This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. Send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for more info. --------------2E4049B15F0C In the recent period, two important cases have been before the Canadian courts. One involved the September 5, 1995 shooting of Stoney Point First Nation member Dudley George at Ipperwash Provincial Park by Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officer Sargeant Kenneth Deane. The other case involves 15 individuals who participated in a struggle of Shuswap Nation members at Gustafsen Lake (Ts Peten) in the summer of 1995. Sargeant Kenneth Deane was convicted of criminal negligence causing death on April 28, 1997, only after a very active struggle was waged to demand that justice be done. There was also a great deal of evidence showing that contrary to the claims of the OPP, Dudley George was unarmed when he was shot dead. On July 3, Deane was given a two-year suspended sentence. While the crime for which he was convicted carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, Deane will be "punished" with 180 hours of community service, while he retains employment with the OPP. In his April 28 ruling, Judge Hugh Fraser acknowledged that Deane knew that Dudley George was unarmed when he shot him dead. Nevertheless, at his sentencing, Judge Fraser all but declared Deane innocent, saying Deane was "in every other way" an "exemplary officer." He was described as a "highly competent officer," who was "lawfully carrying out his duty as a police officer." "The decision to embark on this ill-fated mission was not Sgt. Deane s," Fraser said, referring to the OPP raid on the camp set up by Stoney Point First Nations members at Ipperwash Provincial Park. Judge Fraser also said that Deane was not responsible for the "faulty" intelligence reports the police receive that the protesters were armed. "It's not for this tribunal to decide where that intelligence originated, or why it was so inaccurate." No such leniency has been shown in the Ts Peten case. In pre-sentencing hearings, the state is calling for the harshest possible punishment especially for Jones Ignace (Wolverine), a Shushwap Nation elder and one of the leaders of the Ts Peten struggle. Prosecutor Lance Bernard said Wolverine should be sent to jail for 16 to 23 years. In his sentencing brief to the judge, Bernard said that the defendants were "terrorists" who had used illegal weapons to threaten police. He said all those convicted of mischief had to be sentenced within the context of a "serious over-criminal situation." He said that those who carried firewood, cooked and did other domestic chores were indispensable to those who "wielded weapons," and argued they had to be sentenced accordingly. He proposed the rest of the defendants should be sentenced to 3 to 5 years as a "deterrence." In the implementation of its policy of turning the just struggles of the Aboriginal peoples for the restoration of their hereditary rights into "law and order" problems, there is a clear message: any Aboriginal person who steps out of the place assigned to them by the Canadian state is "fair game" for arrests, shootings, jailings and every form of persecution, while those who implement the state's policy will be protected. This is the way of the 19th century British colonialists and these two cases show how very little has changed since the 19th Century in terms of the treatment of Canada's Aboriginal peoples by the Canadian state. This is the only interpretation that can be given to the double standards of justice being shown in both the Gustafsen Lake and the Ipperwash trials. The Canadian people must condemn the Canadian state's brutal treatment of Canada's Aboriginal peoples and step up the struggle for the restoration of their hereditary rights. CPC(M-L) Shawgi Tell Graduate School of Education University at Buffalo [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------2E4049B15F0C--