The Dominion - Dan Kellar

Walking for Peace, Respect and Friendship along the Grand River

dawn — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:55:14 +0000

Honouring our historical agreements through shared action

KITCHENER, ON—If you travel south along the winding 50-kilometres stretch of the Grand River between Kitchener and Caledonia, you will pass farms fields, forests, a sprawling patchwork of towns with their own industrial sites and golf courses, finally coming to the edge of the Six Nations reserve, and eventually, Kanonhstaton, the “protected place”—a site of Haudenosaunee land reclamation and defense. A brief walk from Caledonia's downtown, the site is still identifiable by the downed hydro tower at the entrance just off the highway, and the skeleton of the trailer burned in early 2008 by a gang of anti-reclamation settlers.

Located on the boundary between the Six Nation reserve and the settler town of Caledonia, Kanonhstaton has brought Indigenous land rights to the forefront of national attention over and over again in the past six years, gaining prominence rarely seen in land occupations since the 1990 Oka standoff.

Kanonhstaton is about reclaiming the land and stopping a housing development known as the Douglas Creek Estates. The initial action by the group of around twenty, mostly woman Indigenous land defenders was met with little protest locally, and instead garnered widespread support from settler allies.

But on April 20, 2006, the Ontario Provincial Police carried out a violent raid on the site, during which OPP tore open tents, tasered, pepper sprayed, beat, and ultimately, arrested 16 Indigenous people. That day, hundreds from the reserve flooded to the site in response to the raid, ejected the police, and proceeded to build road blockades. Following this unsuccessful eviction attempt, groups of white settlers began organising citizen councils and anti-native and anti-reclamation rallies, under a call for a return to the “rule of law and order.”

This act of police aggression and state intimidation did not end the reclamation. It did, however, lead to a series of violent confrontations and acts of intimidation between hostile Caledonians, the police, and Haudenosaunee land defenders that came to be known as the Caledonia crisis. Instead of breaking the camp, the raid worked to solidify resistance to the development.

“They [those who protect the land] have the dedication to hold on to the land for the next seven generations. We are here, we are here to stay, and we are not going anywhere!” proclaimed Dawn Smith during the sixth-year commemoration of the reclamation, which took place on April 28, 2012. Smith, an Indigenous land defender who was involved in the original reclamation action added: “When we started this, it was with a hope to bring the communities together... to commemorate the Haldimand deed.”

In the six years since the reclamation began, the Federal government, which is, according to Canadian laws, in charge of dealing with land claims, has done nothing to bring resolution to the issue. Ottawa added further insult by appointing the head of the botched police raid, Julian Fantino, to cabinet in 2011 first as Minister of State for Seniors, and then as Associate Minister of National Defence.

The government of Ontario, which has shifted all blame to the Federal government, also purchased the land in question from prospective developers for $15.8 million, settled for further millions with other affected Caledonians and businesses, and acted no further.

This inaction has left the situation simmering, leading to ongoing confrontations and arrests, including over 160 charges laid against Indigenous land defenders.

Ken Hewitt, formerly a lead organiser of the Caledonia Citizens' Alliance, a group which formed to organise anti-native rallies, is now the mayor of Haldimand County, which includes Caledonia. These rallies, now organised by a citizens’ council, known as “CANACE,” continue on a monthly basis with between two and ten attendees who gather and hold racist and anti-native signs as they parade along the boundaries of the reclamation site.

In February 2012, days before the sixth anniversary of the reclamation, a 17-year old Caledonian youth, wrote a suicide note and drove his parents' mini-van into the house on the site which has served as the headquarters of land defenders since the action began in 2006.

The youth ended up in hospital, and the attack left a large hole in the front of the house and troubling questions in the minds of many who live across the watershed and around south-western Ontario. The main question is: how can lasting peace be built with so much trauma and hurt remaining within and between settler and Indigenous communities?

Two weeks after this attempted suicide attack on Kanonhstaton, many of the activists and union organisers from across southwestern Ontario who have been active in the reclamation, were again invited to the site to discuss ideas for building peace between affected communities.

“We have to rebuild our historic friendships, through actively living the agreements that were created to guide our relationships—the Two Row Wampum and the Silver Covenant Chain, we have to respect Indigenous land rights and the Haldimand proclamation, and think to our common future on this land aboard our ever crowding vessels,” said Luke Stewart, a born settler on the Grand River, an indigenous solidarity activist, and a resistance movement historian, as we drove down from Kitchener for the first meeting.

After lengthy discussions between the more than 20 attendees, a proposal was voiced to hold an event which could bring all residents from across the Grand River watershed and from other up and downstream communities, to build the relationships that would make living by the historic agreements possible.

