And now:[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 1999 23:18:31 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Canada 9/28/99
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CONNIE AND TY JACOBS
Tuesday, September 28, 1999
Jacobs feared foster care
Family says child-abuse worries prompted shots at RCMP
By NOVA PIERSON, CALGARY SUN
TSUU T'INA NATION -- A lingering fear her children would be abused in
foster care may have played a part in Connie Jacobs' decision to fire at a
Mountie, her family said. "She made it clear to me she never wanted her
children to be in the hands of social services," her sister Cynthia
Applegarth told Jacobs' fatality inquiry yesterday. "She felt one of the
children had been abused when they'd been apprehended, when they'd been in
care." Applegarth and brother Brian Lambert testified they believe the
decisions of two child-welfare workers and a tribal constable led to the
exchange of fire between Jacobs and an Okotoks Mountie. The shotgun blast
fired by Const. Dave Voller killed Jacobs and her nine-year-old son Ty
instantly. Two Tsuu T'ina child-welfare workers and tribal Const. Tammy
Dodginghorse, who testifies today, were trying to take Jacobs'
four children and two grandchildren into custody March 22, 1998, before the
shooting. "I'm not here to blame any one of the people," said Applegarth.
"I'm here to find out what happened. If there's weakness in the system --
social services, the RCMP, the tribal police -- hopefully this inquiry will
find them and strengthen them.
"This could happen on any reserve in any community."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Margaret Wente wonders who pays for the sins of the fathers
MARGARET WENTE
Tuesday, September 28, 1999
Globe and Mail
Floyd Mowatt's story is a tragic one. At the age of 8, he was sent off to
St. George's, an Anglican residential school in rural British
Columbia that was responsible for the education and religious instruction
of native children. His dormitory supervisor was a
sexual predator, who molested Floyd Mowatt and several other boys for
years. That was nearly three decades ago. The man who preyed on Mr. Mowatt,
Derek Clarke, was eventually tried and convicted for his
crimes and is in jail for a good long time. But the issue of who should pay
for Mr. Mowatt's suffering, and that of other
residential-school victims, is not so simple. It is the messiest moral and
legal dilemma in Canada today, and it is going to tie up the courts and
lawyers and mediators for many years to come.
The size of the out-of-court settlement reached with Mr. Mowatt is
confidential, but it's believed to be around $200,000. Last month a judge
ruled the liability should be split 60-40 between the church and the
federal government. Not all that much money -- but Mr. Mowatt's is only the
first in a flood of settlements about to hit the church like a giant tidal
wave.
Last week, the Anglican archbishop of B.C.,David Crawley, made front-page
news when he said the local diocese of Cariboo could
face bankruptcy because of the liabilities it faces over St. George's. To
raise the money, it may have to sell off its church buildings in Prince
George, Kamloops, and dozens of other towns in northwestern B.C. "It's a
sad possibility," says the archbishop. "It's not a bottomless well, and it
wouldn't take long to eat up the assets." In the 26 residential schools
once operated by the Anglican church, there were four known sexual
predators who have since been identified and exposed. Those four alone are
responsible for more than a 100 current claims of sex abuse. Those are the
simple, clear-cut cases, and neither the church nor the government are
contesting their validity. Settlement of those cases alone
will cost millions. In addition, thousands of other former
residential-school inmates are also testing the system to claim damages for
a host of other crimes -- anything from physical or emotional abuse to
involuntary confinement and cultural deprivation. The Catholic Church and
the United Church face their own sets of claims. And on it goes. The
adversarial legal system is a terrible way to resolve these disputes. It's
wasteful and expensive, and it pries open old wounds. It revictimizes the
vulnerable, opens the door wide open to opportunists, and fails to address
the underlying emotional issues of reconciliation and healing. On that,
everyone
agrees. But no one agrees on a better way. Ottawa is struggling to set up
pilot projects in alternative dispute resolution. But there's
so much wrangling over the terms and conditions that progress has been
glacial. Meantime, plaintiffs' lawyers are heaping abuse on the Anglican
church and the archbishop for trying to duck their
obligations. But the church isn't trying to duck. It has no pot of gold.
And the practical problems are monumental. Each diocese is a more or less
independent financial entity and has few assets apart from its buildings.
