Caledonia land disputes heat up
Portion of highway still closed
The hereditary chiefs of the First Nation near Caledonia have come out in support of a blockade and encampment, a protest that, they say, is “to protect and save the land for our future generations who will have nowhere to live and prosper if the settler population continues to unlawfully encroach upon our lands.”
Having simmered for more than a decade, the Indigenous land dispute in southwestern Ontario has bubbled up again this summer, with blockades rerouting local residents and businesses, and preventing a developer from proceeding with a construction project on a disputed land tract. This time around, the Caledonia controversy shows elements of the Indigenous governance issues at play in the Wet’suwet’en protests against the Coastal GasLink pipeline: the tension between elected Indigenous leaders and hereditary leadership.
The protests are objecting, specifically, to the residential neighbourhood planned by Foxgate Developments.
“The Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council is opposed to this development and as the holder of collective rights for the Haudenosaunee people has not granted any type of consent which would allow this development to proceed,” said a statement from the chiefs this weekend.
The encampment, named 1492 Land Back Lane has been in place since mid-July, and is located on McKenzie Meadows, the site where a developer intends to build 218 homes on 25 acres; some homeowners, according to news reports, had expected to be moving in this fall.
The blockade was cleared earlier this month and arrests were made after Ontario Provincial Police enforced a court-ordered injunction at the site to allow development of portions of the site to continue and roads to be cleared. Construction has been halted because of the occupation of parcels of land.
The protesters have also, at various times, blockaded Highway 6, the King’s Highway, leading to outrage among some of the locals, who have expressed frustration at what they see as inaction on the part of the OPP. As of Monday, the police confirmed that a portion of Highway 6 and Argyle Street remain closed.
“We are exposed to acts of domestic terrorism at least twice a year. Does anyone outside our rural county care?” asked a resident in the Hamilton Spectator newspaper recently. “Where else in Ontario do citizens endure almost constant blockades of their roads and the railway, and have tire fires lit across their main thoroughfare as well as the bypass to the town?”
The camp has been slowly morphing over the summer. After being dismantled by the OPP, it sprung back.
The site is part of the Haldimand Tract, a piece of land given to members of the nation in 1784 who had fought on the British side during the American Revolutionary War. The details of land ownership in that tract are under dispute in the courts, with 29 separate claims regarding losses of land and assets over the years.
Caledonia has long been the site of conflicts between the developers and the Six Nations of the Grand River, most famously in 2006, when the ongoing standoff ignited in protests, tire-burning and injuries. In the end, the province aborted the project, compensating the developer and leaving the land in Indigenous hands.
News reports say that Foxgate Developments purchased the land at McKenzie Meadows after consultations with the Six Nations elected council; APTN reported that documents filed in court by Foxgate show the elected leadership of Six Nations agreed to publicly support the development project.
Last week, Mark Hill, the elected chief of Six Nations, said in a statement on Facebook that he would “encourage all sides and each and every person involved to carefully consider the actions they take and the impacts those actions will have on the situation.”
The statement from the “Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council, says it “holds rights collectively on behalf of the Haudenosaunee.”
The statement also requests that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Doug Ford “sit down in good faith and return to the negotiation table to address land issues with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council.”
Emily Williams, a spokesperson for the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, said in an emailed statement that, “We encourage the parties involved to continue to work together to find a constructive, respectful, and positive way forward.”