A NEW WAY OF THINKING AND ACTING
A young warrior’s perspective on the conflict at Six Nations
In this interview, TAIAIAKE ALFRED speaks with a young man who participated in the Six Nations protest and occupation of the development on their lands at Douglas Creek. He was also at the centre of the physical confrontation between Six Nations people and the Ontario Provincial Police on April 20th, 2006. The young warrior reflects on his experiences confronting police violence, the meaning of indigenous leadership today, and on the long-term implication of the conflict for the Haudenosaunee peoples.
TA: What was your involvement in the April 20th confrontation with the police at Six Nations?
BY THE TIME I SHOWED UP, AROUND 7 IN the morning, the police had pushed everybody off the land completely and were formed in a line on the road. Some of us started walking up and down that line, just staring them down, getting mad. I just got sick of it, and I went and grabbed this log, and when I picked it up, these two cops jumped on me right away. So I started slamming and wrestling around with them.
Then a cop – some big black guy – came and took me right down, just like that! (laughs) He grabbed my head and just threw me right down. Nobody really helped me; I got mad ‘cause nobody helped me at all. When somebody did try to jump in after a while, he got taken down too, and then that’s when everybody started jumping in. That’s when all the men finally stepped up.
They got me handcuffed and carried me away. The whole time I was just yelling and getting everybody all riled up. They took me over the hill, behind where everybody was and they started slamming me around and stomping me on my back, kicking me. There was about eight of them. And then they brought in another old guy too, they had him all handcuffed up. And then they took the handcuffs off and put slip ties on, they tightened them real tight. I couldn’t even feel my hands.
So I was sitting there, and I kept trying to hint to this guy, “Hey, that whole side’s open…” I was gonna book it, book through the field with my hands tied. I was just about to get up, I just started to get up on one knee, I was about to take off, when the women came over. There were about three or four women, and they said to the cops, “Let him go, right now!” And when the cops said they couldn’t do that, the women said, “Fucking let them go, right now!” and those cops just got scared, and they said “alright, alright..” They cut those ties off me. I was walking around, looking at them, going “I’m gonna’ get you back.” I pointed right at this one guy who happened to be one of the guys I hit with the log later on!
When they let me go, the men had already pushed the cops back and we were following them along the road walking towards the highway. But then we looked across a field and we could see a whole bunch of cops in the distance, probably about a hundred of them. There weren’t too many of our people over, so I started leading everybody towards that area. I got about forty men to follow me and we started running across the field over to where the cops were. We got over there and we pushed all those cops back again towards Highway 6.
CONFRONTING POLICE VIOLENCE
TA: When you say you “pushed them back” do you mean you had to physically fight them?
YEAH, WE HAD TO PUSH THEM AND SHOVE them. It was then that we saw Hazel Hill over in the distance get slammed by the cops, so we all went running to help her. We didn’t notice right away, but there were about fifty or sixty more cops over there. There was like six cops on her, but we got her away. They backed off after that. And then I kept walking at one of the cops, the loud one, and he kept telling me to “step back.” I didn’t hear nothing, I was right in the zone, zeroed in on that cop. I didn’t really notice the gun pointed at me.
He kept yelling at me. Finally, he hit me. I looked at him, and then I looked back ‘cause I could hear something click and then all of a sudden I saw him shoot it. It was like in slow-motion; I could actually see it, it looked like a red ball coming at me right up that line. There’s a little line up right into the taser. I could see that it looked red, full of energy or something. And then I had a reaction; I just saw my arm go up and knock it right off of me… it was cool. It just pissed me right off though! Talk about “in the zone”! I’d never experienced that before.
I flipped right out and started screaming at those cops. “Is that all you fucking got!?” stuff like that, being real loud. I hit a couple of them. Somebody had to pull me back because they probably would have shot me again! (laughs) I scared them after that, though. When they saw I didn’t go down after being hit, it really scared them. About three or four of them ran and jumped in their trucks – they really ran, too! They were scared. So that was pretty much it; we had pushed them back into Caledonia.
TA: How did you feel after all that was over and the barricade went back to normal?
EVERYBODY WAS JUST IN SHOCK. I remember going home later that day and just sitting there with everything starting to set in, everything slowly started to come back to me. I was thinking, “Holy shit, what the hell just happened?” Over that whole time that I just talked about, I didn’t even remember when it actually happened. It took a couple of days for it to actually set in.
