc of \”Indian\” Affairs”,
Sylvia McKenzie Justice Canada,
Emanuel Chabot Public Affairs 7 Emergency Preparedness,
Louis-Alesandre Guay Justice Canada lguay”@justice.gc.ca
Gilles Rochon Aboriginal Policing,
“Chuck Strahl Minister of \”Indian\” Affairs”
See: http://www.mohawknationnews.com/

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Upping The Anti #6

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it's been almost a month since i received copies of the latest issue of Upping the Anti, a great radical journal from Canada, but am only now getting a chance to mention it here.

This issue includes interviews with Mutulu Olugbala (M1 from Dead Prez), Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and George Katsiaficas, as well as two roundtable discussions with activists from across Canada and around the world - one about Organizing Against the G8 and the other about Anti-Poverty Organizing in Halifax. Articles by Joshua Kahn Russell & Brian Kelly (“Giving Form to a Stampede: The First Two Years of the New SDS”), Eric Newstadt (“Accounting for the Student Movement”) with a response from Caelie Frampton, as well as a look at political repression by Jeff Monagham & Kevin Walby (“The Green Scare is Everywhere”).

You can see more on the Kersplebedeb website or the UTA site, or you can just email me to order a copy. Or... you can simply pay $15 by paypal and i will send you a copy:

$15 postage included

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Montreal Rapist Cop Pleads Guilty

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LCN is reporting that rapist cop Alain Bourque has plead guilty to four sexual assaults on two girls, 11 and 13 years of age, over the summer of 2006. One girl was assaulted in her home, the other in a wooded area at a park.

(He was suspended from his cop duties in December of that year; apart from losing his police job the article is unclear about any other consequences for the rapist.)

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Radical Trans Resources on the Web?

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Hey everyone - i'm taking a week to work on the Kersplebedeb website, and have started with my woefully inadequate trans and trans links pages

if anyone has any pointers to radical resources dealing with transliberation, please get in touch...

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Russell Maroon Shoatz Needs a Coronary Angiography!

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i received this from Theresa Shoatz, Russell Maroon Shoatz' daughter, telling of her father suffering from chest pains at SCI Greene Prison and not receiving appropriate medical care.

Russell Maroon Shoatz is a Black Liberation Army veteran who has been in prison for much of the past thirty some years.

Please call the number given below and demand that Maroon be taken to hospital and seen by a qualified doctor!

Urgent Action Alert from Theresa Shoatz:

New Afrikan POW Russell Maroon Shoats has been suffering from chest pains.

He has repeatedly been ignored by guards when requesting the medical attention he urgently needs. On May 13th he filed a grievance to address the situation. Only after receiving calls from his family did they move him to the medical department.

Now he is in medical but has yet to receive an X-ray or any treatment.

Please call to demand that Russell Shoats (inmate #AF-3855 at SCI Greene) receive a coronary angiography (heart X-ray) and medical care.

Erma Vhilatal (spell name and a receptionist will transfer the call) Medical Department CHCA- 724-852-2902

Superintendant, Warden Mr. Folino- 724-852-5505

And write letters addressed to Dr. Jin and to Superintendent Folino and mail them to Russell Shoatz, supporters, P.O. BOX 9476, Phila, PA 19139

More on Russell Maroon Shoats:

http://www.abcf.net/abcf.asp?page=prisoners#

http://www.myspace.com/freerussellshoatz


For Freedom,
NYC Anarchist Black Cross Federation
nycabc[at]riseup[dot]net

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Bad Day? Try Blogging...

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i'm a third of a way through my most recent copy of my fave magazine, and came across an article by Jessica Wapner ("The Healthy Type", Scientific American June 2008) about the therapeutic effects of blogging.

Alice Flaherty, a neuroscientist at Harvard University, is quoted explaining that "humans have a range of pain-related behaviors, such as complaining, which act as a 'placebo for getting satisfied.'" The point being that blogging about stressful experiences may work similarly.

