Offended by Offence

Today, a professor that I know and respect sent me a message telling me that he had signed the Open Letter (now withdrawn on the basis of its libelous statements) because he had “reservations about particular panelists from the militia in Caledonia” due to their methods, which “the open letter captures”.  He then went on to ask: “Are there not others involved in the conflict who bring a more balanced view to the conflict in Ontario? Christie Blachford [sic] for example has written about Caledonia from a critical perspective without advocating vigilantism”.

After Ms. Blatchford was informed about the professor’s query, she provided an email responding stating that she could not attend because she is currently working on a book about Caledonia, and did not have the time to participate.  She also made some comments in response to the professor’s reference to “vigilantism”, and requested that I forward them to him.  After receiving this reply from Blatchford, the professor in question is now reconsidering his original position on the matter, and so I thought that others who signed the petition might be interested in what she has written.  Reprinting Blatchford’s comments is not meant to endorse the ideas of Vandermaas and McHale; Blatchford’s views are only one opinion, and her impressions of McHale and Vandermaas’ could be mistaken or be based on an unrepresentative sample of the evidence available.  It is only to suggest that until the voice of McHale and Vandermaas are heard we will not be able to develop an informed opinion on the Caledonia conflict, and the appearance of these speakers should not be “protested” on the basis of questionable allegations.

In Blatchford’s words:

“…[the professor] writes that I have written critically about Caledona “without advocating vigilantism” — the clear implication that Mr. McHale and Mr. Vandermaas have done so. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I have attended three recent rallies in Caledonia, two of them organized by Mr. McHale, both of which were cancelled when self-styled anti-racists from Toronto showed up to out-shout the group. Mr. McHale sensibly cancelled the rallies both time. He always urges his supporters to be polite, respectful, civil, and peaceful. (In fact, he also asks people not to swear, which would exclude me, I confess.) In the course of researching my book, I have also reviewed video footage of earlier rallies in Caledonia and at Queen’s Park that were organized by Gary and Merlyn Kinrade; the footage of the rally at the Legislature is actually touching, because they were all dressed up, in suit and tie, and their remarks were as respectful as their attire.

On the one occasion that I know of where a Six Nations member, Clyde Powless, showed up and asked to speak at a Mr. McHale rally, he was greeted politely by Mr. McHale and allowed his turn at the microphone to say his piece. It was but a couple of weeks later at another rally that Mr. Powless assaulted Mr. McHale (he pleaded guilty to this offence in 2008). This was typical and telling — on the few occasions there has been violence at a McHale rally, it was not committed by him or his supporters, but rather by those who wish to deny him the right to speak.

While I grant you that the Caledoniawakeupcall website looks a little cartoonish, it is a well-documented (with original court files, newspaper stories, etc) site, and the cartoonish aspect does not accurately reflect the serious nature of the organizers.

I’ve come to know Mr. McHale quite well, Mr. Kinrade and Mr. Vandermaas a little, and have found them always to be fierce advocates only of freedom of speech and non-violent civil disobedience. I think it is just a little ironic that at a time when George Galloway’s supporters (including university professors) are arguing he should be allowed to enter Canada and speak — and I agree with them and have said so publicly — another professor is advocating censoring Gary McHale et al.” (Personal communication from Christie Blatchford, April 28, 2010).

Over the last two weeks, Christie Blatchford has devoted a number of columns in The Globe and Mail to the fiasco that is known as Caledonia - ”Abandoned, unprotected, afraid.  Afghanistan? No.  The Heart of Ontario” (November 21); “A reign of terror, a trail of OPP inaction” (November 20); “A false date, a shotgun fixation, and a fumbled cross-examination (November 19); “Finally, the weak have a voice against the strong” (November 18); “With a shotgun and his dog, he tried to defend his Caledonia home” (November 17); ”Two standards of policing failed the residents of Caledonia” (November 14); ”A couple terrorized in a ’war zone’  while police stood by” (November 13); “Government preoccupied with how suit seen by natives” (November 11);  and “Just how sensitive is Canada’s native file?” (November 10). 

In these columns,  Blatchford documents how citizens in the town of Caledonia were terrorized by a group of “Mohawk warriors” who were involved in a land claims dispute with the Ontario government.  The reason for Blatchford’s column is a lawsuit initiated by two residents of Caledonia – Dave Brown and Dana Chatwell – against the Province of Ontario.  Brown and Chatwell are suing the government for $7 million for failing to protect them from various forms of harassment, acts of vandalism, and threats of violence.

While Blatchford justifiably focuses on the plight of Brown and Chatwell, and how their lives have been destroyed by the Ontario Provincial Police’s failure to enforce the law, the case raises wider questions about the realization of demands for aboriginal self-government in Canada.  Rather than being an exceptional set of circumstances, the Caledonia debacle is a logical extension of the irresponsible encouragement of the unrealizable rhetoric of “aboriginal nationalism” and “sovereignty”.

The argument underlying “aboriginal nationalism” and ”sovereignty” is that Canadian laws should not apply to native groups.  This is essentially the assumption that “Mohawk warriors” are operating under in Caledonia.  These “warriors” consider themselves to be “sovereign”, and, as a result, have erected barricades, carried out searches, imposed curfews, detained individuals, and issued their own “passports” – actions that are attempting to deny the existence of Canadian law and sovereignty (Canadian passports are recognized throughout the world, unlike Mohawk passports, which will never be pereceived as legitimate by the international community).  The Ontario Provincial Police has essentially accepted this state of affairs because it tacitly recognizes aboriginal self-government.  The combination of the illegitimacy of Canadian law in the eyes of many native groups and political pressure to avoid violent confrontations with aboriginal ”warriors” has resulted in lawlessness.

Defenders of the “Mohawk warriors” will probably argue that aboriginal groups have their own laws, and decolonization requires that this aspect of aboriginal culture be “recognized” and “respected”.  What this view fails to acknowledge, however, is that law is not an aspect of traditional tribal cultures.  As was explained in Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry (pp. 115-18), and in my paper “The Political Economy of Aboriginal ‘Customary Law’ (available on this blog’s Aboriginal Policy page), tribal groups are organized according to kinship, not legal rational authority, and this means that it is the will of the most powerful faction that prevails.  No procedures or institutions have evolved to accommodate the different interests of rival factions.  Liberal democratic principles such as equality under the law and the protection of individual rights and freedoms do not exist in tribal societies. 

As most of the residents of Caledonia are not related by blood or marriage to the Mohawks of the “Six Nations”, there is no mechanism, or will, to ensure that they will be treated equitably under any regime of aboriginal self-government.  If the claims of “aboriginal nationalism” and “sovereignty” are accepted in the rest of the country, similar catastrophic consequences are inevitable.