[IPSM] (Ottawa) Six Nations Info Night: Respect First Nations' Land Rights

[mattm-b at resist.ca]

SIX NATIONS
INFO NIGHT: RESPECT FIRST NATIONS LAND RIGHTS

MONDAY JUNE 26TH

Movie Screening and Speakers:

Local Speaker from Kahnestaton (near Caledonia); Ed Bianchi, (Program
Co-ordiantor for Aboriginal Rights at KAIROS); others To Be Announced.

LE PATRO COMMUNITY CENTRE
40 COBOUG STREET, OTTAWA - LOWER TOWN
FILM SHOWING - 7:00 TO 9:00 PM
ALL WELCOME - ADMISSION FREE; WITH A SUGGESTED DONATION OF FOOD OR CAMP
SUPPLIES

Background Information:

In early March, the Six Nations Rotinoshoni Confederacy peacefully took
possession of a
tract of land that is theirs under the Haldimand Treaty of 1789.  The land
had been illegally sold to HENCO, an U.S. "developer".  The people of Six
Nations have since occupied their land to prevent any further destruction
of it.  Recently, there has been enormous provocation of the native
protestors. Drivers along Argyle (the main street) have thrown
firecrackers, garbage, bottles, etc into the camp while they yell their
racist epithets.  Helicopter fly-overs are increasing.  Police and others
are regularly found encroaching on the territory and being told to leave.
The bottles and rocks that get thrown during those hate fests flow one
way: toward 6Nations.  This is still a peaceful blockade.  Treaties made
between the Six Nations and the British Crown are being trampled by
governments that were nonexistent at the time of their ratification. 
Neither the Federal nor Provincial governments have jurisdiction on Six
Nations land.  As negotiations with the government proceed, the threat of
state violence lurks in continued massive presence of the OPP and the
military near the occupied land.



-- 
Undeterred, the Commisioners continued to track down instances of, or
occassions for, immorality.  They found them, they thought, in the
"conveniences" that the working people had to use.  Hence their recurring
question: were there seperate "closets" for the male and female workers? 
Here, immorality, at least in the minds of the Commissioners, seems to
have something to do with toilets.  The state of factory toilets amounted
to a virtual obsession.  "Did you ever see the men try and get into the
females' closets when the females were in there?"  "What is the height of
the water closets seperating the men from the women?"...The concern
probably reveals more about the inner workings of middle-class Victorian
minds than it does about the state of working conditions in Canadian
factories...Certainly the Commissioners did find sufficient number of
"combined conveniences" to cluck about.  But what the connection was with
the morality of women workers remains unexpalined.

Susan Trofimenkoff