Before I continue any further with this post I need to be upfront and honest.  I believe in the cliché “Two wrongs don’t make a right” and that I know next to nothing about what is happening in Six Nations with their land dispute, occupation, or protest. I have in the past read the claim documents from Six and have had many citizens of the Big Six explain to me the historical accounts that led up to the confrontations and protests we read about. Also…..I really don’t care much for Christie Blatchford’s columns. I only read this one because of the title.

Call me weird, and many people do but I read Ms. Blatchford’s column ( in Saturday November 14th edition)  Two standards of policing failed the residents of Caledonia and can only see a bias towards what she is comfortable with.  Why are so few people not able to step back and ask the questions of the non-residents of Six Nations, who over the years have constantly encroached on territory that did not belong to them, where is the protection for the citizens of Six Nations or any of our Indigenous nations?

Ms. Blatchford writes;

“..Not mentioned was the fact that by this time, Mr. Brown and his family had been living under this state-condoned oppression for three months, had been driven nearly mad by the threatening conduct of the natives, and had been left enraged and bewildered that the OPP and the government regularly turned a blind eye to it all….”

And in the last paragraph Ms. Blatchford writes

“…Insp. Haggith arrived to see the cameraman with his bloodied face and heard from spectators what had happened.

The turning point came when he overheard a woman talking on the phone to a police dispatcher, saying she wouldn’t give her name because she was afraid. “The police won’t do anything,” the woman said, “Who is going to help us?”

It was, he said, “a perception I could share.”…”

But that is my question as a Salteaux/Sioux (and maybe a little Cree too ;O) woman…who is protecting us?  Who protects our land from non-residents or citizens that just take chunks of it and assume ownership, sell, and or/develop.  Why is it that we live in a society where it is easy to forget we exist unless it’s to put us on display as a cultural showcase for Canada? I just don’t get it? Why is it that the Indigenous people with signed Treaties must in the year 2009 fight through the long laborious process of proving those same documents are legitimate? Not to mention our nations must use borrowed government money to pay the researchers and legal fees and pay it back from any future settlement money.

Mr. Brown and his family were living under state-condoned oppression for three months and are suing everybody and their uncle cause it was a horrible and they were driven “nearly mad” by the experience.  Ok I can believe that living under oppression in bad – I think we as Indigenous people can say we know this to be true. Back to my first sentence – two wrongs don’t make it right. But why the empathy for the Browns and not the people of Six who have been living under state-condoned oppression for centuries? Why it is easy for the Blatchford’s of the world to not like the condition when it happens to one of them but believe it only appropriate for the Indigenous people of Canada?

Where the heck is our protection from this horrible society that surrounds us? Do you ever read the comment sections after one of these stories? These are our neighbours, bosses, co-workers that manage to say and do the most hurtful statements and make disgusting accusations not acceptable anywhere else. I confess I really don’t like a lot of people and even more …strangers really scare me.

With every ounce of honesty in me I read those comments and imagine they are written by everyone I see in my day. I believe they are written by the persons who sits on the bus next to me, strangers on the street who stare, and even people in my gym class. It’s easy to believe that any and most  of the people whose path I cross hate my guts, believe I am a lazy alcoholic just waiting to suck every tax dollar out of them, and think I am ‘slow’ but that would be the easy way out.

It’s easy to hate and get angry – it takes effort to find solutions.  And that explains a lot about the majority society and the people who form it. I don’t want to be like them.