A Short Court Report

On March 18 hundreds of us converged at Kingston’s courthouse for a second round of contempt of court hearings and we were all expecting the worst. The court’s agenda was to deal with more outstanding charges against both Algonquins and Settlers. But what was supposed to be three full days of court was miraculously transformed into 3 hours of “housecleaning” by Frontenac Venture’s lawyer Neal Smitheman.

Frank Morrison, white landowner in contempt of court along with his well prepared defence was swept under the rug. All charges dropped. Poof! No more annoying, time consuming arguments about uranium mining. White man # 1 gets off scot free after living with this charge hanging over his head for seven months. No defence required.

White man # 2, a member of the Christian Peacemakers and a United Church Minister had lived with a contempt charge for the past six months. Once again he was prepared for anything and had good legal representation. All charges dropped.

White man # 3, also a member of The Christian Peacemakers and another longtime recipient of a contempt citing. All charges dropped although he had to “take an undertaking” not to protest or prevent Frontenac Ventures from exploratory drilling.

No horrendous fines (which, by the way, would be paid to Frontenac Ventures). No jail time. Relief from stress. Hallelujah! These three brave men deserved the break. But it was shockingly obvious that the court didn’t want to waste its time on the white folks.

Now let’s look at the treatment of the Indians. Maximum jail terms for contempt of court, heavy fines, financial and psychological humiliation. That’s harsh and brutal punishment for standing up and protesting uranium mining on their traditional lands. Then there’s the KI story in Big Trout Lake; six Band Councillors jailed for six months for the same “crime”, different mineral.  An interesting twist here is that both these stories feature the same legal cast – Neal Smitheman represents the two different mining companies involved. Chris Reid represents the two native groups involved. Good material for an HBO series. Bring back Deadwood. perhaps.

It seems the powers that be want to keep this story as a native story only. Drop the charges against the white people and don’t give them a chance to air their views. The white men charged with contempt of court were prepared to defend their right to protest and go to jail if it came to that. They were as involved in the protest this summer as anyone. But no one wanted to hear their stories.

On March 17,  six more white people were charged with contempt.  The Robertsville Six will be in court on June 2nd along with Bob Lovelace, Paula Sherman and Harold Perry who are all facing a second round of contempt charges.  I happen to be one of those white people charged. None of us, native or settler, have committed a crime but our protest has been criminalized and our human rights have been stomped on. What’s next in the name of uranium?

Our protest is definitely being marginalized as a native story by both the Ontario courts and our national media. The story they’re missing is the emergence of the 21st century Settler Movement which has grown out of our alliance with our First Nations brothers and sisters. Stay tuned.

There’s an interesting story told by the Anishnabe people in Northern Ontario about uranium. They claim they can sense veins of uranium under the ground by its smell and it’s not a pleasant smell. Geologists heard about this ability of the Anishnabe people and actually used native noses in detecting new uranium mines in the mid 1900s.

Since 1941 the Navahos in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah have had a long and painful relationship with uranium. They have a name for it, Leetso. Leetso means “yellow dirt” but the Navahos use onomatopeia in translating their words into english and to them leetso sounds like a reptilian monster, a monster that brought disease and death to their communities. Their traditional teachings tell them that to slay a monster they must first name it and then gain knowledge of it; knowledge of what feeds and sustains it. They believe that leetso walks hand in hand with fellow monsters and that these creatures feed on power, political and nuclear, and thrive on disrespect for human beings and for Mother Earth. The Navahos believe that the best weapon to defeat these monsters is the use of respect and group action.

These are often difficult concepts to grasp when you’re in the midst of a political struggle. Respecting your enemy is a concept the Natives understand but I suspect we white folks have some problems with this idea. But the marketing world successfully uses this approach. “Embrace the obstacle” is one of Terry O’Reilly’s mantras and he’s an advertising guru. He says, “the best ideas are found inside the very obstacle that appears to be preventing an easy solution.” The Dali Lama says essentially the same thing. But what is the obstacle exactly in this story? When it comes to group action we’re just beginning to understand the power of community building. Our group actions in these past nine months have been powerful and effective.

Here’s another question. What is the purpose of uranium as it co-exists underground with all its other mineral siblings? Left undisturbed, it’s an ingredient in some geological recipe. What on earth is cooking down there? Does uranium act like yeast or baking soda or salt? Or is it like the apple in the story of the Garden of Eden?