This proposal was eventually transformed into a plan to hold a peaceful rally, walk, and community celebration near the sixth anniversary of the raid. The day would be organized by the newly-formed April 28th Coalition, comprised of a diverse group of Indigenous and settlers,
the group taking its name from the day the Walk for Peace was to be held.

“I feel it is important to make a statement to the government after years of inaction on our unresolved land rights," said Tracy Bomberry, a journalist and Indigenous member of the April 28th coalition, when I asked about her involvement in the event. "A walk for peace will provide the opportunity to get the governments' attention and to educate the larger community of our outstanding land issues not only on Six Nations but across the country."

To guide their work, the coalition looks to historic agreements between the British Crown and the Haudenosaunee. One is the Silver Covenant Chain which represents the bow line of a European ship being tied to the “Great Tree of Life,” indicating cooperation since contact, and commemorated by “polishing the chain"—literally coming together to clean the wampum belt that the agreement is represented on.

The English also agreed to live with the Haudenosaunee in peace, respect, and friendship in accordance with the Guswhenta, or the Two Row Wampum. First agreed to by Dutch settlers and Haudenosaunee in 1613, this agreement has settlers and Indigenous moving forward in parallel on the same river (of life) in their own boats, where one group is not to impact the course (sovereignty) of the other.

“Clearly, somewhere along the way our ship was commandeered by villains and crashed into the Haudenosaunee canoe,” said Stewart, reflecting on the failure of settlers to respect the Two Row.

The other key agreement for the April 28th Coalition is the 1784 Haldimand Proclamation. After the British lost the American War of Independence, the British crown granted six miles deep of either bank of the Grand River to their war ally the Haudenosaunee after purchasing the land from the Mississaugas. This is known as the Haldimand Proclamation.

“While some of this land was later sold off—blocks one to six—and some was leased to settlers, including the Caledonia claim, the vast majority has never been legally transferred from Six Nations,” said Stewart. In another obvious breach of peace, respect and friendship, the money paid in the few legitimate deals from blocks one to six was not kept in trust, added Stewart, it was instead plundered by colonial administrators and misappropriated for infrastructure projects that built Ontario and Canada.

On April 28th 2012, a thousand Canadians from across Southern Ontario participated in the Walk, Rally, and Potluck for Peace, Respect, and Friendship and joined with Indigenous land defenders and families who are tired of the inaction and disrespect shown by all levels of Canadian government, to demand that Six Nations land rights be respected.

Stewart described the walk, which was led by a 25-metre long representation of the Two Row, as “a call to honour and respect our historical agreements, and move toward a peaceful future of healthy coexistence, not colonial subjugation and corporate land theft.”

The march was not the only event the coalition has been working on, said Stewart, who pointed to public information sessions, documentary movie nights, and community meals organised in the lead-up to April 28th that ensured a respectful day with good representation from many communities.

The walk through Caledonia's downtown to Kanonhstaton was occasionally delayed by a small group of Caledonians, who ignored a history of colonialism as they sneered “it is a little late for peace” and demanded to see the passports of marshalls, who asked them to kindly “join in or stop obstructing the path of peace and friendship.” These hecklers included those who had received million dollar settlements for the impact of the situation to their lives.

Local authorities refused to stop the anti-reclamation rallies, but did try and halt the community events on April 28. "Hewitt went to extraordinary measures to stop the walk, with fear mongering in the media and proposing to council that they seek an injunction," said Stewart.

After the rally, march, potluck meal, games, concert and social at Kanonhstaton on April 28th, the buses departed and residents returned home.

“This is only the starting point in an ongoing dialogue and awareness raising on Six Nations land Issues, it was a chance to network, share a meal, make new friends, enjoy some music—all in the spirit of peace, respect and friendship,” said Bomberry. In communities all along the Grand River, added Bomberry, meetings to keep the dialogue going and to build on the momentum of the walk have been set to take place throughout the spring and summer.

Dan Kellar is a born settler on the Grand River Territory, and is an anarchist social justice organiser, who participated in April 28th coalition activities. Dan co-hosts Grand River Radical Radio (GRRR!) and AW@L Radio on 100.3 CKMS-FM (http://soundfm.ca).

April 28 Coalition

Beating Bad Habits

Tim McSorley — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 10:00:27 +0000

How community organizers are working together for more secure online communications

Image by Shira Ronn

KITCHENER, ON—Over the past two years infiltration and disruption of activist and media organizations as well as anarchist communities by undercover cops have been on the rise across Canada. This has included high profile cases of police infiltrating groups organizing resistance to the 2010 Winter Olympics on Coast Salish Territories and the G20 summit in Toronto.

