Killing of Dudley George & Military’s dispossession of First Nations

31 years ago, today the Ontario Provincial Police killed Ojibway protester Dudley George. The act of colonial violence highlights one way the Canadian military has dispossessed First Nations.

During World War II 1,000 hectares of Chippewa Territory was appropriated for a Canadian Forces (CF) training ground near Sarnia, Ontario. After the Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation rejected their offer, the government expropriated the land under the War Measures Act. At the time the Crown Canada Company had a similar sized piece of land nearby, but it would have cost the military more.

As part of the expropriation, over a dozen families were forced to relocate to the Kettle Point reserve and the two bands were merged. Promised the return of their land after the war, the CF failed to follow through. After decades of protest a government committee in 1992 recommended returning the land. The military resisted. The CF’s half-century occupation of Stony Point land ultimately led to the 1995 Ipperwash Crisis in which the police killed George. The land was finally returned in 2016, but it was despoiled by the previous military activity.

The military has repeatedly expropriated reserve territory for bases. Often seized under the War Measures Act, when the CF acceded to pressure to return Indigenous land it was usually despoiled. “In Canada, the military acted like a giant, using Indian land like stepping stones across the country”, explained Brian Lloyd, a former British Army bomb-disposal expert who cleaned up Canadian sites. “You find an Indian nation, and you find range contamination.”

The naval base in Esquimalt was built on land taken from the Songhees. Established in the 1840s, it led to the “first placement of British Columbia Indians on a reserve.”

At the start of the 1900s militia units sought pieces of reserves near Kamloops, Salmon Arm and elsewhere in BC’s Okanagan for rifle ranges and military camps. CFB Chilliwack was built on land taken from the Three Sto:lo; CFB Petawawa was land from the Algonquins of Golden Lake; CFB Gagetown on Oromocto territory.

In the early 1950s thousands of square kilometres of land was taken from the Cold Lake and Canoe Lake First Nations to create the massive Primrose Lake Air Weapons Range northeast of Edmonton. DND officials were largely indifferent to the devastating impacts on their hunting, trapping and fishing. They rejected an Indian Affairs settlement proposal as “grossly excessive.” The sudden loss of the Dene people’s northern forest was “catastrophic”, resulting in crippling social ills. An inquiry into their dispossession conducted a half-century later concluded: “We do find that the creation of the Primrose Lake Air Weapons Range had such a profound impact on the community that, within one generation, a self-reliant and productive group of people became largely dependent upon welfare payments. The cumulative impact was to destroy the community as a functioning social and economic unit.”

During World War II tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of bombs were dropped on the Yekau Lake Practice Bombing Range on the Enoch Cree Nation Reserve near Edmonton. Lied to about the scope of the shelling, a golf course and the Enoch Cree Nation Cultural Grounds had to be shuttered after an independent consultant discovered a 105-millimetre shell and 12,000 munitions sitting in and around a lakebed. The consultant concluded that as many as 200,000 munitions could be at the bottom of the lake, prompting concerns about toxic leaching.

Land returned to the Okanagan Indian Band was also contaminated with munitions. In 2016 the band, near Vernon, sued DND and the Attorney General of Canada over unexploded ordnance and used munitions on their territory. A 2011 DND report estimated 20,000 hectares of land in the area may be contaminated and stated there have been “10 confirmed UXO [Unexploded Explosive Ordnance]-related deaths” on the Okanagan practice range since WWII.

At the start of the 1900s 6,630 acres of the Tsuu T’ina Nation Reserve was taken to build CFB Calgary. Over decades it was littered with shrapnel and ammunition. When pushed to return Tsuu T’ina land the CF made a half-hearted attempt to clean up. A former British Army bomb-disposal expert who cleaned up Canadian sites, Brian Lloyd, told the New York Times: “In 1981, the military had 1,000 soldiers in here for 16 days. They certified the land free and clear of explosives, and then dumped it back on the nation. Since the military declared the land cleared, we have pulled out one million items of ordnance, expended rounds, live rounds.”

The Canadian military has repeatedly taken and despoiled indigenous land. As Mark Carney ramps up spending on the armed forces, it’s important to remember the Canadian Forces role in directly stealing First Nations land.

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