Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

October 28, 2008

Help! Tyendinaga Mohawks brace for police carnage


HELP! TYENDINAGA MOHAWKS BRACE FOR VIOLENT ARRIVAL OF MEGA OPP “COP SHOP” TO BE BROUGHT IN – THEY THINK!

Mohawk Nation News
Oct. 28, 2008. Friends, allies and supporters are asked to come immediately to be witnesses of the attempted carnage of the Mohawks by the Tyendinaga Mohawk Police and the Ontario Provincial Police OPP. It is snowing. Bring cameras, camcorders, food, cells, phone cards and warm clothes, especially gloves. To get to the demonstration site, take the Trans Canada Highway 401 to the Marysville exit, head south on #49 all the way to #2 then turn right into the community. To help, call 613-813-1017, Email wasoonde3232@aol.com

The Mohawks of Tyendinaga are under siege right now. OPP Swat Team have been spotted in the area. Canada, Ontario and the band council want to set up a mega jail in the middle of the community. The Mohawks are adamantly against this. “There’s no need for it. We need fresh water, education and health facilities. And we want a peaceful resolution”, say the concerned Mohawks. Tyendinaga is a small community of several thousand. Some fear this may be more than just a “jail”. That jail can go anywhere in any community. It doesn’t have to go in the middle of ours. It is obviously being used as a tool of provocation.

Tensions are running high today as residents wait for the arrival of this “rogue” police station. Police Chief Ron Maracle has warned the people that he is prepared to use force to set up the multi million dollar high tech security jailhouse. He already threatened that if local residents keep complaining, they’ll be the first inmates.

The police building issue was hotly debated for sometime. The band council went around the community pretending to consult the people. Just about everybody said “no”. So the chief R. Don Maracle and the council of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte made a unilateral decision to bring it in anyway.

At the meeting update today the people vowed that the cop shop and construction equipment are not coming in. They are demanding that whatever equipment is already there be removed immediately.

The Tyendinaga Mohawk Police are threatening that if the pre fab jail is not allowed in and set up they will attack. Police Chief Ron Maracle has stated he will charge and arrest anybody who gets in his way. If he stirs it up enough, they can bring in the heavily equipped para-military forces of the OPP to really “give it to us”. Hundreds of OPP are dressing, gearing up and psyching themselves up at the parking lot in of the Napanee OPP Detachment looking for some ‘injuns’ they can beat up on. They did this on April 23, 2008 when the condo construction was stopped. Who knows where else other cops will be coming in from. The Trenton Army Base is nearby too.

The local corporate flyer known as the “Belleville Intelligencer” knew about the pending attack a day or so beforehand. They have been hanging around waiting for action.

The Mohawks have said over and over again they have no weapons and want a peaceful resolution.

To stop this madness and attempted bloodbath, call the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte Band Council Office to call off the hounds, TELEPHONE: 613-396-3424 Email: reception@mbq-tmt-org Fax 613-396-3627

Contact the Rotiskenekete: 613-391-4055, 613-813-4053,
OPP Eastern Regional Headquarters 613-284-4500 fax 613-284-4597
L.G. “Who-Wants-to-Help-Set-Up-a-Feeder-of-Young-Offenders-into-the-Big-Pens-for-the-Old-Long-Termers” Beechey, Chief Superintendent & Commander, Eastern Region, Smiths Falls. It looks like now that the charges have been dropped from most of the Mohawks, the cops are looking for more bodies. So they are setting up this trap to grab more of our people for the “incarceration industry”. The cops are at the building site videotaping everybody and then telling them everyone filmed will be charged to “interfering with police business”. The OPP are meeting opposition from band office employees who are telling them to leave.

MBQ R. Chief Don “The-Warden-Wanna-Be” Maracle, 613-396-3089, CELL 613-391-9249 RDONM@MBQ-TMT.ORG 613-396-3424 ext. 106 info@mbq-tmt.org
And his master Stockwell “Little-Guy-Who-Thinks-He’s-Big-Time” Day, Minister of Emergency Preparedness. A lot of money is going being washed through this project. Answers are needed.

MNN Staff Mohawk Nation News www.mohawknationnews.com
Katenies20@yahoo.com kahentinetha2@yahoo.com
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Barriere Lake Solidarity: Panel with Arthur Manuel

Canada, a Pariah State? Indigenous rights in Domestic and International Law a lecture by Arthur Manuel

Join the support in Montreal:
MONDAY, November 3, 6:30pm, 2008
McGill Faculty of Law, Moot Court
1st floor of New Chancellor Day Hall
3644 Peel Street
For childcare or translation call 514-398-7432, 48 hours in advance.