Throughout these experiences one thing is now clear: beyond our often naive approach to security culture many in the social and ecological justice movements are not practicing good computer security habits.

In response to this growing need the Montreal-based Anarchist Tech Security collective (Anarchistes pour des technologies solidaires—ATS) formed after the G20. Mobilizing to fill the tech security gap they provide workshops and information about online safety and anonymity. “I think in a general sense we are working on bringing the secure technologies and useful tools to anarchists,” said founding member Boskote (a pseudonym).

The ATS has been travelling throughout the Maritimes, Quebec and Ontario since summer 2010 holding workshops on tech security in front of all kinds of crowds: from small groups in living rooms to standing room only halls at anarchist book fairs.

“People were stressing due to all the surveillance and we responded to that,” said Boskote. “Email and instant messaging is insecure by default; it was normal, but as surveillance and infiltration was becoming more obvious, that normal became a problem.”

Beyond showing participants how to set up certified and encrypted email, anonymous and secure web browsing and verified and encrypted instant messenger programs, the two-and-a-half hour workshop also opened up discussions on hard drive and file encryption, security firewalls and the way internet communications work. Sometimes the workshops were followed by discussions on open source software (see box 1), steps for establishing difficult to break passwords (see box 2), or emerging ideas on the intriguingly named “zones of opacity.”

”The inspiration for the ‘zone of opacity’ comes from a community in Athens, Greece, where there is a really strong anarchist presence,” said Boskote. “The relationships...and all the aspects of what is going on in a space (physical, social, or technological), are opaque to the state or other form of dominating power,” he explained. “It is not possible for the state to see or know what is going on there.” The ATS emphasizes that if the state cannot determine your daily patterns and movements, your attitudes and relationships, or how you accomplish the objectives of your aspirations, it will be hesitant to invade your community’s spaces.

“We hope to help build zones of opacity in anarchist communities,” said Boskote. “If we can prevent the state from surveilling us we will be stronger.”

One of the challenges of sharing these kinds of skills, though, is the widely varying degree of experience among community members. While some—especially those with prior computer experience—have found the ATS's information relatively straightforward and easy to understand others find the learning curve a bit steeper.

“[The workshop] was a lot of info and I will likely have to go over a lot of it again,” said one participant after their first session with ATS. “But it was surprising how easy it was to set up and start using these tools. Plus, if practicing better computer security will help keep my friends and allies out of jail, then yeah, it is obviously worth it.”

It is not only participants who are still adapting to the new reality of online security.

“Far from being experts, we started out knowing nothing about this. We were figuring it out by ourselves and it took quite a while,” said Boskote. “It is through the process of these workshops that we are learning more and more about computer security as some people who come attend the workshops help to fill the gaps in our knowledge.”

It is important for us to recognize the values in the way these tools were created, Boskote said, relating as they do to the horizontal, anti-corporate organizing of the subculture of open source software and self-identified hackers who built these tech security systems.

Even with this recognition however, he explained “The technology that we use needs to change along with, and contribute to, the changes of the rest of society.”

With so many in need of creating a safer space online, and with a limited supply of knowledgeable facilitators, people may be overwhelmed at the prospect of setting up their own systems of computer security. Thankfully, those who are yet to organize a tech security workshop in their town can start practicing good computer security guided by great online resources.

Security In A Box is a collaborative project whose aim is to "meet the digital security and privacy needs of advocates and human rights defenders." The site includes how-to guides addressing various digital security issues and offers free instruction taking users through the processes of setting up and maintaining private internet communications and secure file storage systems.

With the spread of social media, computer security and web anonymity have become important issues. “The kind of information people are posting on the internet is the kind of stuff that the state usually infiltrates groups to get: social networks, personal relationships, day-to-day movements. That is what surveillance is and that is a major problem that needs to be criticized and thought about,” said Boskote.

Noting that facebook and other social media are “really useful tools,” Boskote argues that “we need to figure out how to separate out their usefulness as tools and the dangerous aspects of sharing information that the state can use to infiltrate, disrupt and repress our movements. We need to use the tools in a safer way.” (See box 3.)

As social and ecological justice movements grow in the face of increasing criminalization of dissent, there is a need to build a tech security culture beyond the use of secure communications and Trojan-free computers. (Trojans are malicious programs which create “back-door” access to your computer over the internet or use your computer to carry out attacks on other computers).

“We stress this in our workshops: tech and computer security technologies are necessary but not sufficient part of security culture,” said Boskote. Taking out your cell phone’s battery while planning demonstrations may eliminate audio surveillance but, as was highlighted at the ATS workshop, if tech security is being used and the other security measures are being ignored then there are obvious failure points. In other words: tech security does not identify an infiltrator or informant in your community.

