From just beyond the doors of Central Presbyterian Church, a statue of Joseph Brant (the Mohawk chief who leant his name to Brantford, Ont.), ringed by six First Nations chiefs, stands at the centre of the downtown’s Victoria Square. Although this public square is mere paces from the doors of three churches and the Brant County courthouse, its peace has been punctuated by occasional protests, but not by preaching.
Rev. Mark Gaskin, now minister at St. Andrew’s Galt in Cambridge, Ont., admits that in the 14 years he ministered at Central, he never preached a sermon about the protests that have been happening, in some cases, right outside the door. He hasn’t been afraid to tackle other political topics from the pulpit; he admits he’s talked about the situation in Afghanistan because “we can all agree on that.” But when it comes to aboriginal land rights, he thinks the topic is still rarely broached at coffee hour, although it may crop up in the parking lot or over the morning paper.
“Why don’t we talk about it?” he asks. “If you’re too passionate about it you end up sounding like a racist, I think. And I know you’ll hear from someone else that it’s not about race, but I just don’t feel comfortable, as a white guy, talking about it. We’re all just hoping it’ll go away, which I know is different from the official position of our church.”
“If I’m really honest,” Gaskin says, “I’ve gotta say that, as far as church is concerned, this all might as well be happening on the other side of the world. We just want it to go away, and it’s hard to say we have much sympathy.
“My house is on the land they’re claiming. The church is on the land they’re claiming. I think there’s the sense that, if you show too much sympathy, people will ask, ‘well, are you willing to give your house back?'”
There are five Presbyterian churches in Brantford. They are all modest, with devoted congregations and a handful of community ministries including food banks and Bible studies. As at Central, aboriginal concerns make for uncomfortable conversations, and none of the churches are involved with ministries aimed to improve relationships between the aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities.
“I’ve only been here four years and am just learning the history of the area and the aboriginal folks’ position,” says Rev. Rod Lewis of Alexandria. “I find it a very difficult position for everybody.
“Opinions are sort of divided, or at least mixed. Some may comment about having a sensitivity, but then may qualify that by saying, ‘but that’s preventing the city from moving forward,’ or something like that.”
Joseph (Thayendanegea) Brant fought alongside the British against the Americans during the War of Independence; he met the king of England and the president of the United States. For his loyalty and for his losses, the British granted him and his Mohawk nation 10 kilometres of land on both sides of the Grand River. The area where his allies crossed the river from what is now New York State was known as Brant’s Ford. The Crown also established an Anglican church on the land, in honour of the religion to which Brant had converted.
Just south of Brantford, as city streets give way to fields of aboriginal peoples’ land, the steeple of Her Majesty’s Royal Chapel of the Mohawks, the oldest Protestant church in Ontario, rises above the trees. The white chapel, shading the tombs of Brant and his son, is all that remains of the Mohawk village that once stood nearby. Today, the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve sits on about 46,500 acres, or about a third of the original grant.
What happened to Brant’s land? A succession of native leaders (beginning with Brant himself) chipped away at its edges, selling off parcels to non-aboriginal people. Developers and squatters knocked off other sections, sometimes with blessings from governments and courts. Three centuries later, Brant’s legacy is complicated — each acre of land, given or taken, is hotly debated, protested, questioned in court. But one thing is certain, in their own minds, native and non-native peoples are convinced they are protecting their own promised lands.
Phil Race considers himself a bit of a speculator. The former adherent of a Presbyterian church in Brantford bought a nine-acre plot of land near the Grand River in 2005, planning to build a service station just south of Highway 403. Plans changed, and in 2007 he sold three acres to become the site of a new Hampton Inn.
“Here’s the only letter I received when we were going through the rezoning process [for the service station],” he says, pulling out a paper emblazoned with letterhead from the Six Nations Council, an elected governing body created under the Indian Act. “Basically, it says they recognize the land was sold and patent in 1842. They’re recognizing the transfer but litigating on behalf of the money. This is the same land where they then proceeded to tie the hotel up for months. So I have, in writing from the Six Nations, a document recognizing the legal transfer of the property. But native protestors came and stopped construction.”
A striped couch, containers of toilet paper, the ripped remains of garbage bags and long poles that used to support a tipi were left on the hotel site for a long time after aboriginal protestors were ordered off of the property by an injunction from the city. The protestors allied themselves with the Haudenosaunee Development Institute, a then newly created branch of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Council, a traditional governing body chosen by clan mothers. In the constant toing-and-froing of opinions, the province of Ontario rejected the HDI’s authority to negotiate in the fall of 2007.
While the protests were relatively mild, locals remembered the 2006 highway barricade at nearby Caledonia over a proposed subdivision. Various levels of government bickered over who had authority and responsibility for the land claims, an elderly couple was harassed, non-natives showed up in later months to protest the native people. A decade earlier, similar cycles of acrimony and mistrust did lead to violence when Ontario Provincial Police shot Ojibwa Dudley George, during a protest at Ipperwash Provincial Park. That death led to a public inquiry.
Lawsuits, injunctions and compromises are by now a typical tangle of the development process. Race still owns almost six acres of property that he plans to develop if he can find the right opportunity. For the moment, he has no choice but to wait.
