The Ontario government has offered to create a 6.4-kilometre agricultural belt around Six Nations in an effort to settle the Caledonia standoff and ward off concerns about encroaching development.
Ottawa, in negotiations with the Six Nations Confederacy to try to end the 11-month native occupation of a former housing site, has also been pressuring Six Nations to accept a financial settlement instead of land.
Those were two negotiating offers which Confederacy officials revealed last night in a meeting to update the community on the progress of the talks. About 300 people attended the meeting at Six Nations Polytechnic.
Confederacy representatives are set to meet next Thursday with officials from Ottawa and Queen's Park to hear a federal Department of Justice response to Six Nations' claim it owns the former Douglas Creek Estates site on Argyle Street South. Ottawa has said Six Nations surrendered and sold the land in the 1840s, but Six Nations presented an 80-page report last month refuting that position.
Mohawk Chief Allen MacNaughton and Cayuga sub-chief Leroy Hill said they are getting frustrated by what they believe may be deliberate delays in the talks. MacNaughton said he's worried as the process becomes "institutionalized ... people don't feel the urgency" to work toward a solution and different factions on Six Nations may fall out.
"Let's look at all things that unify us," he told the crowd. "We all know we want the lands back."
Six Nations claims 10 kilometres on each side of the Grand River under the 1784 Haldimand Proclamation. The land was for helping Britain in The American Revolution.