Talking, Sharing and Healing Circles
It’s been some time now since I’ve posted, but, an upcoming event that is of mega importance is coming up in Vancouver. Occupy Vancouver is moving closer and closer to becoming a sustainable movement due to their committment to indigenous ways like guiding principles and now, Talking Circles. An upcoming workshop on this with Chief Phil Lane Jr. facilitating will place Occupy Vancouver ahead of the pack in this world wide movement. It’s good to see Vancouver take a lead on this as it demonstrates true and sincere actions to help change the world for the better. Please read on, you may want to attend!
Facilitating Talking Circles and Using Principles of Consultation for Building Principle-Centred Communities and Manifesting Unified Action
Please come and learn about facilitating Talking Circles and using Principles of Consultation as tools for principle-centred community building and unified action, facilitated by our Br
The purpose of Talking Circles and Principles of Consultation is to create a safe environment for all people to share their points of view and experiences with others. This principle-centered process helps everyone gain a sense of trust in each other, which is essential for building the cohesive circles that make up powerful community-based movements.
Talking Circles ensures people are respectful of one another’s point of view, the shared time they take up and serve to allow non-interrupted talk and respectful consultation to proceed. A key result is that everyone’s point of view gets heard in a respectful manner. This process also supports communities to transcend abusive or disruptive behaviour. For more information on Talking Circles and Principles of Consultation see Talking Circles and Principles of Consultation.
Saturday, October 20th from 1:00 to 4:30 at the W2 Media Cafe (Basement),111 W. Hastings Street. A donation basket will be circulated.
Hosted by Occupy Vancouver Environmental Justice Group as part of a series of community and movement building trainings.
The Occupy Vancouver Environmental Justice Group believes that to live well together in harmony with Mother Earth we must facilitate system change for an equitable, sustainable and harmonious world, “System Change Not Climate Change”
www.OccupyVancouver.com
Tanker Delivers Hooligan Oil to Coast Salish People
Kitimat – A large tanker carrying hooligan oil set forth from Kitimat to the Burrard Inlet in the Salish Sea. The hooligan run was a bumper crop so it was arranged that the S.S. Minnow would set forth with the oil and in exchange the Squamish and Tseil-Waatuth would ship back an excess of salmon berries that would have gone to waste no matter how much canning, pemican and bird and bear consumption of the delectable treat was made.
The S.S. Minnow is one in a fleet of 12 ships on the Pacific Coast run on a combination of non-GMO biofuel, solar and wind power. The tankers also board passengers who double as crew save for free passage for elders. Quarters are comfortable and virtually everyone who’s boarded the Minnow say the food is delicious.
One ship in the fleet, the Sturgeon, is in dry dock right now having repairs done to it’s hull after rust chewed its way through the aging ship. Welders are busy converting old pipeline metal into usable parts; the pipeline steel was used during the old world to carry petroleum products that were used to fuel internal combustion engines before automobiles and public transit were converted to electric and electro magnetic shuttles. It’s expected the Sturgeon will resume sail in late autumn.
The Minnow is expected to arrive dockside within the week.
For safe keeping
ECLIPSE AND ENLIGHTENMENT
A legal opinion delivered by Bruce Clark, LL.B., M.A., Ph.D.
at Listuguj in the Mi'qmaq country
on September 4, 1996.
Since coming to the Mi’qmaq country at Listuguj in the summer of 1996, I have learned of the traditional story of the ship that brought darkness which will be followed by light and an awakening. The story brings me sadness, but also great hope.
Following the European invasion, justice for the aboriginal people was eclipsed. The darkness in the legend seems, to me at least, to symbolize the injustice.
The darkest hour occurred on August 21, 1996. Then, the Supreme Court of Canada delivered its considered opinion regarding the ultimate nature and character of aboriginal rights, in a set of four cases. In these, the Supreme Court of Canada purported to reverse the previously settled constitutional and international law, simply by ignoring its existence.
Yet only a constitutional amendment can reverse settled constitutional law. And only an international convention can over turn settled international law.
The attempt by the Supreme Court of Canada to reverse existing constitutional and international law is a pretence, one that reneges upon the crown’s solemn and legally binding undertaking of protection toward the aboriginal people, and negates the rule of law.
Three of the four cases started in British Columbia: Van der Peet, Smokehouse and Gladstone. One began in Ontario: Pamajewon. These four completed a thought, the expression of which began in 1991, with the same Supreme Court’s decision in another Ontario case: Bear Island. And the thought expressed is essentially the same as that recorded in a case this summer relative to the Maritimes: Marshall.
The thought is that aboriginal and treaty rights are subject to federal and provincial law, except to the extent that the aboriginal people can satisfy the federal and provincial courts that an exception should be made in individual cases.
So far as aboriginal rights, as contrasted with treaty rights, are concerned those courts have indicated the aboriginal people must now prove that whatever activity it is they want to carry out as an aboriginal right was carried out in the same way in pre-contact times by their ancestors.
The judges add that native oral history is unreliable as the means of proof, because they call it “self-serving.” Since there are no written records from pre-contact times, this leaves proving the exception difficult. Oral history is not only disregarded but treated with contempt; and there is no written history. Therefore, for all practical purposes, proof of aboriginal rights, as an exception to the application of federal and provincial legislation, is virtually impossible.
Like the 1996 Atlantic Canada case of Marshall, the Pacific coast cases of Van der Peet, Smokehouse and Gladstone held that Indians cannot legally sell fish contrary to federal and provincial law. In essence, the judges reasoned that “selling” is a money economy concept; and, in pre-contact times, there was no money economy.
The fact that aboriginal people bartered fish was not regarded, by the non-native judges, as the legal equivalent of selling fish. It could have been so regarded, but it was not so regarded.
The apparent difference between the Marshall case and the three B.C. cases was the presence in the Marshall case of a treaty. But this fact turned out to make no real difference.
The treaty in question in Marshall indicated that the Indians could sell fish to non-native truckhouses. But, as the Nova Scotia court noted, the truckhouse trading system was discontinued two years after the treaty was signed. The court held that the discontinuance of the truckhouse system automatically discontinued the right to sell.
In the Pamajewon case, the exemption from the so-called need to comply with federal and provincial legislation was gambling. The Indians offered evidence that aboriginal people did in fact gamble in pre-contact times, just as in the fishery cases evidence had been offered that in pro-contact times the people bartered fish.
The reaction of the judges in the gambling case was consistent with their reaction in the fishery cases. It was not the fact of gambling that was relevant to them, but rather the way in which it was carried out. And the scale upon which it was carried out.
They decided that modern forms of gambling were not permissible, precisely because, being modern as to style and scale, they were not aboriginal. The judges thus preferred to focus upon cosmetics rather than substance; upon details rather than principles.
The Bear Island case dealt with the related issue of what defines a valid extinguishment by treaty. As background to this case it is important to be aware that the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the Statute of Frauds, 1670 enact that an extinguishment of aboriginal rights is valid if, but only if, the intent of the particular Indian community to cede or sell is arrived at in a “public Meeting or Assembly,” and then recorded in a contract that describes with legal accuracy the land being conveyed. The contract must then be signed by the community’s leaders.
None of these mandatory preconditions were met in the Bear Island situation. No matter, said the Supreme Court of Canada. Instead, the court held that the acceptance by some community members of treaty payments under a treaty negotiated and signed with other native communities, and the unilateral setting apart by Canada of Indian Act “reserve” lands, effected an “adhesion” to the other communities’ treaty.
Therefore, even though the Bear Island aboriginal people never negotiated and approved or signed any treaty, the court held that their aboriginal rights had been extinguished by a treaty.
when these 1990s cases are taken as a set, the net result is that aboriginal and treaty rights are a mirage, at least in so far as the courts of the federal and provincial governments are concerned. By whatever route the native people approach the issue of the legal priority that aboriginal occupation confers, the road is blocked by the courts of the newcomers, on one pretext or another.
