[Indigsol] Fwd.CSIS turning to natives in search of information

[kim mackrael]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: courtney kirkby <courtneykirkby at gmail.com>
Date: 2008/11/29
Subject: {BLS} CSIS turning to natives in search of information
To: Barriere Lake Organizing <barrierelake-organizing at googlegroups.com>,
CKUT Community News Collective <news at ckut.ca>

 CSIS turning to natives in search of information

JOE FRIESEN

>From Saturday's Globe and Mail

November 29, 2008 at 1:58 AM EST

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081129.wmohawk25/BNStory/National/home

Canadian spies are trying to recruit informants on a Quebec Mohawk reserve,
telling their targets they're probing the national security threat posed by
radical native groups and gathering intelligence on the murky, lucrative
trade in contraband tobacco and online gambling.

Over the past 18 months, CSIS agents have approached several people with
ties to the Kahnawá:ke Mohawk reserve south of Montreal and invited them to
clandestine meetings.

According to the Mohawks who spoke to CSIS, the spies wanted information on
native groups leading blockades in Ontario and were trying to assess the
strength of political and religious factions within Mohawk communities. The
spies said they did similar work in native communities across the country,
raising the possibility that dozens of aboriginal groups are being assessed
as potential threats to Canada's national security.

Former CSIS director Reid Morden said he was surprised to hear the spy
agency is targeting natives. Such an initiative would have to have been
approved at the ministerial level or higher, he said.

"If they want to operate in what people would say are sensitive areas like
churches or universities or, for that matter, the native community, unless
it's changed dramatically since I was around, and I don't think it has, the
service would have had to put up to the minister, or higher, the rationale
for why they wanted to do this, because it obviously has attendant political
risks," Mr. Morden said.

A Mohawk graphic artist said CSIS asked him what he knew about the blockades
over land disputes in the Ontario communities of Caledonia and Tyendinaga. A
young chief was asked about the possibility of a violent native uprising
before last year's national aboriginal day of action. A youth worker was
asked to identify a young man photographed in front of a cache of weapons in
a Kahnawá:ke longhouse. Each of them spoke to The Globe and Mail because
they wanted to make it clear that they were not collaborating with the spy
agency. They said that if the federal government wants to know what Mohawks
are up to, it should engage in a nation-to-nation dialogue, not secret
intelligence gathering.

"The best way to solve issues with native peoples is government to
government. You don't have to send your spies after us," said Thomas Deer,
32, the graphic artist who was approached by CSIS this month. "I felt I had
a civic responsibility to my community and to my nation to let people know
that CSIS is doing this, that CSIS is watching native people."

CSIS said it would not comment on specific cases or operational practices.

"We do not collect information about specific communities in Canada," a
spokeswoman said in an e-mail. "We interview individuals to solicit facts,
views and opinions in order to become better informed on potential threats
to the security of Canada."

Mr. Deer, a frequent contributor to websites that promote indigenous
sovereignty, said a CSIS agent telephoned him at work on Nov. 3. The woman
said he should not be afraid, but that she would like to meet with him and
lay out her mandate at a Montreal café.

Two days later, after consulting with a clan elder, he declined the
invitation.

"They expressed their disappointment in me not meeting them, and then they
turned to being a little threatening," he said. "They said, 'We've read your
writings.…How do we know you're not a threat to Canada?'"

The agent then changed tactics, praising him as a level-headed person,
someone to whom CSIS felt it could turn for advice, he said.

"After she tried to smooth me over she did say she was interested in talking
about Ontario … 'Concerning the protests and blockades by certain people,'
she said, 'we don't need to mention any names. You know who we're talking
about.'"

"I think she was referring to Shawn Brant," Mr. Deer said. Mr. Deer has
never met Mr. Brant, a Mohawk activist from Tyendinaga who led protests that
blocked major roads and rail lines in Ontario last year. She also said she
wanted to talk about the contraband tobacco trade, and guaranteed that he
would leave the meeting with a smile on his face.

"I suppose that meant I would be rewarded for whatever information I gave
them. Some kind of payoff," he said.

The experience was unsettling, and Mr. Deer contacted the Kahnawá:ke
newspaper, The Eastern Door, to report that CSIS was poking around the
community.

Mr. Deer's story is not unique.

In the spring of 2007, when tensions between natives and Ottawa were rising
before the national aboriginal day of action, two other young men were
contacted by CSIS, and both met with agents.

John Dee Delormier, at 26 the youngest council chief ever elected in
Kahnawá:ke, was initially reluctant to talk to CSIS. But after consulting
his fellow chiefs, who wanted to know what CSIS was up to, he agreed to meet
an agent at a Tim Hortons in suburban Montreal.

She wanted to talk about factions in the Mohawk community, including the
three longhouses that act as a kind of parallel form of government to the
band council on the reserve, and about the cleavage between supporters and
opponents of the band-council system. She also asked about the sectarian
differences of Catholics, Protestants and those who follow native
spirituality.

CSIS said they wanted to know about contraband tobacco, a subject of
long-standing interest to the RCMP, and Internet gambling. Mr. Delormier
estimates that two-thirds of the world's Internet gambling sites are hosted
by Web servers located in Kahnawá:ke, a practice Ottawa considers illegal
but has been reluctant to tackle. He refused to discuss those subjects, he
said.

She also asked him whether he thought a violent native uprising was
possible.

"I said I don't understand that question. I don't know why you would ask
that," he said. "At that point she knew she wasn't going to get much from me
and that was it. It's a little scary. Why would the intelligence agency of
Canada be so interested in my community? What are they planning?"

In the same period, Katsenhakeron, a former Native Youth Movement organizer
who asked to be identified by his Mohawk name, was working at the native
friendship centre in Montreal when two women walked in, asked for him, and
flashed CSIS identity cards. They wanted a confidential meeting, they said,
and he met them later at a St. Hubert restaurant.

"They were both very attractive. I was like, man, you guys are good spies.
Playing right into my libido."

They spent most of the meeting asking about threats to Canada, he said.

When they brought out a photograph, taken from the Internet, and asked him
to identify a Mohawk man standing in front of more than a dozen automatic
weapons and rifles, he refused to say any more.

*With a report from Colin Freeze*


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