The governing body of the church, the General Synod, has been picking up
the enormous legal bills but doesn't have
any significant assets of its own. Perhaps the bishop of Cariboo can
persuade the bishop of Toronto to sell off all his buildings, too. Or
perhaps they can all borrow against the next 100 years' worth of offerings
in the collection plate. "We need to acknowledge that our whole system of
relationship with native people has been terribly flawed," says Archbishop
Crawley. Is there not something also terribly flawed in crippling the
churches of today to atone for the sins of the past? In the small native
settlements of the Cariboo, people still go to church to marry and bury.
Would they really be better off if the church weren't there?
E-mail:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pay natives not to fish, says environmentalist
Executive director of Sierra Club says lobster fishery cannot survive extra
pressure
By DEBORAH NOBES - N.B. Telegraph Journal 9/28/99
If Ottawa wants Mi'kmaq people to stop hunting and fishing, they'd better
come to the negotiating table with their wallets open, says the head of
Canada's most influential environmental group.
Environmental lawyer Elizabeth May is executive director of the Sierra Club
of Canada, and says politicians and bureaucrats must begin talks with
natives immediately to figure out a settlement
package that respects both the recent Supreme Court decision and the
province's wildlife. She says money is an obvious carrot that might
convince natives to forfeit some of their rights to conserve
threatened species. Ms. May, who is also a professor of environmental
studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, says
native people should tie up their boats as a gesture of good faith, and
immediately begin talking with both levels of government. She says many
resources - such as lobster or salmon - are on the brink of collapse and
cannot withstand any extra pressure. But she also says native people
shouldn't be expected to suffer because of decades of fisheries
mismanagement from Ottawa, and must be compensated for what they might be
asked to give up. "Essentially we owe them," she said. "There would have to
be a negotiated package. What is the incentive for them to give up one of
the few things they've ever won, which is a court decision saying they have
an absolute right to fish year round? That's a lucrative right. They have
it in law. If there is going to be a restriction on that right and if it
has to be obtained through a negotiated process, it
would seem to me that it would have to include saying 'We're going to
compensate you because you've forgone your right to fish during this
period.'" Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Mi'kmaq people
can make a living from hunting and fishing, and are not subject to any
government wildlife regulations. The ruling prompted natives in some
communities around New Brunswick to set out in boats with hundreds of
lobster traps, angering non-native fishermen who can't fish because the
season is closed. Some believe the stage is set for a violent clash on the
province's fishing wharves, between natives taking advantage of their
long-denied rights, and non-native fishermen who believe the ruling is
simply not fair and will upset the industry. The Maritime Fishermen's Union
has demanded that the Prime Minister step in and suspend the ruling, and
asked consumers and fish plants to boycott the native fishermen. This
weekend, officials with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans met with
native leaders across the Maritimes, asking them to stop fishing until some
kind of deal is hammered out. Natives in some communities ignored DFO's
request, continuing to set their traps and haul fish from the water. Ms.
May, who is speaking this week at a fisheries conference in St. Andrews,
says neither approach is acceptable. She says there is no evidence to
suggest first nations people will not act in the best interest of the
resource if they are given the power to govern it - and she says Ottawa has
done an awful job of ensuring the future of Canada's fisheries. She says
the best option would be for native and non-native fishermen to join
together and wrest control of the resource from Ottawa, negotiating
agreements on local a local level. That means bands would co-manage the
fishery with non-native fishermen and conservation groups on a
river-by-river, zone-by-zone level.
"We have nothing to be proud of in the record of non-native fisheries
management, but we tend to react hysterically to the news that natives have
the right to fish or hunt outside of our existing
unsustainable practices," Ms. May said. "I believe that if everybody just
calms down and starts talking, that there will be a far more creative and
better solution for everybody than anyone can possibly imagine right now."
She says the provincial government's role in all this is to create a
negotiation process, to build a structure where native representatives,
politicians, bureaucrats and industry can come to the table and feel their
opinions will be respected.
"The government is sitting there like a bunny in the headlights but they've
got to take responsibility and start finding people within the first
nations community who can start thinking about the options
that are out there," she said.
