Stand-off in Caledonia

There's been a major stand-off between native people from the Six Nations and the Ontario Provincial Police (O.P.P.) going on near us in Caledonia, Ontario. For a couple of months the native people had been peacefully occupying a disputed piece of land next to their reserve where a developer had started a new housing development. Last week the O.P.P. raided the protest at dawn, tasaring and arresting a dozen or so protesters. Then native reinforcements arrived from the reserve and took back the land, forcing the police off. Now, with native supporters blockading a major highway in the area, all hell is breaking loose as seriously inconvenienced non-native residents have launched their own counter-protest.

As you might expect, it's all very complicated legally. At root is several hundred years of broken promises, shady deals, and suspect laws that have led to thousands of disputed native land claims that the government isn't addressing. I've heard that the average wait in Ontario for a native land claim to be heard in court is about 30 years. I can understand why folks would be frustrated.

Hopefully the situation in Caledonia will be resolved without any more violence. It would probably help if the native people took down their blockade of Highway 6. That would definitely get them more support in the local community. The O.P.P. also needs to back off---it was their raid that escalated this whole thing. And the local, provincial, and federal governments need to step up to the plate and make sure this claim and the thousands of others are dealt with in a timely manner, even if it isn't politically expedient for them to do so (which it isn't).

I don't have a lot of sympathy for the housing developer. Apparently the federal government sold them the disputed land, but there's no way this deal could have been done without both parties knowing that the ownership of the land would be disputed by the Six Nations. Somebody was trying to pull a fast one and get rich. For many years the claim on the land wasn't an issue because the land was agricultural. Does southern Ontario really need another housing development? There's a growing housing shortage in the area, but I say leave the land alone, built more condos in downtown Hamilton, Kitchener, and Toronto, and centralize everything so the environmental impact of our growing population will be less severe.