How well does Canada live up to its reputation as a human rights champion? When it comes to the situation of Indigenous peoples, it falls dreadfully short. Few people know that the Canadian government is regularly condemned by the United Nations. Canada doesn't only ignore minimum provisions of international law -- it also thinks little of domestic legal standards set by the Supreme Court. In its determination to retain control over the lands and resources of Indigenous peoples, Canada runs rough-shod over the emerging framework of international and domestic law supporting the rights of Indigenous peoples to self-determination and ownership of their traditional territories.
Few people can speak better to this reality than Arthur Manuel, spokesperson for the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade. Former Chief of the Neskonlith Band and chairperson of the Interior Alliance of BC First Nations, Manuel has been a leading voice of opposition to the Canadian government's agenda to "extinguish" Aboriginal and Treaty rights and assimilate Indigenous peoples into the Canadian body politic. Active locally in defense of Shuswap land (during the expansion of the Sun Peaks resort), and at the national level, he has also taken the struggle international, following in the path of his father, the late George Manuel, President of the National Indian Brotherhood and founder of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples. In the lecture, Manuel will lay out an alternative agenda for First Nations to achieve economic empowerment, third order government, and social and environmental justice.
Sponsored by: McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, QPIRG McGill, Barriere Lake Solidarity Collective

Defenders of the Land: The Barriere Lake Struggle Continues
A panel with Arthur Manual, Russell Diabo, and community representatives
TUESDAY, November 4, 6:00pm, 2008
Native Friendship Centre of Montreal
2001 boulevard St Laurent & Ontario (metro St-Laurent)
Free dinner served by Midnight Kitchen
For childcare or translation call 514-398-7432, 48 hours in advance.
Since the Department of Indian Affairs ousted their Customary Chief and Council in March 2008 and used the Surete du Quebec to forcibly impose the authority of a minority community faction, the Barriere Lake Algonquins have been organizing to roll-back the quiet coup d'etat. They are campaigning to make the government honour a number of agreements, including the Trilateral, a internationally praised land co-management and resource-revenue sharing deal the Algonquins signed with Canada and Quebec in 1991. It would significantly protect their forests from clear-cut logging, but it remains unimplemented.
They first signed the agreement after a campaign of logging road blockades, which culminated in a one-day blockade of highway 117, a crucial economic vein in Northern Quebec, in 1990. In October, 2008, Barriere Lake returned to the blockades, to force the government to respect their agreements and their leadership customs. The SQ brutally put down the peaceful action.
Community representatives will be joined by Arthur Manuel and Russell Diabo, a noted aboriginal policy analyst, editor of the First Nations Strategic Bulletin and advisor to Barriere Lake's Tribal Council, the Algonquin Nation Secretariat.
Sponsored by: QPIRG McGill, Barriere Lake Solidarity Collective
Donations are encouraged to support the community's political campaign. Dried goods are also welcome. For a full list of community needs: http://barrierelakesolidarity.blogspot.com/2008/03/donations.html
This event is part of Culture Shock, two weeks of programming aimed at exploring Canada's cultural and political myths. It is a collaborative effort by the McGill Anti-Racist Coalition (MARC), Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG McGill), and Student Society of McGill University (SSMU).
For a full schedule of events, visit http://www.qpirgmcgill.org/
Collectif de Solidarité Lac Barrière
http://www.solidaritelacbarriere.blogspot.com/
barrierelakesolidarity@gmail.com
514.398.7432

October 27, 2008

Army document reveals plan to seize 7 million acres in SE Colorado


Not 1 More Acre! PO Box 773, Trinidad, Colorado 81082, news@not1moreacre.net
Army Document Reveals Plan to Take 7 Million Acres in SE Colorado
From: Not 1 More Acre!

TRINIDAD, Colorado -- The Pentagon has been planning since at least 2004 to acquire almost 7 million acres in southeastern Colorado, forcing more than 17,000 residents off their land to establish the largest military base in the world, according to documents obtained in a federal court case. The unprecedented acquisition of 6.9 million acres, or 10,800 square miles, of private and public land would result in a military reservation larger than some states, including Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New Jersey. The multi-service battlefield would be more than triple the size of the enormous White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, which at 3,200 square miles is currently the largest military installation in the United States. It would undermine the whole southeastern corner of Colorado east of the Rockies destroying the last intact shortgrass prairie remaining in the American Great Plains. The May 2004 policy document prepared by Fort Carson was obtained as part of a federal court challenge to Pentagon plans to expand the size and boundaries of the 238,000-acre Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site (PCMS). A copy of the document, titled "Analysis of Alternatives Study: Pinon Canyon Manueuver Site, Colorado," can be found at www.not1moreacre.net/docs. Read more ...

Canada to examine disappeared children at residential schools

Schools commission to examine 'disappearances of children'
BILL CURRY AND JOE FRIESEN
Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081027.wgraves28/EmailBNStory/National/home October 27, 2008 at 8:01 PM EDT
OTTAWA and TORONTO — The commission examining Indian residential schools is launching a massive new research project to find out who is buried on school grounds and what happened to the young aboriginal boys and girls who left for boarding schools and never returned home.
Kimberly Phillips, a spokesperson for Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said the expanded research has been approved by Claudette Dumont-Smith, one of the commissioners. The “Missing Children Research Project,” as it has been named, will include “an examination of the number and cause of deaths, illnesses and disappearances of children at the residential schools as well as the location of burial sites,” Ms. Phillips said. Ms. Phillips said researchers will go through all relevant church and federal government records to find information that will help families looking for lost children. They will also prepare a questionnaire, and encourage former students and people who worked at the schools to come forward with their stories. According to a commission document obtained by The Globe and Mail, one option involves “visiting residential school sites where graves of Missing Children are located or the cemeteries near the schools where Missing Children have been buried.” Tuberculosis was the most common reason cited for deaths at schools across the country, however, survivors have said that rumours have circulated over the years that some of the forgotten children died of neglect, abuse or even murder. Read more ...
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081027.wgraves28/EmailBNStory/National/home