In addition to understanding and implementing computer security, the need to build supportive and resilient communities that communicate across regions remains. “There is no way to make communication 100 per cent inaccessible to surveillance and it's obviously not possible to make ourselves socially secure,” said Boskote in his final remarks before departing to New York to hold another workshop at the city’s annual anarchist book fair. “In both cases, we just have to try our best. Security goes way beyond tech security.”

Box 1

Quick Reference Guide:

More Secure Email address: riseup.net, resist.ca
Secure Email Client: Thunderbird with gpg and enigmail addons
Browser: Firefox with ToR (software which works to anonymize web browsing), noscript, https anywhere addons
Online Chat (most services): Adium or pidgin with otr plugin
Encryption: True Crypt
Operating System: Linux
“Secure” social networking: we.riseup.net
Guides and Info: security.ngoinabox.org- security.angrynerds.com - help.riseup.net - we.riseup.net/ats-mtl

Box 2

Password creation:
Search Youtube for: How To Choose Strong Passwords

A sentence that only you will think of/a unique phrase that you will remember (8+words long).
Substitute numbers for words where possible or add numbers to end of phrase.
Take the first letter from each word.
Substitute special characters and numbers for letter (a=@, s=$, i or 1=!, etc.)
Use suffixes for different sites (facebook=fbk, twitter=twt, youtube=ytb, etc.)
Have a few of these passwords depending on how secure you need.
Change passwords every 3-6 months.

Box 3

ATS Facebook Tip
Setting up a single account on Facebook which is for a whole group who shares a password, where members can access the accounts anonymously through ToR (torproject.org), and folks can communicate with these entities and remain anonymous. It does not get away from all the problems of Facebook but it creates barriers between these online presences and peoples’ actual identities. Things like that try to make it so we can use these important tools when it is necessary without having all the negative consequences.

Dan Kellar is an organizer with AW@L in Kitchener, co-host of AW@L radio on rabble.ca and 100.3 SoundFM co-op radio Waterloo, and was a co-conspirator with the 2010 G20 and anti-Olympic media centres.

This article was produced with the support of Koumbit, as part of an ongoing series on technology, society and politics. Koumbit is a non-profit company which promotes the use of free & open source software by community groups in Quebec, Canada and abroad.

Tech Watch

Free Trade Goes Local

Cameron Fenton — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:54:22 +0000

Provincial “barriers to trade” broken under new regional agreements

WATERLOO—While the Canadian government was prorogued and the Canadian public was watching the Olympics, Prime Minister Stephen Harper quietly signed the Canada-USA Procurement Agreement (CUPA).

The agreement navigates around a recently enacted United States “Buy-American” policy. Critics of the CUPA argue that the agreement further locks neoliberal ideologies into Canadian-American trade policy. This free-market expansion challenges or removes much of the capacity for provincial and local governments to control local economic development decisions.

The implementation of the CUPA foreshadows Canada’s agenda at the June 2010 G8/20 meetings where, as Harper stated during a planning meeting in Ottawa in March, he will be urging the G20 to “open global markets” and “resist protectionism.” Miranda Goeltom, Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Indonesia, noted at the G20 Workshop on the Global Economy in May 2009 that the G20 agreed upon commitments to “reinvigorate world trade and investment,” primarily through “reducing trade and investment barriers and financial protectionism.”

The CUPA overcomes what a March 2010 edition of the Global Trade Alert report calls a “worrying measure” of protectionism. Under the CUPA, resisting protectionism means decision-makers will have to consider bids from American contractors for procurement contracts, giving no favour to local companies. In an appendix in the CUPA titled “Market Access,” procurement associated with publicly funded schools and local economic development programs in Ontario and Quebec are not protected from the CUPA’s reach. For other provinces and territories, specific exclusions were created for education and local economic development programs.

While there are no tariff barriers between provinces in Canada, differences in regulation and approaches to management in environmental protection, labour rights, health care delivery, and public education are equated to barriers by trade economists. These views are shared by a group which holds considerable influence at the G20 summits—the World Trade Organization. Agreements such as the 2007 Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) between Alberta and BC aim to eliminate these barriers.

In 2009 the Council of Canadians (CoC) released “State of Play: Canada’s Internal Free Trade Agenda,” a report giving updates on TILMA and other interprovincial Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). The report critiques these agreements for allowing “corporations and individuals to challenge any provincial or municipal government measure they feel ‘restricts or impairs’ their investment. Even measures designed to protect the environment and public health can be brought to an unelected TILMA dispute panel with the authority to impose penalties as high as $5 million [against the challenged government].”

