SerengetiGuide
Well-Known Member
In no way is this racist, just providing some facts...as I am out here in Ontario, I can attest its true, plus it occurs in BC a lot as well.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/...cparland-olence-we-re-supposed-to-accept.aspx
The case brought against the Ontario government and Ontario Provincial Police in a Hamilton court is supposed to be about the confrontation with natives in Caledonia, and the alleged failure of authorities to provide protection from it. But there's something else that keeps bubbling up, a question that is central to the situation but might never be addressed by the proceedings.
It's the violence.
There was plenty of violence in Caledonia, as has been made amply clear in the opening days of the case brought by David Brown and his wife Dana Chatwell. Violence against the Browns, violence against the police, violence against the community. A hydro station was burned, a bridge set ablaze; natives in balaclavas and brandishing weapons closed off streets and issued threats against people who challenged them.
Brown told the court he and his family were regularly threatened. Their house was broken into, ransacked, covered in graffiti. Local firefighters were too intimidated to attempt to put our fires. When an OPP team tried to seize back the development occupied by natives they were beaten back by an armed mob. Community members attest that they grew to believe the OPP would do nothing to protect them if the violence was directed their way.
It's the acceptance of this that is alarming. This case isn't about whether it was right or wrong for the natives to act as they did, it's about whether authorities should have done more to protect an innocent couple from its effects. It's as if the violence itself isn't an issue. As if Canadians -- or people in Ontario, in any case -- have come to accept that it's normal for natives to react with threats, aggression and intimidation in certain circumstances, and that it's normal for authorities to accept that fact and accommodate it.
Brown and his wife are seeking $7 million, arguing the province and police had a duty to protect them after a land claim dispute blew up in a neighbourhood that happened to border and isolate their home. The Crown case -- and the trial is just in its early stages -- has argued there are policy issues at hand, that Mr. Brown's actions sometimes provoked the natives, and that the damages they're asking are excessive given that they didn't suffer physical injury, despite many threats.
What hasn't been an issue so far is why it should be taken for granted that violence would result from any attempt to confront the natives in the same way a non-native group would have been confronted.
No one has disputed so far that the native approach, from the start of the confrontation, involved a heavy dose of intimidation. Though the land claim had been trundling along for ages, the natives indicated they'd reached a new level of frustration by occupying the property, subsequently building barricades and blocking roads, making life exceedingly more difficult for hundreds of Caledonians who had nothing to do with the argument. The OPP attempt to take back the property set off wave of retaliatory destruction that heightened native anger and, the Browns say, turned their life into a nightmare.
The official response was to back off. The Ontario government rescued the developer by buying the property and letting the natives have the run of it. The OPP declared themselves peacekeepers, even when there wasn't much peace, and did their best not to rile the natives further. When Mr. Brown refused to accept his fate and keep quiet about it, he was the one who suffered, getting dragged off to cool down in a cell after he'd been surrounded and threatened by an angry native mob, or lectured by police when he blew his top.
This has become normal in the wake of Ipperwash and Oka. It has become common wisdom that no government is going to endanger its own standing by taking action that might provoke natives and result in violence. And it is similarly taken for granted that violence is the likely end result of "provocation" -- which has come to mean anything that might upset the natives further. When natives blocked Ontario's main highway at the peak of summer travel, the police routed drivers onto detours that added hours to their journey. The drivers did nothing wrong, but it was judged better to inconvenience them than to aggravate the protesters. When natives frightened border guards into abandoning their post at a Cornwall area border crossing, the reaction -- this time of the federal government -- was to relocate the crossing somewhere else, at whatever cost and inconvenience, rather than challenge the natives' right to intimidate.
Anything is better than a confrontation. Anything is better than provoking or angering natives, even if those causing the trouble don't enjoy the support of native leaders or the broader native community. Any bending, twisting or breaking of the law can be accommodated if necessary, because the alternative is a situation governments don't know how to deal with and are mightily afraid of.
The politicians don't know what to do. They're scared. They don't want to be blamed. So they're trying to appease native groups while hoping we learn to get used to it, that anger outside the native community doesn't boil over and cause a greater tragedy.
