Back in the naughts there was an occupation of a housing development in Caledonia, Ontario that Six Nations activists said was on their unceded land. The Six Nations had been given something called the Haldimand Grant to compensate them for lands lost to the inhabitants of the new United States of America.
As you can see it was fairly extensive. But it got whittled away over the years, generally due to corruption and fraud inspired by racism and imperialist arrogance. Came the late-20th Century and the First Nations had started to press for their rights and one element of that was land claims for tracts in the historical Haldimand Grant.
So, when a developer started to try to build houses on land that was part of the land claim in Caledonia, Six Nations activists occupied the project to bring construction to a halt.
A depressingly large number of Canadians, ignorant of the facts of the case and completely uninterested in even the idea of learning these facts, called for the police to move in and smash the Indians' heads in and clear them the fuck out. The OPP, on the other hand, still smarting from the public relations disaster of Ipperwash, when racist, corrupt, murderous stooge Mike Harris ordered them to go in and smash the Indians' heads in and clear those fucking Indians out of the park, ended up killing Dudley George, ... did not want to follow the racists' call for blood and handled the standoff in a more restrained fashion.
Racist ignoramuses would tend to respond to this with laments about how if THEY ever tried to conduct an occupation, or block train tracks, that they'd be cleared out in an instant. (WHY they would ever be moved to do such things was never mentioned.) The perceived difference between how First Nations protesters are treated and how they perceive THEY themselves would be treated was described as "Two-Tier Justice." A phrase if not invented by bloated, racist loser Gary McHale, was at least something he constantly bloviated about.
So, the whole point of this post was that in the "Freedom Convoy"'s occupation of downtown Ottawa, we saw what happened when non-Indigenous Canadians protested and shut-down the capital and blocked roads and broke the law. The police sympathized with them and let them honk their deafening horns at all hours, spew massive amounts of diesel fumes in residential areas, harrass passersby, and generally make asses of themselves for ONE MONTH AND A DAY.
Just something to remember.
2 comments:
Your point is stronger if you compare Ontario's Ipperwash response to Alberta's Coutts border blockade response. At Ipperwash, the OPP reacted in two days to armed FN protestors by shooting Dudley George. The 18-day standoff at the Coutts border ended with the RCMP forming a handshake-and-hugs receiving line for armed white nationalists. Nobody died. https://twitter.com/RadioGenova/status/1493587546550542338
Cap,
Well, point taken. And it does make my point stronger now that you mention it.
As I was writing that post I did vaguely remember the border blockades but I thought that was the thing that finally got the government to respond and that they shut the down with the Emergencies Act within 48 hours.
Neither Kenney, or Ford, moved against these idiots, because they agreed with them and/or pander to them for votes.
But those cops hugging them! COVID-19 killed a LOT of cops. Because a LOT of cops were COVID-deniers, anti-maskers, and believers in all the shit about vaccines.
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