On February 27th, 2011, at the fifth anniversary of the Six Nations land
reclamation of Douglas Creek Estates, Gary McHale, anti-Native activist and
executive director of Canadian Advocates for Charter Equality (CANACE),
announced his intention to hold a “Truth and Reconciliation Rally” in Caledonia,
Ontario.
In 2006 people of Six Nations of the Grand River Territory reclaimed land in
“dispute” for more than 150 years in order to stop development of a Caledonia
subdivision on stolen land. In reaction to the reclamation, Gary McHale and his
followers set about a political movement to end what they call “native
lawlessness,” “land claim terrorism,” and “race-based policing”. CANACE has
bolstered continued support for their propaganda against “reverse racism” and
“two-tiered justice” that, according to them, victimizes the mainly white
residents of Caledonia and Canadians more broadly. Following the patters of
white backlash movements since the gains of the 1960s civil rights movement,
CANACE misappropriates the language of civil and human rights, and readily
proclaims its work to be part of Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy.
In 2009 leaders of CANACE played leading roles in trying to establish the
“Caledonia Militia” and on March 21st, 2010 they called an “anti-racist” rally
on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to bring
attention to the “race-based policing” that discriminates against white people.
See:
http://voiceofcanada.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/join-merlyn-kinrades-anti-racism-rally-in-caledonia-on-march-2110/
Anti-racist and Six Nations solidarity activists organized to denounce the
escalation of racism and colonial violence on both occasions.
See: https://6nsolidarity.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/mchale-flees-dialogue-happens/
And:
https://6nsolidarity.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/anti-racists-2-gary-mchale-canace-0/
Now Gary McHale and his followers are attempting to appropriate the language of “Truth and Reconciliation.” CANACE is demanding that an official apology be issued to the people of Caledonia from the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), Ontario government, and Six Nations peoples. CANACE intended to erect an “apology monument” on Kanonhstaton (Six Nations reclaimed land). In their press release for the event they demanded a similar apology from the government as that given to the First People of this land in relation to the unconscionable atrocities of the residential school system.
For Press Release see:
http://caledoniavictimsproject.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/joint-news-release-truth-reconciliation-rally-in-caledonia-feb-27th/
We must stand united against this outrageous attempt to compare the hardships
experienced by Caledonia residents to various genocidal and racist projects of
assimilation, expulsion and extermination. We must uphold the political,
historical and emotional significance of apologies issued by the Canadian
Government to people wronged by the state and society. The First Nations
Solidarity Working Group as a part of the Six Nations Solidarity Network calls
on all anti-racist activists and supporters of Indigenous struggles to send a
clear message to anti-Native activists: attempts to erase the ongoing theft of
Indigenous land and continuing crimes of the Canadian government against
Indigenous people and nations of this land through the spectre of white
victimization will not be tolerated!
Solidarity with Six Nations 
What is really disgusting is the fact that Gary McHale and Company have usurped the status of Holocaust victims, blacks and “good natives” (read: those who support the colonialist system of unearned privileges that perpetuate oppression and discrimination). Just a mere one day’s worth of Internet research shows that McHale and Company have heavy truck and trade with well-heeled Nazi war criminals, violent white male supremacists, kiddie porn consumers and other social deviants.
Violence and thuggery is always defined by the “winners” in this system of unearned privileges, isn’t it?
One thing that stood out that sent bad chills down my spine when I happened upon that Google video featuring David Ruud of Northern Alliance at McHale’s Oct 15 2007 anti-native reclamation rally was Ruud’s repeated use of the words “special treatment.”
For those of us all too familiar with the politics and machinations of genocide, “special treatment” means one — and only one — thing: the immediate extermination of those of us deemed to be members of an execratable race (Jews and Serbs in my case, aboriginal people here on the American continent).
When First Nations/Native American people were brutally hewn down and their survivors made into third-class citizens in their own country, this crime of infamy was sanitized by euphemisms such as “progress”, “civilizing”, and “Manifest Destiny” (implying some sick and demented “divine right” to carry out genocide).
