Indigenous-Labour Solidarity and the Six Nations Land Dispute: An Interview With Rolf Gerstenberger

Rolf Gerstenberger is President of the United Steelworkers Union Local 1005 in Hamilton, Ontario. Members of his union local were some of the first non-natives to answer the call for support from Six Nations after the Ontario Provincial Police invaded the territory and attacked the peaceful occupation at Douglas Creek. He was interviewed on video at the barricade in May 2006.

Our local first came out here after a week of local media propaganda about how “something has to be done” about the stand taken by the Native people here at Douglas Creek. The local media were trying to whip up support for the police or the army to move in and clean them out. So we came the first day with our flags and about twenty of our members to lend support.

For us, supporting Native peoples’ hereditary rights and their land claims is a motherhood issue. It’s been 500 years of injustice done to the Native people; it’s never been resolved. They had been promised certain things and the Crown never upheld their promise. They had almost a million acres of land, and no sooner did the Crown promise it in 1784, they started taking it away. Today they have less than five percent of the land still available to them.

Our position was that you can’t solve this question with police attacks, or the army coming in, or shooting someone, or arresting someone, or making it a lawand-order issue. It’s a political question that has to be settled politically, through negotiations. So when the OPP riot police moved in and arrested 16 of the Native people, attacked them, beat them up, tazered them, had assault rifles out, and thought they could just clean up this small group of “trouble makers,” then, of course, the Native people took measures to prevent that from happening again. They asked for people to come out to just be witnesses in case the police attack. So our members have been coming either as a group or just on their own just to be around and support the Native people in their just demands.

NO CHOICE

I got lots of calls from union members who live in this area. Basically, my argument to them was, first of all, they all have to agree that we don’t want to settle this through law and order, by beating someone, by beating the Native people up, or by shooting them, or arresting them. There was a general view that that shouldn’t happen.

It was interesting because every one of the callers said, “What the Native people are doing is illegal, this is an illegal occupation.” The more I discussed with them, as far as the history of it, it turns out that all the residents of Caledonia know that there’s a land dispute. Twenty or 30 years ago, the reason you could buy houses cheaply in Caledonia was be-cause you weren’t really sure if you owned the land or not! So it turns out everyone in Caledonia knows that; they may not have liked it, but they know that this is… you know, the six miles on each side of the Grand River, is Native land. They knew that. And then they would say, “Well why didn’t the Native people raise this issue before?” And then we would tell them that the Natives did, but unfortunately the courts won’t listen to them and it isn’t until they take a stand that the government is forced to deal with it. And then of course when they do take a stand, like they did at Oka, and Ipperwash, and Gustafsen Lake, they’re attacked. So it’s not an easy thing for the Native people to take this step, but at the end of the day they have no choice.

It always comes down to whether you know the history or not. Hopefully this will be settled through negotiations. The problem is there are about 600 unresolved land claims in Canada right now, and that may open a can of worms. So this is what the government has to think about when they’re settling this problem. But it’s about time that these things are settled. Five hundred years is a long time to not settle a question as basic as this.