Non-natives give DFO deadline
By LISA HRABLUK - Telegraph Journal 9/28/99
Members of the Maritime Fishermen's Union have given the Department of
Fisheries and Oceans until the end of business today to force the Mi'kmaq
community of Burnt Church to control its fishery. At a weekend meeting
between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia native chiefs and DFO officials,the
chiefs were asked to stop fishing until the two groups can devise a way to
merge with existing conservation practices the recent Supreme Court ruling
giving natives the right to fish and hunt. Yesterday, many Nova Scotia
communities complied; Burnt Church did not, much to the consternation of
local non-native fishermen. What the MFU plans to do if the DFO does not
act today is not known but at least one fishermen thinks the government's
inaction could lead to confrontation. "I think they are waiting for someone
to get hurt," said local fisherman Bill Loggie, who said the
MFU weekend meeting attracted fishermen from Miscou Island down to
Richibucto. "You get a group of 1,000, 2,000 men together, there's no
telling what could happen." For the past 10 days, the DFO has been
scrambling to find a consensus. Yesterday, MFU executive secretary Mike
Belliveau and his counterpart with the PEI Fishermen's Union met with
Fisheries Minister Herb Dhaliwal in Ottawa and local DFO officials met with
the New Brunswick Aboriginal Peoples Council in Fredericton. Philip Fraser,
the council's aboriginal fishery co-ordinator, was not impressed with the
government's message. According to Mr. Fraser, the federal Justice
Department will likely advise the DFO that the Marshall ruling does not
apply to non-status Indians or off-reserve natives. The news did not shock
Mr. Fraser, who is accustomed to battling both the provincial and federal
governments on behalf of off-reserve and non-status natives but he said the
council will not accept the government's interpretation of the Marshall
decision without a fight. "Where in the decision does it say to limit this
to on-reserve Indians?" he asked. "It's like the government's approach to
us is to say 'How do you harass them out of this so they don't exercise
their rights.'" DFO spokesman André-Marc Lanteigne said a decision
regarding off-reserve and non-status natives has yet to be made but
admitted the government believes the right detailed in the Marshall ruling
does not apply to people off-reserve. As for the MFU's ultimatum, Mr.
Lanteigne says government officials hope fishermen will be patient while
the DFO and native chiefs sort through the ruling. "We can't clean up the
[lobster] traps of people who are fishing legally."
Native fishing ruling in peril
Cabinet to discuss suspension of court decision on 1760 treaty
Rick Mofina
The Ottawa Citizen 9/28/99
The federal cabinet is expected to consider suspending a recent Supreme
Court decision that gave East Coast natives unlimited year-round fishing
rights when it meets today. If the government goes ahead, the rare step is
expected to alleviate increasing tension over fishing rights in Canada's
Atlantic waters. The industry in the Maritimes is on the brink of chaos in
the wake of the recent high court decision upholding a 1760 aboriginal
treaty, said officials
for several fishing groups, after meeting with Federal Fisheries Minister
Herb Dhaliwal yesterday. Mr. Dhaliwal said the federal government "is
working around the clock" to resolve the situation. He urged "co-operation
and restraint" after the 90-minute meeting yesterday with a delegation
representing thousands of fishermen in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince
Edward Island and Quebec.
The fishermen are calling for "suspension of the effects" of the Sept. 17
landmark ruling that gave natives year-round fishing rights and has led to
upwards of 6,000 illegal lobster traps being set in the past week during
the off-season, said Michael Belliveau, executive secretary of the Maritime
Fishermen's Union. "The traps have to come out of the water. There's no
question they have to
come out of the water," Mr. Belliveau said after the meeting.
He said the federal government is expected to make a decision within two
days after first taking the issue to cabinet today. The federal government,
fishermen and native groups will be meeting throughout this week. Angry
fishermen met over the weekend in Yarmouth, N.S., and decided to give the
government until next Monday to act on the traps, or they would start
pulling them out of the water. Uncertainty over the ruling is causing
chaos, Mr. Belliveau said.
