Haudenosaunee retake Six Nations Council House, may dismiss Reserve officials – The Buffalo Chronicle:
June 10, 2019 - "On May 28th, citizens of the Haudenosaunee [Iroquois] Confederacy barricaded the Six Nations Reserve’s Central Administration Building, a ‘federal works’ office of the Canadian government, located on the Confederacy’s sovereign Grand River Territory at Ohsweken, ON. They’ve enforced the shut down for the past two weeks, effectively expelling the Six Nations Elected Council (SNEC) from their chambers and senior administrators from their offices. The shutdown is being enforced until SNEC acknowledges [its] limited role as an administrator of federal programs — not as the legitimate constitutional government of the Territory....
"The two Councils have been engaged in an adversarial posture since 1924, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police sent officers into the Old Council House to beat the Haudenosaunee Chiefs with billy clubs before installing their own elected Councillors to administer Crown programs on the Reserve under the federal Indian Act.
"The Haudenosaunee Confederacy is the oldest still-existant constitutional democracy in the world, founded in 1142, with its capital situated at Onondaga Lake for more than 600 years — until 1779, when General George Washington ordered Generals John Sullivan and James Clinton to execute a genocidal military campaign against the Haudenosaunee. Hundreds of villages were burned to the ground, and the survivors fled across the Niagara River as war refugees to the Grand River Territory, which they secured as a term of their alliance during the American Revolution, in negotiations with Governor General Fredrick Haldimand.
"The Haudenosaunee Chiefs continue to conduct Council on the first Saturday of every month — as allies, not subjects, of the Queen. There they operate as a government in exile, their diplomatic relations having limited recognition by the American or Canadian government.... .
"In recent years, SNEC and its economic development attache have asserted jurisdictional capacities over the Haldimand Tract — the federal government’s largest off-balance sheet debt and the largest set of indigenous land claims cases in Candian history. That series of Court of Claims filings by Six Nations have been valued by economists at many hundreds of billions of dollars....
"But it was the sovereign Haudenosaunee government — not SNEC — who was a party to that treaty and other treaties with the Crown. SNEC has made material misrepresentations to counterparties, including presenting itself as a government with fictitious jurisdictional capacities.... That has angered many traditionalists in the community, who argue that those misrepresentations constitute criminal fraud....
"SNEC's ... Lands & Resources Department has been funded to the tune of millions of dollars a year ... using Ontario-First Nations ‘limited partnership’ funds, which are discretionary monies that could have been otherwise spent by the community, which still lacks a reliable supply of clean drinking water....
"It’s been widely rumored that the Haudenosaunee are debating whether or not to disband the SNEC Council permanently or to simply dismiss the current Councillors and install new ones in their place (presumably with individuals who understand SNEC’s limited role as a service delivery agency, rather than that of a government). Either would be an unprecedented move that would reassert the Haudenosaunee Chiefs and Clan Mothers as the sovereigns of the Grand River Territory."
Read more: https://buffalochronicle.com/2019/06/10/the-haudenosaunee-retake-six-nations-council-house-may-dismiss-reserve-officials/
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June 10, 2019 - "On May 28th, citizens of the Haudenosaunee [Iroquois] Confederacy barricaded the Six Nations Reserve’s Central Administration Building, a ‘federal works’ office of the Canadian government, located on the Confederacy’s sovereign Grand River Territory at Ohsweken, ON. They’ve enforced the shut down for the past two weeks, effectively expelling the Six Nations Elected Council (SNEC) from their chambers and senior administrators from their offices. The shutdown is being enforced until SNEC acknowledges [its] limited role as an administrator of federal programs — not as the legitimate constitutional government of the Territory....
"The two Councils have been engaged in an adversarial posture since 1924, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police sent officers into the Old Council House to beat the Haudenosaunee Chiefs with billy clubs before installing their own elected Councillors to administer Crown programs on the Reserve under the federal Indian Act.
"The Haudenosaunee Confederacy is the oldest still-existant constitutional democracy in the world, founded in 1142, with its capital situated at Onondaga Lake for more than 600 years — until 1779, when General George Washington ordered Generals John Sullivan and James Clinton to execute a genocidal military campaign against the Haudenosaunee. Hundreds of villages were burned to the ground, and the survivors fled across the Niagara River as war refugees to the Grand River Territory, which they secured as a term of their alliance during the American Revolution, in negotiations with Governor General Fredrick Haldimand.
"The Haudenosaunee Chiefs continue to conduct Council on the first Saturday of every month — as allies, not subjects, of the Queen. There they operate as a government in exile, their diplomatic relations having limited recognition by the American or Canadian government.... .
"In recent years, SNEC and its economic development attache have asserted jurisdictional capacities over the Haldimand Tract — the federal government’s largest off-balance sheet debt and the largest set of indigenous land claims cases in Candian history. That series of Court of Claims filings by Six Nations have been valued by economists at many hundreds of billions of dollars....
"But it was the sovereign Haudenosaunee government — not SNEC — who was a party to that treaty and other treaties with the Crown. SNEC has made material misrepresentations to counterparties, including presenting itself as a government with fictitious jurisdictional capacities.... That has angered many traditionalists in the community, who argue that those misrepresentations constitute criminal fraud....
"SNEC's ... Lands & Resources Department has been funded to the tune of millions of dollars a year ... using Ontario-First Nations ‘limited partnership’ funds, which are discretionary monies that could have been otherwise spent by the community, which still lacks a reliable supply of clean drinking water....
"It’s been widely rumored that the Haudenosaunee are debating whether or not to disband the SNEC Council permanently or to simply dismiss the current Councillors and install new ones in their place (presumably with individuals who understand SNEC’s limited role as a service delivery agency, rather than that of a government). Either would be an unprecedented move that would reassert the Haudenosaunee Chiefs and Clan Mothers as the sovereigns of the Grand River Territory."
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