Richard Brennan and Jim Wilkes - Staff reporters
Toronto Star
May 1, 2006. 06:51 AM
Former Ontario premier David Peterson yesterday likened his new task of solving the ongoing Six Nations land dispute in Caledonia, Ont., to finding a solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"There are deeply entrenched views on both sides," Peterson told the Star yesterday while stressing his assignment from Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty — to resolve a 200-year-old land dispute — is "extremely complicated."
"It's like trying to solve the Israeli issue," said the former Liberal premier on visiting Caledonia to make some inquiries into the two-month-old dispute over a construction site.
"I have only been at this 24 hours now and I don't have any easy answers. This is tough," he said.
Earlier in the day, after a briefing by a dozen senior government officials in a Burlington hotel, Peterson outlined the tough task ahead.
"We know this has been going on for 200 years, in various degrees of intensity along the way," he said. "It's extremely complicated."
Peterson is charged with trying to bring a resolution to the Mohawk blockade of the Douglas Creek Estates property, which the Six Nations says involves land that it never relinquished.
It is also hoped that the charismatic Peterson can also put a lid on the growing tensions between Six Nations protestors and Caledonia residents, who are becoming increasingly frustrated that the blockade is interrupting their lives and dividing the quiet community into two.
Meanwhile, residents of the Six Nations reserve gathered yesterday to air their concerns over what at least one described as unabashed racism.
There was even a photocopy of a flyer they claimed was being circulated Friday night depicting Ku Klux Klan members, which talked about a "final solution."
But people in Caledonia interviewed by the Star said they knew nothing of such racist material, and expressed shock that such material was circulating in the area.
Dawn Martin-Hill, director of the Indigenous Studies program at Hamilton's McMaster University, said the land dispute has given some people a chance to show their real feelings toward Six Nations people.
"There is underlying racism...situations like this that deal with any civil disobedience involving native people kind of allows people to express views that they have had all this time," Martin-Hill said.
"I stood there while they called me and a bunch of youths 'effin' Indians and it was mostly middle-aged and older non-native women. It wasn't the men. I was stunned," Martin-Hill said of her time on the blockade last Thursday.
"Our people will never forget," she added, warning of economic consequences to the town. Caledonia, she said, won't be "getting any of our money for a long time."
Yet Wesley Miller, an 18-year Six Nations resident, said he was at Tim Hortons Saturday night in Caledonia when he experienced the kindness of strangers.
"I didn't realize that they don't have debit at Tim Hortons and I didn't have any cash on me. So, I had ordered about three coffees and they had it all made and I gave her my (debit) card and she said `no debit' and this woman behind us she paid for it...I think she was a Caledonia resident," he told the Star.
"I have found people (in Caledonia) to be very supportive," Miller said.
It's that type of goodwill that will be vital to Peterson as he searches for a solution to the impasse.
"Some issues will take years to settle," he said, before driving to Caledonia for a first-hand look.
"But there are some immediate problems as well and that's the economic health of Caledonia, the blockade and the aboriginal assertions of their claims.
"It's not as if one side is illegitimate. There are always many sides to these issues."