Gustafsen2
Go to end of this fileNews posted mostly by Ernie Yacoub. Archives were posted in illegible form by Settlers in Support of Indigenous Sovereignty; unedited except for removal of many "Urgent action -- call these people now!" -- notices. Accuracy of facts, quotes, etc. not verified.
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Subject: GUST. LAKE: EX-US ATT'Y GENERAL CALLS FOR PEACE
EX-U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL CALLS FOR INDEPENDENT
AND IMPARTIAL TRIBUNAL, NOT ARMED FORCE
Ramsey Clark, U.S. Attorney General under President Johnson, released a
letter August 29 TO BC Attorney General Ujjal Dosanjh. The letter has
been faxed to all major media but so far the media have chosen to ignore
the letter.
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RAMSEY CLARK
LAWRENCE W. SCHILLING
LAW OFFICE
36 EAST 12TH STREET
NEW YORK, N.Y. 10003
August 29, 1995
Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh
Attorney General
Parliament Building of British Columbia
Victoria, British Columbia
V8V 1X4
By Fax 604 387-6411
and Mail
Dear Mr. Attorney General,
I write to urge you to pursue nonviolent means of addressing the
issues raised by the present confrontation between traditional Shuswaps
Indians and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police near Gustafson Lake. There
is no justification for the use of force, or for conduct by law
enforcement that might provoke violence. The emotionalized state of mind
of all involved is clear. With the RCMP calling the Indians "thugs" and
"terrorists" and promising force, the risk they will employ excessive,
deadly force, causing bloodshed and loss of lives is overwhelming unless
restraint is ordered. Moral and legal leadership requires the avoidance
of violence and bloodshed. The responsibility is yours.
As a former Attorney General of the late United States, in the
turbulent late 1960s I recognized the protection of the public from
official violence as the highest civil rights enforcement duty of law
enforcement. Restraint, patience, civility, dialogue, negotiation and
simply waiting where there is no imminent threat to life are duties under
law. As a lawyer in government and private life these past 35 years I
have watched the effects of government violence on the quality of life
and respect for law and government from scores of cases like the
Orangeburg, South Carolina massacre, the Algiers Motel murders in
Detroit, riot prosecutions in dozens of cities, the Fred Hampton murder,
work as counsel of the Alaska Federation of natives, Leonard Peltier, the
Kent State University student body President indicted following the
shooting deaths of four students by National Guardsmen, prisoners
indicted after law enforcement killed 30 prisoners and 9 hostages in the
Attica prison rebellion and presently as counsel to survivors and
families of persons among the 86 church members who died at Mt. Carmel
Church, near Waco, Texas in 1993.
Nothing hurts law, government, or society more than violent clashes
between government agents and the people. When a people are acting in
conscience and belief and the government assaults them from arrogance,
prejudice, intolerance, or impatience, the government and its leadership
will be condemned in history for its disservice to peace, democracy,
liberty and humanity.
I urge you to act immediately to defuse a dangerous situation, to
begin dialogue and to seek arbitration of all issues perhaps by an
independent and impartial panel comprised of no Canadians and no Indians.
The peaceful resolution of this crisis is largely in your hands. If
there is violence, every hope for peace, justice and human dignity will
suffer.
If I can be helpful, call me.
Sincerely,
Ramsey Clark
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SUPPORT THE SHUSWAP DEFENDERS' RIGHT
TO AN INDEPENDENT AND IMPARTIAL
HEARING BEFORE THE
QUEEN'S PRIVY COUNCIL!