This is not surprising. The newcomers’ courts are in a profound conflict of interest.
The root of this conflict runs very deep. Since the European invasion began, there have always been two conflicting attitudes contending for paramountcy in the minds and hearts of the newcomers’ society. From the outset, some newcomers both coveted and feared the untamed wilderness an the first people inhabiting it, and wanted cut the one down and exterminate the other.
In 1493, the year after Columbus made his great or at least so-called discovery, the Roman Catholic Church proclaimed the natural law governing questions of legal rights as between natives and newcomers. Because, at that time, the church was universal in Europe that declaration of natural law determined international law.
The declaration took the form of formal legislation, a papal bull entitled Inter Cetera. It enacted that aboriginal people were not humans with souls but rather animals without souls and, for this reason, without rights either of jurisdiction or property in the lands of the new world.
Controversy raged in European legal circles. Not all Europeans had the same attitude of rapaciousness and racism. There was another faction, that saw the new world and its native people as a symbol of salvation, rather than a challenge and a threat; they saw a Garden of Eden peopled by more noble beings, where others imagined a dark forest inhabited by sub-human demons in peoples’ form.
In 1537, a subsequent papal bull, entitled Sublimus Deus, repealed Inter Cetera on all points of law. Thus, natural law and international law came to recognize and affirm that aboriginal people are human with souls, jurisdiction and property, which must be respected as a matter of law. Sublimus Deus concluded by enacting “should the contrary happen, it shall be null and of no effect.”
The contrary has happened, as clearly focused by the set of cases in the 1990s in Canada. Yet, there has been no repeal of Sublimus Deus. To the contrary, the legal point settled by Sublimus Deus became so entrenched in international law as to provide the blueprint for the constitutional law of both Canada and the United States.
On the eve of the American revolution the Royal Proclamation of 1763 restated Sublimus Deus and the various constitutional instruments reiterating its legal point over the intervening years. Thus, the proclamation confirmed that the aboriginal people could not, legally, be molested or disturbed by newcomer governments, their courts or their citizens. At least, not upon “any Lands whatever” which were not “ceded to or purchased by” the crown.
As to such Indian land, being all land for which the crown could produce no deed of sale from the Indians occupying it, the making of land grants by crown officials was proclaimed to be the crime of “Fraud.”
Thus, the proclamation issued an injunction prohibiting “upon any Pretence whatever” the making of “Grants” or even “Surveys” relative to the yet-unsurrendered Indian lands.
Furthermore, any “Settlements” by “any Persons whatever” were ordered off the yet-unsurrendered Indian lands.
And this is where the rule of law began to break down. For although there was never any repeal of the international and constitutional law constituted and confirmed by Sublimus Deus and the Royal Proclamation, there was in fact a rush into the yet-unsurrendered Indian lands of illegal surveys, grants and settlements.
Among the first illegal settlers trespassing upon the Indian lands were the newcomers’ lawyers, judges and police. They set up shop, made it safe for, and then invited in, the rest of the settlers.
when the Indians complained about this blatant breach of existing law, the trespassing lawyers, judges and police employed their stolen monopoly over the legal process in the Indian territories to protect the illegal settlements.
The reason this process does not represent merely a breach of the law, but an eclipse of the rule of law and therefore of justice, is precisely because the illegal invasion of the Indian lands was spear-headed and is still maintained by lawyers, judges and police. They are supposed to be the guardians of the rule of law. when they turn their coordinated talents to thwarting the law, as they have, the rule of law necessarily goes into a sleep.
This is the darkness, I think, of which the traditional Mi’qmaqs have always known and spoken. The enlightenment and the awaking that their legend forecasts may be at hand.
In accordance with their tradition, the prophesied light will come from the east from their land-the land of people of the Atlantic region, where the European invasion began.
Today’s generation has a map to follow Three hundred years ago, the Mohegan Indians on the Atlantic coast faced the same dilemma as that faced today by the aboriginal people of all of North America. Then, the Mohegans had a legal dispute with Connecticut over the intent of a treaty. The Mohegans believed the treaty was intended to curb settlement by placing the land in trust But under the excuse of the treaty, the government had introduced settlers onto the Mohegan lands.
The Mohegans knew that the rule of law cannot function, ever, other than by means of third party adjudication. Therefore they did not want their dispute with Connecticut to be decided by the General Court of Connecticut. So they petitioned Queen Anne to create an independent and impartial third party court, for the constitutional purpose of adjudicating such fundamental questions between natives and newcomers.
The General Court of Connecticut strenuously opposed the Mohegans’ petition. That court argued that it was already the third party court. It argued that the Mohegans were one party; that the settlers and the government of the colony were the second party; and, that it, the Connecticut court, was separate from the settlers and government of the colony. On this basis, the court argued that the rule of law’s cornerstone principle, third party adjudication, was not upset by having the General Court of Connecticut being the umpire in the legal disputes between natives and newcomers.
For constitutional law purposes Queen Anne in Council rejected the submission of the General Court of Connecticut It would be a false, she held, to pretend that would be a false, she held, to pretend that there was a wall dividing the settlers and their governments from the courts they established.
She held that as human beings the aboriginal people naturally have governments and dispute-resolution mechanisms, that is to say courts, of their own. And that it is false to pretend that the newcomers’ court system, any more than the natives’ court system, can ever be seen to be independent and impartial in a dispute between them.
Having recognized and affirmed that the native nations are juristically sovereign bodies politic, no less so than crown governments, it logically and in justice followed that the courts of the newcomers could not be granted jurisdiction over native versus newcomer legal disputes.
This founding principle of constitutional common law was then legislatively confirmed as the cornerstone of the crown’s written constitution for the judicial system in British North America. It is recorded by Queen Anne’s Order in Council of 9 March 1704, which itself was confirmed by King George Ill’s Order in Council of 15 January 1773. These orders in council are of the same constitutional force and effect as the Royal Proclamation of 1763. They define the constitution in so far as the issue of court jurisdiction is concerned. They are existing constitutional law.
The 1704 constitutional order created a special court, to be made up of judges who were not part of the newcomers’ legal system.
That special court has never been disbanded. The constitutional law establishing it has never been repealed.
The word “existing” in the phrase “existing aboriginal and treaty rights” refers back to no principle more crucial than the due process right of the aboriginal peoples, of access to this third party court.
All that the cases of August 21, 1996 of Van der Peet, Smokehouse, Gladstone and Pamajewon when read together with the Bear Island and Marshall cases prove, is the wisdom of the Mohegan case. Judges are human beings. As such, they are prone to the frailties of the human condition; one of which, lamentably, is to see things from one’s own cultural perspective, and to manipulate affairs in the interest of one’s own race and economy.
The reason that the Mohegan case and the order in council enacting it as a permanent constitutional principle is not only good law, but necessary law, is illustrated by the travesty of justice that has resulted since the principle of third party adjudication has been ignored.
Ever since 1537 the law has been constant and consistent. The aboriginal people were here first Their possession of and jurisdiction over the land is original. Correspondingly, the newcomers’ jurisdiction and possession is derivative. It is derived, if at all, by cession or purchase.
Yet, the newcomers’ courts have come to assume the right to adjudicate, as if that right were original to them. And they have exercised that falsely assumed jurisdiction effectively to strip aboriginal and treaty rights of legal content. At the same time, they have used the usurped jurisdiction to stonewall attempts to bring forward the law that exposes their assumption as illegal.
Even though, by definition, as constitutional rights, aboriginal and treaty rights cannot be affected by federal and provincial legislation, the newcomers’ courts are now pretending that aboriginal and treaty rights can be nullified by federal and provincial legislation. The entire legal point of the word and concept “constitutional” is that the rights which it describes are paramount over and immune from such legislation. The position now occupied by the newcomers courts therefore is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.
