And now:[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 08:51:52 -0500
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: canada Nov 01, 1999
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November 1, 1999 Wounds of Oka heal for powerful Mohawk woman
Soldier's bayonet she can forgive, but she wants native
rights upheld across nation
By Laura Eggertson
Toronto Star Ottawa Bureau
OTTAWA - Nine years after a bayonet wound that marked the end of the low
point in Canada's relationship with its original peoples, the scar on
Waneek Horn-Miller's chest has healed. But as tensions escalate for native
and non-native fishing communities in Atlantic Canada, they transport the
Mohawk woman back to Oka in Quebec - and the day a soldier's bayonet
inflicted the wound. Horn-Miller was 14.
She was emerging from the barricades past the Canadian Forces detachment on
the final day of the 78-day standoff. She was trying to shield her
4-year-old sister as soldiers rushed to get to the Mohawk men. At first,
she did not know she'd been hurt. The bayonet hit her sternum. ``I just
felt like I had the breath knocked out of me,'' said Horn-Miller. ``I
looked down afterwards and I was full of blood.''
Now 23, Horn-Miller hopes she will never see another Oka. Relations between
aboriginals and other Canadians have a long way to go but have progressed,
she believes, since the siege over a land claim that marred the country's
human rights record in the eyes of the world. So has Horn-Miller. The
daughter of Mohawk activist and former model Kahn-Tineta Horn captains the
Canadian women's water polo team that defeated the U.S. team to win Pan Am
gold medals
last summer. Next stop? The 2000 Olympics, when the sport enters the Games
in Sydney, Australia. Horn-Miller explains that instead of erecting
barricades, more First Nations are choosing negotiations and litigation to
win rights and enforce treaties.
But even when they win, aboriginals face backlash from some
Canadians fearful of losing economic ground. The Reform Party has led the
charge in Parliament, decrying `'special rights'' for aboriginals and
opposing landmark treaties like the Nisga'a agreement in British Columbia.
The federal and provincial governments' lack of preparation for the impact
of court decisions threatens to allow angry confrontations like those over
East Coast fishing to damage again the aboriginal/non-native relationship.
Fisheries Minister Herb Dhaliwal has admitted that the day the
Supreme Court ruled certain East Coast Indians could fish for
profit was the first time he was briefed on its impact. The
Marshall case affirmed fishing, hunting and gathering rights for
Atlantic Canada's Maliseet and Mi'kmaq nations. Ottawa took two weeks to
develop a strategy to contain tensions over access to the lucrative lobster
fishery. As traps were cut, trucks burned, a sacred site destroyed and
Mi'kmaqs injured when their truck was rammed, Grand Chief Phil Fontaine
waited for a chorus of national and provincial voices to be raised against
the violence.
Instead, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, a former Indian Affairs
minister, suggested government lawyers were considering asking the Supreme
Court to suspend the legally affirmed rights. Fontaine called the backlash
in Atlantic Canada ``a knee-jerk reaction by non-aboriginal people, people
that aren't prepared to share.
Canadian leaders, including premiers and others . . . The people that
should have been up saying `Yes, we have to accept the treaties, they are
part of our history, they're central to Canada's future and we're not going
to be dissuaded by thugs and criminal acts' - they didn't say that.''
Instead, the message was sent that if the dominant majority in Canada did
not like the outcome of rules played out in its courts, it would change the
rules, said Brad Morse, a University of Ottawa law professor. That is an
untenable position, added Morse, who is also the federal negotiator for the
Lubicon Cree land claim in Alberta. ``Either we're a society that is based
on a respect for law or we're not. You can't pick or chose.''
Ottawa eventually rejected going back to court but even the
suggestion that it might sparked outrage among aboriginals.