Governor General of Canada
His Excellency the Right Honorable Romeo Le Blanc
Rideau Hall
1 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A1 Canada
Phone: (613) 993-9530
Fax: (613) 990-7636
-.-.-.-. Your urgent protests to:
RCMP Public Complaints Commission Phone: 1-800-665-6878
Government of British Columbia - 1-800-663-7867 and ask for:
B.C. Premier Mike Harcourt who, briefed by the police, called the
Sundancers terrorists. email: Premier
(they shut it down, ask them why) phone 604-387-1715, fax 604-387-0087
B.C. Attorney General, Ujjal Dosanjh, who denies that this is about
Sovereignty, land and culture, not law and order. email: Attorney
General phone 604-387-1866, fax 604-387-6411
B.C. Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, John Cashore (still in hiding), who
should have immediately spoken out in support all First Nations People,
calling for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. email: Aboriginal
Affairs
Prime Minister Jean Chretien
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Canada
Phone: (613) 992-4211
Fax: (613) 941-6900
-.-.-.-. Solidarity, support, and inquiries to:
Dr. Bruce Clark: (613) 741-7065; fax (613)741-7077
Splitting The Sky: (403) 865-1784
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posted by
S.I.S.I.S. Settlers In Support of Indigenous Sovereignty
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Subject: MOHAWKS SEIZE CROWN BUILDING
MOHAWKS SEIZE GOVERNMENT BUILDING IN ASSERTION OF
MOHAWK SOVEREIGNTY AND IN SOLIDARITY WITH SHUSWAP
DEFENDERS
the following document was received today, sent by the Canadian Alliance
in Solidarity with Native Peoples, phone (416) 972-1573, Fax (416) 972-6232
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 30, 1995
TO ALL MEDIA:
OSEKEN - The Mohawk People of Grand River have seized a Crown government
building located on the so-called Globe property which is under the
jurisdiction of the Mohawk People near the City of Brantford, as of 9 am.
today.
The Crown illegally assumed jurisdiction over Mohawk property but have
been served with a Notice of Original Jurisdiction by the Mohawk People
of Grand River.
The Crown has disputed Original Title and has recently conducted a
campaign, through Crown legislated Band Councils, to terminate Original
Title through Federal Government policies patterned after the 1969 White
Paper termination policy.
The Mohawk people are also protesting Crown actions against the
Shuswap (Secwepemc) Original Title holders near Gustafsen Lake is a
direct attempt to terminate Original Title on lands which are beyond the
treaty frontier.
These Crown actions contravene the 1948 international conventions for
the prevention and punishment of the Crime of Genocide, for which the
Crown is a signatory.
The Mohawk People have appointed Richard Hill of the Mohawk Turtle
Clan as spokesperson.
- 30 -
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Mr. Richard Hill, spokesperson for the Mohawk People.
Telephone: 519-445-2592 Facsimile number: 519-445-2090
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Subject: NATIONAL COLUMNIST: NO WACO AT GUST. LAKE (fwd)
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST SAYS MEDIA COVERAGE OF "AMBUSH"
OF RCMP "DOESN'T HOLD UP"
RCMP SHOULD AVOID
WACO-STYLE SHOOTOUT IN B.C.
William Johnson
Canadian Syndicated columnist - carried in many Canadian papers
reprinted from the Montreal Gazette; all headings as in original article
Tuesday, August 29/95
OTTAWA - Now, wait a minute. We don't need a Waco-style shootout scene
in this country. Nor do we need an Oklahoma City-style guerrilla war
against innocent people - including the police. Nor do we need a
deceptive propaganda campaign.
As I was writing this yesterday afternoon, events at the James ranch
on Gustafson Lake seemed to be moving towards a violent confrontation. If
someone is killed there, all of Canada will have taken a turn for the worse.
Sunday evening, shock waves rippled across the country at the
annoncement by the RCMP that two of their men had been shot in the back,
saved only by their bulletproof vests.
A HAIL OF BULLETS
The newspapers yesterday played it big: "Indians fire at Mounties in
B.C." reported "The Gazette" across the top of Page A1. "Rebel natives
ambush Mounties," reported the Citizen in Ottawa. The Globe: "Mounties
hit in Indian standoff: bulletproof vests save fleeing officers; B.C.
minister calls for surrender without amnesty."
The accounts were vivid: "Indian rebels ambushed an RCMP team
yesterday with a hail of bullets that hit two officers near an armed camp
on private land," stated the Canadian Press report carried by "The
Gazette".