Queen Anne in 1704 knew that the colonists and their courts would try to evade the law limiting the newcomers’ courts’ jurisdiction. In 1704 the Attorney General of England identified the anticipated evasion as a form of treason, calling it “an apparent Injury to them and Her Majesty.” For the assumption of court jurisdiction over an ally is an attack upon the ally, and to attack the Queen’s allies is to attack the Queen, which is treason.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 recognized the constitutional crime of “Misprision of Treason,” which has no legal meaning other than as a sanction against colonial officials and judges who prematurely assume jurisdiction. Indeed, Blackstone’s authoritative Commentaries on the Law of England, published in 1825, gives as the classic example for misprision of treason the breach of faith to the Queen’s allies attendant upon disregarding the terms of a royal proclamation.
Furthermore, the newcomers’ taking of Indian land without the Indians’ prior consent is the classic form of “Pretence” and “great Fraud and Abuse” that the proclamation constitutionally intended to preclude.
These words, “Misprision of Treason”, “Pretence” and “Fraud” are the proclamation’s words, not mine. I do not say these words to shock; they are the words of existing law – and to bring the law into courts of law without using these words is impossible, for these words are the body and soul of the law.
The injustice resulting from the constitutionally prohibited premature assumption of jurisdiction by the newcomers courts imposes “serious mental harm” upon a “national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” and therefore constitutes “complicity in genocide” within the meaning articles 2(b) and 3(e) of the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948.
Never will the genocide be apprehended, if the words constituting the crime are not openly addressed, and applied to the facts.
This is why the Mohegan precedent and principle not only is the cornerstone of the constitution, but must be so. In virtue of ignoring that precedent and principle, the judges of the newcomers’ courts are engaging in treason, fraud and complicity in genocide. The corruption of the judges results from the conflict of interest under which they labour. It corrupts the law and the rule of law, not only for aboriginal people, but in all respects.
The corruption sets a national standard of successful duplicity in high places, the influence of which reaches to every school yard. The message is not mistakable: might is right. That message should not be admissible in a society based, as Canada purports to be, upon respect for the “supremacy of God and the rule of law.”
And what does this phrase mean: the rule of law? No one has explained it better than the eminent English jurist E.V. Dicey, in a set of lectures at Harvard Law School published in 1920: once a constitutional principle is first identified and formally declared, such as by the 1704 precedent and principle in the Mohegan case, thereafter it cannot legally be ignored or changed by the judges.
It must be respected, even by the judges, until it has legislatively been altered by the people by a formal constitutional amendment. Not even the monarch himself can make such a change.
In the Anglo-American legal tradition, this sense of the rule of law can be seen as springing from two key events. First, Magna Carta, 1215 established that no person or institution is above the law, not even the king.
Second, the case of Campbell v. Hall, 1774, established that once a constitutional right is conceded, such as by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, it cannot subsequently be retracted, even by the king in council that granted the right. Only a constitutional amendment can take away a constitutional right, once conceded.
E.V. Dicey stressed that judges do not have the power in effect to amend the constitution, by changing their minds about the nature and character of a constitutional right. Judges are under the law, not above the law. And it is in this essential sense that the law “rules.” It “rules” absolutely, precisely because there is no person or institution above it, not even the judges.
Or, more accurately, especially not the judges, whose ultimate function in society is to serve as guardians of the integrity of the rule of law. If the judges could change constitutional law at whim, as the Bear Island to Van der Peet line of 1990s cases pretends, the rule of law would be negated by the rule of men.
Following the Royal Proclamation of 1763 there was a long series of cases that recognized and affirmed the nature and character of aboriginal rights. The series is too long to permit going into each one in the time allotted for the making of this address. I have listed the main events in the series in a typed schedule, annexed to the printed copy of this address.What the long series of cases confirms is that all the British crown ever claimed in virtue of its assertion of crown sovereignty was the exclusive right to buy jurisdiction and possession from the aboriginal people. And then only if the aboriginal people are, as the Royal Proclamation confirmed, “inclined to dispose” of the land. Until that bilateral and consensual purchase is completed, the aboriginal people are constitutionally guaranteed the integrity and inviolability of their previously enjoyed jurisdiction and possession.
Thus, for example, individual court cases over the years recognized and affirmed that the natives were free to mine gold or cut timber and to trade in the products. They were acknowledged to be at liberty to do whatever they wanted, because until they relinquished their jurisdiction and possession they were in law the absolute master in their own house.
The limited right of the crown to buy that jurisdiction and possession did not give the crown any right to interfere with the aboriginal people before the crown purchase was made.
As one case made apparent, the crown did not even claim a right of way across the natives’ land, except by purchase.
In 1875 the government of Canada legislatively acknowledged that it was legally obliged under the constitution to disallow as unconstitutional provincial legislation of British Columbia and the other provinces that did pretend to affect unsurrendered native land. But for political reasons, because the disallowing would have been very unpopular in British Columbia and elsewhere, the government of Canada instead of doing its duty, in the following years enacted Indian Act provisions designed to destroy the traditional Indian governments.
Yet the Indian Act cannot legally even be applied to yet-unsurrendered Indian land. In its own terms, it only applies to reserves set apart when the crown purchase of Indian land is made. The Indian Act only comes into operation as a result of the treaty. And it is domestic legislation. As such, it could not legally interfere with existing aboriginal rights even it pretended to.
Aboriginal rights exist before the treaty and are constitutionally protected. Domestic legislation, like the Indian Act, by definition, cannot legally derogate from constitutional rights. To pretend otherwise is to overturn the rule of law paramountcy of constitutional law over mere domestic law.
Instead of upholding the constitutional law, the federal and provincial governments knowingly embarked together upon a coordinated criminal programme of forced assimilation of the Indians, and the theft of their lands.
The unconstitutional onslaught on the natives was total. Their traditional cultural ways were made criminal offences under domestic legislation, and the elders were put hi jail for practicing them. Generations of children were kidnapped from their parents and incarcerated in residential `schools, where their languages literally were beaten out them. Without the children, the aboriginal cyclic economy whereby families returned to the bush to winter was crushed. Death rates soared. Indeed, it was generally assumed that soon there would be no Indians, which was the point of the unconstitutional onslaught.
Before this process began in earnest in Canada, with the Indian Act of 1876, the model for it was built first in the United States. In 1830 the US Congress enacted the Indian Removal Act. It allowed the President and the Executive Branch of the US government to move the Cherokee nation of Indians out of Georgia, to lands west of the Mississippi River. But only upon the condition of those Indians consent.
In 1831 the Cherokee nation took the state of Georgia directly to the US Supreme Court, under the auspices of a clause in the US Constitution which says that disputes between states and “foreign” nations can go directly to that court, thus leapfrogging over the lower courts that sit in the states. In short, the Cherokees attempted to persuade the US Supreme Court to take over the function of the independent and impartial third Party court constitutionally created by Queen Anne in 1704.
The US Supreme Court declined to do that, on the ground that the native nation was not “foreign.” This case was called Cherokee Nation v. Georgia.
The following year, 1832, in another case involving the Cherokees’ region, Worcester v. Georgia, the US Supreme Court confirmed the sovereignty of the native nations. Putting the two cases together, the conclusion effectively confirms the British Order in Council of 9 March 1704 in the matter Mohegan Indians v. Connecticut The native nations are juristically sovereign, but the US Supreme Court cannot serve as the third party court.
This US Supreme Court did not say that the American courts lower than itself do have the third party jurisdiction. All the US Supreme Court said was that it, itself, did not have that jurisdiction.
In the 1830s there was no place else for the Cherokees to turn. At that time there was no International Court of Justice, no United Nations Human Rights Committee, no European Court of Human Rights. The route to the crown court constituted by Queen Anne seemed to be blocked by the American Revolution and the Peace of Paris, 1783. The route to the Vatican seemed to be blocked by the fact that the United States were overwhelmingly Protestant.
The Cherokees found that for practical purposes they were recognized for legal purposes as a sovereign nation, with a corresponding right to third party adjudication, but that there was no third party court in existence with jurisdiction to hear their case.
