Contempt of court

A judicial pogrom against Native leaders appears to be underway in Ontario. For the second time in two months, jail sentences of six months have been handed down by our justice system, for the "crime" of peacefully protesting against mining operations on Indian traditional lands.

In February, Professor Robert Lovelace, spokesperson for the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, and Chief Paula Sherman, were sentenced by Justice Douglas Cunningham in Kingston for upholding Algonquin law by opposing uranium mining operations on Algonquin land. Sherman offered to obey previous court injunctions against protesting the incursions of Frontenac Ventures Corp., and was spared jail time--as the mother of three young children, she could ill afford to be separated from them. Lovelace is currently serving his sentence in Quinte Correctional Facility. The Ardoch First Nation was fined $10,000 and Sherman, $15,000.

This month, it was the turn of the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninunwug First Nation, near Big Trout Lake, 600 km. north of Thunder Bay, to get a taste of white man's justice. Justice Patrick Smith sent six band members to jail, including Chief Donny Morris and Deputy Chief Jack MacKay. Two others, Enus McKay and Evelyn Quequish, were given suspended sentences after they agreed to stop protesting.

The judge cited last month's decision as a precedent for the jail terms, and stated that he could not impose fines in any case because the defendants would be unable to pay them. One member "purged his contempt" by agreeing to stop protesting. Indian land is now safe for Platinex Inc. to commence its drilling operations.

The short message is this: if you are Native, forget about protesting peacefully in Ontario. Miners can come on to your land with impunity, and dig it up at their whim. You have no recourse. If you stand up, white judges will lock you down. The justice system stands with the mining companies, and the McGuinty government, including the feckless Aboriginal Affairs minister Michael Bryant, stands with the justice system.

But solidarity is building. Whites joined with Ardoch Algonquin First Nation to protest uranium prospecting around Sharbot Lake. Now Nishnawbe Aski Nation has broken off bilateral talks with the government of Ontario. And Anishinabek Nation, with its secretariat the Union of Ontario Indians (representing a third of Ontario's Aboriginal population), has thrown its support behind the newest victims of the judicial/mining axis. It's time for the rest of us to show our contempt for a court system that is so clearly biased against Aboriginal people and their traditional rights.

[As an aside: while some go on wringing their hands about the alleged racking and screwing of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn, and whine about fascism and the like, not a peep has been heard from that quarter about the on-going judicial suppression of Native people in Ontario. Could it be that jailed Native people don't warrant the same concern as a couple of journalists who have been mildly inconvenienced at best? Militant conservative whites, of course, get somewhat different treatment from the establishment when they do their protests in my province.]

Score one for the First Nations

Today is the National Day of Action for aboriginal people across Canada, but the celebrations started yesterday. The Ontario Court of Appeal released seven First Nations prisoners of conscience who had been given six months in prison and fined heavily for the crime of defending their land against mining companies.

"Savour this," said defence lawyer Julian Falconer. "Once in a while, out of the deep dark depths, comes justice."

The reasons for upholding the appeal against the contempt-of-court sentences--the harshest that observers can remember--will be given later.

Christie Blatchford is a passionate person, and I don't usually like where her passion leads her, but she is simply bang on today. Her Globe & Mail article (subscriber wall, unfortunately), from which the above information comes, is a masterpiece of focussed anger against the system: prosecutors, corporate land-rapists, the provincial government. "[I]n the contest between the state and first nations," she says, "the state almost always wins." "Almost," however, is the operative word.

She was quick to spot the community of interest between the mining companies and the Crown, revealed in a telling gesture: when lawyer for the native people spoke, Crown prosecutor Malliha Wilson and a mining company lawyer "would often roll their eyes in unison."

Blatchford is new to First Nations land issues, as she tells us. She is seeing the staggering injustice of it all with innocent eyes, and through her we see it all afresh. She is outraged:

Native pleas for genuine negotiation--whether in these specific cases, where they want the provincial Mining Act, which allows private companies to stake mineral rights on anyone's land without having to bother with getting permission, at least on the table for review, or in the sweeping land claims which drone on for decades--go unheard. Their letters to everyone from premiers to department heads and provincial coroners go unanswered. Their reports on poverty and suicide rates get no response.

And at the end of it all, in various courts across the country, government lawyers mouth words like "reconciliation" and "conciliation" with an ease that their collective daily conduct--they appeal every loss, fight on every technicality, argue for the harshest punishments, stall and obfuscate--utterly belies.

A national day of action? After yesterday, a national day of insurrection sounds more in order.

Woo-hoo! Tell it like it is, Sister.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, the OPP has ensured that Shawn Brant, the Mohawk activist from Tyendinaga Mohawk territory in the Bay of Quinte region, will not be taking part in today's festivities. They have jailed him on what appear, at least to this observer, to be trumped-up charges. But OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino isn't having any of that. Not content to defend Brant's detention by his officers, he goes on to utter not-so-veiled threats against native people:

As for what I feel regarding the Day of Action, it is my hope that everyone will be respectful of the laws of the land. In any event the OPP will take appropriate action regarding those that don't.

Sod off, you old racist. And to the celebrants, especially Robert Lovelace and the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug Six, have a great day--and keep sticking it to the man.