Perhaps it's the old newsman in me, but I'm uneasy about the
reporting. Journalists have been kept away from the scene by the RMCP,
and the native occupiers could notell their side of the story because the
Mounties have cut off their means of communication.
The Canadian Press account carried a dateline at 100 Mile House, B.C.,
a good distance from the scene of the "ambush". The reporter stated as
fact that "Indian rebels ambushed an RCMP team with a hail of bullets."
Professionalism would have required that he add: "according to an RCMP
official."
Here you have a confrontation, a war of nerves, a propaganda campaign
in a remote area of British Columbia. Reporters should not take sides and
decide who is right. They do have a responsibility to the public to be
cautious, to recognize that both sides have an interest in manipulating
them, but only one side really has access to them and controls what they
are told.
STORY DOESN'T STAND UP
Something, perhaps my gray hair, tells me that the story of an
"ambush" in a "hail of bullets" fired by semi-automatic weapons doesn't
stand up. When an ambush involves crossfire from two sides on
unsuspecting targets - the story told by the Mounties - one would expect
that someone would get hurt. If there is no wounded Mountie to photograph
and show the pictures of, if there is no bullet-torn clothing to hold up
ata press conference, I begin to sense that thre is more or less to the
"ambush" story than what reporters so confidently reported.
Yesterday, Bruce Clark, the lawyer for the Indians occupying the
perimeter of the James ranch, flew from Ottawa to Williams Lake, B.C., to
communicate with his clients. He has been cut off from them by the RCMP's
action in preventing the use of the radio-telephone from the camp.
I spoke to him in Vancouver where he was between flights. "Shooting
police officers in the back is entirely inconsistent with everything that
my clients are doing," he told me. "It seems fundamentally inconsistent
with my clients' philosophy as I understand it, which essentially has
been a defensive posture in order to precipitate a legal hearing. So I
must go and get instructions and clarify this situation."
Clark did not suggest that his clients would not use their weapons if
the police mounted an assault on their camp. "Both constitutionally and
at common law, and under the Criminal Code, a person is entitled to
self-defence to resist force with force."
The dissidents, advised by Clark, maintain that Indian land in B.C.
was never surrendered, that their right to self-government is
constitutionally entrenched and they want a hearing for their legal case
before an impartial tribunal, that is, one that is neither Indian nor
Canadian. They maintain that the RCMP has no jurisdiction over them on
Indian land.
Whatever the merit of their legal position, a satisfactory solution
will hardly be reached by a Waco-style solution.
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Subject: GUST. LAKE - AUGUST 31, 1995 (fwd)
After being stonewalled by police yet again this
morning, Dr. Bruce Clark, lawyer for several of the
Defenders of the Shuswap Nation, gave the police an
ultimatum: either let him into the camp to see his
clients, or send him home. Police did neither, so Dr.
Clark went to the airport and prepared to fly home to
Ottawa.
Police have claimed they could not let Clark into the
camp for his own safety; Clark replied that it was
ludicrous to think that his clients would fire on their
lawyer. He also pointed out that safety concerns did not
prevent the RCMP from letting Ovide Mercredi into the
camp. According to Clark, police attempts to prevent
him from meeting with his clients while continuing to
discuss "negotiations" was a "manipulation of public
opinion".
Shortly before Dr. Clark was to board the plane in
Williams Lake, two RCMP officers arrived via police
helicopter and pleaded for Dr. Clark to return to the
camp. An RCMP officer said, "Frustration is
understandable". Clark replied, "frustration is not the
problem. Deceoption is the problem. Bad faith is the
problem". After the RCMP promised to let him into the
camp at 2 pm, Clark agreed to return to the camp.
At approximately 6 pm, Dr. Clark came out of the
Defenders' camp. In his hands were a handful of bullet
casings and an affidavit sworn by an independent
journalist inside the camp.
According to Dr. Clark, the casings and the affidavit
show that police *have* been firing directly at people
inside the camp.
The affidavit reads:
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I, Tron Halle, freelance cameraperson, of the City of
Vancouver in the Province of British Columbia, make
oath and say:
1. Exhibit A hereto is a 223 casing which can be fired
out of an M-16 assault rifle, such as is issued to the
police tactical units.
