The Six Nations Band Council wants to restart land claim talks with Ottawa and Ontario, but aims to put in place a new negotiator and take the talks in a new direction.
The band council has rescinded a 2006 motion delegating responsibility for the talks to the hereditary Six Nations/Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and intends to hire what chief Bill Montour calls a "hired gun" to represent Six Nations at the negotiating table.
The talks began four years ago this week in the wake of the Caledonia lands claim dispute and a botched provincial police raid, but halted last fall over a dispute on whether a third-party mediator was needed.
The band council also wants to abandon attempts to resolve individual land claims and, instead, seek a comprehensive settlement with the federal and provincial governments over its claim to all of the land along the Grand River. Montour said yesterday the council's ultimate aim is for the two governments to recognize Six Nations' rights to the land, which was given to it in 1784 by the British Crown for services in the American War of Independence, and to pay the band something like transfer payments in perpetuity.
Six Nations was given 10 kilometres on each side of the Grand, from its source to Lake Erie, but now only controls 5 per cent of its original land grant. The land grant is known as the Haldimand Tract.
There's no guarantee the two governments would return to the table on that pretext, but Montour notes Six Nations has also resumed its lawsuit against Canada, seeking an accounting of what happened to its holdings and monies. The lawsuit was launched in late 1994, but put in abeyance shortly before the Caledonia land claim eruption when it looked as if settlements could be reached outside the courts. Six Nations says Canada could owe it as much as $82 billion.
"Well, we will stay in court then," Montour said, if Ottawa and Queen's Park won't return to the table. "All we are trying to do is provide a couple of options for Canada to come to the table and say, 'Let's solve this old business because it should have been solved a long time ago.'"
The chief said he is drafting letters to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Premier Dalton McGuinty outlining Six Nations' new direction.
Mohawk chief Allen MacNaughton, lead negotiator for the Confederacy, could not be reached for comment on the new direction. There might be resentment and resistance to the band council's move as some see the Confederacy as the real government of Six Nations and the elected-band council as a creation of Ottawa. Confederacy supporters were also in the forefront of the 2006 occupation of a Caledonia housing project, including clan mothers.
Montour said he has heard "a few rumblings" but nothing official from the Confederacy. He says the band council will keep its leadership apprised of developments.
Federal negotiator Ron Doering could not be reached for comment.