Peter Edwards is a journalist with the Toronto Star. His book, One Dead Indian received the inaugural Debwewin Award for investigativejournalism into the death of Dudley George who was shot by the Ontario Provincial Police at Ipperwash in 1995. He will be releasing the Canadian Encyclopedia of Organized Crime and Night Justice in September.

Tommy Jonsson: In One Dead Indian you talk a lot about DudleyGeorge’s family. The effects of the murder of DudleyGeorge have put their family into thelimelight and have caused them a great deal of grief.Talk about what you’ve seen in their drive to getsatisfaction from the Ontario government.

Peter Edwards: Through the whole ordeal, I got to know Sam, Dudley’s older brother, pretty well. The first time I methim — it was six hours after — I asked“who do you blame for the shooting?” He said he wasn’tblaming anyone but he wanted to find the truth.“That’s all?” I thought. “What kind of answeris that?” I didn’t realize how powerful that statementwas at the time.

They have a word Debwewin. It means general positivetruth. Not nail someone to the wall but turn it aroundand make something good out of something bad. It’s ahealing thing. What he wanted to do was to fosterhealing for his family, for native people and beyondit, for humanepolice and government.

But Sam never jumped to aconclusion. He always spoke with a sense of fairnessand I got more and more impressed with it over thepast nine years.

T.J.: Why was the Harris government unwilling to havecalled an inquiry after Ipperwash?

P.E.: Well, the big questions would have been directedat them. How many questions don’t involve theresponsibility of the provincial government? Even ifthe OPP went off the rails that day, doesn’t thatmerit an inquiry in itself? One thing is my book waswritten with lawyers. The Globe and Mail was sued for$15 million by Harris so you write what you can prove,not what you believe.

T.J.: Why do human rights organizations condemn thefederal government for failing to encourage theinquiry?

P.E.: I think that they both could have done a betterjob. The weird thing is that the federal governmenthas a lot to answer for. In 1942 when the peoplevoted against the feds buying out their land, thegovernment took the land anyway. They still hadn’tgiven it back. No level of government has anything tobrag about on this one. Funding for the AFN (Assemblyof First Nations) was slashed so they became a lesseffective lobby group. It’s Sam, not the AFN who isresponsible for the inquiry.

T.J.: The Premier’s office is required to fully complywith the commission “subject to privilege or anylegal restrictions.” Can we expect to see testimonyfrom Mike Harris and what will he say?

P.E.: Oh yeah. He’ll testify and his aide, Debbie Hutton, willtestify. I don’t expect a tearful apology. I thinkwe’re going to see a lot of finger pointing and “oh,who can remember, it was all such a long time ago?”Probably a lot of “I act on the information given tome” and “how am I supposed to know?” too. But thewhole thing will be televised. The APTN (Aboriginal Peoples Television Network) is running itevery Sunday. You can watch Harris’ face as hetestifies right on television.

Even if he had nothing to do with it, somethingterrible happened. One guy got beaten until hisheart stopped, another guy got shot and killed. So wehave a community traumatized and seven police openingfire? Obviously something happened on his watch.

T.J.: Part One of the inquiry will cover the eventsleading to the death of Dudley George. What do youhope is accomplished by this section of the inquiry?

P.E.: A big question is why walk at night? As anofficer, I would want to be filmed constantly as tonot get accused of anything. I want it filmed sothat I can’t get accused. Why were the cameras shutoff? Where is the tape if it did shoot? If they can’toperate a video camera, I don’t want them operating amachine gun.

And that’s not anti-police. It’s not their job toquestion the political motives of their mission.There’s a chain of command and you have to followorders. Once a fight starts, people fight. Theydidn’t decide to march down the road that night,they were sent down.

T.J.: Part Two of the inquiry will focus on avoidingrepetition of such incidents in the future. What are yourrecommendations and what do you foresee thecommission deciding?

P.E.: I think if it’s anything to do with land claims,we’ll see a different approach. It’s pretty ridiculousthat no one looked at why these people are upset. Nowthey lost the whole park and spent a fortune doing thewrong thing when they could have done the right thing.Nobody won in this situation.

The trick is avoiding repetition, and some of it isstuff that should have been known already. Mostimportantly political influence on the command post isinappropriate.

A key thing isgoing to be 11:00 a.m.- 3:00 p.m. the day of the shooting. Why wasthe paramilitary terrorism fighting team sent in? Whomade that decision? Why werethey told that the Native people had AK-47s? Whywere some officers told and not others? If I was inthe crowd management unit, I would be upset to havesent my men into that.

If they honestly believed that they had guns, whywould they not be told? If they had been told, youwouldn’t get a lot of volunteers to be marching andbanging on a fucking glass shield. How crazy would youhave to be to send them in? But the paramilitary teamswere told so the fingers on the triggers were ready?It doesn’t make sense either way.

When I asked the Stoney Point people if they had guns,why didn’t anything or anything behind the policeget hit. One man told me, “You’d think we could havehit something!” It’s nine years later and I stillcan’t get that one. They’re pretty good shots; a lotof these guys are hunters. If they had six hundredshots, they should have at least hit somethingbehind (the police).

This was a situation where there was no cover. Theywere in an open parking lot smaller than a baseballdiamond.

T.J.: Did you ever receive any sort of threats or fearfor your life during any of the writing or speakingyou’ve done on behalf of telling this story?

P.E.: Not fear for my life, but fear for Sam’s lifethat he was going to drop dead of a heart attack. Thestress really was eating him up. For me, it wasdisillusioning that when the book came up, morethan one native person said if they’d written thesame thing, no one would have believed it. It seems tome that the words are either true or they’re not.

But no, I never felt threatened in any way.

T.J.: So you decided to take on writing about organizedcrime in Canada next?

P.E.: I did organized crime before Ipperwash but thiswas way more nerve-racking than organized crime.With organized crime, the victims are people who getinvolved in that sort of world. Dudley George wasn’tmaking money, he wasn’t victimizing people.

The organized crime stuff doesn’t nag you as much asthis because people make their own choice to buy andsell drugs. No one chooses to get their land takenaway. One of the women at Ipperwash was in her 70sand that was emotionally hard to deal with.

Frankly, I don’t pay taxes to organized crime. The people inprovincial government are my representatives whether Ivoted for them or not.

The weird thing is I had really good police contactsbefore Ipperwash because of the work I was doing onorganized crime. Some people I used to have lunch withwon’t even return my calls now. I don’t care becauseI’m proud of what I did, but it’s weird.

Ipperwash just won’t go away. It was hard to evenget a publisher for the book and it was turned down twodozen times. Everyone turned it down. I even tried togive it away. I literally couldn’t. Now,it’s taken on its own little life. It reminds me thatpeople do have a conscience and it sounds corny butCanadians like to think that we’re fair. Whensomething makes us look unfair, it really botherspeople.

But Sam never said “hang Mike Harris by his heels.” hewas saying “I need to know the truth.”