This allowance is akin to the CUPA provisions in Notes to Appendix A, which challenge strengthening environmental protections as “disguised barrier[s] to trade,” or the Chapter 11 review panels of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which allows corporations to sue governments when they change policies or regulations that could affect trade. A 2009 case brought to the NAFTA review panel by DOW Chemicals found that Quebec’s restrictions of certain toxic pesticides were considered a disguised trade barrier.

“It [TILMA] will dramatically restrict the ability of governments—including local governments—to act in the public interest,” said Murray Dobbin of the CoC.

Unlike NAFTA, in TILMA there is no limit on how many times a corporation may bring an issue to the dispute panel. If a regulation is found to be a “disguised barrier to trade,” foreign corporations may continue to sue the offending government until that regulation is changed. To avoid continual negative repercussions, governments may avoid implementing stronger standards and policies.

The CoC reported that “some US states have shown an interest in signing TILMA, which would lead to massive deregulation in Canada as we harmonize policies with the United States. TILMA thus becomes an issue of democracy and of deep integration with the US.” With the two agreements sharing many of the same clauses, the implementation of the CUPA forces many of TILMA’s clauses onto provinces, states, and municipalities who had little-to-no input into the agreement.

Canada is discussing a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Europe that the CoC says “is likely to put pressure on provincial governments to increase privatization, including in areas such as child care and public health care...municipal governments will also be forced to fall into line.”

Fraser Institute economist Amela Karabegovic and trade advisor Robert Knox wrote that “interprovincial barriers are, and will remain, a major roadblock in the current negotiations... the free-trade agreement with the EU is an opportunity for Canadian governments to finally resolve the remaining interprovincial barriers.” It becomes clear that the regulatory harmonizations that result from TILMA and the CUPA must take place for FTA negotiations to continue.

“The [G8] recognized in its Pittsburgh statement last year that ‘there are different approaches to economic development and prosperity,’ which is the same as saying that free trade, privatization and open markets don’t always work,” Stuart Trew of the CoC told The Dominion. “Harper disagrees with that idea and has made noises that he’d like the G20 to broaden its mandate to go after ‘protectionism in all its forms,’ which would include important national measures to protect the environment or help local industries grow up and compete.”

Dan Kellar is an organizer with AW@L and is co-host of AW@L Radio. He will see you in the streets of Toronto in June.

This story was published in The Dominion's special issue on the G8 and G20 summits in Ontario. We will continue to publish independent, investigative news about the G8 and G20 throughout the month of June.

For up-to-the-minute G8/G20 news from the streets of Toronto, visit the Toronto Media Co-op.

CUPA chainsaw

Torch Ignites Resistance

Tim McSorley — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 06:27:17 +0000

Opposition to Olympic Torch spreads across Canada

KITCHENER-WATERLOO—Emerging from the October 2007 Indigenous Peoples gathering in Sonora, Mexico, was a call out for an anti-Olympics convergence in Vancouver in 2010, to coincide with the opening days of the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics. In February 2009, the Olympics Resistance Network (ORN) in British Columbia issued a statement: Solidarity and Unity in Opposing the 2010 Olympics.

The call was heard in Ontario, and since then resistance to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in the province has drawn attention to ongoing local colonialism and environmental destruction. Actions undertaken by anti-poverty, Indigenous and solidarity activists have highlighted how the Olympics impact the gentrification of Vancouver and Whistler, the destruction of native lands, and the criminalization of activists—all also occurring in communities across Ontario.

The Olympic torch is to arrive in Ontario on December 12, 2009, after departing from Victoria, BC, on October 30.

In August 2009, headlines were made when residents of Six Nations, in Southern Ontario, started debating the torch relay’s intrusion into their territory. In October 2008, protests followed the Canadian Pacific Olympic Spirit Train through Ontario (including a rail blockade outside of Toronto). In March 2009, activists disrupted the Royal Bank Torch Relay press conference in Toronto and directly confronted the then-Assembly of First Nations chief, Phil Fontaine. In October 2009, the Olympic Resistance Network-Ontario (ORN-O) released a statement calling for autonomous actions to disrupt the torch relay.

Wherever groups have organized against the Olympics, activists have been targeted by policing and intelligence agencies who have visited and interrogated people at their homes and workplaces, and in some cases even pulled them out of university classrooms.

One of these activists is Melissa Elliot, a founding member of Young Onkwehonwe United (YOU) and one of the individuals who confronted Fontaine this past spring. Elliot has been central in the debate about the torch relay at Six Nations, where youth are organizing to stop the torch passing through their territory. They have echoed the slogan that unites much of the Olympic resistance movement nationwide: “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land.”