It was a weird feeling. I’ve never felt that way before. It felt good, though. Me, I’ve had it in my mind since I was six years old, and I knew one day, and always waited for the time, that we were going to show the white people who we are, who we really are, what we can be, no matter how many times they push us or try to put us down. It really showed that day, and it was awesome. After we pushed them all out I was just dazed, and I looked out in the field, there was just people, swarms, everywhere. It just straightened my back right up. I held my head up.
CONFUSION
TA: That’s awesome. But thinking back, was there anybody who would talk differently from you about it? Is there anybody in the community who opposed what you were doing?
I REMEMBER, IN THE FIRST WEEK OF THE protest, the Confederacy chiefs actually came there and said, “Take the blockades down. We don’t want them there at all.” The chiefs came there and the people said, “No, we’re not taking them down.” Even [Chief ] Dave General and the band council chiefs came there too. He actually got smacked right in the face by one of the guys! (laughs) and he had to leave because everybody just got mad after a while. He came there calm, and he came there in a respectful manner, but the things he was saying were… ah, his plan was that he wanted to hand out pamphlets. I mean, by the time he did that, the land would’ve been developed.
TA: I really don’t think people give a damn about pamphlets anyway.
WE SAID, “NO, WE NEED ACTION NOW.” And he said “No, we can’t do that. They’re going to send in the army.” All our guys at the blockades said “bring it on.” They’re ready to stand for this, they’re not going to take it anymore. It really hurt me, though, to see our own band chiefs in there, actually coming there and saying that.
TA: Why do you think the chiefs would take that position?
YOU HEAR A LOT OF PEOPLE TALKING about deals they may have made over other conflicts in the past as a reason for the mistrust. Some people had heard that the MPs in the Hamilton area had drafted up an order in support of what was going on, but that Dave General told them, “Don’t listen to the Confederacy council.” They were going to get a bunch of people together to go right down to bust up Dave General and take over the band council – they were so pumped up, it was funny!
I was confused myself when it came to the Confederacy chiefs though. The Confederacy had a meeting, and they said that the secretary and the lawyer that the Confederacy always calls upon were the two telling the chiefs to put a stop to everything. The secretary, Tom, came down there and was telling everybody that the chiefs aren’t supporting what’s going on here now because, “we thought it would be peaceful but it’s kind of gone beyond what we agreed to support in the beginning, so we’re not supporting it.”
It was confusing to me. The whole point of doing all of this is to reclaim what is rightfully ours. So why would anybody not support it, especially our traditional council? People involved were all pretty much thinking, “Screw the Confederacy council if they don’t want to support us.” The clan mothers there were still supporting us though. For a couple of days, I was really confused. We don’t want to follow the elected system, but then our Confederacy system is telling us to walk away.
TA: What about the clan mothers? It seems like they are more involved and supportive of the land reclamation blockade.
I SAW CLAN MOTHERS THERE EVERY night. I never saw one Chief there, not once in the entire blockade, I never saw a Chief. But there were clan mothers there sitting with the people, talking with us and supporting us any way they could. Giving us coffee, staying up with us all night, not until three or four in the morning would they go home. It’s the old women, seventyyear- olds, doing that for us. Not one chief there. And these chiefs are young.
LEADERSHIP
TA: So what do you think has been the impact of all this?
I SAW SOMETHING FOR THE FIRST TIME that I thought I would never see. I saw our people rise. But then we saw our traditional government fall. That’s how I see it. The power of the people is strong. But we just need strong leaders; that’s the thing.
TA: What are your thoughts on leadership in our communities now?
THAT BAND COUNCIL BROUGHT WAY more support than our traditional system! Yeah, there was that one guy, the main chief Dave General, and a group in there that totally denounced us, but there were some councilors, they were with us every day. I don’t know how many times the councilors were there, eating with us and sharing food on an individual basis. They just came as community supporters. They were there, they supported us strongly. My view on the band council has shifted lately… I’d get called down at home by some of the old people if I said that. I’d probably get slapped in the head (laughs).
We just need a strong leader, and that’s all it’s going to take. That’s the role of a leader: to start a vision in the people and give them hope. That’s all it is, just show them a new way of hope, a new way of thinking.