When domestic terrorists like Aryan Guard blow up people with pipe bombs, it’s called “celebrating European heritage”. But when a group of oppressed people rise up and say, “We’re not gonna take it anymore!” and raise a flag, it’s called “terrorism” and “thuggery.”
My sympathies lie four-square with the First Nations/Native American people. I know that McHale’s whining is not about flags or “respect for the rule of law.” He’s whining because he wants to maintain a system of unearned rich white male privileges. He benefited from imperialism/feudalism/colonialism/fascism/capitalism, and that is precisely why he beats his “law and order” drum.
73 years ago, Nuremberg Law # 322 was enacted by the Nazi government. This “rule of law” prompted the seizure of all Jewish owned property (even if the only thing you had was a cheap brass menorah to light on Chanukkah) and the herding of Jews into the sealed ghettos of Lodz, Krakow, Warsaw, Lublin, and Minsk…until the Nazis marched six million of us into the gas chambers and mass-cremated us, after taking the fillings from our teeth, the hair from our heads, and even the clothes on our backs.
After the end of WW II, three engineers and key employees for the firm Topf & Son stood trial in Erfurt, Germany. Their names were Fritz Sander, Kurt Prufer, and Karl Schultze. These three white middle-aged middle class “good German men” offered to make themselves indisposable to the Third Reich, the Nazi Party, and their boss Ludwig Topf by joining the Nazi Party and then applying to the patent office in Berlin for the exclusive rights to design, build, and perform maintenance on these heavy-duty industrial-sized crematoria in order for their employer to get the exclusive contract with the Reich Economic Office for this machination of genocide — which ensured job security for these three “good Germans.”
When the Allied Force judges at the tribunal asked these men why they did what they did, they didn’t say it was because they hated the Jews. They didn’t say it was because they feared the SS or the Nazi government. They said it was because they were afraid of losing their middle class jobs and that they were merely obeying the “rule of law” of their Nazi government.
If it were not for Dine (Navajo) code-talkers, Hitler (and the Axis Forces) would have handed the Allied Forces their asses and the Nazis (and their compatriots, the Croatian Ustasi, the Bosnian SS Handzar, and the Hungarian Arrow-Cross) would have succeeded in killing ever last Jew — of that, I am quite certain. I am the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors.
I admire the Mohawk warriors at Caledonia and Oka because in the face of enormous obstacles, they stood up against what was really an ongoing oppression and injustice and they did not let six million of their people be marched into gas chambers.
Yes, there were people caught in the middle. But I believe that none of that would have happened if not for the actions of a corrupt town council, a greedy rich land developer who was looking for a license to steal, and police who drew first blood.
And like their philosophical descendents of today (the anti-native, right-wing “law and order” screeching gang), the Nazi SS were the first Holocaust deniers: they attempted to destroy evidence of their genocidal crimes by blowing up some of the crematoriums and gas chambers before fleeing the oncoming Allied troops.
It is no coincidence that the same people who claim that “the natives have it too good” are also the same people who lynched Jews and black men in the deep South, and who say that the Holocaust didn’t occur (despite mountains of evidence proving otherwise).
There is a wealth of info on these modern-day neo-Nazis, white male supremacists, and their fellow travellers at the Nizkor website. McHale & Company’s hands are, indeed, quite sullied. No matter how McHale spins it, you can’t polish a turd.
To me, that unity flag will always represent a distress call for help from my First Nations friends — and that is a call that I will answer and gladly come to aid my First Nations friends in any way I can.
Anti-Native Activist Gary “I’m Not a Racist” McHale in Bed
With Canadian and American neo-Nazis
By Jacqueline S. Homan
Click to access anti-native-activist-gary-i-am-not-a-racist-mchale-in-bed-with-canadian-and-american-neo-nazis-1.pdf
Gary McHale is a racist with ties to the KKK according to this well prepared document.
“scalp ’em”, “vermin”, terms used against FN People are documented in the attached link as being commonly used in McHale’s attempts to insert himself into the High Park restoration attempts. Some of you may recall McHale who moved to Caledonia where he placed Canadian flags on Six Nations Haldimand Tract soil.
Despite disliking giving this “hater” of Indigenous People and their Rights “press”, it is necessary to make all of you aware of how widespread McHale’s tenacles may spread.
