[IPSM] Fwd: 10 years after Gustafsen Lake

[Jaggi Singh]

----- Forwarded message from John Boncore <splitting_the_sky at yahoo.com>

Hoped-for Sundance film to tell the story
The only Canadian granted political asylum in the U.S. wants to tell the
natives' side of the 1995 incident, ROBERT MATAS writes

By ROBERT MATAS
Saturday, September 17, 2005 Page [26] A10

VANCOUVER -- A demand for a government inquiry is a common refrain of 
Canadians in search of justice. James Pitawanakwat has gone one better. He 
is angling for an indie film backed by Robert Redford's Sundance 
Institute.

Mr. Pitawanakwat was one of 18 people arrested in 1995 after the Gustafsen 
Lake standoff, a confrontation over a native land claim that attracted 
international attention. The 31-day episode that some feared would turn 
into a bloodbath ended 10 years ago this weekend. For his part in the 
standoff, Mr. Pitawanakwat was sentenced to three years in jail for 
endangering life. He fled Canada in 1998, 11 days after he was allowed out 
on day parole for the first time. He successfully fought extradition to 
Canada to finish his sentence, becoming the only Canadian ever granted 
political asylum in the United States. He is now a construction worker in 
a small U.S. town. He is also promoting a script that tells the natives' 
side of the Gustafsen Lake story. The three-hour movie would echo the 
themes of speeches he gives on campuses around the United States, Mr. 
Pitawanakwat said in an interview this week. "I talk about the issues, 
about how the Canadian government used land mines against the Indian 
people while they were campaigning internationally against land mines, 
about how 10 native warriors held off 400 RCMP officers and the army in a 
full-fledge gun battle," he said.

"You know what we call that ERT team," Mr. Pitawanakwat said, referring to 
the RCMP Emergency Response Team, which spearheaded efforts to end the 
standoff. "We say it is the early retreat team . . . they fired 77,000 
rounds of ammunition in panic fire." The most complete account of the 
standoff is set out by Splitting the Sky, a Mohawk native from Buffalo, in 
his autobiography From Attica to Gustafsen Lake. One of the leaders of the 
Attica prison riot in 1971, he became a minor folk hero within 
human-rights and left-wing circles in New York in the 1970s. Splitting the 
Sky, who is also know as John Boncore Hill, said this week that he was 
invited to Gustafsen Lake to lead a sun dance ceremony. He was at the site 
from June to early August of 1995. When the standoff began a few weeks 
after he left, he became the group's spokesman on the outside and drew 
international support for the natives.

Gustafsen Lake is in a remote area of central British Columbia, 450 
kilometres northeast of Vancouver. The natives made an arrangement with a 
ranch owner, Lyle James, in 1989 to hold sun dances at a spot on his 
property near Gustafsen Lake that they believed to be spiritually charged. 
When the arrangement broke down a few years later, the natives asserted 
aboriginal ownership and continued to hold annual summer sun dances.

The standoff began on Aug. 18, 1995. After two months of increasing 
tensions over the occupation, a shot was fired at an RCMP officer. The 
RCMP and the army closed the area. On Sept. 11, 1995, natives and Mounties 
exchanged fire after a plastic-explosives belt (which the natives regarded 
as a land mine) disabled a red truck delivering supplies to the 
encampment. Over the next week, all the natives and non-natives walked out 
of the area and were arrested. Mr. James did not respond to requests for 
an interview.

Academic Anthony Hall called the Gustafsen Lake standoff a national 
tragedy that the country has never addressed.

"It is a classical case of the ability of the elite of Canada to sweep 
[issues] under the carpet," said Prof. Hall, founding co-ordinator of the 
globalization program at the University of Lethbridge. "The perception 
was, if there were any victims, the victims were a few radical Indians. 
But the real victim was the rule of law. The Canadian government violated 
its own laws in a systemic and elaborate and massive way."

