| Play Part
1 |
- Introduction to the class and to the court case, taking place in North Bay Ontario.
- Anthony Hall is in Laurentian University in Sudbury Ontario. He is joined by Michael Swinwood the main lawyer in the case, and Father Michael Stogre, author of That The World May Believe – The Development of Papal Social Thought on Aboriginal Rights”
- This case began as a criminal charge but now has been transformed into a constitutional question.
|
| |
- Michael Swinwood provides a thumbnail sketch of the case and how he became involved.
- In 2001 an Algonquin woman and a Mowhawk man in Field, Ontario, were operating something called the League of Indian Nations of North America. They were distributing cards identifying people as native. On the back of the cards there was a list of 5 constitutional rights that they claim come from the treaties. The authorities were upset about the statement that Indians: “were exempt from federal, Provincial and Municipal Taxes.”
- Swinwood was sought after to provide a constitutional element to the case.
- He became involved in aboriginal matters through studying aboriginal spirituality and interview native elders for an organization called Elders Without Borders. ( http://www.elderswithoutborders.org ).
- Swinwood was approached by Algonquin freedom fighters who had set up a blockade to prevent logging trucks from entering their ancestral trapping lands.
- They were charged with “interfering with economic activity” and for threatening to blow up a bridge which they themselves had built.
- There was an identical constitutional question put forth in Hull, Quebec in 1999 as the one in North Bay in 2005.
|
| |
- This constitutional question surrounds the issue of Genocide and Sovereignty. Taking the position that native people never really gave up their sovereignty. That the sovereignty of the crown as it exists has difficulty imposing its sovereignty on native people.
- In the case of Okanagan Band versus her majesty, the band had sought funding to pursue a land claim. The group was granted $841, 000 based on 1) that they didn't have sufficient funds 2) that their constitutional claim was sufficiently novel and complex and 3) that it transcended individual interests (it was applicable to others).
- Sovereignty is examined in the context of the US invasion of Iraq and the need to setup a provisional government to administer authority.
- The major players in the colonization of North America were the French, Spanish and the English.
- There was a battle between France and England that culminated in the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Wherein France purportedly gave North America to England
- A group needs a territory to claim sovereignty. Europeans claimed sovereignty based on the concept of Terra Nullius, that the land was not sufficiently populated. This claim has been discredited; some such as Ward Churchill author of Holocaust and Holocaust denial, 1492 to present would put the population base at the time of European contact at around 100 million persons.
- This represents an attrition rate of over 90%.
- A nation cannot obtain sovereignty over another nation by conquest.
- Written on the backs of the cards were statements derived from the treaties between Britain and indigenous peoples.
- The idea of no taxation has its genesis in the treaties.
- The American Empire and the Fourth world pays special attention to Section 35 of the Constitution act of Canada.
- It is important to consider that the Apartheid system of South Africa is in some ways modeled after sections of the Indian Act of Canada.
- Officials of the Indian Affairs Department actually traveled to South Africa to discuss some of the sections of the Indian Act which were then enacted by the apartheid regime, particularly concepts of keeping people in villages, giving them passes in order for them to leave the village, and setting up town councils like band councils.
- The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission involved reconciling the minority white population with the majority black. In Canada whites are a significant majority of the population, but the same kind of issues need to be reconciled.
|
| |
- Canadian sovereignty existed because of alliance with indigenous people.
- The major alliance was between natives siding with the British Crown against the Rebels that wanted to leave (American Revolution).
- The declaration made claims that King George III had “brought on the merciless Indian savages”.
- In a court case one must present evidence. Constitutional cases need experts with the ability to reach back into history. A discussion of the qualifications of Anthony Hall takes place.
|
| |
- Swinwood is representing a number of native groups in Canada and the United States.
- The issue for all native people in North and South America is Sovereignty.
- In 1996 the US congress in a celebration of the contribution of the Iroquois confederacy's great law of peace to the US constitution, had a presentation where they took the great law of peace article by article and put it up against each article of the US constitution to demonstrate the relationship between the two documents.
- There is jurisprudence in the United States that could stand for the proposition that Article I of the US constitution recognizes the sovereignty of recognized tribes in the US.
- The Tuscarawas tribes that Swinwood is representing in North Carolina are the descendants of a group that was nearly wiped out in battles with colonialists between 1711-1713. The North Carolina government took the position that there were no Tuscarawas left.
- This group is trying to attain tribal recognition and then work on issues of sovereignty.
- In the US when you are recognized as a tribe, the Government agrees to treat you government to government.
- In Mohawk territory in northern New York, there are signs that say: No FBI, No CIA and No State Police, and its mostly respected by state and federal governments that they will govern themselves and their own situation.
- Question period for the students in Lethbridge
- What cases are being looked at? How far back?
|
| |
- There are somewhere between 4.3 and 4.5 million Native people in Canada. 1.2 million are registered under the Indian Act, and 330, 000 live on reservations. A majority falls outside jurisdiction of the Indian Act.
- The Parliament buildings in Ottawa sit on top of an ancient Algonquin burial ground. Victoria Island, which is right behind the parliament buildings, had been a site for elders to meet for thousands of years, and was where Elders Without Borders was essentially created.
- A fourth (native) level of government could coexist within existing frameworks of government on the territories being claimed.
|
| Play Part
7 |
- Introduction of Father Michael Stogre and the tradition from which he comes.
- In Alberta there is a product being marketed called Cold FX, it is an over the counter cold remedy that consists mostly of Ginseng. The history of Ginseng in Canada has roots with a Jesuit in China who made the connection between Ginseng and hard wood forests. He contacted another priest in Quebec who found that indeed this plant grew in Canada, and so Ginseng for a time was the second larges export from Canada, behind furs.
- Globalization has biblical roots; Abraham was told all nations will be blessed through you.
- There is a univeralist thrust embedded in biblical thought.
- The separation between church and state.
- Jesuits brought the gospel to the world and brought the world back to Europe.
- The word Propaganda comes from the propagation of the faith.
|
| Play Part
8 |
- Standardization of the Gregorian calendar.
- There was a papal document issued which affirmed that aboriginal people had rights even if they were not Christian.
- The establishment of Paraguay involved an Indian theocracy centered on the Roman Catholic Church.
- Is there a jurisdictional problem to native sovereignty?
- What is taking place now needs to accommodate something that already existed in the past.
|