In other words, life can suck, or if it doesn't, at least the world we're stuck living in leaves much to be desired. Complaining about this makes you feel a bit better. As the culture of a thin privileged section of the world's population begins to be based more and more on computers, things like blogs begin to play the same role.

According to Wapner's article, blogging can even make you sleep better. Plus, it "might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art."

Well there you go.

Blogging: the opiate of the cyber-petit bourgeoisie.

(If i have to have an opiate, i can think of worse.)

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More Charges Laid: Clampdown Intensifies, Support Tyendinaga Mohawks!

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This from the Tyendinaga Support Committee:

More Charges Laid: Clampdown Intensifies, Support Tyendinaga Mohawks!

(MAY 20, 2008) In the wake of recent road closures, OPP intimidation, and jailing of Mohawk community members, charges have now been laid by the OPP against at least 9 additional Tyendinaga Mohawks. These charges, according to police, stem from "events that occurred in and around Deseronto," between April 21 and 26. According to the OPP, the investigations are ongoing and additional charges may be laid against other Mohawks. While none of the 9 people recently charged were forced to remain in police custody, and are free to go home to their families, all carry conditions of 'no protests' and 'not to be present at the quarry site'.

Three men remain in custody at this time, awaiting trial - Clint Brant, Matt Kunkel, and Shawn Brant. Shawn Brant's trial date has been set for mid-June.

The current situation in Tyendinaga is developing into a sweeping crack-down on community members, the stifling of resistance to increased policing and further development of the Culbertson Tract, while federal monies are being poured into the Territory for policing matters and an RCMP report is released, citing federal government intentions to dedicate police "to fighting contraband, which he [Stockwell Day] said is funding organized crime and possibly even terrorists" in three Mohawk communities, including Tyendinaga.

It is important to remember that the feds' concern with Native-made smokes and sales go much deeper than their own pocket book. It is not simply the lost tax revenue that they suffer, but the fact that the lost dollars go to sustain Mohawk families and other services and allows for the Mohawk Nation to stand, as it always has, as a clear and organized force of resistance against the Canadian government's practices of assimilation and control of First Nations peoples.

It is the efforts to strengthen Mohawk Nations' economies and sovereignty that threatens the implementation of Canada's colonial agenda. The policing agendas of the Canadian government aim to crack down on this assertion of self-sufficiency and strength, not, as they claim, "organized crime".

- Tyendinaga Support Committee
** NEW WEBSITE: http://ocap.ca/supporttmt/
support.tmt@gmail.com

--------------------------------

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

1. Please send letters to the men in jail:

Shawn Brant
Clint Brant
Matt Kunkel
c/o
Quinte Detention Centre
89 Richmond Blvd
Napanee, ON K7R 3S1

2. Donate money to the Tyendinega Legal Defence Fund, which divides funds raised between legal costs and maintaining the quarry reclamation site. Cheques can be made out to "Tyendinaga Legal Defence Fund" and mailed to the address below.

3. Host a facilitated workshop or information session with a member of the Tyendinaga Support Committee. Contact us at support.tmt@gmail.com

4. Put forward a resolution in your local or organization in support of Shawn Brant and the struggle of the Tyendinaga Mohawk community to reclaim their land.

5. Officially endorse the TSC campaign to support Shawn Brant's legal defence and the quarry reclamation site by contacting us at supporttmt@gmail.com

6. In Toronto, contact us to become actively involved in the work of the TSC and come to one of our meetings.

7. Visit our website to sign an online petition or to join our mailing list: http://ocap.ca/supporttmt/

Tyendinaga Support Committee
c/o 10 Britain St. Toronto ON
M5A 1R6
support.tmt@gmail.com
http://ocap.ca/supporttmt/

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Man Arrested Torching a Montreal Police Car

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The Canadian Press and Info690 are reporting a man was caught setting fire to a police car in Montreal's east end last night. It seems unclear whether or not this is connected to the attack on police cars which took place in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve a couple of months back.

