Drop the injunctions and lawsuits and get back to developing good relationships, a panel of natives and non-natives said Thursday night.
Lawyers, land experts and historians weighed in at the latest meeting to help educate non-natives about native issues. They told about 140 people that the increase in aggressive behaviour by everyone isn't going to lead to a constructive settlement.
"In the last two to three years, steps have been taken by both sides to put us on a path that won't lead to resolution," warned the city's former mayor, Chris Friel, at Laurier's Odeon building.
"We're not going to be able to live as neighbours if we keep this going."
The meeting was the fourth in a series being held by TRUE, Two Row Understanding through Education.
Friel said that while his sympathies are clearly with the native people who have been consistently wronged over the past 200 years, he can't agree with some decisions made by the natives.
"I'm not fully supportive of the Haudenosaunee Development Institute," he said of the agency established to control development in the Haldimand Tract. "At the same time, the injunction (obtained by the city) is also a bad process that's created a worse process and there's no resolution."
Friel, like others at the meeting, suggested uniting all parties to force the federal government into solving the land claims rather than allowing it to divide and conquer both the natives and all the interested communities.
Andrew Orkin, a human rights lawyer who is originally from South Africa, likened the Canadian government's treatment of natives to the treatment of blacks in South Africa.
"We cannot walk away from our treaties," Orkin said. "The path of injunctions leads to the path of Ipperwash."
Orkin said natives have shown remarkable restraint toward the government over the years and they have humbly and politely request what they are owed and to be consulted over land use.
The panel also told the crowd there's a government expectation that the natives will eventually accept a pile of money and then go away.
That is not in the native nature, said the panel, explaining that the natives will always think of themselves as the caretakers of this land.
Jan Longboat warned the crowd they are involved in a spiritual war, telling how, some years ago, a group of native women asked Friel to meet with them when he was mayor. The women prayed at the site of a dispute where machines were trying to lay a line across the Grand River, against the wishes of the natives.
"We met four mornings in a row and on the fourth day, the machinery hit shale," said Longboat.
Phil Monture, a lands research expert who worked for decades for the elected band council, said the natives will eventually prevail -- but not in his lifetime.
"(The Canadian government) is oozing incompetence," Monture said. "It's an endurance test and we're going to win this. We're not going away."
Other panellists included Aaron Detlor, a native lawyer and the man behind the Haudenosaunee Development Institute; Zig Misiak, a local historian and educator; and Stan Farmer, an amateur historian.
Detlor explained why the HDI was established and said that, while some accused the group of extortion, it has never demanded funds.
"We have to undertake some expensive research but we never told (developers) they had to pay. The extortion claim is about fear."
Orkin encouraged those in the crowd to continue to be educated about the situation and to make their voices heard to the federal government.
"Every non-native person in this room has more power than we think. If the government started receiving scores of letters, they're ears would prick up."