Elliot says that at Six Nations, “We have land rights and we have treaties that are nation-to-nation.” She emphasizes that the torch relay compromises their assertion of sovereignty: “They’re not coming to us under the Two Row Wampum and asking if they can cross our territory.” She continued, “They are going through band council and asking if it can pass through our Canadian municipality—we’re not a Canadian municipality, we are a nation.”

In Stratford, 100 kilometres northwest of Six Nations, the annual, six-month-long Shakespeare Festival has been targeted by Stratford Action for Equality (SAFE). Comparisons are drawn to the Olympics by showing how the festival committee is an instigator and propagator of local gentrification, which targets low- and no-income communities, and of neoliberal exploitation of art and culture.

While attempts to convince City Hall to block the torch from coming through Stratford have been rejected, SAFE continues to conduct rallies and small actions directed against the city and Olympic sponsors. These actions have ignited debates around gentrification in Stratford and Julian Ichim, one of SAFE’s core organizers, draws connections between his own community and the 2010 Olympics. “Stratford is a town based on tourism,” says Ichim. “We have a lot of social cleansing [...] removing specific undesirable elements to create the image of the town being perfect. And the reality of the situation is that what is happening in BC is happening in Stratford [...] so we have a direct interest and a direct tie to what is going on.”

Elliot and Ichim both think that one major benefit of working on the No 2010 campaign is that it has created new energy for direct action and change in their respective communities despite the negative police and media attention that has been focused on anti-Olympics organizers across the country. Elliot adds that the No 2010 campaign has played a big role in the recent trend towards political engagement and mobilization among youth from Six Nations.

Elliot and Ichim are both also excited about the positive impacts Olympics organizing has made on the activist community in Southern Ontario. Ichim says that anti-Olympics organizing in Stratford has helped to “take things to the next level...It has revealed the inefficacy of the democratic process, it has exposed the city and has exposed the liberals who claim to be the friends of poor people, it has exposed all the hypocrisy.”

Ichim and Elliot both stressed that solidarity between native and non-native activists has been one of the campaign’s strengths. Ichim says, “The Olympics are imperial in nature. In Canada the issue is that the Olympics are taking place on stolen Native land.” For him this equates simply: “As settlers we have to take a stand...while some people think that it is an issue of the past, it is still today stolen land.”

For Elliot, one of the reasons she is enthusiastic about the campaign against the torch relay and the Olympics is that, “We’re all working together, and that is very powerful: non-natives and natives working together, that is a huge step forward in healing.”

Alex Hundert is a founding member of AW@L and the KW Community Centre for Social Justice (kwccsj) in Kitchener. He is a co-host of AW@L Radio on 100.3 SoundFm, and the Rabble Podcast Network.

Dan Kellar is an organizer with AW@L. He recently completed a master’s degree focusing on the application of environmental impact assessment legislation to the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Torch Ignites Resistance

Case Closed?

Moira Peters — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:20:53 +0000

Site 41 resistance seeks revocation of environmental permit

WATERLOO, ON—The “People’s Fire” has been allowed to burn to ashes at the 150-day-old protest camp on 2nd Concession Road in Simcoe County, across from the proposed Site 41 landfill development 45 kilometres east of Blue Mountain, Ontario.

Site 41 sits on top of the Alliston aquifer, which contains some of the world’s purest groundwater and is connected with water sources across Southern Ontario, including Georgian Bay and the Oak Ridges Moraine.

For the protesters, many small victories have been achieved; still, this community demonstrates vigilance in its efforts to ensure a landfill is never built on the property.

September 22, 2009 will remain lodged in the memories of everyone involved in the Site 41 struggle as the day Simcoe County Council voted 26-3 in favour of cancelling the proposed garbage dump project.

However, those who remained encamped until October 20 (when they decided to shut down the protest camp for pre-winter agricultural preparations) note that while the current project has been called off, Council voted 22-7 against a motion to have the Ministry of the Environment’s Certificate of Approval (CofA) rescinded. The defeat of this second motion raises doubts about Council’s sincerity in their disapproval of the controversial dump project.

A communiqué from those who kept vigil at the site after the Sacred Fire was allowed to burn down in September was printed in a recent edition of the Tekawennake News. It declared: “The struggle has been so long, so hard and the most current victory so tangible, so close, that it seems unforgivable to cast any doubt on the enthusiasm so freely offered by the media and politicians.”

The letter continues, “First and most pressing, the CofA is still in effect and its power cannot be underestimated... This is a very real danger.”

Rejecting the current CofA would force any newly-proposed developments to undertake a new environmental impact assessment process. This was a process which, for this contested garbage dump development, took more than 20 years to complete, and was loaded with well-documented political pressure. By not annulling the CofA, Council leaves open the possibility for future development of the site—either for the County or a private developer who purchases the land.