Here is a translation of the Canadian Press article, by yours truly:

A Suspect is Arrested After Setting Fire to a Montreal Police Car

Montreal - A forty year old man is in custody after having been surprised by a police officer as he set fire to a Montreal Police Department squad car last night, in the city's east end.

The vehicle was damaged. It was parked in an area next to Station 35 on Belanger Street East.

Realizing he had been spotted, around 12:25am, the arsonist fled but was quickly captured by police officers. He did not resist arrest. It has not yet been determined if the individual has a criminal record.

At the moment, the Montreal Police Department is unable to establish any link between this attack and the arson of six police cars in mid-March, outside Station 23, on the corner of Hochelaga Street and Bennett Street, in the city's east end. The six vehicles were heavily damaged.

This time, surveillance cameras captured images of the events.

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Political Police Probe Punks

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This just out from the Toronto Star:

Anti-terror cops probed Ottawa punk band
May 21, 2008 04:30 AM

OTTAWA–All it takes to get noticed by Canada's top anti-terrorism team is a shocking band name and a provocative logo.

At least, that's the contention of The Suicide Pilots, a self-described "no-name punk band" based in Ottawa that promotes itself with a cartoon image of a plane swooping toward the Parliament Buildings.

Access to Information documents released by the band's lawyer yesterday show the RCMP's Integrated National Security Enforcement Team took a look at the group last year as a result of the band's outspoken and politically active drummer, Jeffrey Monaghan.

Monaghan was alleged last spring to have leaked the environmental plan of the Conservative government, and was marched in handcuffs by the RCMP out of his contract job at Environment Canada.

He was never charged with anything, but his musical tastes, including a song titled "Harper Youth," quickly attracted state scrutiny.

"Subject is a self-described anarchist and drummer in a punk band that compares (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper to Hitler," says an RCMP report dated two days after Monaghan's May 9, 2007 arrest.

The band's MySpace page depicts a "9/11 type drawing showing an airplane crashing into the Parliament; there is also anti-Harper songs from the band," says an assistance request from the national security team to the Tech Crime unit.

The documents show that the force's integrated cyber-analysis team, the commercial crime unit and national security team were all involved.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service was apprised. "Advise CSIS of our findings," states a timeline for May 29.

The last entry is dated Sept. 8 and is marked "NFAR, CH" – RCMP jargon for No Further Action Required, Cancelled Here.

The band, in a statement, said the investigation is indicative of "Harper's `War on Terror' gone mad."

The RCMP declined to comment.

The Canadian Press

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Radical Principles vs. Poisonous Politics

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It would be nice to always see "the big picture", to be able to act fully informed, to see every angle. You could then act on a case by case basis, always sure that you were not being misled or manipulated, that you were not wasting your energy or working against your own interests.

In life, however, such happy circumstances rarely if ever present themselves. We often must act on partial information, on rumour or hunches. We risk being wrong, and having our own efforts prove to be detrimental to our own goals. We thought we were advancing, only to learn later that we were heading down a blind alley.

To the degree that this is so, that we cannot be sure that our next step is actually bringing us closer to our destination, principles, including but not limited to morals or ethics, become important. Principles establish a way of acting and relating, a methodology or stance, and by acting in a principled manner we become better at adopting this stance, one which will serve us well even if it was first developed in the service of some dead-end activity in the past.

This does not have to be some grand exercise with deep moral implications (though it can be). It may be as simple as taking ourselves seriously. For instance, if we are working on some campaign, just the fact of learning to be on time, to do the work we promise to do, to not dominate conversations or allow them to be dominated, will all serve us well in the longterm even if at some point we realize the campaign we were working on was ill-advised. That stance or principle of being a responsible comrade is worth developing regardless.

i normally don't write about the pissing contests and sectarian shit between activists, in part because it's demoralizing, and in part because it can often feed the noise, contributing to problems that i have found do some harm both to activists and to the radical scene in general. Plus, i myself have been involved in a fair number of squabbles, some of them intensely unpleasant, and i don't want to allow this blog to become a part of that.