From everything read or seen about Gary McHale, one can clearly see that he is a racist, who may even be a “plant” to cause division, or perhaps a media mongrel who interjects himself where he doesn’t belong. Either way, it is important to be aware that there is a storm brewing in Toronto, and Gary Mchale is behind it.
We pray that the continual efforts of the men and women at the High Park Ancestral Burial Mounds prevail without confrontation and the racist presence of Gary McHale and his Neo-Nazi friends.
Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and Social Justice is Not “Special Treatment” Regardless of What Big Money and Big Oil Say
By Jacqueline S. Homan
Regarding the rights of indigenous peoples, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) states:
“In many regions of the world, indigenous peoples have been, and are still being, discriminated against and deprived of their human rights and fundamental freedoms…they have lost their land and resources to colonists, commercial companies, and State enterprises. Consequently, the preservation of their culture and their historical identity has been, and still is, jeopardized. The Committee calls in particular upon States parties to:
Recognize and protect the rights of indigenous peoples to own, develop, control, and use their communal lands, territories, and resources where they have been deprived of their lands and territories traditionally owned or otherwise inhabited or used without their free and informed consent, to take steps to return those lands and territories…”
Human rights advocates drew upon this to form the Inter-American Human Rights System (OAS). Under the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, many of the same rights as those enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are affirmed — including the right to property. To wit:
Article 23: “Every person has a right to own such private property as meets the essential needs of decent living and helps to maintain the dignity of the individual and of the home.”
Sadly, there is a prevailing sentiment among many, a byproduct of centuries of redistributive colonialist injustices that dismisses aboriginal peoples as “savages” with no human rights— including the right to property. Churches and corporations — which are not individual persons or human beings — are allowed to own private property. Why shouldn’t First Nations/Native American people be accorded that same respect and right in their own country?
Canadian Conservatives like Gary McHale and Mark Vandermaas claim they stand for “equal rights for all Canadians”; that nobody should receive special privileges at the expense of another. Under the OAS, “equal rights” means that if you expect to have your property rights recognized in accordance with your customs and traditions, you must also recognize and respect aboriginal peoples’ property rights under their laws, norms, customs, mores and traditions. And under indigenous people’s property systems, aboriginal peoples have property rights that are recognized by the OAS as being no less valid that Mr. McHale’s or Mr. Vandermaas’s, or yours or mine. That, my friends, is what “equal rights” really means.
Go out to any First Nations/Native American community — the people know their property rights. They know where their trap line is. They know where their communal farmland is. They know where their sacred sites and burial places are. They have property rights — they’re just not titled by the State.
In modern international law, all peoples are to be treated equal. That means that non-native property titling mechanisms are on equal par with — NOT superior to — indigenous property-holding traditions. The State cannot extinguish aboriginal property rights.
In the case where a non-native person or corporate entity paid money for real property to some third party (i.e. the State) when that property really belonged to indigenous people who did not consent to said sale/property transfer, and is then compelled to return that land to its indigenous owners who are exercising their aboriginal customs and traditions and asserting their claims to that property, then the State is obligated to fully compensate the non-aboriginal titled owner for that land and return that land to its aboriginal owners.
Gary McHale, co-founder of CANACE, and Mark Vandermaas, founder of Voice of Canada, have a habit of traveling to areas of Native protests to create dissention and public panic by citing the Caledonia incident. Their tactics are best described as “stochastic terrorism” — using language and/or imagery to inflame people and possibly incite some racist and/or sexist “lone wolf” into carrying out a racially motivated crime with the deliberate intent to cause bodily harm; which helps shed some light on the cause behind Canada’s missing and murdered aboriginal women and the practice of “starlighting” aboriginal men and youth like 17 year old Neil Stonechild who was found with handcuff gashes on his face, missing a shoe and proper outerwear, frozen to death in the frigid sub-freezing Saskatchewan winter temperatures. Dying from hypothermia is a long and excruciatingly painful death.