Those writing from the People’s Fire insist they will continue to protest, as their communiqué states, “Until such a time as the Certificate of Approval is revoked for good.”

They acknowledge that, in the face of massive public relations spending by the County, they "need more than ever to maintain a strong presence and not to suddenly fade away in the face of our first victories.” They warn that “there is a very real danger of privatization...” and that without unrelenting pressure, another 30-year-long battle against development could take place, “This time at the hands of a faceless, multinational corporation instead of a local, elected County Council.”

Council has budgeted $250,000 for public relations consultations in an effort at “cleansing the fallout of the Site 41 debacle,” wrote Travis Mealing of the Midland Mirror.

While the debate around the PR costs continues, County environmental services director, Rob McCullogh, insists that restoring the land that was disrupted due to construction of garbage holding cells would be too expensive. The high-end estimate for recovery at the site is $368,000.

Refusing restoration means damage which occurred, according to the Council of Canadians, when cell construction commenced in violation of County Council approval processes, will not be reversed.

County Warden, Tony Guergis, maintains that the County no longer seeks to build a landfill on the site. However, Guergis’ sincerity is also being called into question; soon after he was elected, Guergis changed his stark opposition to the dump to a position of strong support. Meanwhile, County CAO Mark Aitken recently asked, in reference to removing the infrastructure that was built to support a dump site, “Why would [the County] remove all those things when you’re not sure if they have a use in the future?”

While the protest camp itself is no longer active, the campaigns for ecological and social justice continue. The "Restore and Revoke" campaign is working toward having the CofA cancelled and ensuring that the land is restored to a state which is as near its pre-disruption state as possible. A campaign is also underway to have the mischief and intimidation charges dropped for the 17 protesters arrested at Site 41. Only Indigenous protesters were charged with intimidation.

United by the responsibility of local environmental and community protection, and by the direct actions they took to protect the land and the water from the project that the Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the UN General Assembly, Maude Barlow, calls “ill conceived,” the Site 41 resistance vows to persevere until the permanent restoration and protection of this precious land is achieved.

Dan Kellar is a geography PhD student in Waterloo and an analytical banner painter with AW@L.

Site 41 Garbage Drink Cropped

For the Water

dru — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 05:52:40 +0000

Opposition to Site 41 unites Natives, farmers

SIMCOE COUNTY, ON—It has been nearly four months since a group of Anishinabe women from Beausoleil First Nation set up a protest camp across the road from a construction site where a new garbage dump is being built. More than 20 years have passed since members of the local agricultural community started the fight to protect what has become known as the world’s purest water.

Tomorrow, August 25, Simcoe County Council will meet, and the agenda includes a vote on a one-year moratorium on development of Dump Site 41. Many Canadians outside the county are familiar with Site 41 because of recent public protests.

Mark Calzavera, the new Council of Candians (COC) organizer for Ontario-Quebec, says, “Ninety-nine per cent of the work that I’ve done has been on Site 41.”

"We’ve really been putting a full court press on the issue because the time frame on the issue is very, very critical," he adds. "The construction is happening now and the people that were there needed support right away.”

The proposed garbage dump is located a few kilometers from the town of Elmvale and barely 30 kilometres from the Beausoleil First Nation reserve on Christian Island in Georgian Bay. The location covers 20.7 hectares of land, is surrounded by productive farmlands and sits directly above the Alliston aquifer. Site 41 has been a contentious development since 1979, when the North Simcoe municipalities started researching garbage dump development options. The county has been dewatering the aquifer as part of preparations for the site, which is slated to receive garbage as soon as possible.

The COC, like the local community, is focused on fighting Site 41 through the system. “From our perspective, what we wanted to do, and what we’ve always said, is that we were looking for a political solution bringing a vote back to council...on whether the dump site should go ahead or not, or whether to issue a moratorium until some of the outstanding questions could be answered,” says Calzavera.

COC lawyers discovered that the site had only received authorization for preliminary work, not for the cell construction. In other words, they had permission to start developing the site, but not to dig the hole the garbage would eventually go in. “They were never authorized to do that, in fact, they were specifically told not to do it by the folks in [Simcoe County] council.” Cell construction began anyway.

During a two-week stay of court in which COC lawyers were awaiting a ruling on the legality of the site, the courts and the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) put on the pressure at Site 41, arresting 10 people between August 2 and 10.

The resulting publicity means that “far more people...understand what is going on,” explains Calzavera.

Police were once again used to clear the shoulder-to-shoulder protesters from in front of the access gates on August 18, and six more people were arrested.