It was at that juncture in history that President Jackson ordered the forced removal of the Cherokee nation. In spite of the fact that the consent of the majority of the Cherokees was never obtained as required by the Indian Removal Act of 1830, by 1838 the forced removal on the infamous “Trail of Tears” was a fact. One third of the nation died on route; more deaths followed in the new homeland: the reserve lands where those Indians were concentrated for more gradual extermination.
The genocide in North America had begun. Canada learned quickly. The lesson taught by the Cherokee cases of 1831 and 1832 and the “Trail of Tears” was that, regardless of the Indians’ rights, those rights could be ignored with impunity in practice, because there was no third party court around to which the Indians could turn for assistance in the enforcement of their rights.
The General Court of Connecticut, and all the newcomer courts like it, lost the jurisdictional contest on the law, but effectively got the jurisdiction back because there was no third party to uphold that law.
The resulting assumption of jurisdiction by the newcomers’ courts in both the United States and Canada, that we have come to regard as normal, has all along been illegal. But the illegal practice cannot possibly amend the law. The fact of its existence is the evidence of the breach of the law. It is the evidence that proves the treason, the fraud, and the means of the genocide.
The Indians were not, until now, able in general to challenge the illegal assumption of jurisdiction. To have done so would have been to as to bring down upon their heads the wrath of the criminals who were judging them in fact, regardless of right. And when they did in exceptional cases question the assumption of jurisdiction, they were ignored, or beaten to set an example to other Indians.
The obscene show trials of the Gustafsen Lake natives and their supporters presently in progress in British Columbia, are a case in point There, in the summer and fall of 1995, some natives drew a line on the ground and threatened not to be taken out of its perimeter alive, unless and until the newcomers’ governments agreed to submit the question of jurisdiction and possession to third party adjudication, as required by law.
Rather than permit the law to come out, the newcomers’ governments, the lawyers, the judges, the police, the Canadian army and the Governor General conspired to frustrate the law. The Indian resistance at Gustafsen Lake was overcome, and the natives now stand trial before a judge and jury that will not address the law indicting that same judge and jury for their own crimes-the crimes of trespass, and usurpation of judicial power.
All the lawyers, judges and police are members of the club that is still carrying out the genocidal programme, and none of them breaks rank. Historically, even the raising of money for land claims purposes was made a criminal offence, as was talking with Indians about their rights in a way that might encourage civil disobedience to the genocidal programme. Even today, for any lawyer to break rank, by remarking the legal establishment’s ongoing crimes, is to invite quick and certain professional suicide, if not disbarment.
This activity, this virtual reign of terror by newcomers over natives, all of which was and is outside the law, and all of which is still fostered by the complicity of the legal establishment whose sacred trust it is to uphold the rule of law, is the norm.
Billions of dollars of real estate illegally has been granted upon the basis of it, all in spite of the Royal Proclamation’s clear and plain injunction against any grants “upon any Pretence whatever.” Millions of settlers have been introduced onto the unconstitutionally granted lands, all in spite of the Royal Proclamation’s clear and plain injunction against any “Settlements” by “any Persons whatever.”
This grotesque negation of the rule of law has become so accepted that when, in 1973, one half of the Supreme Court of Canada bench decided that there might be aboriginal rights in British Columbia, it hit like a bomb shell. The Calder case held that aboriginal rights presumptively do exist, at a time when the newcomers’ society had convinced itself there was no such thing as aboriginal rights that could affect their comfort.
To admit the fact of aboriginal rights, as was done in 1973, implicitly raised certain collateral questions. what about the billions of dollars of real estate and the millions of settlers? what about the hundreds of thousands of Indian deaths arguably attributable to the injustice of ignoring the aboriginal rights?
What about fact that the genocide would not have occurred but for the complicity of the legal establishment in the great land theft?
After 1973, it could no longer easily be pretended that aboriginal rights were nonentities. Nor that the acknowledged aboriginal rights had, as if by magic, been superseded by mere federal and provincial law even though the international and constitutional law recognizing and affirming those rights had never been repealed.
That pretence would be the equivalent of being seen to return to the position set out in 1493 by Inter Cetera. It is not feasible, not realistic, at the close of the twentieth century, to be seen to deny the humanity of the aboriginal people, as the pretext for denying their rights of jurisdiction and possession. But how, otherwise, to deal with the fact that if those rights are admitted the billions of dollars of real estate and the millions of settlers will be seen as illegal? How otherwise to cover up the exposed guilt of the legal profession in the genocide?
These are the hard practical questions. The cases of the 1990s, from Bear Island to Van der Peet and Pamajewon, are the delayed reaction to them. What these 1990s cases attempt to do is put the cat back into the bag. Since it is too late to deny aboriginal rights, the answer adopted by these cases is to trivialize aboriginal rights, to such an extent as virtually to deny them absolutely.
This answer proceeds by two carefully placed steps. Step one is to make aboriginal rights virtually impossible to prove. Deny their existence globally, so as to put the burden of proof on particular bands. Say that aboriginal rights must be proven to have been enjoyed in the same way in pre-contact times. And then say that oral history is unreliable and there are no written records.
The problem with step one, from a rule of law perspective, is that the previously established constitutional and international law does not care to put the burden of proof upon individual bands in this fashion. That approach has already been rejected, as a “Fraud” and a “Pretence,” by the Royal Proclamation of 1763.
The proclamation recognizes and affirms aboriginal rights as being vested “in them or any of them.” The law does not care which of them. They bear no burden of proof. All land is Indian land, originally; and remains so until the crown can prove the land has been “ceded to or purchased by Us.” There is only that one burden of proof, constitutionally, and it is on the newcomers, not on the natives.
Step one is a transparently unconstitutional attempt to shift the burden of proof from the crown to the Indians. If the rule of law has any meaning or significance whatsoever, that attempt judicially to rewrite the constitution must fail.
Step two consists in trivializing aboriginal rights to the point of non-existence for all practical purposes. This, the 1990s set of cases attempt to achieve by embracing the unconstitutional opening premise: that federal and provincial law presumptively applies to land not yet “ceded to or purchased by Us.”
On the basis of that fraudulent opening premise, the newcomers’ courts persuade themselves that aboriginal rights are limited to activities that do not unduly upset the social programme advanced by federal and provincial legislation.
This does not leave much room for aboriginal rights. According to the lights of this skewed perspective, for example, the Indians can catch and eat a few fish, but not make a living trading their catch, at least not without federal and provincial consent.
But the constitutional and international law has long since already determined that opening premise to be not only false, but treasonably, fraudulently and genocidally so. The constitutional and international law is deeply entrenched that holds that the derivative federal and provincial law does not come into operation until after the aboriginal jurisdiction has been relinquished.
The absurd idea of federal and provincial law qualifying aboriginal rights is by definition of constitutional and international law an absolute impossibility. Federal and provincial law quite simply does not exist relative to a region where aboriginal rights are unsurrendered. Not being in existence, how can federal and provincial law qualify, indeed trivialize aboriginal rights as the Supreme Court of Canada pretends? The only way in which the Supreme Court of Canada can maintain the pretence that federal and provincial law can qualify and effectively trivialize aboriginal rights is by overturning the rule of law itself. The Supreme Court must, and has, assumed a jurisdiction that is beyond its power, in circumstances where the assumption constitutes treason, fraud and complicity in genocide. It has then exercised the criminally usurped jurisdiction to shift the burden of proof from the crown to the aboriginal people, and it has nullified the constitutionally protected character of the aboriginal rights by treating them as subject to federal and provincial law.
The privy Council of England in the 1897 case of Attorney General of Canada v. Attorney General of Ontario held that the crown’s title in yet unceded land is “subject to” the Indian “Interest” within the meaning of those phrases in section 109 of the Constitution Act, 1861 In the 1990s the Supreme Court of Canada has effectively pretended to up-end that settled constitutional cornerstone. The Supreme Court of Canada now says that the Indians hold their aboriginal rights “subject to” the federal and provincial interest. This is the equivalent of a radical constitutional amendment of revolutionary consequence.