On McHale’s Caledonia Wakeup Call website, he announced his May 28th 2011 anti-Native rally in High Park where he planned to distribute fliers to the public stating that Natives were taking over the park, forbidding Blacks and Jews (and non-Natives in general) from accessing the public park, admonishing everyone in Toronto to remember the violence that erupted at Caledonia and recognize the “eminent danger” they were in because High Park was being “occupied by Mohawk warriors” and that the presence of the Six Nations Confederacy flag along with the “Mohawk Warrior flag” proved it.
What he left out, however, was the fact that the Native and non-Native people encamped in the park were there with the city’s permission to do volunteer restorative work to repair damage done by BMX bikers, and that there were city employees coming to lend a hand and show support. Hardly a hostile takeover, or as Joe Warmington of the Toronto Sun said, “a mini-Caledonia.”
McHale, who presents himself as an expert on the meaning of various First Nations flags, apparently did not understand the history behind the Six Nations Confederacy flag. Nor did he understand the unity by virtue of treaty between those of us living in the Iroquois region and our Native brethren signified by the two-row wampum belt with that same Six Nations Confederacy flag design also featuring William Penn —a treaty between the Haudenosaunee peoples and the settlers to their region. When the People of the Longhouse entered into that treaty, it was one of honour and mutual respect. It was not merely some impersonal capitalist concoction of temporary trade and commerce.
It meant that we, who live among our Haudenosaunee brothers and sisters on their traditional territories, should share equally in each others’ good times as well as bear an equal share in each others’ hard times if misfortune should beset either of our peoples — for as long as the river flows and the grass grows. The treaty relationship is far deeper and far more personal than that of commerce and trade; it is one of love, honour, respect, equality and community. It is a relationship of brethren, of mutual aid in times of distress when our brethren are facing an outside threat; not one of paternalism and subservience. But Gary McHale doesn’t understand that language of flags and treaties. And sadly, neither do many others.
UN Declaration on the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Article 27: “States shall establish and implement, in conjunction with Indigenous peoples concerned, a fair, independent, impartial, open and transparent process, giving due recognition to indigenous peoples’ laws, traditions, customs and land tenure systems, to recognize and adjudicate the rights of indigenous people pertaining to their lands, territories and resources, including those which were traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used. Indigenous peoples shall have the right to participate in this process.”
Gary McHale and company purport to support “the rule of law.” The question is does Mr. McHale understand the “rule of law” framed, outlined and upheld by the Inter-American Human Rights Tribunal?
More to the point: who funds ultra-right wing individuals and groups, their neo-Nazi fellow travelers and the ultra-conservative political candidates they support? Who really stands to benefit from abrogating indigenous peoples’ rights in a fascist agenda cloaked under the guise of “law and order”? Follow the money.
Billionaire Koch Brothers’ Tentacles of Greed Reach Deep Into Northern Lands
The Koch brothers’ financial conduit, Americans for Prosperity, organized the ultra-conservative, anti-poor, anti-woman, anti-healthcare Tea Party rallies in the US. They also funneled millions of dollars into groups promoting climate change skepticism, including Canada’s Fraser Institute.
Koch Industries is the biggest company most Canadians probably never heard of, but thanks to the Internet and watchdog groups such as Sourcewatch.org, information is accessible at an unprecedented speed and is readily available at your fingertips.
Koch Industries and its subsidiaries currently operate in seven Canadian provinces, employing about 2,400 people in manufacturing, trading, chemical production, marketing and sales.[1] According to a March 30th 2010 Greenpeace report, Koch holds multiple land leases in Alberta’s tar sands region. Since the 1990’s, Koch-owned pipeline companies such as Flint Hills Resources has operated the pipelines that carry the tar sands crude oil from Canada into Minnesota and Wisconsin where Flint Hills Resources owns and operates oil refineries.[2]
Billionaire Koch brothers David (CEO of Koch Industries) and Charles (Vice President of Koch Industries) are using their vast fortune to influence the Canadian and US political regimes and shape laws and public policy. Especially energy policy. They bankrolled the Fraser Institute with $175,000 between 2005 and 2008. The Fraser Institute is a libertarian ultra-right wing think tank based in Vancouver, BC.