2. There is no weapon at the Gustafsen Lake Indian
encampment that is capable of firing a 223 shell.
3. Exhibit A was found on the road after a police tactical
unit officer fired his rifle directly at persons from the
said encampment.
4. Exhibit B is a high-8 video tape that from behind
bushes records the following sequence of audio events:
a) warning shots fired into the air, apparently by
persons unknown from the said Indian encampment,
b) fire from the police directly at and narrowly
missing persons from the said Indian encampment, and
c) return fire, apparently issuing directly at the
said police.
5. A 9 mm shell casing was also found on the road from
where the police were located. It was found in the
vicinity of the aforesaid 223 casing, and it also must
have issued from a police weapon, since there is no
weapon in the said Indian encampment capable of
discharging a 9 mm shell.
6. Exhibit C....
(cut off by CBC reporter at Williams Lake)
The persons at the said Indian encampment are not going
to relinquish their defensive position until they hear
from Bruce Clark that the petition to their protector,
Queen Elizabeth II, dated 3rd of January 1995, and
accusing her judges, government, and police of
misprision of treason, fraud and complicity in the
genocide of the aboriginal peoples has been addressed.
Sworn before me at the Gustafson Lake Defenders' camp
this 31st of August 1995.
Tron Halle
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CBC reporter: So we're back to square one?
Clark: No, we're not back to square one.
CBC reporter: So how does this help negotiations?
Clark: This helps negotiations by making available to the
public the other side of the story.
Quotes transcribed from CBC TV 6 pm news broadcast.
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posted by S.I.S.I.S. Settlers In Support of Indigenous Sovereignty
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SHAKING HANDS WITH "WOLVERINE"
The greatest injustice at Gustafsen Lake: denying that the issue is political
By James MacKinnon, editor
Monday Magazine, Victoria BC - August 31, 1995 - p. 3
Soft-spoken, a little shy, a gentle hand shake, a shine of mischief in
his eyes. That's what I remember of a brief meeting with "Wolverine", now
appearing in the press as a grizzled, camouflaged front-man for the
so-called native terrorists at Gustafsen Lake.
According to what I've read over the last week, Wolverine is now a
fanatic, militant, doomsday cultist, and conspiracy theorist. As I write
this, it is touch and go whether he lives or dies.
Wolverine, how you've changed.
Distortion is the name of the game at Gustafsen Lake, where communication
is easily reduced to the blunt exchange of gunfire and the emptiness of
TV sound-bites.
But no distortion matches that of Attorney-General Ujjal Dosanjh, who
said the stand-off, "is a law enforcement matter and has nothing to do
with native land claims." It is the line he clung to all last week: that
the situation has nothing to do with politics, so he can keep his hands off.
This is a repugnant twisting of the truth. Is it possible the
government is so blind to the growing native sovereigntist movement that
they do not see it as political?
Let's take a look at the sovereigntist argument, and then decide
whether there is more to this saga than hooliganism.
The Gustafsen Lake rebels are native sovereigntists. As such, their
argument - a lingering legal question, really - overwhelms all of British
Columbia.
That legal conundrum is based on a fact regularly mentioned by
bureaucrats and columnists, academics and politicians: unlike the rest of
Canada, very little of B.C. was given up by the first nations through
treaties. This issue is so well understood that a Treaty Commission is
set to spend the next few decades drawing up those missing treaties.
The sovereigntists carry this fact further: if there are no treaties,
and the lands were never sold or lost in war, then much of B.C. is still
native land, and non-native history is a legacy of theft. It is a
position that reminds us, with unflinching clarity, that we are a
colonial nation, that B.C. is a province where one of the first
post-Confederation acts was to pass a bill ensuring the native majority
could not vote.
Constitutional lawyer Bruce Clark - the lawyer for the Gustafsen Lake
rebels - has developed legal arguments that stem from this simple idea.
His ideas are inflammatory; his documents accuse Canadian governments of
"fraud, treason and genocide."
