Camp Ipperwash occupation approaches seven-year mark

Page 7

The Warrior Society flag now flies where the Canadian flag used to wave above the guardhouse at the main gate of the former CFB Ipperwash and, since 1993, it's been a kind of no-man's-land in the cold war between traditional Pottawami protesters and Canadian authorities.

The world's attention was focused on this camp and on Ipperwash Provincial Park, just a kilometre down Army Camp Rd. to the west, on Sept. 6, 1995, when Dudley George was shot and killed by Ontario Provincial Police Acting Sgt. Kenneth Deane, an act Amnesty International has called an "extra-judicial execution."

Deane was convicted of criminal negligence causing death, but he was sentenced to community service and kept his job.

On June 1, the talk was about Warren George being in jail while Deane walked around free. None of the Stoney Pointers, as the residents call themselves, thought there was any justice in that.

Pierre George, Dudley's brother, lives at the camp. He told Windspeaker it's a place where violence is frequently used to solve disagreements and where fear and suspicion is always in the background.

It could be the only place in the country where there is true Native sovereignty but it comes at a price. Divisions between the residents of the camp and their relatives who live on the nearby Kettle and Stony Point reserve are bitter. Federal, provincial and local governments - as well as provincial police and federal intelligence agencies - watch closely, it seems, at all times, looking for an opportunity to end the seven-year-old occupation. Tensions exist between local residents and the Stoney Pointers. Late at night, bottles get tossed through windows of the barracks that are within throwing distance of Highway 21, especially on weekends when alcohol increases the courage of non-Native locals.

Everywhere along the main highway, the camp's buildings are decorated with spray-painted graffiti that reveals the rage that simmers within the hearts of Dudley George's surviving friends and relatives.

The place is a black eye for Ontario Premier Mike Harris, the Ontario Provincial Police, the Department of National Defence and the Department of Indian Affairs, which have all played a role in the events that led to the standoff.

Harris continues to be haunted by the memory of Dudley George. Five years later, he has still resisted the call for a public inquiry into the events of the night of the shooting. Many people, not just Stoney Pointers by any means, believe Harris had a hand in the death of Dudley George. They believe he is stone-walling the inquiry to protect himself from justice.

But even the pursuit of the truth about the night of Sept. 6 can't unite the camp residents with their band council supporting friends and relatives. The George family itself is bitterly split.

Pierre George has asked his brother Sam to remove his name from the $7 million wrongful death lawsuit that was filed against the premier, the attorney general, the solicitor general, the OPP commissioner and several police officers. He believes it's "blood money."

The story has its beginnings in the early 1940s when the federal government expropriated the Stoney Point people's land under the War Measures Act in order to construct the base. It was war time and the people were expected to do their part for the war effort. The government promised the land would be cleaned up and returned when the military no longer had a use for it. The Stoney Point community was merged with the nearby Kettle Point community and the people were relocated. But, as former Indian Affairs minister Ron Irwin verified in the chaotic days following Dudley's shooting, there was a burial ground left behind.

The Stoney Pointers never forgot where home was and, after half a century of waiting for the government to keep their word about returning the land, they took action and reclaimed the camp in 1993. Things stayed more or less peaceful for two years until the Stoney Pointers, in an attemt to force the government to deal with them, extended their occupation into the provincial park to the west of the military base.

"A lot of people might say the government owns that [the military base]. Well, I say they don't because in 1993 the people moved on there and they never tried to move 'em off. They harassed us at different times. They must know," Pierre George said. "We have a birthright to be there. And I would also say that from a legal standpoint, there's that color of right defence. We know we belong there. And that stood up down at the park, too. They know they can't remove us, we belong there."

The police and the army have stayed away, saying they don't want a confrontation. The state of limbo caused by the lack of recognition of the traditional people, whose claim to the land is disputed by the band council, has left things hanging in a very unsettling way. The band council claims that many of the occupiers are opportunists who have no legitimate connection to the land. George claims that's a smokescreen designed to ensure that any payment related to the restoration and return of the land will go to the band rather than the Stoney Pointers. He said it wouldn't be that hard to trace the family ties and decide who has a legitimate claim to the land.

"They know who belongs there. Some of the people in Kettle Point say, 'Well everybody's intermarried and all that.' Well, that's still not hard to figure out. You just go back to the grandfathers who were there at that time," he said.

Meanwhile, the impasse continues. The toxic waste and other debris that accumulated from half a century of military training exercises remains in the woods that form the majority of the expansive base's grounds. And the question of legitimate ownership remains undecided.

"That's the sad part about it," said Pierre George. "Nothing's been resolved. If the government would have returned it to the people they took it from, things would have been different."

Stoney Pointes know the band council didn't approve of them in 1995. Glenn George, one of the leaders of the occupation, accuses former Kettle and Stony Point Chief Tom Bressette, now the Ontario regional sub-chief for the Assembly of First Nations, of allowing the OPP build up that led to Dudley George's death. Like most traditional people, he sees the people who participate in the band council system as government employees. He said the government rewards loyalty to that system with money and, likewise, punishes those who won't conform to the system.

"They're sellouts. They speak on behalf of whom? I never elected them. They weren't given no right to speak for nobody," he said.

Glenn George believes that the spirits will exact their form of justice on those who have turned their backs on the traditional ways.

"Our people have endured this nightmare for more than 500 years," he said. "We were promised these people would be made peaceful and I know that will happen."

Pierre George shares the distrust of the band council and that's one reason why he won't support his brother's lawsuit against the premier. The lawsuit was financed in part by the band council and he strongly resents his brother for taking that money.

He, along with his sister Caroline, drove his fatally wounded brother to Strathroy Middlesex General Hospital on that fateful night. A half-hour drive in a 1977 Chevy with only three tires - they suffered a blowout early in the journey and had no time to fix it - during which they were shadowed by police officers who did not step in to help. He feels that Dudley would not have approved of accepting the band council's help and he can't bring himself to look the other way.

"Sam and them do not recognize what Dudley was doing there," he said.

Sam George's supporters say he made the decision to get justice for his late brother by forcing the government to be accountable and that kind of a struggle isn't cheap. Members of the coalition pushing for an inquiry into Duley George's death say Pierre is angry and traumatized by the events of that night but he will eventually reconcile with his siblings. Sam George could not be reached for comment.

Pierre believes the Stoney Pointers have a right to the land and he'll fight anyone who tries to deny them.

"I have a brother who died for that land," he said.

Glenn George is furious that the band council has been engaged in talks with the government to settle the land question.

"They're treating it like it's a land claim when it's a repossession," he said.

He said he's confident it will eventually come down to talks between his group and the Department of National Defence, who took the land from the original residents so long ago and made the promises about its eventual return.

"When you have an argument it's between two people and in this case it's the people here and DND," he said.

Since the federal authorities only recognize band council governments and have a big political stake in continuing that practice, that face-off with DND isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Asked if he and the others are willing to continue to stare down the government and deal with the constant threat that someone in authority somewhere could at any time decide things have gone on long enough, he shruggs off that risk.

"You take a risk driving down the road these days," he said.

And nobody knows how it will all end.