On page 2 of its 2005 annual report, the Fraser Institute featured a picture of Michael Walker with US Vice President Dick Cheney followed by a picture of now-Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, attending the Institute’s annual general meeting.[3] The Kochs fund other ultra-right wing think tanks, academic groups, and “grassroots” political organizations like the Tea Party and its Canadian contemporaries — many of which (like CANACE and Voice of Canada) have links to neo-Nazi and white supremacy groups. Racism, patriarchy, fascism, sexism, misogyny, classism and an entire array of systemic redistributive injustices stemming from colonialism blend together like alphabet soup.
It is no accident that Gary McHale and his sympathizers (some who referred to Native Canadians as “terrorists with feathers in their hair”) are backing Tim Hudak, the leader of Ontario’s Conservative Party. Conservative groups are the Koch brothers’ pawns.
Hudak wants to gut the Ontario Green Energy Act, even though the piece of legislation has been described as the “single best green energy program” in North America that has created a lot of jobs and is posed to create many more.
Hudak, as part of the Koch brothers disinformation and propaganda machine, cited a fraudulent study (“the Spanish Study”, which was thoroughly discredited) claiming that the Green Energy Act costs a net loss of jobs. This “study” was funded by the American Energy Alliance, a libertarian think tank funded by Exxon-Mobile and Koch Industries.[4] The Spanish Study was debunked by the Spanish government, the US Dept. of Energy, and the Wall Street Journal — not exactly the cradle of leftist thought and politics. But apparently, the Toronto Sun didn’t get the memo. Instead of being the watchdog of democracy, it looks more like the lapdog of the elite — much like Fox News and CNN in the states.
As a Koch brothers uber-right wing pawn, Tim Hudak panders to racist beneficiaries of unearned privileges who despise the poor, First Nations people, and other marginalized or disadvantaged groups.
The Koch brothers’ dystopia is made possible by a lot of bigots and a lot of greedy, self-centered people — many who champion “charter equality”, and government cuts to social programs for the poor under the guise of “eliminating wasteful spending” and “getting tough on crime”; which always — without exception — targets indigenous people and the poor.
Billionaire mega-criminals like the Koch brothers have their hacks in mainstream media, like the National Post, that are all too eager to give them a free pass to continue raping the world with impunity in exchange for a comfortable middle class paycheck and a false sense of importance that they wear as badges of smug superiority.
The Koch brothers and their “homies” in the Multinational Corporate Klepto-Plutocracy would just as quickly poison the water used in Joe Warmington’s latte as they do to the ground and drinking water in Cree country in the Canadian prairies. And they have a willing army of middle class conservative voters ready to help them do it — like rats following the Pied Piper, dancing mindlessly like marionettes to the symphony of destruction. The Koch brothers are the prime beneficiaries posed to gain if the Keystone XL Pipeline is approved — which will not alleviate the fuel-poverty of tens of millions of poor Americans struggling to live without adequate employment opportunities or an economic safety net. Instead, that project will be a Tar Sands Road to China.[5]
So if you want to see what’s really behind the violation of aboriginal peoples’ human rights and the engine driving the cultural racism machine, follow the money: It’s the billionaire oil tycoons and other filthy rich mega-criminals and their phalanx of middle class economic hit-men. They’re the ones benefiting by promoting and perpetuating redistributive injustices and ongoing ill-will between the descendents of the colonizers and the descendents of the colonized. They stand to lose if we actually begin to like each other, stand up for each other, and support each other and work together to save Mother Earth and strive for social justice. And justice is what love looks like in public.
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[1] http://www.kochind.com/factsSheets/CanadaFacts.aspx
[2] “Refinery Takes Canadian Oil and Turns It Into Gasoline For Wisconsin”, Richard Mial, LaCrosse Tribune, Monday March 8th 2010; http://lacrossetribune.com/news/article_e76ad10e-2a6d-11df-8363-061cc4c002e0.html
[3] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fraser_Institute
[4] “Kochs Invade Canada”, Chris Genovali, Huffington Post, January 21st 2011; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-genovali/kochs-invade-canada_b_809432.html
[5] “Why Keystone Pipeline Will Weaken the US”, Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee, May 27th 2011; http://thetyee.com/Opinion/2011/05/27/KeystonePipeline/