By Vincent Ball, Brantfort Expositor Staff
Friday, March 02, 2007 - 01:00
Protesters from Six Nations staged a short, peaceful demonstration at the site of a planned $40-million shopping centre in Brantford early Thursday.
Flags were raised and about a dozen people gathered at the site, where the former Chicago Rawhide factory is located, on the southeast corner of Wayne Gretzky Parkway and Henry Street.
“This is an example of the frustration we, as Six Nations people, feel about the ineptitude of the federal government in dealing with our land rights,” said Wesley Elliott, who spoke on behalf of the protesters. “We came here to express our concerns.”
The protesters also want First Gulf Development Corp. to delay site preparation until they have met with the Six Nations Confederacy. The confederacy is scheduled to meet Saturday, Elliott said.
First Gulf plans to build a 267,000-square-foot commercial centre on 24 acres of land at the site where protesters began gathering at about 7 a.m. Six Nations flags were placed on a building there. Protesters left the site at about 9:40 a.m.
Elliott visited Brantford police prior to the demonstration to inform them of plans to hold the protest. There wasn’t any police presence during the peaceful and quiet demonstration.
Last May, Brantford city council passed an official plan amendment allowing First Gulf, on behalf of Skyline Estate Properties Inc., to build the shopping centre. Elliott appealed council’s decision to the Ontario Municipal Board.
In his statement of appeal, he said the Haudenosaunee Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy was not given notice of the development application and no archeological assessment report had been received.
Then, in November, Elliott withdrew his appeal in exchange for an agreement between First Gulf and the Iroquois Confederacy that put tight limitations on how much could be done to the site in the short term.
Under the agreement, First Gulf couldn’t begin site preparation or construction before March 1. It was also supposed to enter into a detailed public consultation process with the Confederacy Council and the Six Nations community.
Although city officials weren’t part of the agreement, they are aware of it and were also made aware of Thursday morning’s demonstration.
While it is believed there have been some discussions about the matter, public consultation has not been as in depth as Elliott had anticipated, a city official said.
That issue, combined with Thursday being the first date work on the site could begin, likely led to the demonstration.
No one from First Gulf was available for comment on Thursday.
Native flags were first mounted at the site in June, just after the city approved the shopping centre project.
Earlier this year, a sign declaring Mohawk Park “sovereign Mohawk nation land” was put up by a group calling themselves representatives of the Grand River Mohawk Nation. It was removed by city workers a couple of days later who advised the group to erect the flag at the nearby Glebe Land, which belongs to the Six Nations.
Last summer, a Mohawk information trailer was parked on Grand River Conservation Authority land off of Erie Avenue.