We know that a region’s geology defines the makeup of our soil, the taste of our water and the kinds of plants that grow in that region. In our beautiful corner of Eastern Ontario where our geology includes uranium we now understand that disturbing this mineral by drilling or blowing up the rocks it lives inside will affect our water, our air and our soil.

Early in July of 2007 Bob Lovelace spoke to the protesters at the mining site in Robertsville.

On February 23, one week after Bob Lovelace was sentenced to 6 months in jail, there was a rally in Napanee attended by hundreds of supporters.

Thanks to uranium exploration north of Sharbot Lake in Eastern Ontario our community has been transformed. Nine months ago we were a peaceful but dynamic community of oldtimers and newcomers. Lots of artists, musicians, writers, craftspeople and organic farmers have moved here since the 60’s. We all get along most of the time. There’s lots of good music and lots of good food.

After nine months of protest we’ve given birth to an historic alliance with two local Algonquin groups whose traditional lands have been staked by a uranium exploration company. Both Algonquin groups are adamant that there will be no uranium mining on their traditional lands. We “settlers” support them without reservation. No one in this community wants a uranium mine or, for that matter, a reservation. The Algonquins in these parts are non-status by choice and therefore have no reservations.

The land here is full of wetlands, creeks, rivers and the Mississippi Valley watershed which flows into the Ottawa River. We value our clean water. And we’ll fight to keep it that way. The Algonquins have taught us that protecting the water is both our duty and responsibility.

Thanks to uranium, the Algonquins and the “21st century Settler” alliance has become an unstoppable force. Our collective eyes have been opened and we’re learning how to work together for a common cause.

Thanks to uranium the settlers and the Algonquins have become activists or “eco-terrorists”, as George White, president of Frontenac Ventures Corp., calls us. Our peaceful lifestyle has disappeared. We spend hours online and on the phone, writing letters, protesting, wondering, ranting. We’re learning how to transform a grassroots movement into a force to be reckoned with. We now know more about uranium and the effects of mining uranium than the average citizen. We now know more about the untold history of Canada’s dealings with First Nations than most of us ever imagined. And we managed to sustain a peaceful protest all through the summer and fall.

But thanks to the powerful lobby groups behind uranium mining our protest has been marginalized in the national media and blatantly ignored by the Ontario government. And lately our protest has been criminalized by injunctions and contempt of court rulings.

Thanks to uranium for the wake up call. NO THANKS TO URANIUM. This is the will of the people who live here and vote here.

The best ongoing coverage of this story has been local, naturally.
Jeff Green, publisher and editor of “The Frontenac News” has told the story from the beginning.

www.frontenacnews.ca

On February 21, 2008 he published this summary of events:

June 28, 2007
Members of the Ardoch and Shabot Obaadjiwaan First Nations begin an occupation of the Robertsville mine, the headquarters and access point of Frontenac Ventures Corporation for an exploration project on a 30,000 acre mining claim. The company has the intention of pursuing a drilling program to determine if there is “an economic uranium resource” on the property.

The Algonquins say they were forced to take drastic action when the government of Ontario breached their duty to consult with them before registering Frontenac Ventures mining claims since the territory is included in the Algonquin Land Claim.

July 25, 2007
Frontenac Ventures initiates a $77 million lawsuit against the Algonquins and their supporters. At the same time they apply to Kingston Superior Court for an injunction ordering the occupation to end. A counter suit is subsequently filed by Ardoch against Frontenac Ventures and the government of Ontario for $1.03 billion.

August 2007
Through their lawyers, the Shabot Obaadjiwaan and the Ardoch Algonquins inform the court that they have opted not to contest the injunction saying the courts are no place to deal with aboriginal disputes, which they characterize as political in nature. They cite Justice Linden’s report on the Ipperwash Inquiry, which they say argues this very point.

August 31, 2007
An injunction is served ordering all protesters to vacate the site, granting Frontenac Ventures Corporation “unfettered access” to the Roberstvillle mine and the mining claim lands.

October 2007
The names of eight people are presented to Superior Court Justice Cunningham as people who are willing to confirm that had attended at the Robertsville mine, in contravention of the injunction.

October 5, 2007
A deal is reached in the judge’s chambers, effectively ending the occupation and setting up a 12-week window for mediation between the Algonquins and the Government of Ontario before Frontenac Ventures was scheduled to begin test drilling for uranium. The contempt of court process is frozen to allow for a mediated settlement to be sought.

November 2007
The Algonquin communities vacate the Robertsville mine and set up a small encampment on the road allowance near the gate.

December 2007
Mediation begins.

