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If my neighbour and I have a dispute over a piece of land we both claim to own, and he currently lives on the parcel in question, but I drive my truck onto it and stand there with a shotgun refusing to let him or anyone else come on, how long before you think police are going to arrest me?
Now say my neighbour and his family have farmed that land for 100 years -- or 200 -- and they have the title to it, and all I have is a story my mother used to tell about how my great-great-great- grandfather once roamed this same property, but I get out my Hibachi and my homemade flag for the Republic of Lorne, and pitch my tent across the entrance to settle in for a lengthy camp-out.
Sure, police negotiators are going to try for a few hours to talk me off the land, but the minute I nod off -- or threaten violence -- a SWAT team is going to swoop in and cart me off.
As well they should.
But everything changes if I'm native. The laws by which all other Canadians must abide and normal police procedures no longer apply. Even if my neighbour wins an injunction ordering me off, police are going to be told to sit by, day after day, month after month, while I grill up burgers and insist my ancestor never meant to give up the property.
One government or another might even step up and buy out my neighbour, just so the politicians can avoid having to tell me I'm wrong.
And all because, for politicians, the rule of law is trumped by political correctness and the cult of victimhood.
It's not hard to understand why the Tyendinaga Mohawks of Deseronto, Ont., moved on Thursday evening to blockade the main CN line between
They know from the experience of the Mohawks at
Politicians and police commanders afraid of an ugly scene are prepared to tolerate native protests they would never permit from non-natives.
At Deseronto, the Mohawks' gripe isn't even with CN. They are upset about work at a quarry several kilometres away that they insist is on their ancestral land. Protests and day-long blockades at the quarry began last November, and native protesters have occupied the site continuously since last month.
But negotiations weren't moving fast enough, so Mohawks decided to "target" the main rail line between
Besides, April 20 marked the one-year anniversary of Ontario Provincial Police attempts to dislodge Mohawk protestors from the Douglas Creek housing development at Caledonia, and the Tyendinaga Mohawks wanted to show solidarity with their Six Nations cousins, so they moved from the quarry to the right-of-way to make two points with one blockade.
Many of the same natives involved in yesterday's blockade and the quarry standoff were among those who used a school bus to blockade the CN main line a year ago in protest of the OPP's attempts to clear the
No doubt the fact they were allowed to get away with the same stunt last year made them confident they could do it again without consequences this time, too.
The fecklessness of governments in the face of native lawlessness is only going to encourage more of it. Some native leaders have already predicted that this will be the "summer of the blockade," and there is no reason to doubt them.
The unwillingness of governments to enforce the law out of fear that native protesters will resort to violence--or worse, out of fear that enforcement will give politicians a PR black eye -- is fuelling protests rather than curtailing them.
Late yesterday, CN shut down all operations in the Montreal- Toronto corridor, even though it had obtained an injunction against the Mohawk blockade, because, just as at
The hope both in
Instead, the opposite has happened. One blockade has encouraged another and another, and so on.
Until governments cease negotiations on any land claim in which violence or blockades are used, Canadians can expect native protests to become increasingly disruptive.