Ipperwash Summer Series: Ipperwash reflections

September 6, 2020, will mark the 25th anniversary of the shooting death of unarmed protestor Anthony “Dudley” George by an Ontario Provincial Police sniper at Ipperwash Beach.  The Anishinabek News will feature an Ipperwash Summer Series to highlight the history, trauma, aftermath, and key recommendations from the 2007 Report of the Ipperwash Inquiry.  First Nations in Ontario understood that the Inquiry would not provide all of the answers or solutions, but would be a step forward in building a respectful government-to-government relationship.

For information on the 2007 Report of the Ipperwash Inquiry, please visit: http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/inquiries/ipperwash/closing_submissions/index.html

By Catherine Murton Stoehr

News that Dudley George had been shot by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) at the Ipperwash camp was met with disbelief at the Anishinabek Nation Head Office (then named Union of Ontario Indians). In the fall of 1995, Dwayne Nashkawa, a young intern tasked with the policing file at the time, remembers that day.

“Everyone was stunned and shocked and pissed off and upset and wanting to do something.”

Fred Bellefeuille, then, as now, serving the organization as legal counsel, recalled that everyone assumed that there must be a rational explanation for the shooting. However, as the days went by, rumours of Ontario Premier Mike Harris’ obscene marching orders grew more credible, and the OPP’s objective of “removing the occupiers from the park as soon as possible” came in to focus, Bellefeuille noted, “the perception of a rational explanation deteriorated.”

The Union of Ontario Indians had been tracking provincial opposition to the Stoney Point members’ camp at Ipperwash Provincial Park through the summer. They were not directly involved, seeing the action as a matter of internal community politics related to both Stoney and Kettle Point, but after the shooting, many Anishinabek First Nations wanted to support the people of Stoney Point. A relief effort for the people at the camp was arranged.

Nashkawa collected donations, starting at Nipissing First Nation, he moved on to Whitefish Lake (now named Atikameksheng Anishnawbek), Sagamok Anishnawbek, Whitefish River, down Highway 69 to Henvey Inlet, Wasauksing, and Moose Deer Point.  After a final stop at Saugeen First Nation, he rolled into Kettle Point after 10 at night. That was where his plan ended – he did not know where to take the supplies and the people he asked, themselves in the midst of contentious negotiation, were not helpful. The sudden appearance of Merle Pegahmagabow, then the Union of Ontario’s Education Officer, saved the day. Pegahmagabow told him where to take the donations then, as he was unloading, invited him to be a fly on the wall of a crisis meeting happening at the Kettle Point band office.

Ovide Mercredi, Chief Tom Bressette, Jim Potts from the First Nation branch of the OPP, and others, were gathered into the early morning trying to game out a peaceful way forward.  Nashkawa remembers the room, the intensity of the conversation, and nothing that was said.

What could they say? The worst had happened and the underlying causes remained unchanged.  Disaster management was all that was left.

Speaking from Nipissing First Nation all these years later, Bellefeuille says there were two long-standing issues that led to Dudley George’s death that day: the land claims process and disproportionate police aggression toward Indigenous People.

According to Bellefeuille the land claims process then, as now, “frustrates people and leaves land in limbo for decades.”  The people of Stoney Point had been forced to ask, petition, negotiate, compromise, write back, hire lawyers, and gather evidence for 53 years to retake possession of lands guaranteed to them in a legal treaty, as long as the sun shines.

An experience familiar to all First Nations, this strategy of forcing Indigenous people to expend massive resources of time and money through endless bureaucratic delay and reversal—whole lifetimes even— puts enormous pressure on people. Pressure exacerbated by persistent government denial of both the strategy and the work and resources it demands. Struggling to protect their property and families from Canada while Canada pretends to the world to be benevolent supporters of First Nations is punishing work, hard on the spirit, minds, and bodies of Indigenous political and grassroots leaders alike.