Because Magna Carta and Campbell v. Hall are the cornerstones of the rule of law, what the Supreme Court of Canada has pretended to do is blatantly impossible. Or, more accurately, it is impossible if Canada is a rule of law society. And the Constitution Act 1982 is expressly based upon the premise that Canada is founded upon the “rule of law.” So why has the Supreme Court of Canada pretended to do it? Because it is attempting to evade accountability for the true answers to the hard questions-the questions the answers to which indict the judges of the newcomers’ courts for treason, fraud and complicity in genocide. This is why the court is willing to destroy the integrity of the rule of law. The oldest reason of all: self-interest what can the aboriginal people do to defend themselves against the omnipresent and seemingly omniscient injustice that is killing them? How can the appalling and rising mortality rates from the indicators of enforced social break down the litany of teenage suicides and internecine violence, the escapism though alcohol and drug addiction — how can the flow of the blood of the innocents be stopped? The first great challenge will be for the aboriginal people to admit to themselves that the people they have been trusting are the very people leading them to the slaughter. The lawyers who have been and who still are acting for the aboriginal people have been, and still are, labouring under a massive conflict of interest. They themselves are trespassers. And they make their livings doing anything but asserting that they themselves along with the other lawyers, the judges and the police are assuming a jurisdiction which the law denies them.
It is not difficult to see how even the most empathetic of lawyers allow themselves to aid and abet the eclipse of justice. In law schools lawyers are taught that the whole field of constitutional jurisdiction is divided between the federal and provincial levels of government. The professors do not realize that the division relates only to the field of newcomers’ jurisdiction, and that the prior jurisdiction of the aboriginal people is outside the parameters of that frame of reference. Possession and jurisdiction relative to the Indiana’ yet-unsurrendered lands is simply not affected by the constitutional apportionment of possession and jurisdiction relative to land that has been purchased from the Indians.
In the United States’ constitution this is implicit. In the Canadian constitution, because of section 109 and the case of Attorney General of Canada v. Attorney General of Ontario, this is explicit.
Those few constitutional law professors who do carefully examine and therefore realize the error of the jurisdictional assumption, nevertheless, so far at least, have fallen into the opportunism of thinking that, regardless of the law the judges will do whatever they want to do, and then find legal-sounding pretexts to justify it Many of these professors then help the judges in this negation of the rule of law, such as by arguing that the “reasonableness test” in part 1 of the Constitution Act, 1982 applies to aboriginal and treaty rights, which are in part 2 of that statute.
The net result is that the professors persuade the lawyers and the judges that aboriginal and treaty rights can be disregarded, if to allow them in full would seem “unreasonable.” On the ostensible basis of this legally inapplicable reasonableness test, the newcomers’ judges hold that conservation requires the imposition of federal and provincial limitations on the uses of the lands and waters by the aboriginal people.
But if the existing international and constitutional law were upheld, there would be no newcomers pulling pressure upon natural resources. There would, for example, be no pressure on the fishery, because the newcomers would not be fishing.
There would be no “need” to regulate the native people, who from time immemorial lived, and still would, if permitted, live in harmony with the natural resources.
The newcomers’ judges do not think it “reasonable” to enforce the law that says the newcomers are trespassing. Rather than the curtail the criminals among whom the most prominent are the lawyers, the judges and the police, the newcomers’ judges feel that imposing restrictions upon the victims is more reasonable.” The application of the reasonableness test to part 2 of the Canadian constitution, when it belongs only to part 1, is a fraud.
Recall that I said that it was on the “ostensible” basis of the misapplied constitutional reasonableness test, that the newcomers judges are doing what they are doing. If that were all they were doing, it could be excused on the basis of honest mistake. One might argue that the judges had been misled by the professors and the lawyers advising them.
Especially by the lawyers acting for the Indians, whose primary task it should have been to inform the judges that the concept of aboriginal rights precludes and renders criminal the newcomers’ judicial assumption of jurisdiction.
But to suggest that the professors and lawyers are misleading innocent judges would be a false and naive argument. On July 2, 1995 the Supreme Court of Canada refused leave to appeal each case in a set of eleven applications for leave to appeal, that I as legal counsel had brought before that court. The cases arose from Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. In each case the issue raised was the absence of newcomer court jurisdiction over aboriginal rights, and the unconstitutional criminality of the assumption of that jurisdiction.
The court denied leave to appeal to all, on the ludicrous ground the issue raised was not important.
Yet before getting to the that juncture, the judges had to read the precedents and the legislation that I had put before them in the applications.The judges also had to read the responses of the Attorneys General for Canada and her provinces. Having done so, the judges knew that there was no answer to the precedents and the legislation refuting the assumption of jurisdiction, and indicting its criminality. All the Attorneys General had done, was to put forward the Sparrow case, in which an earlier Supreme Court of Canada had made a general comment that the crown was sovereign, as if Sparrow had repealed all the precedents and legislation without even addressing them. And as if the crown had not exercised its claim of sovereignty constitutionally to preclude the assumption, prior to treaty, by crown governments and courts of jurisdiction and possession.
The point is, as at July 2, 1995 the Supreme Court of Canada was fully informed of the law. It chose to bury the exposition of that law, by the pretence that the issue was not of importance.
Then, on September 12, 1995 I again put the same law before the Supreme Court of Canada, this time in the context of making an application to state the same constitutional question of court jurisdiction in the Delgamuukw case, from British Columbia. In that case leave to appeal had already been granted.
Remarkably, the lawyers for the Indians in the Delgamuukw case, except for my client, joined with the lawyers for the Attorneys General, and opposed the challenge to the newcomers’ courts’ assumption of jurisdiction. The court then refused to state the constitutional question, this time on the ground the Indians had not raised the challenge before in the case, and the majority of the Indians apparently did not want to do so now.
Thus, when the issue had been raised in the lower courts the Supreme Court of Canada refused on July 2, 1995 to address the issue on the ground it was not important. Then, on September 12, 1995 the same court acknowledged the great importance of the same issue, but refused to address it because the lower courts in that case had not done so.
The perfect Catch-22. The name for Catch-22s in the legal context is chicanery, and chicanery by judges defeats the rule of law.
In arriving at the decision not to address the issue in the context of the Delgamuukw case, the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada again had to read the precedents and the legislation that I put before them. Again, they knew full well from the Attorneys General response, that there was no legal rebuttal to the position set out in the precedents and the legislation.
Again, rather than own up to the law, the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada refused to state the constitutional question, the stating of which would have required them to address the law.
But they know! They cannot help but know! The law that I put before them is far too clear and plain not to know
Instead of addressing the law publicly, the court not only refused but, having refused, had the Registrar of the Court report me to the Law of Society of Upper Canada, for no offence other than that of having raised the law in the written materials filed in support of the applications. Rather than address the law in public, the court preferred privately to try to have the lawyer disbarred for raising it.
That attempt apparently was discontinued when the Law Society rejected the previous attempts by other judges to achieve the same reprehensible end, of silencing the bearer of unwelcome tidings, rather than face them honestly.
The idea that a lawyer can be in contempt of court for raising a point of law that he can substantiate, is itself an outrageous contempt of the rule of law. How else can the truth come out, if it cannot be spoken in courts of law? Justice, after all, is supposed to be the application of truth to affairs.
How can any lawyer, or any other citizen for that matter, keep silent, when they know that what is going on in the courts aids and abets the genocide of the aboriginal people? To maintain silence about the genocide, once you know that it exists and how it is perpetrated by the judges, is itself complicity in genocide.
This is the reason the Law Society refused to go along with judges’ obscene attempt to cover up their crimes by silencing the raising of the law exposing them.
