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The importance of keeping your ears open

They say that, following the Battle of the Little Bighorn, women located George Armstrong Custer’s body and pierced his eardrums with sewing needles.
They say that, following the Battle of the Little Bighorn, women located George Armstrong Custer’s body and pierced his eardrums with sewing needles.
He didn’t listen to us in this life, was the reasoning, so maybe this will help him listen to us in the next.
That was in 1876, and people still aren’t listening as much as they need to about the realities of issues that are still causing differences of opinions between the First Peoples of North America and immigrants to the continent.
Granted, it must be overwhelming to realize that all those John Wayne movies were wrong – the cowboys and pioneers were really the bad guys. Many members of Stephen Harper’s caucus still can’t cope with it.
It was really just a matter of time before 150 years worth of law school graduates discovered that the skeletons in Canada’s closet include over 800 unresolved land claims.
And one of the largest of these, which the Algonquin peoples wanted to straighten out 240 years ago, has landed with a huge thud on the desks of many elected officials in eastern Ontario.
When politicians grasp that over a million of their citizens are living in 82 municipalities on nine million acres of land that, basically, belongs to somebody else, that’s a recipe for confusion, fear, and anger. It’s sort of like the same feeling you get when you slip and fall in front of a crowd of strangers; you realize it’s your own fault, but are so embarrassed you try to find somebody else to blame.
And, like most issues, most people don’t pay attention to land claims until they realize they are affected by them. In fact, land claims affect every single person in Canada, because every square inch of the country’s surface – not to mention the beds of a couple of million lakes and rivers – constitute traditional territories over which the courts have consistently upheld the rights of Indigenous peoples. Whether governments or their citizens anywhere in the world are comfortable recognizing the legitimacy of “aboriginal title” or not, legal systems are becoming unanimous in supporting the claims of those who demonstrate they were first occupants of a land, and have made continuous use of it.
First Nations in Canada are not claiming that it’s “finders-keepers”, or asking for all the land back. They’re willing to negotiate settlements with federal and provincial governments that reflect the understanding that they permitted the sharing of the land with settlers, sometimes by treaty agreements, and sometimes – as in the case of the Algonquin -- simply because they couldn’t stop all the squatters.
Counting seasonal and recreational users, about two million people a year are squatting on traditional Algonquin lands, pretty well all of Eastern Ontario. These tenants, who are 240 years behind on their rent, include users of the Parliament Buildings and Supreme Court of Canada. Everyone in Ottawa, the Nation’s Capital, has been enjoying the free use of unceded Algonquin territory.
The Algonquin have been engaged in negotiations for a modern treaty with Canada and Ontario since 1991, and much of the publicly-expressed criticisms following last December’s announcement that a preliminary draft agreement-in-principle had been reached has centred on the “secrecy” of the process.
Well, it’s no secret to the 8,000 Algonquins, who first petitioned Canada for a treaty in 1772. But once Ontarians got wind that their favourite hunt camps and picnic sites were included in the 117,000 acres of Crown land to be transferred to the Algonquin, all hell broke loose.
Irate phone calls and e-mails poured into the offices of elected representatives, most of whom did what you would expect them to do – act as mouthpieces for their constituents’ outrage before finding out the facts.
Governments have learned the hard way that going public about land claim negotiations too early in the process can be a recipe for disaster. One unfortunate reason for this is that land claims bring more bigots out of the closet than line the streets of Belfast for an Orange parade. In the 1990s when word leaked out prematurely about negotiations to resolve a 200-year-old land claim by the Caldwell First Nation, billboards started popping up in farmers’ fields in Essex County, fueling fear that longstanding residents were about to be evicted from Century Farms or, worse yet, find themselves living next door to --- gasp!!!! – Indians.
During an April public meeting in North Bay, comments were being whispered about which brands of beer the Algonquin would likely buy with their AIP negotiated trust fund of $300 million. As Algonquin chief negotiator Robert Potts points out, there are some people who don’t have any specific concern with the claim – they just don’t want to see First Nations rights recognized, by the law or anybody else.
The principals try to manage a process less likely to create unnecessary panic and racist rhetoric. Potts points to over 120 meetings – many of them open to members of the general public – that have been held to provide accurate information about the Algonquin Land Claim, and to deal with specific land-use concerns.
Spokesmen go to great pains to point out that, even if members of the public and their elected representatives are just learning details about the proposed settlement, the first modern treaty in Ontario is at least 5-10 years away, small potatoes when one considers that the Algonquin have been waiting for over two centuries. And no, Algonquin Park isn’t being handed over to ten Algonquin communities and they won’t be shooting moose in the back yards of East Ferris Township.
East Ferris Mayor Bill Vrebosch – who informed participants that he is a card-carrying Algonquin -- was among about 30 who accepted the invitation to attend a May 31st North Bay information meeting for political leaders. Others, including North Bay Mayor Al McDonald, MPs Cheryl Gallant and Jay Aspin, and Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli, should be congratulated for turning their Friday afternoon into a PD day.
Unfortunately, they were among a mere 70 elected officials who showed up for the first two of three planned similar sessions. Over 800 invitations had been extended.
Hope the Algonquin women don’t have to get out their sewing needles!
(Maurice Switzer is a citizen of the Mississaugas of Alderville First Nation. He serves as director of communications for the Union of Ontario Indians and editor of the Anishinabek News.)