Defend Native Protesters at Caledonia!

Since February, members and supporters of the Six Nations Confederacy have occupied a 40-hectare parcel of land in the southern Ontario town of Caledonia, southwest of Hamilton. The occupation began when developers began building a residential subdivision despite a longstanding land-claim dispute. The land in question is a small fragment of the vast Haldimand Tract, which the Six Nations obtained from the British Crown in 1784. Over the ensuing two centuries these lands have gradually been eroded through government fraud and outright theft to a tiny fraction of their original size.

The Native occupiers and their supporters have withstood police attacks, multiple arrests, media smear campaigns and an escalating barrage of racist provocations and mob attacks. On April 20, as Six Nations representatives were engaged in talks over the stand-off with the Liberal provincial government, the Ontario Provincial Police launched a violent pre-dawn assault with M16 rifles, tear gas, tasers and pepper spray. Sixteen protesters were arrested. But the attack ended in a fiasco for the OPP, as the Six Nations occupiers regrouped and returned in greater numbers several hours later, forcing the cops to retreat. As police helicopters roared overhead, the protesters erected barricades on roads bordering the occupation site.

Unlike the Ipperwash occupation in 1995, which ended when an OPP riot cop killed unarmed Ojibway protester Dudley George, this time the cops backed off, as the provincial government of Dalton McGuinty quickly distanced itself politically from the OPP attack. This was enough to bring frothing local racists out in force. On the night of April 24, a 500-strong mob led by the “Caledonia Citizens’ Alliance,” a group created by business owners from the Chamber of Commerce, converged under Maple Leaf flags singing “O Canada,” shrieking racist taunts and calling for the Canadian Army to “clean out” the Native “terrorists.” Over the spring and summer, these mob attacks have escalated, as thugs armed with golf clubs and baseball bats send cascades of rocks, golf balls and refuse over police lines at defenders of the occupation.

The McGuinty government has sought to portray itself as steering a “middle course” between Native protesters and hostile local residents. In June, the government bought out the claim of the developer, Henco Industries, to the occupied land. The same cops who had earlier stormed the Native encampment were suddenly positioning themselves as even-handed guardians of public order.

But on June 9, Six Nations supporters intercepted an unmarked SUV entering the area that, as it turned out, contained not only an OPP officer, but also U.S. Border Patrol and Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco (BATF) agents who, the OPP claimed, were merely “observing” the occupation. The BATF is infamous for its role in the 1993 massacre of 86 members of the racially integrated Branch Davidian religious commune in Waco, Texas. For pulling the cops out of their vehicle, which protesters then drove back to the occupation base camp for inspection, and for making copies of classified documents found in the van, warrants were issued against seven protesters, including a charge of attempted murder! The ongoing police provocations demonstrate the Marxist understanding that the cops, as the armed fist of the capitalist state and enforcers of the rights of private property, are the deadly enemy of all working people and the oppressed. Drop all charges against Native protesters!

Labour Must Defend Native Rights

The “Canadian values” racism on display against the Native barricades at Caledonia underlines the basic fact that this country was built on the destruction of the pre-existing aboriginal societies through a combination of fraud, brutal military conquest and the devastating impact of disease following European contact. To this was added a state policy of abduction of Native children from their parents and their forced internment in church-run residential schools aimed at destroying their languages and culture.

Today, the vast majority of Native people live in dismal conditions, either isolated on remote, desolate and economically unviable reserves or at the margins of urban society, where they are plagued by illness, homelessness, addiction and a remorseless diet of racist cop violence. As we wrote in our Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste Programmatic Theses,

“Only the destruction of capitalism can hold out the possibility of voluntary integration, on the basis of full equality, for those aboriginal peoples who desire it, and the fullest possible regional autonomy for those who do not. The Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste demands that whatever residual rights Native peoples have been able to maintain, whether through treaty agreements or otherwise, be respected. In some cases, treaty rights and land claims run up against socially useful developments like railways, hydroelectric projects and oil pipelines. The aboriginal peoples should receive generous compensation for any deprivation of land or disruption of activity, based on completely consensual agreement. Only a workers government will guarantee these conditions.”

—“Who We Are, and What We Fight For” (1998)

The April OPP attack sparked solidarity actions with the Caledonia occupation across the country. Demonstrations, blockades and other protests were held in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatoon and elsewhere. Unions including the Canadian Labour Congress, Canadian Auto Workers and Ontario Public Service Employees Union issued resolutions, letters and statements protesting the OPP actions.

Even before the OPP attack, Steelworkers (USW) Local 1005, representing 2,500 workers at the huge Stelco plant in Hamilton, sent the first of several delegations to the occupation site. The USW flag has been prominently displayed there along with that of the CUPW postal union among others. In August, amid rumours of another imminent police attack, the USW local sent another squad of unionists to reinforce the Native barricades. In an interview on the Autonomy & Solidarity website, Local 1005 president Rolf Gerstenberger explained, “Why it’s important for the labour movement to take this stand is that it may prevent the police and army from moving in if there’s organized support for the Native people…. It’s much more powerful that they’re not left on their own to face the police and whatever attacks are being planned.”

The USW Local 1005 action is a small but heartening example of the social power of organized labour being mobilized on behalf of Native rights. Such mobilizations not only serve to bolster the immediate struggle, but aid in winning the working class to an understanding of its social power and class interest in fighting to sweep away the entire oppressive capitalist system. Only an egalitarian socialist society under workers rule can redress three centuries of abuse and degradation and open up a future for the Native peoples. Defend the Caledonia occupation—Mobilize labour’s power to defend Native rights!