No, the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada did not make an innocent or honest mistake on August 21, 1996, when they handed down their decision in the Van der Peet, Smokehouse, Gladstone and Pamajewon cases. At that time, they knew they did not have jurisdiction in aboriginal rights matters. They knew that the newcomers courts were in the habit of committing treason, fraud and complicity in genocide by assuming jurisdiction. They attempted to perfect those crimes by effectively reading aboriginal rights out of the law.
The attempt is impossible. Only a constitutional amendment can legally achieve what the judges illegally have attempted. By making the attempt, they have abused their power profoundly. They have turned the rule of law into a cruel and vicious hoax.
At the same time as the Supreme Court of Canada was handing down its decisions in the Van der Peet, Smokehouse, Gladstone and Pamajewon cases, the Toronto Globe & Mail prophetically ran a set of anagrams. One these rearranged the letters in the phrase “Supreme Court of Canada,” to read “Accursed paramount foe.” As head of the beast that is committing genocide against the aboriginal people, in willful blindness to existing international and constitutional law, the anagram represents a fair and just assessment.
For as matters stand the Supreme Court of Canada is not only an enemy of the aboriginal people, but of all people who believe in the rule of law and the cause of justice.
Still the question remains, how can the aboriginal people defend themselves, when all these institutions for upholding the rule of law-academic, professional and judicial-seem to conspire to defeat the law and the integrity of the rule of law?
The Passamaquoddy Declaration of 27 August 1996, perhaps, lights the way. The Passamaquoddy nation has gone back to the map of the way provided by the Mohegan precedent and principle. That nation has resolved to take its dispute with the State of Maine and the United States to its own court system, which means reviving the court system of the Wabanaki Confederacy. For purposes of international relations and third party adjudication, the Passamaquoddy tradition and customary law regards the confederacy as the appropriate forum.
The Passamaquoddy nation has made two extraordinarily important legal points. First, there are native courts. They do exist, for all that have been suppressed. The idea that if there are no newcomer courts there would necessarily be a vacuum is an invalid assumption.
Second, the enforcement of the orders made by the native courts will benefit from if not require the cooperation under the rule of law of the courts of adjoining jurisdictions, whose citizens without that cooperation might otherwise destroy the rule of law by force.
In this sense, the approach taken by the Passamaquoddys is en route to putting the rule of law itself to the test. And the world’s community of nations increasingly depends for its economic well-being and security upon the universal integrity of the rule of law.
Fifty years ago perhaps, the newcomers’ governments and courts in North America would have been willing to crush the native people who had the courage to challenge their jurisdiction. Perhaps today, and even more so in the tomorrows, the willingness to be seen crushing the resistance will be less present The Gustafsen Lake show trial, it can be hoped, is a last gasp of a corrupt regime, which will by its example demonstrate what ought never again be done by the newcomers’ legal establishment.
In order to turn to the native courts, the Passamaquoddys have resolved by their Declaration of 27 August 1996 to repudiate the covenant chain of Atlantic coast treaties, from the Boston Treaty of 1725 to the Maine Settlement Treaty of 1980.
This is of interest to the Mi’qmaq and Maliseet nations in what is now called New Brunswick and Quebec. The Mi’qmaqs and Maliseets are parties to the covenant chain up to but not including the Maine Settlement Treaty of 1980. And they are constituents of the Wabanaki confederacy.
The Passamaquoddys have ruled in their own court at the first level, subject at this stage to confirmation at the confederacy level, that the entire covenant chain was a fraud upon them. They repudiate it as such.
The basis for the repudiation begins with the 1704 ruling by Queen Anne that the crown governments in British North America were obliged in law directly to protect the aboriginal peoples’ possession and jurisdiction; and that the local crown courts have no jurisdiction capable of being used indirectly to molest or disturb that possession and jurisdiction.
In 1725 the local governor promised to uphold that legal obligation, provided the aboriginal people contractually were to concede to the local crown courts the jurisdiction to act. The natives signed. Hardly was the ink dry, than the newcomer judges allowed the settlers onto the Indians’ yet-unsurrendered lands, and then used the contracted-for jurisdiction to persecute the Indians who interfered with the settlers.
Similar treaties were signed in 1752, 1761-2 and 1779, and all ended the same way. As soon as court jurisdiction contractually was allowed by the natives to the newcomers, it was profoundly abused.
The Passamaquoddys have observed that not only in terms of aboriginal peoples’ law, but equally in terms of the newcomers’ own law, this is illegal. The crown governor promised to uphold existing law, which he was constitutionally bound to do anyway, and therefore the contracts are void for failure of consideration.
Furthermore, the treaty contracts were signed under duress:-the governor threatened that if the Indians did not sign, their lands would be overrun by uncontrolled settlement.
And, the contracts fundamentally were breached:-the promised protection at the root of the them never materialized.
when the facts and law go before an independent and impartial third party court, the Passamaquoddys will win, if the rule of law exists.
This legal position will be expressed in defense of the aboriginal peoples’ original jurisdiction and possession in the North American courts of the newcomers, and in the international courts of the world.
The question now is, who will stand with the Passamaquoddys. Indications are that the Mi’qmaqs at Listuguj are with them.
The injustice thrives in the dark. The newcomers’ governments and courts have divided the aboriginal people. They have scapegoated the truth-tellers and rewarded silence. Band government systems have been set against traditional government systems. Indeed, bands have been financed to supplant traditional governments. And in the past, bands governments that have reverted to the traditional model have been punished economically. Why?
By definition, all the band governments have ever had are the restricted powers listed in the Indian Act. These do not include either the power of international relations or the court function. Yet these two powers are the crucial ones for asserting the aboriginal and treaty rights in a way that breaks the strangle hold of the interpretive monopoly assumed by the newcomers’ courts. The traditional governments had, and still have, those greater powers, though suppressed. The band governments have the skills and technology to work with and through the traditional governments. Together, in mutual solidarity, the truth can be told for the benefit of the aboriginal people which both of those native governments exist to serve.
In contrast with the situation facing the Cherokees in the 1830s, when it seemed that there were no courts to which to turn as candidates for carrying out the crucial function of third party adjudication, today there are courts that do exist for this purpose. Not only has the court constituted by Queen Anne in 1704 never been repealed, but a range of additional alternatives exists, all of which can be resorted to.
For example, one of the several international alternatives yet to be tried includes the Vatican, the author of the papal bull Sublimus Deus, 1537, which so elegantly still stands as a bulwark against the illegal genocide in progress.
In recent years the lawyers and judges and police who as an institution have masterminded the genocide have taken, sanctimoniously and hypocritically, to prosecuting the religious community for abuses of jurisdiction over the native people. Yet the legal establishment which made those abuses possible and probable shirks accountability for its own crucial role.
The major churches that contributed to the more lamentable and illegal aspects of the European invasion have had the grace and courage and honesty to acknowledge their mistakes, publicly, and so to begin the process of atonement and healing.
The legal establishment sits on the sidelines, and judges the priests. Yet it is the infinitely more evil eminence noire, without whose complicity the wound that the religious community is working honestly to heal, would not exist. The legal establishment sits smugly and complacently, and seemingly securely, immune from prosecution for its crimes, because it has hijacked the rule of law.
This does not mean that the aboriginal people should give up on the capacity of the newcomers’ judges to do what is right, in the end. When the aboriginal people are forced into the newcomers’ courts, as will continue to happen for a time, until the jurisdiction issue can be straightened out, they can and should inform the newcomers’ judges that they are making a terrible mistake.
Out of respect for those judges the very least the aboriginal people can and should do is inform them of the law, in the ignorance of which they will commit treason, fraud and complicity in genocide. The aboriginal people are entitled to assume that not all the newcomers’ judges necessarily want to commit those crimes under the mask, as some obviously do want, of willful blindness to the law.
Eventually, whether it be in the newcomers courts in North America or in the international courts of the world, or both, the whole truth will not only be told, but listened to, and respected, and implemented.
