“A decade-long access to information fight by Amnesty International has uncovered documents the organization says reveal a deep-seated bias in how the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) handled the Mohawks land dispute in 2008.
“From the very beginning we think the response to the land occupation and protests in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory were vastly disproportional to any credible evidence of any threat to public safety,” said Craig Benjamin, who works for the human rights organization.
“Do I really think the OPP are there for public safety? Absolutely not,” said Dan Doreen, a Mohawk land defender, who was on the frontlines of the land reclamation in Tyendinaga.
“Does public safety encompass Indigenous people? Absolutely not.”
Larry Hay is a Mohawk investigator based in Tyendinaga. He worked with Amnesty International to examine the OPP actions.
He said this is still very much a live issue for his community.
“Why is it important ten years on to move this forward? Because these issues have never been addressed,” said Hay.
Hay is a former RCMP officer and former chief of the Tyendinaga Mohawk Police.
“What happened here in 2008, here Tyendinaga at the Culbertson Tract turned out to be an example for police of how not to manage an Indigenous protest,” said Hay.
The Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, in southeastern Ontario, sits on the shores of the Bay of Quinte, framed by Highway 401, the train tracks to the north and two small towns on either side.
In 1995, the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte filed a land claim for a 900 acre (364 hectares) area called the Culbertson Tract. Roughly a third of it is farmland, but it also includes part of the small town of Deseronto, which borders the reserve.
“All the important part of the town is on stolen land,” said Doreen.
The land claim is still under negotiation.
Back in 2007, the Mohawks had already protested a permit granted by the province to a local developer for a quarry in the land claim area.
They occupied the quarry site and shut it down.
That occupation was still going on a year later, when another property developer announced plans for 200 housing units in Deseronto, in another area that’s part of the land claim.
“It was always about the land and it was stopping development of the land,” said Doreen. “And we did that.”
The 2008 protests and police actions largely happened out of the public eye.
But through freedom of information, Amnesty International has accessed documents including officer’s notes, briefing books, police interviews, and footage recorded by the OPP – video never before seen by the public.
“Do you need 200 police officers to address a situation which is at most one of mischief? Or perhaps one where no laws are being broken?” asked Benjamin.
The OPP deployed the Public Order unit, the Canine unit, a helicopter and the Tactics and Rescue Unit (TRU), commonly called the sniper squad or swat team.”
- Trina Roache, “Documents show deep-seated bias by police during operations against Mohawks of Tyendinaga.” APTN Investigates, November 23, 2018.