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The initial environmental review for Site 41 ended in 1989 with a provincial Environmental Review Board rejecting the project. According to Steve Ogden, a local farmer and member of the Community Monitoring Committee (CMC), in 1990 the Peterson government forced re-opening of discussion on Site 41, leading to a provisional Certificate of Approval (CoA) being granted for the project in 1998. Ogden claims that political pressure led to the project being approved, despite known environmental impacts.

One of the provisions of the approval required the CMC to “serve as a focal point for the collection, review and exchange of information relevant to both county and local concerns in connection with the landfill site.” By the end of 2001, two applications for review of the CoA, based on groundwater concerns, were dismissed by the MoE, and in 2003, hydrological consulting company Jagger Hims Ltd (now owned by GENIVAR), which the county hired, created a hydrogeological evaluation of the site using open source computer software Modflow.

The CMC has been denied access to data from the computer model that alleges that Site 41 is ecologically sound. Ogden filed a freedom of information request in 2006 after the final approval that year, despite concerns from Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner. Jagger Hims Ltd argues that the models contain “proprietary information” and still refuses to release the information—which Ogden points out is "a violation of the CoA, and unfortunately the OPP can’t force the MoE to follow the law. I’m not sure who does, because from what I have witnessed, they are not following the rules.”

Vicki Monague, a single mother from Beausoleil First Nation and spokesperson for the protest camp, says of the MoE, “Ultimately, I think the issue is that they are looking more at economy rather than ecology or environment.”

Monague, who was arrested and charged with mischief and intimidation, was banned from returning even to the legal protest camp. She links the direct action taken by herself and others, action considered illegal by the state, to positive social change: “This is actually a really great thing that has happened... the fact that we are able to impact and expose [the corruption] for what it is, and hopefully promote change within the system.”

Mohawk environmentalist Danny Beaton is one of five First Nations people who have been charged in connection with Site 41—he is the only non-local arrested thus far. However, it is not only Indigenous people who have been targeted for arrest by the OPP. Members of the local agricultural community have also been charged in connection with attempts to stop Site 41.

Keith and Ina Wood are 82 and 76 years old, respectively. Calzavera describes Ina Wood as “a saint.” Monague describes the couple as “people who have never even had a parking ticket... law abiding citizens who had lost their faith in the legal system and the political system.”

The Woods—like Monague, Beaton and the 12 others—are facing charges of mischief and are living under bail conditions. Monague says that the example set by the Woods “should inspire people to stand up and use their voice, and to protect what is theirs and to protect their heritage.”

On the eve of the hundredth day of the protest camp, Monague emphasized how their fight has highlighted the extent to which taking action to protect the land and water is not only a fight for First Nations.

“This is also a heritage territory for those families out there that are fighting Site 41 as well. Some of their farmlands have been there for up to 250 years, so this is now a land that we all share.” She continues, “It has gone beyond land claims and treaty rights and aboriginal rights... To protest, to protect the world’s purest water is a right that everybody has and that everybody should stand for.”

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Corporate industrial giant GENIVAR also owns Henderson Paddon, the firm that provides landfill design and operations services to Simcoe County. This clear conflict of interest was highlighted recently in court when it was revealed that county officials defied a provincial Privacy Commissioner’s order to release the groundwater model, and have now been compelled to take actions to make the data public.

The information from the Freedom of Information inquiry, and issues around the criminalization of protesters, will also be discussed at the council meeting on August 25. It appears that through direct action, communities have come together to force local politicians to at least consider taking environmental protection seriously.

Monague notes that “this is really the first time ever in this area that non-Natives and Native people have stood together side-by-side.”

Calzavera adds, “I think one of the key reasons that the two groups have gotten along so well is that there is a tremendous amount of respect for the hard work that each [has] done and are doing, and the commitment that each group has shown.”

Calzavera says that part of the reason COC has fully engaged with the Site 41 issue "is actually that relationship between First Nations and the local agricultural community.” He emphasizes that “we often support fights like this, but this is a particularly important one because of the quality of the water—it is the purest groundwater that has ever been tested.

"The fight over Dump Site 41 is a metaphor for, and a link to, all the other fights to protect source waters and water sources in Ontario and across the country. They’re all under threat from bad development choices... and Site 41 is the one that is threatened the most right now.”

For more information about the Site 41 protests, including background information and resistance updates, go to www.stopdumpsite41.ca.

Alex Hundert is a community organiser and a founder of AW@L, Journalists for Human Rights - Laurier Waterloo Chapter, and the Earth Justice Initiative.

Dan Kellar is a PhD student at the University of Waterloo, undertaking research in the failure of environmental laws and policies in actually protecting the environment, and an organiser with AW@L

Site 41 Rainbow

Site 41 Sign