The U.S. court, in granting Mr. Pitawanakwat political asylum, accepted 
the argument that the RCMP conducted a disinformation and smear campaign 
against the natives, he said. "Public officials simply misrepresented the 
facts." During the standoff, the RCMP demanded access to CBC airwaves, 
saying the natives had hostages and someone could be killed if the 
broadcaster did not allow a chief, who opposed the protesters, to speak, 
he said. The RCMP obtained air time "in that way to present a propagandist 
message which obviously was not what it professed to be." The RCMP also 
falsely told the media the natives had conducted an ambush, he said. The 
Canadian army was called without following proper procedures and without 
adequate safeguards, Prof. Hall added. "When you turn an army on your own 
people in a domestic situation, that is one of the very most serious -- if 
not the most serious -- things a government can do."

Mr. Pitawanakwat is an Anishinaabe native from Manitoulin Island, Ont. He 
went to work with B.C. natives on political issues in 1994 when he was 23 
years old. Before going to Gustafsen Lake, he participated in a protest in 
the Okanagan Valley and a native blockade in another part of the province.

He recalled hearing in mid-June of 1995 that some cowboys at Gustafsen 
Lake had threatened a "lynching" if the natives were not off the property 
by the next day.

"We just jumped into a vehicle and drove up there," he said. "It was night 
when we arrived, and it felt very serene and peaceful. But you could hear 
the turmoil in everyone's voice. They were talking about cowboys who 
wanted to string up a red nigger."

He arrived with binoculars, in camouflage fatigues and army boots. "I was 
one of those young natives who felt important by being a member of the 
warrior society," Mr. Pitawanakwat said.

He left in July to join an anti-logging protest at Clayoquot Sound on 
Vancouver Island and then went to Alberta. He got a frantic call to go 
back to Gustafsen Lake in mid-August. He was told people were running 
through the bush, shooting at natives. After his arrest, he said, he began 
considering fleeing to the United States.

"I thought about it during the trial," he said. "I thought, this is not 
right. We were defending ourselves. We were political prisoners. If I have 
the chance, I'll just go."

At his extradition hearing, his lawyer set out extensive evidence of the 
RCMP's disinformation campaign and the fight for native sovereignty. "When 
[the judge] heard they called us terrorists, it painted a different 
picture," he said.

He is reluctant to talk about the movie script that tells his story, 
especially before he hears from the Sundance Institute's Native American 
program, which provides support for up to four producers each year. The 
institute has helped finance nearly 40 native American writers and 
directors over the past 20 years.

Janice Stewart, a magistrate justice of the U.S. District Court in Oregon, 
decided he could not be extradited to Canada to complete his sentence 
because his crime was of a political character. "The Gustafsen Lake 
incident involved an organized group of native people rising up in their 
homeland against an occupation by the government of Canada of their sacred 
and unceded tribal land," she wrote.

The key events

A highly militarized standoff between the RCMP and a fringe group of
radical natives claiming sovereignty over a small parcel of land in
B.C. drew international attention in 1995.

June, 1989 -- Rancher Lyle James allows Shuswap native Percy Rosette
to use ranch property for sun dances.

August, 1993 -- Mr. James wants the natives off his land; Mr. Rosette
indicates his intention to pursue native ownership of the property.

June 13, 1995 -- The natives are formally told they can no longer hold
sun dance ceremonies on the property.

July 2-12, 1995 -- Sun dance ceremonies are held.

Early August, 1995 -- RCMP receive information that firearms and
explosives have been moved onto the site. Natives in camouflage gear
carrying rifles are seen patrolling the area. Natives block access
roads.

Aug. 18, 1995 -- A shot is fired at an RCMP officer.

Aug. 24, 1995 -- A shot is fired at an RCMP helicopter. A native
leader says that if their demands not met, the only way they would
leave would be in body bags.

Sept. 11, 1995 -- RCMP use a plastic explosives strip on the road to
disable a truck carrying supplies for natives; thousands of rounds of
ammunition are fired during ensuing gun battle.

Sept. 17, 1995 -- Standoff ends. Fourteen natives and four non-natives
face criminal charges.

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050917/GUSTAFSEN17/TPNational/BC