January 31, 2008
Mediation breaks down over the issue of drilling

February 12-15, 2008
Court hearing and sentencing.

Ardoch Algonquin retired chief Bob Lovelace is now in jail for 6 months. Lovelace chose to obey Algonquin Law rather than the “Rule of Law”. This annoyed the judge. Then Bob refused to betray anyone; not his own people, not settlers and not cops. The judge asked, then ordered him to identify certain people during cross examination. Lovelace refused three times.

So, not only a jail term but also crippling fines: $25,000 to Lovelace, $15,000 to Chief Paula Sherman, $10,000 to the Ardoch Algonquin community, plus an additional fine to Robert Lovelace of $2,000 a day until he “purges his contempt” and $2,000 a day to the Ardoch Algonquin Community until Lovelace “purges” or takes an “undertaking” to obey the terms of the injunction.

Does this court language speak for itself?

And this isn’t taking into account the fines still to be levied against the Shabot Obaadjiwan leadership and the three settlers who are facing contempt charges on March 18th. There’s also a second contempt which will be dealt with in these next court sessions referring to the interlocutory injunction which was awarded to Frontenac Ventures by Justice Cunningham. The first interim injunction was the work of another judge. What Cunningham will be weighing in this next frenzy of sentencing will be the actions of those who disobeyed an order he actually wrote. Oh oh.
Judge Cunningham also ruled that the evidence Bob Lovelace gave in court be struck. This means the Ardoch defence, based on the unconstitutionality of the Mining Act, can’t be used in court again. Lovelace’s eloquent and moving evidence was based on the Algonquin’s traditional relationship to the land.

The first part of the pipe is the stone and the stone is that part of creation that’s at the very centre. Everything else rests upon the stone. So we’re taught that the first thing we pick up is the stone. The next thing that goes into the pipe is the stem and the stem is made of wood. We often use sumac which is a really beautiful yellow wood and it’s easy to pull the pith out.

The second part, the stem, being made of wood, tells us that all the plants in the world whether they be great trees or grasses or lichens; whatever that plant material is, it rests on the stone. It’s the second order of being in this world. It’s dependent upon the stone. Without the stone there would be no plants.

The next thing we do is hang our feathers on the pipe. The feathers remind us of the third order of being, all the animal creatures of this world that fly and swim and walk and run. Sometimes it’s fur, sometimes it’s feathers. It’s a reminder, not just a decoration. That’s the third order of being. The third order of putting the pipe together is hanging those feathers, usually laced with animal hides, onto the pipe.

The fourth order of the pipe are the human beings because we’re the most dependent. Without our animal relations, without the creatures of this world, we would not exist. And without the stone none of this would be at all.

So that’s what we’re taught when we put the pipe together. There are many teachings that go with the pipe but I used that one today because it really does tell us a couple of important things. One is that we’re not way up in the order of things in this world. We’re actually, as human beings, the most dependent, and maybe even the youngest of all creatures on this world.
The other thing that it tells us is that we are dependent; that we can depend upon this earth; that we can rest upon all these others to find our place. As a pipe carrier we remember that when we begin to pray. We remember our place in the world and that we have a place here.

I think about that a lot and try to understand why is it that so much of our brothers’ and sisters’ time and so much of ourselves is tied up doing other things, seeing ourselves as the masters of this world, thinking that the rest of the world is dependent on what we do, rather than understanding that we’re dependent on this world.

Bob Lovelace Jan. 26, 2007

Bob Lovelace

When you look at a map or a picture of the linguistic groups in North America before contact what you will see is that those linguistic groups conform to the geography itself.  The major linguistic groups were located in the major ecosystems of this continent and the diversity within these linguistic groups were set in watersheds.  People lived within these watersheds and they adapted.  They were people who were not materially oriented but rather a knowledge-based society.  The highest order of human beings have the ability to adapt to local environments (rather than being displaced and taking an ideology into their new environment to change it into something different.)

I place our ancestors in the category of highest human beings.  They were a knowledge-based society who knew how to adapt to local conditions, local ecosystems.  The amount of knowledge that they had within these cultures was much more than what we have as individuals today.  For example, think about what’s in your fridge in terms of plant material.  How many plant species are in that fridge?  You ‘d probably come up with about 25 if you have a fairly diverse diet.

