Six Nations leadership still fractured
The latest missive from the spokesperson for the Six Nations longhouse calls the band council illegal. Nothing new here, really, except with the importance of negotiations growing as winter gets closer, you would think the natives would have tried to come to some sort of temporary truce, a coalition government of sorts.
From April 2006, when the Caledonia land dispute was three months old:
There's no end in sight to the aboriginal occupation of a housing development south of Hamilton, but the Mohawks are already claiming a major victory.
Representatives from the traditional longhouse government are sitting at the negotiating table in ongoing talks with provincial and federal officials, a fact that thrills their spokeswoman, Hazel Hill.
"It's monumental," Hill says. "It's big. I can't even explain the enormity of what's happening."
While Hill can't contain her excitement, she can explain it.
She notes that the traditional longhouse form of government was declared illegal in 1924, when the federal Indian Act was imposed.
Now, it's at the centre of talks with the two levels of government, and elected Chief David General of the Six Nations Council has deferred to the longhouse government as having the lead role at the table.
I don't pretend to understand the subtleties of native power politics, but it has been clear that there are several different groups claiming leadership: Chief David General and his elected council, the Longhouse and the Clan Mothers, the Mohawk Warriors, and of course, every individual occupier who has claimed a half-built house on the Douglas Creek Estates housing project.
In any case, it was claimed that David General has given the exclusive authority to negotiate to the Longhouse:
It's amid this atmosphere that the Six Nations Confederacy will resume talks with the federal and provincial governments today. But it's unclear where those talks will lead.
The federal government has said the dispute is a provincial issue. And yesterday Ontario Aboriginal Affairs Minister David Ramsay called on his federal counterpart Jim Prentice to appoint a personal envoy to take part in the talks with the Confederacy, which has been delegated to deal exclusively with land claims by Six Nations Chief David General and the elected band council.
It's now September, and Hazel Hill is less thrilled, since it appears that the authority was less than exclusive. But worse than that, the band council would have had no authority to grant that exclusivity, since it is an illegal entity:
It does not take a genious to figure out that our Confederacy representatives are at the table because of our reclamation. It also doesn't take a genious to figure out that all the while they are negotiating with our Chiefs and delegated representatives of the people, that behind closed doors they are making simulataneous [sic] deals with individuals of the illegal entity known as the band council and are strategizing on how to get our people off the land so that they can go back to working with the party they created as an arm of the federal government. [emphasis added]
To be totally accurate, Hazel Hill and other Clan Mothers spokespersons have called the council illegitimate or illegal before. This from April:
As the land is held by the Indigenous Women, they need our permission to do anything. We must be consulted on everything that’s going to be done on all of the Haldimand Tract.
Ontario and Canada can’t do anything without consulting us, the Confederacy. They can’t go running to their illegal band council puppets.
Most of Six Nations people are opposed to the band council.
Their point man, Dave ‘Colonial’ General, did not vote in favor of this resolution. Instead he read out his, Canada and Ontario’s schemes on how to resolve the occupation. They want an extension to the current Douglas Creek Estates’ injunction to May 24th 2006 [rather than disposing of it because it’s illegal]. They want a poll to be conducted of all members 18 years of age and older on whom should oversee the land issue. Will it be the traditional Confederacy, the band council or a jointly appointed committee? The band council is supporting the Confederacy and Dave General is still pushing the colonial agenda. Hey, Dave, whose payroll are you on anyway?
I wouldn't ask about payrolls, since it would raise embarassing questions about whether the only two sources of money are massive transfers of taxpayers money from the federal government, or legal, semi-legal, and clearly illegal cash coming from cigarettes, gambling, and smuggling.
But the really interesting point is that it appears that the Band Council is still a player, and that the Six Nations have not resolved their leadership problem. They haven't even gotten to the point of moderating their language, much less taken the far more complex step of forming a temporary coalition government to negotiate the issue of the land. Instead there are monumental breakthroughs in April, and then the same old recriminatons in September.
Does't provide much hope for the negotiations. Meanwhile, winter continues to approach.
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Comments
"...you would think the natives would have tried to come to some sort of temporary truce, a coalition government of sorts."
