WHAT’S AT STAKE ON (UN)COMMON GROUND? THE GRAND RIVER HAUDENOSAUNEE AND CANADA IN CALEDONIA, ONTARIO by LAURA ALICE DeVRIES B.Sc. (Hon), University of Ottawa, 2006 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Resource Management and Environmental Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) July 2009 © Laura Alice DeVries, 2009 ABSTRACT Caledonia, Ontario made the news on February 28, 2006 as broadcasters reported on a strategically planned ‘occupation’ by Haudenosaunee protestors from the nearby Six Nations territory of a half‐finished forty‐hectare housing development known as Douglas Creek Estates. Negotiations over ownership of (and compensation for) Six Nations’ twenty‐ eight unaddressed land claims began shortly after the Ontario Provincial Police attempted and failed to remove the Six Nations occupiers, who assert that the land was not surrendered in the 1840s as Canada claims it was. The reclamation effort sparked tremendous controversy in Caledonia and across Canada; negotiations have achieved no resolution at the time of writing, and conflicts over land and resource rights are increasing in frequency and intensity both in Southern Ontario and across the continent. This thesis undertakes a discourse analysis of texts publicly circulated by the involved parties to discover the underpinnings of the dispute, to link it to histories of Haudenosaunee and Euro‐Canadian settler societies, and to generate insights regarding future Canadian‐ First Nations relationships. Competing claims to the land evidenced in these texts also constitute conflicting visions as to definitions of legitimacy, sovereignty, justice, citizenship and ‘normal’ society. As such, discursive claims are woven through with power relations and the rights to shape political and geographical landscapes. Discourses accessed, re‐ presented and re‐articulated on both sides connect (this) land to national‐cultural imaginaries, including ways of interpreting history and relationships, economies, law, and future ‘places to grow.’ Accounting for connections between identity and discourse reveal the ways in which spaces of difference and ‘truth’ are claimed by each party. In Caledonia, Six Nations is discursively positioned outside of ‘the law,’ of acceptable and rational society, and of political recognition as a nation; on the basis of these and other exclusions, Haudenosaunee epistemologies, histories, and priorities are rejected in this dispute over land. This present‐day conflict re‐presents Canada’s foundations in British colonial law and the ongoing symbolic and physical erasures of people who were here first, and demonstrates again the need to shape new relationships and landscapes in Canada. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .................................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. iv Chapter 1: Approaching the Story ............................................................................................. 1 Prologue .................................................................................................................................. 1 The Haudenosaunee Confederacy .......................................................................................... 3 Haudenosaunee‐settler relationships .................................................................................... 6 Colonial landscapes ............................................................................................................... 20 My place in the story ............................................................................................................ 27 Chapter 2: What is at stake in this dispute over land? ............................................................. 39 Setting the stage ................................................................................................................... 39 Places to grow? ..................................................................................................................... 43 Land, identity, polity ............................................................................................................. 47 Normalcy: “us” and “them” .................................................................................................. 55 Relationship or jurisdiction? ................................................................................................. 71 ‘Rule of law’ .......................................................................................................................... 80 The righting of wrongs .......................................................................................................... 95 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................... 116 Chapter 3: Shaping all kinds of spaces ................................................................................... 121 People, language and land .................................................................................................. 121 Canadian identity: spaces of difference ............................................................................. 130 Negotiating topographies of ‘truth’ .................................................................................... 147 The Haudenosaunee and land: identity and sovereignty ................................................... 154 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................... 176 Chapter 4: Future story (together?)....................................................................................... 179 A cautionary tale ................................................................................................................. 179 The land imperative ............................................................................................................ 182 Landscapes of relationship ................................................................................................. 188 Chapter 5: Summing up ............................................................................................................... 200 References ........................................................................................................................... 206 Primary sources .................................................................................................................. 206 Secondary sources ............................................................................................................. 220 Appendices .......................................................................................................................... 232 Appendix A: Key persons ................................................................................................... 232 Appendix B: Timeline of events ......................................................................................... 235 Appendix C: Six Nations Confederacy Council land rights statement ............................... 241 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like to thank my committee, Dr. Juanita Sundberg and Dr. Susan Hill, for the honest and patient insight and inspiration they provided. Thanks also to Dr. Terre Satterfield and Dr. Stephanie Chang for their straight talk and invaluable guidance. I am grateful for financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada and the University of British Columbia’s Pacific Century Graduate Scholarship. My pals at RMES put up with me for two years. Thanks for the good times, people. And, of course, where would I be without my parents? You’re the best. iv Chapter One APPROACHING THE STORY Prologue Caledonia, Ontario made the news on February 28, 2006 as broadcasters reported on a strategically planned ‘occupation’ by Haudenosaunee protestors from nearby Six Nations territory of a half‐finished forty‐hectare housing development known as Douglas Creek Estates. The protestors reclaimed the land as their own, asserting that it had never been surrendered to the Crown to be sold to third parties. Many non‐First Nations Caledonians and other Canadians across the country felt shocked and betrayed: to them, Canadian land title meant ownership, and the developing company had paid for the property ‘fair and square.’ What did it mean if First Nations people could invade and seize at will, apparently without consequences? Spokespersons for the attention‐grabbing protest maintained that action was necessary, following years spent waiting for Canada’s land claims system to address fraudulent land alienations.1 Should the events have been surprising? Physical and discursive expressions of First Nations ‘land claims,’2 in the forms of demonstrations, declarations, and scholarship on the subject, have been mounting in frequency, forcefully disrupting Canadian cultural imaginaries of history long‐passed and harmony in diversity predicated on the ongoing denial of First Nations’ rights. Three years after the beginning of this protest, negotiations between Canada and Six Nations drag on without appreciable