Algonquins in the Ottawa Vally used about 250 plants in their annual diet.  And they needed to know the succession of these plants: when they would be available, where to harvest them, who they could be sharing that harvest with.  Often they would have to go into a neighbouring territory and share the resource with others,  the same way we do with our wild rice today. People from Alderville and Curve Lake come and help us harvest the rice so relationships are built around food-sharing as well.  And often those 250 plants are also used in different successions.  Milkweed’s a good example. I hope most of you have enjoyed milkweed at that stage just before it flowers, at that rosy red stage.  It tastes really good, even better than broccoli and then there’s the stage when the early pods are really good.

The old people in Europe in the Mediterranean used to talk about the cornucopia and I think that’s a really good explanation of what the knowledge system amongst indigenous people really is.  They understand what a cornucopia is.  And they also understand the pharmacopia of plant medicines.  That takes a tremendous amount of complexity;  intellectual,  spiritual,  emotional complexity,  to gather all of that knowledge and pass it on in oral tradition where it is encoded in stories and songs, dances and drama and even in jokes.   There are all sorts of way to encode that information so that it’s remembered from generation to generation.  And that really talks about a relationship with the land that requires the highest level of the human order.

So I asked myself how did we get here?  How did we get to this point?  In my academic studies,  I started looking at Europe and asking these questions.  What I found was that 1700, 1800 years ago in Europe,  people lived in an indigenous state.  For the most part,  they weren’t unlike the Algonquins,  they weren’t unlike the Cree.  They lived in an indigenous state and they were knowledge-based cultures.

At a time in the early part of what we know as the first millennia they became Romans.  They were colonized by people from the Mediterranean.  They lost their language.  They lost their spirituality.  They lost their ability to express their cultures in a meaningful way.  Their dances, their dramas, their stories were submerged within the control of another culture.

Then it began to make sense to me that we’ve lost the process of knowledge-based cultures.  The process of losing our understanding and attachment to the land has to do with the way which some cultures have dominated others.

So it’s quite apparent to me that we all suffer from colonialism,  that all of our cultures have been diminuished,  in large measure,  by colonialism.  The effects of that are that instead of the oppressed wanting to gain back what they have lost we’re taught as an oppressed people to look to those who would see themselves as our masters and to say the only way to freedom, to liberty,  is to acquire that they’re got.  And so the whole direction of our western cultures,  and I’m including aboriginal people as well because we’ve been largely westernized,  is to look to those who would put themselves up as our masters and say, “We want you’ve got.  That’s our way to freedom, that’s our way to liberty.”

In truth ,  it’s exactly the opposite.  We can’t construct sustainability.  We can’t turn our intellectual minds to create what sustainability is.  We can’t develop technologies that will bring us to a state of sustainability.  Certainly, we need to adapt technologies to help us with that but we have to understand that the process isn’t going and taking what the masters have.  It’s recognizing that the binary itself is flawed.  We have to go back to understanding that you cannot take the relationship with the land away and that the relationship the so-called masters have with the land is flawed.

We have to form those relationships with the land over again.  We have to listen to the story of the pipe.  We have to find our own stories that tell us about the values of living close to the land and allowing the land to shape us.  Because that’s what happened.  When you look at that map of those linguistic patterns you see the cultures because language is often the principal signpost or the principal vessel in which cultures exist.  When you look at that you’ll see that the world itself shaped those cultures,  that it’s a relationship and it has to be a relationship of utter dependency.  That’s the binary;  that we are totally dependent upon this world — but thank God we are, because that dependency is what sustains us.

This is a story that sums up these ideas. It’s a story told to me by Wilfred Pelletier author and elder at Carleton University for many years and a great storyteller from Manitoulin Island.  This is a story he learned from the Cree and it goes this way.

Sometimes when someone comes knocking at the door, there’s no no one at home and you don’t have the proper clothes to wear to answer the door. What you need to do if you find yourself in that position, that situation,  is you need to open the door, go outside and you need to breathe the air and draw it right down into your heart.  Then you need to bend over and scoop up some soil and put it in your heart.  Then you need to go to the water and you need to scoop some water up and you need to put it in your heart.  And you need to take a leaf off a tree and you need to put it in your heart.  And you need to open your eyes and look all around and put it in your heart.

Then when someone comes knocking on the door you will be home and have the best clothes to wear.

From a teaching  given on January 26, 2008

March 1, 2008 was Bob Lovelace’s 60th birthday.

Bob was in prison for his birthday but I’m sure he’s not feeling sorry for himself.  He’ll have a lot of birthday cards to read.  And he’s doing time thinking.  Bob can really think.  His wise words to all of us will resonate and keep us from being shrill and ineffective.