Alongside the struggle to get their land back was what Bellefeuille characterized as ongoing aggression from the police forces toward Indigenous people. Some have heard of the “starlight tours” in which Winnipeg police officers drove Indigenous people out of town and left them to find their own way back, a practice that could and did result in death. In southern Ontario, they were “sunset walks.” Bellefeuille said officers in Toronto would drive Indigenous people to Cherry Beach at the harbour front and force them to walk into the water up to their necks, then leave them to walk home.

Nashkawa remembered the OPP in the days before the Anishinabek Police Service (APS).

“I generally remember in a serious situation it was command and control and that’s it. If they came in [to a community,] they came to take someone out and that’s it. When something really serious is going on in the community, you shouldn’t be freezing out the Chief. You should be opening up communication lines with the leadership of the community.”

In the months that followed the shooting, the Union of Ontario Indians did become directly involved, supporting the George family in their pursuit of justice. The Ipperwash Inquiry, and resulting in the Ipperwash Inquiry Report led by Sidney Linden, generally seen as a victory for the community was in fact a compromise. They wanted what all people want, for the aggressor to be held to account, for a judge to determine their level of guilt or innocence, and punishment befitting the crime.

Instead, they got an inquiry.

Both Bellefeuille and Nashkawa, in their roles at the Union of Ontario Indians, made submissions to the Ipperwash Inquiry. One of the recommendations for policing that came out of the report was that police should remain neutral as to the underlying issue in any protest or occupation involving Indigenous people. Bellefeuille observed that since that time, “policing has definitely improved. But it’s still full of problems.”

“There is much more deference to First Nations people if they are doing something like protesting or blockading or information handouts. There’s more respect to say, ‘We can’t take this simply at face value; that because there are people blocking the road they have to be stopped.’ That definitely has improved without a doubt.”

Nashkawa compared the police response to the 2006 Caledonia crisis favourably to Ipperwash.  He noted that despite the social permission and even pressure exerted on the police to act aggressively by Christie Blatchford in her Toronto Sun coverage, the police did not force a hasty or dangerous conclusion.

As they tell it, those improvements are important, real, and a small fraction of the work that needs to be done if the goal is just relations between the Anishinabek and police, or between the Anishinabek and the governments of Ontario and Canada, respectively.

Nashkawa highlighted the problem of broken communication.

“It isn’t effective, there’s a lot of talking past each other and not a lot of effort to understand what’s happening.”

As Chief Executive Officer of Nipissing First Nation, he often receives calls from non-Indigenous leadership evincing a desire to be “sensitive” to the people.

“When leaders of institutions say, ‘We want to be sensitive,’ ‘We want to be more inclusive,’ I wish they would start by reflecting and telling us where they think the problems are. I’d like to see [North Bay Police Chief] Scott Tod come out with a report on specifically where he thinks systemic racism exists in his force. That’s work he needs to do – not what the local First Nations leadership should be asked to point out for him.”

Nashkawa said if a group came to him having already done that work, it would enable meaningful collaborative reflection that could result in appropriate evaluation mechanisms.

Bellefeuille noted that some First Nations in Ontario determining to close their borders during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic exposed limitations to their sovereignty, even as police forces assisted them to take those extraordinary measures, and the province said they would cooperate with the First Nations to keep their communities safe.

“I was very pleased when [the province] said that; they were very supportive of whatever we thought was right. But there is no legislative framework to ensure it. If they had rejected the idea, we would have been out of luck. The only reason it worked out was goodwill by everyone involved.”

For Bellefeuille, this is the sticking point: trust.

“They think if they give us that legal or legislative power we could abuse it. They won’t trust us, so we can’t protect our own community. Before we had police officers, we had peacekeepers without guns, then special constables, then officers with guns. They have to give an inch at a time before they recognize our full ability to be police officers or justices of the peace or judges,” said. “It’s a shame.”

Catherine Murton Stoehr is a non-Indigenous writer and historian living on Nbissing land.