It is in the telling of that truth that enlightenment will begin. And this is where the Mi’qmaq prophecy with which I began this talk may come into play.
The Mi’qmaqs and the other aboriginal people of the Atlantic Maritimes, including the Passamaquoddys, in ancient times traditionally grouped themselves as the Wabanaki confederacy. The very word Wabanaki signifies the land of the dawn, which can also mean the place of light, or of enlightenment. The prophecy of the Mi’qmaq nation, of the ship bringing darkness followed by an enlightening and an awaking may refer to the destiny of the aboriginal people of Wabanaki confederacy.
History may be poised to unfold from here. Humankind and all its relations dearly need the end of the eclipse of justice in the new world.
Schedule
Precedents and legislation recognizing and affirming that aboriginal rights are unlimited rights of absolute jurisdiction and possession subject only to the one restriction that if such rights are going to be relinquished it can be in favour of none other than the crown in Canada or in the United States to crown's successor the United States. The preclusion of crown jurisdiction pending purchase precludes crown court jurisdiction no less than other forms of jurisdiction: - see, especially, Mohegan Indians v. Connecticut (PC, 1704); R. v. Nadean and Le Compte (Athabaska Territory, 1788); R. v. Lamothe (Saskatchewan Territory, 1802); R. v Cadien (Quebec, 1838); Connelly v. Woolrich (Quebec, 1867 & 1869); St Catherine's Milling & Lumber Co. v. R. (SCC, 1887, per Gwynne J. re Restigouche grants).
Sublimus Deus, 1537.
Statute of Frauds, 1670.
An Act for Preventing Frauds, and Regulating Abuses in the Plantation Trade, 7 & 8 Wm. III, c. 22 (1696), s. 12.
Order in Council of 9 March 1704. In re Mohegan Indians v. Connecticut.
Order in Council of 31 July 1740. In re Mohegan Indians v. Connecticut.
Capitulation of New France, at Montreal, 1760, article 40.
Royal Proclamation of 1763, part 2 paragraphs 1 and 2 and part 4 paragraphs 1-6.
An Act for the Better Securing the Dependency of His Majesty’s Dominions in “America” upon the Crown, and Parliament of “Great Britain”, 6 Geo. III, c. 12 (1766), ss. and 2; Royal Regulation (Spain), 1772, a. 6.
Order in Council of 15 January 1773. In re Mohegan Indians v. Connecticut; Quebec Act 1774,ss.3 and 4.
Campbell v. Hall (1774), 98 ER 848, 895-9 (PC).
R.V. Nadeau and Le Compte (Athabaska Territory, 1788). See, Foster, “Forgotten Arguments: Aboriginal Title and Sovereignty in Canada Jurisdiction Act Cases.” 1992 Manitoba Law Journal 343-89.
Marshall v. Clark, 1 Kent 77, 80-1 (CA, 1791).
Hughes v. Dougherty, 1 Yeat’s 497, 498 (SC Penn., 1791).
Plumstead v. Rudebagh, 1 Yeat’s 502, 504 (SC penn., 1791).
Weiser v. Moody, 2 Yeat’s 127, 127-8. (SC Penn., 1796).
Sherer v. McFarland, 2 Yeat’s 224, 225 (SC Penn., 1797).
R. V. Lamothe (Saskatchewan Territory, 1802). See Foster, “Forgotten Arguments.” An Act for Extending the Jurisdiction of the Courts of Justice in the Provinces of Lower and Upper Canada to the Trial and Punishment of Persons Guilty of Crimes and Offences within Certain Parts of North America, 43 Geo. III, c. 138 (1803), a. 1.
Strother v. Cathey, 1 Morgan’s 162, 168 (SC North Carolina, 1807).
Fletcher v. Peck, 6 Cranch’s 87, 121 (USSC, 1810).
New Jersey v. Wilson, 7 Cranch’s 164, 166 (USSC, 1812).
Thompson v. Johnson, 6 Binney’s 68, 68 (SC Penn., 1813).
Meigs v. McLungs Lessee, 9 Cranch’s 11, 17 (USSC, 1815).
An Act for Regulating the Fur Trade, and Establishing a Criminal and Civil Jurisdiction within Certain Parts of North America, 1 & 2 Geo. IV, c. 66 (1821), ss.4 and 5.
Johnson v. Mcintosh, 8 Wheaton’s 543, 574, 592, 597 (USSC, 1823).
Danforth v. Wear, 9 Wheaton’s 673, 675 (USSC, 1824).
Cornet v. Winton, 2 Yearger’s 129, 130 (CA Tenn., 1826).
Lee v. Glover, 8 NYR 189, 189 (SC, 1828).
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 5 Peter’s 1, 17, 48, 49, 55, 58, 71 (ussc, 1831).
United States v. Arredondo, 31 us 691, 712-13 (1832).
Worcester v. Georgia, 6 Peter’s 515, 541, 544, 546, 549, 560, 581 (ussc, 1832).
Cameron v. Kyte (1835), 12 PR 678, 682 (PC).
Mitchel v. United States, 9 Peter’s 711 (USSC, 1835).
Harris v. Doe, 4 Blackf. 412, 414 (SC Indiana, 1837).
R. v. Cadien (Quebec, 1838); Instructions to jury per Chief Justice James Reid. An Indian in the unceded Indian territory is one “over whom no jurisdiction could be maintained” by the non-native court system of Quebec. See, Foster, “Forgotten Arguments.”
Clark v. Smith, 38 us 19, 201 (1839). Georgia v. Canatoo, 8 Washington National Intelligencer 24 (SC Georgia, 1843).
Stockton v. Williams, 1 Michigan Reports 546, 560 (SC, 1845).
Bown v. West (1846), 1 P & A 117, 118 (CA Upper Canada).
Ogden v. Lee, 6 Hill’s 546, 548 (SC New York, 1846).
Montgomery v. Ives, 13 Smedes & M. 161, 171, 174-5, 177, 179 (Mississippi HC of E & A, 1849).
Stuart v. Bowman (1851), 2 LoR 369, 394.
Rowland v. Ladiga’s Heirs, 21 Ala. Reports 9, 28 (Sc, 1852).
Sheldon v. Ranisay (1852), 9 UCQIs 105, 127, 133.
R. v. McCornick (1859), 18 UoQB 131, 133.
Constitution Act, 1867, ss. 56, 90, 91(24), 92(13)(14), 109, 129, 146.
Connelly v. Woolrich (186, 11 L0J 197, 205-7, (1869) RLos 253, 356-7 (CA).
Minter v. Shirley, 3 Miss. 376, 384 (SC, 1871).
Holden v. Joy, 84 us 211, 244 (1872). Wood v. Missouri, K. & T. Ry. Co., 2 Kansas Reports 248, 264 (so, 1873).
Leavenworth [etc.] Railroad Company v. United States, 2 Otto’s 733 (usso, 1875); Order in Council (Canada) of 23 January 1875. In the matter of the power of disallowance; United States v. 43 Gallons of Whisky, 93 US 188, 196 (1876); Beecher v. Wetherby, 95 US 55, 67-8 (1877).
Church v. Fenton (1878), 28 UUCP 384, 388, 399, (1879) 4 OAR 159, 5 ScR 239.
Butz v. Northern Pacific Railroad, 119 US 55, 67-8 (1886).
St. Catherine’s Milling & Lumber Co. V. R. (1886),13 OAR 148, 169.
St. Catherine’s Milling & Lumber Co. V. R. (1887), 13 SCR 577, 608-10, 628, 631-2, 647 (see, especially, Owynne J. re Restigouche grants).
St Catherine’s Milling & Lumber Co. v. R. (1888), 14 AS 46, 51,53,60 (PC).
AG Ont. v. Francis (1889), PAD, Irving Papers, u43, P 42, Item 9, at 13 (High Court of Ontario).
AG Ont v. AG Can. (1895), 25 SCR 434, 504, 535.
