[IPSM] More than a mine, a metaphor

[stef at tao.ca]

More than a mine, a metaphor
While the Mohawks and Ottawa negotiated for the land, the land itself was
disappearing

GLOBE AND MAIL
2007.05.04
P. A21 (ILLUS)
NAOMI KLEIN

NAOMI KLEIN After a group of Mohawks from the Tyendinaga reserve blockaded
the railway between Kingston and Toronto two weeks ago, a near unanimous cry
rose up from the editorial pages of Ontario newspapers and talk radio: Get
Shawn Brant. Yesterday, Mr. Brant, a beanpole of a man, walked into a packed
Napanee courtroom with his wrists and ankles shackled after handing himself
over to the Ontario Provincial Police.

According to court testimony, the arrest warrant on charges of mischief,
disobeying a court order and breach of recognizance violated an agreement
between police and demonstrators, who were given immunity when they
peacefully ended the blockade. But Mr. Brant worried that the warrant for
him would be used as a pretext for raiding a gravel quarry that he and
several other community members from Tyendinaga have been occupying for the
past six weeks. "We don't want to bring that into the camp," he told me.

The court granted Mr. Brant bail on condition that he is not allowed to
"plan, incite, initiate, encourage or participate in any unlawful protest,"
including those "that interfere in any way with commercial or non-commercial
traffic on all public and private roads, airports, railways or waterways." A
trial date has not been set.

Why the determination to get Shawn Brant, and Shawn Brant alone? On the
surface, the broken immunity agreement seems sure to inflame tensions. And
whatever crimes Mr. Brant may have committed, he had plenty of company. But
Mr. Brant has a theory. "Right now, I'm the voice. They think if they take
away the people's voice, the people will stop. They'll see that they're
wrong, and that's not all bad." Mr. Brant is more than a voice. He has
become a symbol for the new militancy that is spreading through first
nations communities across the country. Sitting beside the campfire at the
occupied quarry a few days ago, Mr. Brant told me that since he was a kid,
people in his community have been telling him to keep quiet. "It used to be,
'Shawn, shut up, don't say those things about the government, they'll cut
off our funding.' Now it's 'Shawn, shut up, they'll walk away from the
negotiating table.' " The reason Mr. Brant isn't willing to let the
negotiations take their course is that these talks are designed to take
decades. And as the time passes, the land disappears. Forests are clear-cut,
mountains are carved up, suburbs creep outward. Ineffective negotiations do
not hold the line on an already unacceptable status quo - they contribute to
the losing of very real ground.

At the gravel quarry near Deseronto, the loss of land is painfully,
insultingly literal. The quarry is on land never ceded by the Mohawks of the
Bay of Quinte, a fact the federal government has acknowledged.

The only question is what form compensation for the theft will take.

The Tyendinaga band council and Ottawa have been negotiating over that
question since last November. The problem arose because, as the two parties
talked, trucks were carrying 10,000 loads of newly crushed gravel out of the
pit every year - an estimated 100,000 tonnes. While they bargained for the
land, the land itself was disappearing.

When 150 people from the reservation took over the quarry and planted the
Mohawk flag at the top of a mount of gravel, they had, and continue to have
a single demand: Revoke the quarry's licence until the negotiations have
concluded. Or, as 28-year-old Jason Maracle put it to me, rather succinctly:
"You're not hauling away the very land we're talking about." But it got
worse. There was a pile of wood on the edge of the gravel pit that the
people occupying the quarry used to feed their bonfire. As the pile
depleted, it became apparent the wood had been covering up a large pile of
garbage: old washing machines, leaking industrial batteries, oil filters,
hydraulic fluid, bed frames, antifreeze. They explored some more and
discovered it was all over the pit: piles of hastily covered junk, some of
it half-burned, much of it toxic, including broken up pieces of asphalt from
the highway. (You can still see the yellow lines.) "When it rains, the whole
mountain turns into a rainbow of chemical fluids and oils, all flowing down
into the water. Then it all leeches into the ground water," Mr. Maracle told
me, pointing to the murky green pool at the bottom of the pit.

Not surprisingly, the mine has become a powerful metaphor, a vivid
illustration of the failures of the negotiation process, and the problems
with being patient. While the experts talk, good land is trucked out and
toxic junk is trucked in - and without direct action, there would have been
nothing left to talk about.

It's an image with resonance on reservations across the country.

With commodities from fuels to metals commanding record prices on the world
market, the slow erosion of land has suddenly jumped into fast-forward, with
a frantic push to open new mines and pipelines.

Add to that the race to cut new ski hills and highways out of pristine
mountains for the B.C. Olympics in 2010 and to build new town homes to feed
Ontario's housing boom and it's easy to see why more and more native people
are telling Shawn Brant to keep talking.

The final insult came when the federal Tories handed down a budget with next
to nothing new in it to address first nations poverty.

Mr. Brant makes an analogy between the way land disappears while
negotiations stall and the way lives are degraded while funding is frozen.
Birth rates are high, he points out, "so getting nothing means moving
backward - more suicides, more disease, more contamination." When "nothing"
happens at the negotiation table, mountains and trees disappear; when
"nothing" is in the budget, lives are extinguished.

The budget blow prompted Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine to
call for a national day of action on June 29. Though Mr. Fontaine insists he
is not calling for cross-country blockades, many first nations are already
planning them, with talk of a co-ordinated targeting of key infrastructure,
from rails to roads. "It's the same notion as a general strike," Mr. Brant
explains with a smile.

If the blockade strategy goes ahead, one thing is certain: There will be
rivers of ink spilled explaining that, while native grievances are
legitimate, there is no excuse for such disruptive tactics.

Protesters will be told they are discrediting their cause, and they will be
described as "violent" whether or not violence takes place.

Mr. Fontaine has taken this finger-wagging to heart. "Let's face it, if you
irritate Canadians, they're not going to listen to your message," his
spokesperson said recently.

Mr. Brant has a different message for non-native Canada - don't just listen
to us, join us. He points out that Canadians, even those who tell themselves
they support native rights, "still treat them as a government problem." But
that's not how social issues ever gain the kind of critical mass that leads
to real change. "The environment is an issue right now because people told
the government it was an issue," Mr. Brant says. "If they said our concerns
were an issue, they would be addressed too." Right now, everything is lining
up for June 29 to be a day for natives to act and the rest of us to whine
about late trains and traffic jams. But listening to Mr. Brant, it struck me
that it could be something else: a day of action on native rights for the
entire country, one when we all refuse to shut up.

Naomi Klein is the author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster
Capitalism, to be published in September.
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