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| Secwepemc Elder Wolverine |
WOLVERINE'S OPEN LETTER TO PM TRUDEAU
The Right Honourable Justin TrudeauOffice of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2
The Honourable Jody Wilson
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
December 30, 2015
Dear Mr. Trudeau,
My name is Wolverine. I am also known as William Jones Ignace. I am an 83-year old father, grandfather and great grandfather, and an Elder of the Secwepemc nation in what is called British Columbia. I am a farmer. This past summer I cultivated 8 acres of organic food to nourish the people in my nation and other nations as well. I am a long time defender of the inherent jurisdiction of Indigenous peoples to steward our traditional homelands.
Today I am writing to you to request that you initiate a federal public inquiry into the events surrounding the month long standoff at Ts'Peten (Gustafsen Lake), British Columbia in 1995, an event which cast a deep shadow on the relationship between the Canadian government and Indigenous nations, which to this day has not been adequately investigated.
In 1995, after a long history of peaceful attempts to have Secwepemc sovereignty respected, Indigenous people from the Secewpemc nation and their supporters took a stand on sacred Sundance lands at Ts'Peten, aka Gustafsen Lake. The incident began after a local white rancher, Lyle James began demanding that the sacred Secwepemc Sundance Camp leave land to which he claimed ownership. Approximately 24 Sundancers set up camp to defend Ts'Peten. I was one of those people.
Beginning in August 1995, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) surrounded the Ts'Peten Defenders. Over the next month police, politicians, and media escalated the situation to make the siege the most expensive and largest domestic military operation in Canada's history: armoured personnel carriers, .50 calibre machine guns, land mines, and an astonishing 77,000 rounds of ammunition were directed at the land defenders.
In the course of the standoff, RCMP shot at unarmed people and at people in negotiated no-shoot zones. RCMP Superintendent Murray Johnston expressed the belief that a resolution to the standoff would "require the killing" of the defenders, including myself. Although this thankfully did not come to be, the unjust and violent actions carried out against the Secwepemc people during the siege remains strong in our memories to this day.
Despite the twenty years that have passed since the Ts'Peten standoff, the core issues that so forcefully clashed against each other remain at the forefront of the hearts and minds of Indigenous people. That is our right to self-determination, autonomy and protection from the dispossession of our lands and territories. According to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, Aboriginal Title to land exists inherently and will continue to exist until it has been ceded by treaty with the Crown.
The land on which the Ts'Peten standoff occurred was, and remains to this day, unceded territory. The land at Ts'Peten was never handed over by the Secwepemc Nation to Canadian control through treaty or otherwise, and is therefore land that cannot have been sold to settlers by the Canadian or British Columbian governments. The use of Canadian paramilitary forces against the people of the Secwepemc nation asserting our inherent jurisdiction and title over our own territories therefore is a serious abrogation of the Nation to Nation relationship between the Canadian government and the Secwepemc Nation.
This abrogation has yet to be properly investigated, and remains one of the largest stains on relations between Indigenous nations and the Canadian state. A public federal inquiry is long overdue into the actions of the RCMP, the Canadian government and the provincial government of British Columbia.
In recent months, Mr. Trudeau, you have called for a renewed Nation to Nation relationship with Indigenous nations, promising a new era of recognition, rights, respect, cooperation and partnership, rooted in the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. According to that Declaration, Indigenous peoples have the right to be safe from being forcibly removed from their lands and territories.
Even now, aggressive resource extraction and the destruction it inevitably brings regularly occurs on Indigenous lands without the consent of Indigenous peoples. Indigenous lands which, according to the very agreements that founded the nation of Canada, do not belong to Canada to be given away without the free prior and informed consent of the Indigenous people of those lands who never relinquished their rights. In order to build this Nation to Nation relationship, Indigenous peoples must know that they can continue to pursue peaceful processes for protecting their sovereignty, without the threat of state sanctioned violence being used against them.
The use of police and RCMP intimidation and force as a method to settle land claims in favour of the Canadian national and provincial governments is antithetical to the creation of a healthy and just partnership between nations. If Indigenous people are prevented from asserting their rights to sovereignty, true reconciliation cannot occur.
The time has come to honour your commitment to Indigenous people, and to a reconciliation between our nations. An inquiry into the Ts'Peten standoff would demonstrate that the Canadian government is truly committed to a new era of respectful, Nation to Nation relationships in which the wrongs of the past are thoroughly understood and acknowledged, ensuring that threats, intimidation, defamation and force are never again used against Indigenous people in Canada.
With respect,
Wolverine, Wiliam Jones Ignace
http://www.realpeoplesmedia.org/news/2016/1/4/secwepemc-elder-wolverine-calls-for-public-inquiry-into-gustafsen-lake-standoff
I too have heard of Wolverine and he is regarded a great hero for taking a stand on this issue. Watching the video is really shocking and we never heard about the RCMP blowing up the truck and shooting at the people and killing the dog. I only heard the details of the story recently and I believe that many more people really need to know the truth and to see how awful some people treat others and feel entitled to do it for some bizarre reason.
Let the RCMP evidence incriminate itself!! This is really shocking.
From Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustafsen_Lake_Standoff
The Gustafsen Lake Standoff was a confrontation between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Ts'peten Defenders in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, at Gustafsen Lake. The standoff began on August 18, 1995, and ended on September 17, 1995. The RCMP operation would end up being the most costly of its kind in Canadian history having involved 400 police officers and support from the Canadian Military (under Operation Wallaby). The predominantly indigenous occupiers believed that the privately owned ranch land on which they stood was both sacred space and part of a larger tract of unceded Shuswap territory.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police launched one of the largest police operations in Canadian history, including the deployment of four hundred tactical assault team members, five helicopters, two surveillance planes and nine Armoured Personnel Carriers. The RCMP kept journalists well away from the site and some reporters became uneasy that the only side of the story being told was that preferred by the police.[7] By the end of the 31-day standoff, police had fired up to 7,000 rounds of ammunition, disabled a supply pick-up with buried explosive, and killed a dog. One of the indigenous leaders claimed that at least one of the shooting incidents blamed on them in fact occurred when two APCs fired on one another when their view was obscured.[8] The operation was the largest paramilitary operation in British Columbia history and cost $5.5 million.[9]
THIS IS VERY INTERESTING!!
Shocking and Shameful for Canada....:( :(
Did you know any of this?? I didn't.
According to Janice Stewart, a magistrate justice of the U.S District Court in Oregon, "The Gustafsen Lake incident involved an organized group of native people rising up in their homeland against an occupation by the government of Canada of their sacred and unceded tribal land." She also asserted that "the Canadian government engaged in a smear and disinformation campaign to prevent the media from learning and publicizing the true extent and political nature of these events".
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There are many videos online, just google them and look in Youtube
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