AG Ont. V. AG Can. (1894 ), AS 199, 205 (PC).
Ontario Mining Co v Seybold (19O3), AC 73, 79 (PC).
AG Can. v. AG Ont (1910), AC 637, 644, 646 (PC).
Doherty v. Girour (1915), 24 QKB 433, 436.
R.. V. Ontario & Minnesota Power Co. (1925), AS 196, 197 (vs).
R. v. McMaster (1926), Ex. 68, 73. Statute of Westminster, 1931, 5. 7(1). Lasterbrook V. R. (1932), 5 SSR 210, 217-18.
R. v. Wesley, [[1932] 2 wwR337, 348, 351.
Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948, articles 2(b), 2(e), 3(e), 4 and 6.
St Ann’s Island Shooting & Fishing Club Ltd, v. R. (1950), SSR 211, 212-13.
R. v. George (1964), 2 OR 429, 433 (CA).
R. v. Sikyca (1964), 46 WwR 65, 66 (NMSA), 1964J SSR 642.
Brick Caftage Ltd. v. R. (1965), 1 Ex. 102, 105 (ID).
Calder v. ASPS (1973), scr 313, 320, 323, 379, 401, 402.
Constitution Act, 1982, ss. 25(a), 35(1), 38 & 52.
Law Society of Upper Canada v. Bruce Clark. Reasons for Judgment of Convocation. Unreported. June 19, 1996. Page 14: “The “genocide” of which Mr Clark speaks is real, and has very nearly succeeded in destroying the Native Canadian community that flourished here when European settlers arrived.”
The Mohawk Manifesto
MNN_188_Mohawk_Manifesto_sep_9_05 The legal framework that proves by Rule of Law that First Nations are indeed sovereign. This is because Canada is in fraud and treason unto itself as it has never obeyed Queen Anne’s Royal Order which says all indigenous peoples must be dealt with on a nation to nation basis with a third, neutral party.
Stephen Harper’s Police State
Doesn’t HE look grand? From the first throws of holding office , Steve’s done nothing but a series of playing dress-up and enacting the game….only, in real life. So he’s made Canada a police state. My what fun, for him! Bullies don’t really have any concern about the people they’re hurting, the toxic environment they’re creating, only about their game time and if Mommy might have a nice piece of apple pie waiting for them at the end of their long play.
Here’s his ‘big move’. And here’s how it really plays out – Pot growers will serve more time than pedophiles!
“Producing six to 200 pot plants nets an automatic six-month sentence, with an extra three months if it’s done in a rental or is deemed a public-safety hazard. Growing 201 to 500 plants brings a one-year sentence, or 1½ years if it’s in a rental or poses a safety risk.
The omnibus legislation imposes one-year mandatory minimums for sexually assaulting a child, luring a child via the Internet or involving a child in bestiality. All three of these offences carry lighter automatic sentences than those for people running medium-sized grow-ops in rental property or on someone else’s land.
A pedophile who gets a child to watch pornography with him, or a pervert exposing himself to kids at a playground, would receive a minimum 90-day sentence, half the term of a man convicted of growing six pot plants in his own home.
The maximum sentence for growing marijuana would double from seven to 14 years, the same maximum applied to someone using a weapon during a child rape, and four years more than for someone sexually assaulting a kid without using a weapon.”
I wonder if Steve likes corgies?
The Devil Wears Prada, Christy Wears Nada
What’s this? Christy Clark showing off her finery? If the Emporer has no clothes at least Christy might look better then him parading naked down Government Street, but all it would serve to do is let us know what we already do: Clark is all about money, making money, spending money, perhaps even eating money for dessert (chocolate moose toppled with loonies?). In the end, if The Devil wears Prada then what exactly is Christy wearing? Nada. Nothing. Zip. She was too stupid to ask anything in return!
You want transparency in government? You need look no further then Christy Clark’s very visible flip-flopping.
Yes, Christy, families this and that. Yes, Christy, money to go here, no wait, money to go there, wait….move it under the window sill….no, no, no, it looks better under the painting. So how are we to have any faith that today’s HST referendum count will be respected in any way? 55% of the people who voted on the HSt referendum voted to kick it out. The B.C. Liberals like to play ‘hide the peanut’, so Kevin Falcon’s seemingly sincere adddress on the HST flop could have us going all over the map. I trust him like I trust NO liberal…and that’s simply purely pragmatic, there’s no conspiracy theories here.
And how about the gloating Bill van der Zalm? EW! MSM hasn’t picked up on the fact that the NDP did it’s lion share of campaigning to get rid of the HST. “Oh my darling, Christy-tine”. I guess Adrian Dix drives a Lada and that’s not enough to impress the permanent press.
Oh gawd, how long are we to be doomed by the Liberals???
Christy van der Clark
Christy van der Clark
There’s certain rules a B.C. Liberal/Socred must adhere to; cruelty is at the top of the list. While Bill van der Zalm was busy plucking the wings off flies during his tenure as premier, Christy Clark has begun working on disecting the fly itself (sans anaesthetic).
Christy, you give here, then take there….all in what you call the ‘name of the family’, forgetting that so many families are poverty level and below. You are in Fantasy Gardens, even wearing Lillian’s trademark headband!
Do yourself and BC a favour….quit lying (it makes your nose grow longer), quit deceiving (it makes breasts sag even more), quit pretending (or your pubic hair will fall out). All you’re doing is transferring one debt load to another and all the while punishing the impoverished. We do not want to be part of your fantasy!!!
Families are your priority? How about the family of humankind? How about the family of equality? I think your headband is too tight and before you know it you’ll look like a female Pinnoccio with body parts hanging to the floor and hairless as a chihauhau. I’m sure Mr. Thatcher-Clark would not like this.
What is North America Truly Asking For?
The turbulence is growing….England, Greece, Spain….where’s next? It could be our own backyards.
This from Mohawk Clan Mother, Kahentenita Horn:
Youth Riots – Ravenous Hunger for Freedom
MNN. August 9, 2011. People and animals don’t live or breed well in captivity, unless they think they are free. Indigenous had mental, physical and spiritual freedoms. Europeans were born into cages, conditioned to be obedient to their masters. They can’t see the horror of their slavery because it is too painful to look at directly. Europeans have tried to bring everybody else into the cage with them. We can only be kept in cages we refuse to see. To see the cage is to leave it.
Tales From The Project – #2
Ain’t that a pretty view? And it’s mine, all mine!
I’m still adjusting to life in the projects…the neighbourhood is sweet . I’ve gotten most of the bus routes downpat and like to ride my bike downtown; it’s an easy route with a small hill that allows me to coast back downhill.
There’s a million Chinese elders in the building, most whom don’t speak english, but like to wave and say ‘hello’. They make me feel tall. I can’t imagine how they got here and what they left behind. People complain about them not speaking english and all I can say is that if I lived in a place that was filled with poverty and crummy conditions or my parents took me to a new place when I was a teen , I’d probably hang out with ex-pats and merrily speak english all day. I’m not good at language. So, there but for the grace of gawd go I.
Rat-man got kicked out. He was down the hall from me and I’m sure responsible for the cockroaches in my apartment. Rat-man would leave his junk collecting shopping carts out in the hall and it’s rumoured he had more in his suite. Professional cleaners have been here a myriad of times hauling garbage out of his room and every time that happens there’s a cockroach crawl in the elevator. He obviously need assisted living.
The outside of the building is being given a facelift and the workers get to their scaffolding via motorized lifts. The lifts have to be cordoned off and this sets off some of the fellows here. They start yelling at the workers and are in obvious need of medications….it’s pretty clear: safety is a factor. The workers have to listen to the bullshit hurled at them and do their best to keep quiet but every now and then they engage in the fire. Hard not to, I guess.
I like my little suite. It has it’s downfalls but I’ve grown used to them. Still, I want to be making money and in a nicer place. Time, time….time.
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PAYPAL
Harper Valley 