“Anytime you sit down with the natives, and especially the Six Nations, there’s the hereditary council, the elected council … and then you have the splinter groups, the HDI,” Race says, expressing his frustration and confusion. “Who can make a decision that will bind the Six Nations? … It’s a very difficult situation for the federal negotiators. Are the people who can bind the Six Nations sitting across the table?”
Not surprisingly, then, confusion and frustration are not limited to one side of the debate. Keith Jamieson is a Mohawk historian and adjunct professor of Indigenous Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Brantford campus. He argues from the native perspective: he considers the Crown an ally — not a superior — to the Six Nations, and calls the Haudenosaunee Confederacy a “moral compass” which has been given authority to set priorities for the community. “The HDI is a bit of a knee-jerk reaction,” he admits, calling it a “first shot” at creating an administrative arm for the traditional body.
“We don’t see this as a protest. We go and cause inconvenience. It’s not a land claim, it’s reclamation. And retribution.”
Amy Lickers, community planner for the Six Nations Council, maintains a spirit of optimism. She suggests many aboriginal people aren’t opposed to development as long as the community is consulted first. “At the very beginning stages, when you’re gathering information, it’s okay for you to send in your worker people, but in the long run we don’t want to see your worker people here because they can’t do anything. We want to see your decision-makers and your money people and whoever else needs to be here at the table because that’s who we need to be consulting with.
“A lot of times we find out about development as an afterthought. [You can’t consult when] your shovels are in the ground; you need to get here before that. … Once you’ve already started to develop, where’s the room for the consultation? There is no room.
“Sometimes there’s been a feeling of hopelessness, and so far the protests have been the only things that have been able to get any action. Because it’s not like our concerns for land claims are new. This has been going on for a long time, but it’s not until recently that people have started to take notice of it.”
As a community planner, Lickers deals with development on reserve lands, but also works with municipalities and developers whose projects may impact the Six Nations, or which are taking place in disputed areas. According to the Supreme Court, the Crown is required to consult and accommodate aboriginal peoples when projects could affect their interests.
“People in places like Brantford have experienced what native peoples have,” says Lori Ransom, the Presbyterian Church in Canada’s healing and reconciliation animator. “They’ve had their land occupied. They’ve felt unsafe in their communities. Both sides have — as protests and counter-protests have occurred nearby. So there’s healing needed on two levels for both sides: historic and recent.”
Ransom is a member of the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation, and worked in the department of Indian and Northern Affairs for more than 20 years before taking on her current role.
“The whole idea of making amends for historical wrongs is fairly recent. We don’t have a lot of precedents to look back on, or examples that we can point to and say ‘this is how it’s done.’ We’re all groping through this. But I think it’s a sign of health and maturity that we’ve reached a place where we can say, ‘There’s been an injustice and I’ve benefited from it. How can I make amends?'”
On the level of courts and governments, there are negotiations which may one day attach monetary settlements to historical injustices. And, she suggests, although money or land may be a tangible part of an apology — of saying I was wrong and I’m willing to give something up as part of my act of apology — it won’t heal the hurts or the spirits of individuals and communities.
“People may need to ask: What’s at issue? What’s at stake?” she suggests. “Church members may have been wronged in their own lives, or in the lives of their parents or grandparents. What’s wounded is the relationship, and to restore a relationship both parties need to work together to rebuild trust. We have to ask, how we can love our neighbours when they seem like our enemies — whom Christ also told us to love?”
Rev. Stewart Folster, a member of the Eagle Clan, describes his experience as a member of the Brokenhead Ojibway Nations’ reserve in Manitoba. Under a May 1997 agreement aimed at fulfilling the Crown’s treaty obligations, his nation received 4,344 acres of federal Crown land, a federal payment of $350,000 and $3.68 million to purchase additional land from willing sellers. But he grew up on the reserve as a “non-status Indian,” feeling that he didn’t belong. His grandfather sold his treaty rights in the early 1900s, and they were only restored to the family when Bill C-31 passed in 1985.
“As of yet, my family has never benefited from any of that money,” he says. Folster is an ordained Presbyterian minister and pastor of the Saskatoon Native Circle Ministry–an outreach to Saskatoon’s inner-city population, offering meals, worship services, fellowship, healing ceremonies, spiritual counselling and prayer.
“Truth and reconciliation means that you want to restore the relationship between sisters and brothers,” he says. “You want to learn about each other. It’s time. It’s time to live together. I also work with non-native people in my ministry and they come to worship and they take part in our ceremonies.
“Tears have to be shed. Anger and resentment and fear have to be addressed. God will be there. My elders have some beautiful teachings to give you, not just you, but to the entire world. Reach out to the Six Nations. They are created in God’s image and we are all related. Some of them will be angry at your interest in them but show them that you want to get to know them. The reason we have conflict is because we don’t sit down and get to know one another.”
Ultimately, reconciliation may not be about agreeing, or about fixing hundreds of years of historical problems. Perhaps it is the small, yet sincere steps that can actually mean the most. As Ransom suggests: “It’s about finding ways to live well in the meantime.”
