Matt Silburn: What has been the effect of the quarry blockade on the community of Tyendinaga and Deseronto and how has it changed the relationship between Tyendinaga and the feds and the province?

Shawn Brant: We started back in November [of 2006] and we wanted to stop development on the Culbertson Tract. And what we said to the town was that anytime you try to build a house, or make an announcement, we’ll take an action and we’ll punish you. So we have shut down roads, we’ve shut down businesses and the quarry shut down came from a January announcement of a potential sod turning. That’s how the quarry got its 60-day notice and shut down in March, it was punishment for something else. While it [the quarry] was on the slate to be stopped, I think that the way things found their place and came to be, that the effect of the relationship between us and the town is that the town [laughing] doesn’t make any more announcements about development. They know that there is punishment and consequences. So the quarry really represents that, it represents a different type of relationship of not us being subservient to the town, but rather, the town having to keep itself in check.

It’s not like a Caledonia situation, where the mayor can beak off about people being on welfare, and other people having jobs. If that were to happen, the entire town would go down in flames, and everybody knows it. So, we’ve really enjoyed a comfortable relationship with the town, since starting this campaign. For our community, people are happy that it is being done. It was based on a community mandate that people went forward to do that. It is a rare thing for people just to go out and do what needs to be done because it is right, when it is easier to sit at home and just make threats.

They really see it as a real tangible expression of support for the land, for the preservation of the land, and for the preservation of our land. That’s what the community takes pride in. All those other things can just go away. But the land is permanent. So when you get caught into a land issue, you bring other social issues forward, that get carried through the land. But the land is of primary importance. When the land is involved, it’s something that is under your feet, something you can touch, and that’s something that people will make an ultimate sacrifice to defend.

I’d like you to talk more about why the province has dug in its heels, and the precedent it would set.

Yeah. The situation involving the quarry, in a land claim set of circumstances, is that the federal government sits at the table to discuss the land while the province âe” not just in this case, but in all cases throughout the province of Ontario âe” is responsible for issuing licenses for harvesting of resources on the land. There’s always been the feds at the table saying it’s the province’s responsibility or the province at the table saying it’s the feds’ responsibility, yet the two overlap. What happens is that the province derives its revenue from royalties that are harvested on land, that in this case is involved in a land claims dispute, transfers that money to the federal government and then it comes back in the form of federal transfers and budgetary program funding.

It’s kind of like a wink-wink, nudge-nudge. So long as the province doesn’t come to the table it still continues to generate the resources and the feds are happy because they continue to get the revenue from the resources. And nobody wants resource harvesting to stop, the federal and provincial governments certainly don’t want it to stop. It’s a scam to perpetuate 40, 50, 60, 70 years at a negotiating table while everything gets stripped. And at the end of that when everything is gone, then they’ll stand up and walk away from the table, and say ‘you don’t get it anyway.’

I was in Grassy Narrows, people sat at the table, talked about it, talked about the land, the land claims, and up there it is Crown land. The province is issuing licenses to Abatibi to clearcut it, and the feds are saying, ‘well there’s nothing we can do, we can’t intervene in provincial jurisdiction.’ So they clearcut the land, and when the land is clearcut the feds get up and walk away from the table, and say, ‘we have nothing left to discuss.’ So the land claims don’t get resolved. It’s an age-old scam.

So to answer your question, in this case, the province issues the license, but they won’t sit at the table because they say it is a federal responsibility. It was from that frustration, that we said, ‘we’ll just stop it. We have a mandate to stop it and we’ll just stop it. Whether you pull your license or you don’t, it doesn’t matter, because we’ll physically stop it.’

When we went into the quarry, we thought that it was so clear, that there wasn’t nobody who wouldn’t understand, that you don’t sit at the table and discuss land and literally chew it up and truck it away on the other side of the table. The very acreage that you’re trying to determine is disappearing on a daily basis. We thought it was so clear. That people would just say this is an absolute inconsistency in Canadian values and it should stop.

Whenever the Indians get pissed off and shut down a road, the province will be losing resource royalties and we’re obviously aware of that. But we also said that their failure to act in a timely manner [will bring about] actions that we felt were appropriate in order to resolve the matter. That’s how we ended up with a rail blockade in April. It’s how we ended up in smaller blockades, fights with the OPP within our community, the military, and then we ended up at June 29th. All these things are really emerging from that.

Can you speak to what must feel like a daily betrayal by non-Native Canadians, who purport to value the rule of law, and won’t follow their own law?

It’s simply because they’ve never had to, it just falls out of the consciousness of people. While it may have been high through the polls in the summer, from April, through to the end of June 29, First Nations issues were important to people and it’s because there was a real potential for economic disruption, and the hype that was being brought to it, and that put it in the forefront.

At the end of the day it comes down to average Canadians don’t see First Nations issues as being their responsibility, they see it as the government’s responsibility, they see it as a government obligation. As we like to say, we’ve been relegated to an issue, like health care or education or the environment, and really not as a high priority within those issues.