Negotiations have resumed on the Caledonia standoff two weeks after federal and provincial officials walked out when Six Nations Chief Dave General was accosted and barred from entering the talks by five men spouting support for the traditional Confederacy government.
The negotiators said they wouldn't come back until Six Nations straightened out its internal differences and General, head of the elected band council, was permitted to attend the talks.
General says he was pushed into some stairs, but was not hurt.
All sides at the main negotiating table, which is trying to end the year-long native occupation of a former housing site, gathered at a business park boardroom and the proceedings appear to have gone off without a hitch. General was in attendance and the parties are set to meet again April 5.
"Everything is normal," said Mohawk Chief Allen MacNaughton, lead negotiator for the Six Nations, said after the meeting with federal negotiator Barbara McDougall and provincial negotiator Jane Stewart. "We raised a lot of subjects. There wasn't the excitement there this time."
MacNaughton said, however, the internal differences remain and "there always will be some divisions." The split is between supporters of the elected system, established on Six Nations in 1924, and the hereditary system of chiefs and clan mothers. A meeting on the future governance on Six Nations is set for tomorrow. It will bring together band councillors and chiefs.
MacNaughton didn't think much of Ottawa and Ontario's direction to resolve the split. "Frankly, that's none of their business," he said.