The victims are just supposed to live with it.
www.serengetifishingcharters.com
*NEW VIDEO*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlEzuNC59ck
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/...cparland-olence-we-re-supposed-to-accept.aspx
The case brought against the Ontario government and Ontario Provincial Police in a Hamilton court is supposed to be about the confrontation with natives in Caledonia, and the alleged failure of authorities to provide protection from it. But there's something else that keeps bubbling up, a question that is central to the situation but might never be addressed by the proceedings.
It's the violence.
There was plenty of violence in Caledonia, as has been made amply clear in the opening days of the case brought by David Brown and his wife Dana Chatwell. Violence against the Browns, violence against the police, violence against the community. A hydro station was burned, a bridge set ablaze; natives in balaclavas and brandishing weapons closed off streets and issued threats against people who challenged them.
Brown told the court he and his family were regularly threatened. Their house was broken into, ransacked, covered in graffiti. Local firefighters were too intimidated to attempt to put our fires. When an OPP team tried to seize back the development occupied by natives they were beaten back by an armed mob. Community members attest that they grew to believe the OPP would do nothing to protect them if the violence was directed their way.
It's the acceptance of this that is alarming. This case isn't about whether it was right or wrong for the natives to act as they did, it's about whether authorities should have done more to protect an innocent couple from its effects. It's as if the violence itself isn't an issue. As if Canadians -- or people in Ontario, in any case -- have come to accept that it's normal for natives to react with threats, aggression and intimidation in certain circumstances, and that it's normal for authorities to accept that fact and accommodate it.
Brown and his wife are seeking $7 million, arguing the province and police had a duty to protect them after a land claim dispute blew up in a neighbourhood that happened to border and isolate their home. The Crown case -- and the trial is just in its early stages -- has argued there are policy issues at hand, that Mr. Brown's actions sometimes provoked the natives, and that the damages they're asking are excessive given that they didn't suffer physical injury, despite many threats.
What hasn't been an issue so far is why it should be taken for granted that violence would result from any attempt to confront the natives in the same way a non-native group would have been confronted.
No one has disputed so far that the native approach, from the start of the confrontation, involved a heavy dose of intimidation. Though the land claim had been trundling along for ages, the natives indicated they'd reached a new level of frustration by occupying the property, subsequently building barricades and blocking roads, making life exceedingly more difficult for hundreds of Caledonians who had nothing to do with the argument. The OPP attempt to take back the property set off wave of retaliatory destruction that heightened native anger and, the Browns say, turned their life into a nightmare.
The official response was to back off. The Ontario government rescued the developer by buying the property and letting the natives have the run of it. The OPP declared themselves peacekeepers, even when there wasn't much peace, and did their best not to rile the natives further. When Mr. Brown refused to accept his fate and keep quiet about it, he was the one who suffered, getting dragged off to cool down in a cell after he'd been surrounded and threatened by an angry native mob, or lectured by police when he blew his top.
This has become normal in the wake of Ipperwash and Oka. It has become common wisdom that no government is going to endanger its own standing by taking action that might provoke natives and result in violence. And it is similarly taken for granted that violence is the likely end result of "provocation" -- which has come to mean anything that might upset the natives further. When natives blocked Ontario's main highway at the peak of summer travel, the police routed drivers onto detours that added hours to their journey. The drivers did nothing wrong, but it was judged better to inconvenience them than to aggravate the protesters. When natives frightened border guards into abandoning their post at a Cornwall area border crossing, the reaction -- this time of the federal government -- was to relocate the crossing somewhere else, at whatever cost and inconvenience, rather than challenge the natives' right to intimidate.
Anything is better than a confrontation. Anything is better than provoking or angering natives, even if those causing the trouble don't enjoy the support of native leaders or the broader native community. Any bending, twisting or breaking of the law can be accommodated if necessary, because the alternative is a situation governments don't know how to deal with and are mightily afraid of.
The politicians don't know what to do. They're scared. They don't want to be blamed. So they're trying to appease native groups while hoping we learn to get used to it, that anger outside the native community doesn't boil over and cause a greater tragedy.
The victims are just supposed to live with it.
www.serengetifishingcharters.com
*NEW VIDEO*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlEzuNC59ck