Nevertheless, at times it's irresponsible not to say what you think. If you're wrong, speaking out gives others an opportunity to correct you and thus you have an opportunity to learn. And if you're right, then the responsibility is obvious.

So here it goes.

John Zerzan, an anarcho-primitivist intellectual, is coming to speak at Montreal's anarchist bookfair this weekend. Zerzan is not only against class society and the state (like all good anarchists) he also holds some beliefs most people find shocking, namely that the key technical advances people have made - literacy, music, metal-working, agriculture - were all bad things which led us to the oppressive society we live in today.

To be clear, i disagree with Zerzan. i'm not going to critique him here, because that's not the point of this post, but i find his ideas unconvincing, no matter how intriguing they might be on a science-fiction level.

Furthermore, i tend to have little in common with so-called "primitivists" and "post-leftists", those anarchists who find Zerzan most useful. Often these folks are amongst the most narrow minded when it comes to dealing with other currents of the left or learning from the real experiences of the oppressed. Their arrogance can be phenomenal, breath taking in fact. While i have friendly exchanges with some primitivists who i meet briefly in other cities, i think i'm probably on bad terms with every single primitivist in Montreal, and happy to stay that way.

It is because i disagree with Zerzan, and because i am less than chummy with "primitivists" locally, that i feel i have to publicly express how disgusted i am with the post-situationist "hors d'oeuvre" website, which has publicly posted threats to Zerzan, warning him not to come to Montreal because it's "primitivist season". The folks behind this website are doing the state's work with shit like this.

i am also concerned at the email circulating calling for a demonstration against Zerzan outside the bookfair. As i said at the beginning of this post, i do not know what everyone's angle is, and i don't know what connection this demo and the "Coalition for Progress in the Anarchist Milieu" which organized it have to the "hors d'oeuvre" website. However, the wording of the email in question (also posted to CMAQ), which calls for a "war" against Zerzan, manages to combine macho posturing with a very superficial critique.

Within the radical milieu, threats of violence or even just exclusion of those we disagree with have to be justified. In the case of people with coercive personal behaviour, or people who make the scene unsafe or unfriendly through their sexism, racism, or other shit, there is sometimes a place for threats or actual violence to get rid of them (although over the past ten years a number of groups have pioneered more interesting strategies). But that is not the case here.

As for the idea of demonstrating against Zerzan at the bookfair, with the view that he should not be allowed to speak, one has to wonder what will be gained. While such an action will certainly underscore the fact that not all anarchists are "primitivists", and that there may be unresolvable contradictions between the "primitivists" and the rest of us, don't most of us know that already? If the idea is to challenge Zerzan's ideas, couldn't that be done in the form of debate, which the workshop he is giving would seem to facilitate?

Like i said above, i'm not a Zerzanite, i'm not a primitivist. i don't have to be, in order to think that using threats to solve political disagreements within the radical left is reactionary. Similarly, if one is a part of a campaign in which others are making threats, one has a responsibility to denounce this behaviour. To not do so means one risks discrediting oneself.

Finally, on a strategic level, nothing could please the police more than this kind of setup, whereby a public call is made to demonstrate against an anarchist event, where public threats are made. Not only do such threats undermine solidarity and poison the political culture in which resistance is grounded, they can also serve as a pretext for surveillance, repression and suppression.

Living in an imperialist country, riddled with sexism and racism and a moribund culture, we certainly cannot prefigure a communist or anarchist society in the here and now. It's an uphill battle, and it's bound to fail. But in trying to do so, and persisting in these efforts despite inevitable failure, all the while taking up the necessary work as best we can, we develop a stance, a set of principles, which will serve us well.

If we stop trying to do so, one has to ask - what's the fucking point?