"We have a couple of situations in the Maritimes that are on the verge (of
chaos) if not into it already," Belliveau said. "What we're asking for is a
suspension of the effects of the judgment until reasonable fishing plans
can be put into place. If that's 30 days or 60 days then that's what it
should be." The Supreme Court's 5-2 ruling gave Mi'kmaq and Maliseets
unfettered hunting and fishing rights, when it overturned the 1996
conviction of native Donald Marshall Jr. for fishing eels without a
licence. Mr. Marshall maintained that under the treaty signed between the
Mi'kmaq
and King George II in 1760, he had the clear right to catch and sell fish
without government intervention. The Supreme Court agreed, striking down
Mr. Marshall's conviction, but stressing that the treaty limits the
Mi'kmaq's fishing rights to daily needs, or
what it called a "moderate livelihood" including "food, clothing and
housing, supplemented by a few amenities." In its ruling, the high court
itself theorized about the issuance of "communal licences" or new limits on
the number of fish treaty fishers could catch. Fisheries
officials said they are consulting with the Justice Department to clarify
these aspects of the court's ruling. Mr. Dhaliwal pledged that federal
Fisheries officials would be enforcing
federal law against any aboriginal fishermen who violated conservation
measures. In the meantime, Mr. Dhaliwal encouraged "all fishers and other
stakeholders to remain calm and exercise restraint in this immediate period
of uncertainty," in a letter sent yesterday to provincial Fisheries
ministers, First Nations, aboriginal organizations and commercial
fishing groups in Atlantic Canada.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Archeologists fail to find evidence of 17th-century Fort Jemseg
By SARAH MARCHILDON - 9/28/99 Telegraph Journal
LOWER JEMSEG - Sitting cross-legged on the banks of the St. John River,
Arron Hannah hunches over a shallow dirt pit while he
methodically scrapes the brown earth with a trowel. As he flicks the tool
along the bottom of the pit, the flat blade repeatedly strikes objects
buried in the dirt with a muffled clink. Mr. Hannah sets down his trowel
and brushes off the objects for closer inspection. A piece of clear broken
glass, a cigarette holder and pieces of pottery quickly pile up. None are
significant finds. "We found this," he says, extending his palm. A tiny
piece of 19th-century creamy earthenware flecked with blue rests on his
dirt-caked finger.
To the left and right of Mr. Hannah, the river bank is pockmarked with
about 20 similar holes. Supervised by professional archeologists, more than
70 volunteers spent the weekend excavating a site believed to be one of the
first British settlements in New Brunswick. By yesterday only a handful of
volunteers remained.
Unearthing remnants from the 17th century would constitute a major find and
may put an end to the century-long search for Fort Jemseg.
Provincial archeologist Chris Turnbull says he's looking for fragments of
French ceramics because the fort was mostly under French hands. If enough
remnants are found, he hopes to go forward with a full archeological dig
that could uncover the historic fort.
"So that way we get a sample of these artifacts and if they're 17th
century, we'll know that we're in the right area of the fort," said Mr.
Turnbull. "And if we're really, really, really lucky we would end up with
maybe part of the interior walls." But, in an interview last night, Mr.
Turnbull said no conclusive evidence of Fort Jemseg had been found. "As it
stands now, there's not a hint of any 17ith-century material," he said. "We
did not find fort Jemseg." But he indicated the search would continue next
year. Fort Jemseg was established in 1659 by Sir Thomas Temple as a
fortified fur-trading post with the Maliseet nation during one of the
periods when Acadia was under British rule. Located on the east bank of the
St. John River about 100 kilometres north of the river mouth, the site was
deemed less exposed to marauders than a fort at Saint John. In 1662, Sir
Temple was appointed governor of Acadia but his rule was short-lived. In
1667, the area was returned to French control and became an Acadian fort.
The fort was raided by Dutch privateers but was again returned to French
control, serving as the capital of Acadia for a short time. But the
six-metre-tall structure was abandoned in 1701 after a severe flood and
eventually collapsed and decayed over the years. In 1899, New Brunswick
historian William F. Ganong purported to have found the site of the fort in
Lower Jemseg based on the oral history of older residents in the community.
The site was declared a National Historic Site in 1929. But an excavation
in 1971 showed this was not where the fort once stood and was instead a
Loyalist site. New evidence came to light in the second half of the 1990s
in the form of old French maps pointing to the location of Fort Jemseg. A
dig in 1998 turned up no direct evidence of the fort so archeologists
tested a site closer to the river bank.
"Let Us Consider The Human Brain As
A Very Complex Photographic Plate"
1957 G.H. Estabrooks
www.angelfire.com/mn/mcap/bc.html
FOR K A R E N #01182
who died fighting 4/23/99
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.aches-mc.org
807-622-5407