Clark's legal argument is largely based on the Royal Proclamation of
1763. That dusty document, a sort of constitution for the then-unsettled
British colonies, states that native people "should not be molested or
disturbed" where their lands have not been ceded or purchased.
The relevance of the proclamation has been a concern for years, most
recently among the five judges who split judgement on the Gitxsan
Wet'suwet'en land-claims case in the B.C. Court of Appeal.
The majority ruling in that case, the most definitive land-claims
court battle in the province, tightly limited native people's rights on
traditional territory, and threw the whole question of native land title
back into the political arena.
It also left natives with few bargaining chips: with any legal land
title extinguished, they can only go a-begging through the new Treaty
Commission - which will not accept sovereigntists.
The Gitxsan Wet'suwet'en case is commonly cited as having decided the
1763 proclamation did not apply to B.C. Clark argues that while that case
begged the issue of native jurisdiction, the sovereigntists' argument
addresses it. If native people do hold title to lands where treaties have
not been signed, then the provincial courts are illegitimate, and can't
decide that their law shall rule.
This Catch-22 has made for bizarre courtroom drama, most notably in
the trial of sovereigntists arrested in the 1991 Duffy Lake Road
blockades set up outside Pemberton by Lil'Wat activists. Clark suggested
that the B.C. Courts throw themselves, rather than just the cases, out of
court. In the Lil'Wat case, Clark himself was thrown out - bodily.
It is the need to get a ruling on whose rules will stand that prompts
sovereigntists to make the seemingly wild demand that their case be heard
by the colonial government - the Queen and Privy Council - or another
international tribunal.
Complicated, political - the whole thing makes for lousy TV. Clark and
other sovereigntists have tried in vain to have their arguments heard in
forums ranging from B.C.'s Commission on Resources and the Environment to
the International Court at the Hague.
Theirs is the best catalogued of revolutions. And now, a handful of
them have decided to see who listens to them from an armed camp on a
dusty hill.
So, is it fair of the Attorney-General to say the stand-off is
non-political, a mere criminal matter?
Certainly *his* position is political. Naming the Gustafsen Lake
dissidents as criminals pleases the non-native electorate. It guarantees
that if the situation descends into a bloodbath, that blood won't appear
to stain the NDP government. And, if the stand-off ends peacefully - as
all must hope - the province will still have no reason to listen to the
"criminals".
Meanwhile, in many native communities, where divisions in native
politics are more clearly understood, the lesson must be clear.
Sign-waving and petitions and court appearances are often as effective as
silence. Now someone is waving a gun, and his voice, however distorted,
is being heard.
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Solidarity with the Mohawk, Shuswap, and all indigenous sovereign nations!
Posted by S.I.S.I.S. Settlers In Support of Indigenous Sovereignty
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Subject: GUSTAFSEN LAKE - A SPECIAL PLACE...
A PICTURE GIVES PAUSE -- Free Press
June 28, 1995
The Shuswap natives, Percy Rosette and Ernie Archie, talk about the spiritual
power of the Sundance, and the Sacred Arbor at Gustafsen Lake.
Who is to say? A roll of film only added to the mystery.
On my visit to the general area last week their visiting spokesman,
Splitting the Sky, told me I would be allowed to see and photograph
the Sundance grounds - from a distance.
This was fine. As we walked out to a place where spirits had revealed
ancient burial grounds they pointed to the Sacred Arbor in the distance
and continued walking. At the tail of the small group, I quickly snapped
a distant photo, as originally discussed, and continued.
While at the burial ground Percy and Ernie conversed briefly in Secwepemc
and told me they felt I shouldn't photograph the sacred site after all. I didn't
mention I already had.
When the film was processed the entire roll was fine, except for one
exposure - that of the Sacred Arbor.
Every frame, including that one, is crisp and clear and properly exposed.
But that one view is mysteriously obscured by a overlapping light pattern
inconsistent with the camera or the rest of the film.
Some things make one wonder.
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Last updated: Sunday, January 28, 1996 - 8:56:44 AM