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Algonquin Political Prisoner Begins Hunger Strike

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This just in:

Ardoch Algonquin First Nation
May 15, 2008 - For Immediate Release

Jailed Algonquin Leader Begins Hunger Strike
Second Algonquin Chief Going to Jail - McGuinty Government Does Nothing

On February 15, 2008 Ardoch Algonquin First Nation (AAFN) Spokesperson Robert Lovelace was sentenced in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Kingston to 6 months in maximum security, plus crippling fines, for peacefully protesting uranium mining in the Ardoch homeland. Chief Paula Sherman was fined $15,000 and given until today to pay the fine, failing which she will be jailed.

On March 17, a Superior Court judge in Thunder Bay sentenced six leaders of the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) to six months after they were found in contempt of court in dispute which is virtually identical to that of the Ardoch Algonquins.

The jailing of respected, law-abiding community leaders has had a devastating impact on our communities, particularly on the families of those incarcerated. The indifference shown by the McGuinty government towards the rights of First Nation communities and the imposition of long jail terms and crippling fines in the name of "the rule of law" has further eroded respect for both the legal system and the government of Ontario in the eyes of First Nations people in this province.

The cases of the KI Six and Robert Lovelace are strikingly similar. In both cases Ontario gave approvals to mining companies to conduct aggressive mineral exploration on land claimed by First Nations as their own. In both cases this approval was given without any consultation with affected communities, forcing the First Nations to take action to end the illegal exploration when the government refused to act. In both cases the mining company sought and obtained court injunctions to end the peaceful protests of the First Nations, while lawyers representing Ontario supported the mining industry's legal manoeuvres at every stage.

For the first month of Bob Lovelace's incarceration, the government of Ontario said nothing, remaining indifferent to this travesty. Since the jailing of the KI Six, and public outcry which followed, the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, Michael Bryant, has told the media that he has "bent over backwards" to try to resolve the disputes which led to the incarceration of seven First Nations leaders from our two communities. He also claims that he wishes to see the incarcerated communities leaders freed from jail.

We want to set the record straight.

In fact, there has been no response from Minister Bryant to any of our proposals for peacefully resolving the dispute. Minister Bryant's staff also has not responded to several calls and emails seeking a response to our proposals. To put it bluntly, Michael Bryant is a liar.

Bob Lovelace is now entering his fourth month in jail while the KI Six are about to begin their third month of incarceration. They are prisoners of conscience, jailed by the government of Ontario to send a message that the interests of the mining industry will trump Aboriginal rights and the environment of Ontario.

Lovelace, who turned 60 in jail, announced that he will begin a hunger strike tomorrow to press the government to respond to Ardoch's request for good faith negotiations. "I do not want my children and grandchildren to have to go through what we are going through" he said. "Starting tomorrow I will consume only water in the hopes that our cry for justice will be heard by Mr. McGuinty and Mr. Bryant."

Chief Paula Sherman said: "I will soon be going to jail because I cannot and will not pay this unjust fine. I am a single mother with three dependents whose only crime is the defense of our land. Like Bob Lovelace and the KI 6, I would rather go to jail than take food out of my children's mouths or let our land be destroyed ."

Acting Co-Chief Mireille Lapointe added "We are sickened by the hypocrisy of the McGuinty government. While honest, conscientious community leaders languish in their jails for peacefully protecting our land from uranium mining, all these politicians care about is their public image. They are lying when they say they are trying to resolve these disputes. They have done nothing at all and continue to show total indifference. They do not even respond to our letters, calls and emails asking for negotiations, meanwhile claiming they care about us and our land".

Ardoch and KI remain committed to resolving these disputes peacefully, through negotiations which lead to responsible, cooperative land use planning. We call on all citizens of Ontario to support the unconditional release of our leaders and negotiators by joining us at Queen's Park on May 26 at the Gathering of Mother Earth's Protectors.

For more information contact Paula Sherman: (613) 329-3707
Or Chris Reid, lawyer: (416) 629-3117

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