It all began one year ago when native protesters from the Six Nations began a demonstration to raise awareness about a land claim in the small town of Caledonia, Ontario, about a 30 minute drive south of Hamilton.
At the centre of the dispute was a 40 hectare plot of land which was to be developed into a residential subdivision. This was a fragment of a much larger chunk of land known as the ‘Haldimand Tract’ which was granted to the Six Nations by the British crown back in the 1700’s. It is argued that the Six Nations surrendered the land back to the crown in 1841. 150 or so years later the Canadian federal government sold the land to Henco Industries Ltd., the developer intending to build houses on the property.
In June of 2006, the Province of Ontario purchased land from Henco. At present the natives continue to occupy the land.
There’s a lot of stuff that happened in between now and a year ago but there you get the condensed story in a nutshell. The above cartoons illustrate some of the highlights of the Caledonia standoff, a story I wish would go away soon, but will probably keep going for years to come.
FEEDBACK
I think perhaps you should go and meet the Confederacy representatives and explore their view of the land dispute. Your cartoons have a definite anti-native bias that is quite unsettling and appears to lack awareness or respect for their culture, their position, and their 200 year long and arduous trail just to get the federal government to the table.
If a cartoonist only reflects the biased information that already exists in the media, he only presents stale stereotypes such as these.
Saga (March 6, 2007)