To show its disgust with a violent demonstration at Caledonia in which a builder was beaten unconscious last week, the provincial government has temporarily pulled out of land-claims negotiations with the Six Nations.
"Ontario considers last week's confrontation unacceptable," the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs said in a statement yesterday announcing that government negotiators would not participate in this week's scheduled meeting, but hope to resume negotiations soon.
"Violence is never a solution to any dispute. Occupations and unlawful tactics put public safety at risk and slow down resolution of these important land claims issues," the statement added.
The government withdrawal from the talks was signalled by Premier Dalton McGuinty last week, after Caledonia developer Sam Gualtieri was beaten by a group of young aboriginal protesters inside a house he is building for his daughter and her fiancé at the Stirling South subdivision.
The Confederacy Council, which represents the traditional chiefs of the Haudenosaunee, said in a statement by Mohawk Chief Allen MacNaughton that it regrets the government's move and that it may only make the situation worse.
The chief's statement also said: "Six Nations peoples were protesting a development that was proceeding on disputed Six Nations lands without Six Nations approval or consultation."
The negotiations over land claims in the Haldimand Tract - a strip of land approximately 10 kilometres on either side of the Grand River - have been going on for a over a year.
They were undertaken in response to the continuing aboriginal occupation of the Douglas Creek land development site in Caledonia that started in February, 2006.