Chrétien, Dhaliwal and Indian Affairs Minister Bob Nault eventually did
urge people not to take the law into their own hands. Nault says he will
find a way to move forward instead of reacting to each new crisis or court
decision. ``We don't need any more court cases to know that aboriginal
people have rights . . . we have to sit at the table and make some tough
decisions and compromise and come up with solutions,'' he said in an
interview. The minister is organizing a meeting this fall with his
provincial counterparts and native leaders to try to persuade the provinces
to begin long-term, broad negotiations. Those should start by implementing
areas already defined in the 4,000-page Royal Commission on Aboriginal
Peoples,
oncluding an independent tribunal to adjudicate land claims,
says Georges Erasmus, co-chair of that commission.
Horn-Miller supports negotiations and non-violent processes.
She calls the recent victories in the Marshall case and the
Delgamuuk decision affirming aboriginal land title groundbreaking.''
``I don't like violence. I've seen the worst of it,'' she says in an
interview from Kahnawake. ``I wouldn't say: `Go, go out, put up
a barricade, grab guns - without fully equipping yourself about
your rights, your history'.'' She attributes the backlash to ignorance.
Most Canadians are not educated about the country's obligations to her
people, she says. But Horn-Miller shares the frustration of many younger
peers who make up the overwhelming majority of aboriginal people in
provinces like Saskatchewan, for example. They are unemployed, jailed,
dead from suicide, alcohol or drug abuse, or living in poverty in
dramatically higher proportions
than their non-native counterparts. They want better lives. Now.
INMATE RIGHTS
November 1, 1999 Native hunger striker waiting for response
By Randy Richmond
London Free Press
A 42-year-old Onyota'a:ka man in his 26th day of a hunger strike
over religious services for native inmates is still waiting for the
province's answer to his concerns. Paul Doxtator said he has lost about 17
1/2 pounds (about eight kilograms), has cramps in his legs and abdomen, and
can no longer walk for long without tiring or getting pains shooting up his
calves. "I won't starve myself to death. There are limits," said Doxtator.
"But I really think the only time anything will happen is when I'm
hospitalized."
The Correctional Services Ministry is still working on a response to
Doxtator, spokesperson Ross Virgo said. Another ministry official
has promised one of Doxtator's supporters a response within the
next 30 to 45 working days. "In 45 working days, I imagine I'll be
hospitalized," said Doxtator, sipping water -- all he's taking -- in his
home on the Oneida Nation of the Thames reserve about 15 kilometres
southwest of London. Doxtator sent a letter to Correctional Services
Minister Rob Sampson Oct. 5 and began his hunger strike Oct. 6. He is
demanding provincial jails offer full religious services to natives, as
they do for other faiths. "Native people are not
receiving the equal treatment they are
guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms," he said.
The last straw was a decision by Milton's Maplehurst Correctional
Centre in September to prohibit a London-based support group,
Circle of Friends, from visiting the facility or helping inmates
get day passes to attend sweat lodge ceremonies in Oneida, he said.
Sweat lodge ceremonies are the native equivalent of church services
for Christians, Doxtator said. "In prison more than anywhere else, you need
to go into a sweat lodge," said Doxtator. "You have to live with tension 24
hours a day. The sweat lodge ceremony gives you a chance to reflect and to
do some prayer. You cleanse yourself."
Ministry officials are aware of the hunger strike and are concerned
about Doxtator's health, Virgo said. "However, the ministry's position is
clear -- we do support the practice of native spiritual and religious
traditions in all our institutions." But there are limits in what the
province can provide,Virgo said. Maplehurst does not have enough natives to
justify building a sweat lodge, said Frances Pedder, the facility's
volunteer co-ordinator. She said she did not know how many natives the
facility holds. She referred questions about the day passes to the
Correctional Services Ministry.
Maplehurst broke off its relationship with Circle of Friends
volunteers partly because some of its members were non-natives,
Pedder said.
"Let Us Consider The Human Brain As
A Very Complex Photographic Plate"
1957 G.H. Estabrooks
www.angelfire.com/mn/mcap/bc.html
FOR K A R E N #01182
who died fighting 4/23/99
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.aches-mc.org
807-622-5407
For people like me, violence is the minotaur; we spend our lives
wandering its maze, looking for the exit. (Richard Rhodes)
Never befriend the oppressed
unless you are prepared to
take on the oppressor.
(Author unknown)