Why on earth would they? The current cause of action is the claim that the past transfers of the Haldimand Tract were unlawfull, since the Clan Mothers hadn't consented to it; but the band is not about to give back the proceeds (with interest) of those transfers. The Six Nations are not stupid - they see the advantage in proposing negotiations that can later be repudiated, along with a ratchet-effect demand for more. The best thing that can happen to them is a decent agreement with (or series of concessions to) the "illegal" Band Council, that can then be used for further demands by the Warriors, then the Longhouse Leadership, the Clan Mothers, and any other splinter group that can muster a flag and a couple of assholes with bandanas.
Posted by: at September 16, 2006 01:15 PM
This is why negotiations will not succeed. Even if there is a settlement with one or more factions, other factions can come later and declare the settlement null and void because they weren't consulted. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out how the Six Nations can stand up and proudly say that their ancestors are stupid.
Posted by: jgriffin at September 16, 2006 08:31 PM
What it proves is that the land claims where a ruse.
These occupations are nothing more than a tactic to extort more funding from the fed.
The natives however are discovering the problem with this tactic, subgroups deciding they want a piece of the action and subsequently a seat at the negotiating table.
Sucks to be them.
Posted by: gimbol at September 16, 2006 08:35 PM
I was under an impression that Judge Marshall ordered the province not to negotiate.
Seems like the good judge understands negotiation a touch better than the government.
Contempt of Court proceeding to follow. Followed by a plethora of civil suits based on faulty negotiating.
Posted by: john at September 17, 2006 06:42 AM
Six nations politics has become a yawn to me. Until they expell the criminal and renegade element from their midst and deal with it as other evolved societies deal with disruptive criminal forces, they remain, to me, a walking anachronism which hasn't the credibility to call itself either sovereign or a nation. The latter two concepts denote a level of civility and social order/organization that six nations is yet to acheive.
Posted by: wlyonmackenzie at September 17, 2006 10:54 AM
thanks for changing your understanding from my input about hazel not being a clanmother. unfortunately, you deleted my comment which led to your change. was it something about your masters calling the shots from the back rooms or just a general distaste for my personality?
Posted by: Ottawa Core at September 17, 2006 12:26 PM
"It does not take a genious to figure out that our Confederacy representatives are at the table because of our reclamation. It also doesn't take a genious to figure out that all the"
Apparently it DOES take a genius to spell genius though.
;-)
A thought... if the Brant sales are not legit because clanswomen aren't on the documents, then presumably all treaties are null and void, since these too do not have clanswomen's names.
Posted by: Genius at September 18, 2006 07:31 PM
since when have the clanmothers taken away the chiefs rights? of the 50 confederacy chiefs (appointed by the clanmothers) all would be required to sign any document of any significance.
Posted by: Ottawa Core at September 18, 2006 08:57 PM
Well Mr...or is it Ms, Mrs.? Ottawa Core? Well anyways....Yes the clanmothers DO HAVE the ability to take away a "Confederacy" Chief's rights and it is termed in a manner I am definite you wouldn't understand sooo we'll just leave it at that.....and for you up there Jgriffin where in the world did you come up with the conclusion that we stated our ancestors are stupid? There's a difference between stupidity and disadvantaged for your information....yes I said disadvantaged.....due to the language barrier there was a HUGE language barrier......besides that are you even aware of the complete circumstances surrounding the transfer of lands in the late 1700's and how we came to be here "Forced" on reservations?.....are you aware that the Ontario Gov' had assigned agents to our reservations and if we weren't back on the reservation by a certain time we were locked out and some even killed as a consequence......? Then the Residential schools came into the picture.....so are my ancestors stupid because they were placed there? Against their will? Taken from their homes to be beaten, molested, abused in every shape and form? The Government has done this to my people.....I wouldn't wish that upon any race or group of people.....just because we were the minority doesn't put the majority in the position to attempt to resocialize individuals against their will......yes the Governement is attempting to "financially compensate" for the wrongs they have inflicted upon my people BUT no amount of money will ever give back what was lost during that era.....This is what we are fighting against, years and years of geonicide....assimilation....decolonization....on behalf of our ancestors and our future generations to come.....I am proud to be Native...because have you ever wondered why, after all the attempts to destroy my people we are still here? I do.....and thats something to be proud of........we are still here....and for that I am proud.....
Posted by: Kryz~tee at September 23, 2006 08:25 PM
 
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