Province halts work at indigenous site
Alex Horkay Staff Reporter -Toronto Star The province has issued a stop-work notice at the site of archaeological work at an indigenous village in Vaughan, opening a six-month window for the Huron-Wendat Nation to find a way to permanently protect it from development.
“This is great news and it’s long overdue,” said Grand Chief Konrad Sioui. “We’ve been fighting this for a long time now. There’s lots of sorrow and pain within our nation.”
The property, south of Teston Rd. and west of Pine Valley Dr., is on land that comprises part of a 500-year-old indigenous village known as Skandatut. The area was once home to as many as 2,000 natives and contains remnants of a number of longhouses.
Archaeological work was being done as part of the process required to get approval for a possible development of about 204 single-family homes. They would be part of a subdivision that could add 1,300 homes to the surrounding area.
“At this point we’re certainly looking at our options in terms of fighting the order,” said John Alati, lawyer for Joseph Pandolfo, the property’s owner.
Although the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued Wednesday’s stop-work order, the work being done was “pursuant to a permit that the ministry issued and pursuant to a licence that the minister granted. The same ministry. So there’s that issue, which is certainly perplexing,” said Alati.
He said Vaughan’s official plan designating the land urban was approved in 2001 and the zoning applications and subdivision plans were filed in 2006.
David Donnelly, a lawyer representing the Huron-Wendat Nation, said, “We applaud the stop-work order, but it is the clear desire of the archaeological, environmental and First Nations’ communities that the minister invoke the Ontario Heritage Act to permanently protect Skandatut.
“If this was Don Cherry’s birthplace, would we even be having this debate?”
Mukunthan Paramalingham, a ministry spokesperson, said, “We have consulted with heritage experts from the Ontario Heritage Trust prior to issuing the stop order.
“The ministry will be using this pause to determine next steps and to continue to encourage dialogue and collaboration between all affected parties.”
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Published Online Oct. 06, 2010: http://www.thestar.com/news/article/871918--province-halts-work-at-indigenous-site
Skandatut
Represented the Huron-Wendat Nation during a six-year battle to save Skandatut, an internationally significant aboriginal cultural heritage site containing the archaeological remains of a large and heavily fortified, late sixteenth-century ancestral Huron-Wendat village, once considered the “capital” of central Ontario. Failed negotiations and a court challenge led Donnelly Law to obtain a rare Stop Work Order under the Ontario Heritage Act from the Ministry of Culture. The Vaughan site is now protected in perpetuity.
Represented the Huron-Wendat Nation during a six-year battle to save Skandatut, an internationally significant aboriginal cultural heritage site containing the archaeological remains of a large and heavily fortified, late sixteenth-century ancestral Huron-Wendat village, once considered the “capital” of central Ontario. Failed negotiations and a court challenge led Donnelly Law to obtain a rare Stop Work Order under the Ontario Heritage Act from the Ministry of Culture. The Vaughan site is now protected in perpetuity.
Native remains held in U of T basements
U of T prefers to not tell anyone about ‘skeletons in their basement’
Yeamrot Taddese, The Varsity
U of T’s anthropology department is being asked to repatriate thousands of Huron-Wendat ancestral remains to their descendents. The skeletal remains, dug up between the 1950s and early 1970s by archaeologists, currently lie in the basements of U of T’s St. George and Mississauga anthropology buildings.
Attorney David Donnelly has been representing the Huron-Wendat Nation since 2006, when he “got a tip” about the existence of the bones in U of T’s lying in the Anthropology buildings’ basement. “The University of Toronto had skeletons in their basement and preferred not to tell anybody,” he said. “It is profoundly tragic.”
“There are different ways [in which] people have approached excavations for analysis,” said U of T anthropology professor Susan Pfeiffer, who is also involved in the negotiation with the Huron-Wendat. Before the early 1970s, Pfeiffer said there was no framework to regulating archaeology. “We reflect on the impact of our actions and we get better.”
Pfeiffer said the skeletal remains have not been used for a long time and that the university’s Department of Anthropology “has no reason to be reluctant to return them.”
The Ontario Heritage Trust has retained responsibility for the remains at the Mississauga campus. According to Pfeiffer, the land the remains were dug up from was owned by the Ontario Heritage Trust, which permitted the excavations.
A representative from the Ontario Heritage Trust could not be reached to confirm this statement.
Link to Huron-Wendat long known
Pfeiffer said the Department of Anthropology has always known, through research analysis, that the remains were linked to the Huron-Wendat, but added that the current location of the Huron-Wendat has been a barrier in returning the remains. “Heritage is a provincial responsibility and not [a] federal [one]. The fact that the Huron-Wendat live in Quebec has slowed us down quite a bit.”
Donnelly said that location cannot be used as an excuse not to tell the Huron-Wendat about their ancestors’ remains. “The University of Toronto is a world-class university and they could have looked in a yellow page to find the Huron-Wendat.”
However, Donnelly said it is encouraging that U of T has agreed to repatriate the remains in a cooperative and respectful manner. “That is the very small silver lining.”
He also said the Ontario Heritage Trust has not returned calls and e-mails about starting a similar negotiation. “If they don’t co-operate [in the same manner as U of T], we will prosecute them under the Criminal Code of Canada.”
“Most institutions are not forthcoming about their possession of ancestral remains,” said Lee Maracle, Aboriginal studies faculty member from the Sto:Loh Nation. “What is true is that we are the only people in the country whose remains are violated and who must seek redress via negotiations to have them returned.
“No Indigenous community was ever asked to have their remains committed to violation.”
Maracle said the Huron-Wendat had a similar case in which the Canadian government kept 500 sets of human bones in the basement of the parliamentary building in Ottawa. After 10 years of negotiation, the remains were finally returned to the Huron-Wendat in the year 2000, she said.
The Ontario Cemeteries Act
In section eight of regulation 133/92, the Ontario Cemeteries Act stipulates that a representative of a person whose remains are interred in an unapproved cemetery can consent to scientific analysis on the remains.
The regulation defines a representative as: “the nearest First Nations Government or other community of aboriginal people which is willing to act as a representative and whose members have a close cultural affinity to the interred person.”
Donnelly said the regulation assumes “any Indian would do” and asked the University of Toronto Law School to cooperate with his firm to reform the act.
In cases where there is no apparent sign of burial at the cemetery — known as “irregular burial” — the current land owner is responsible for the remains.
“Like all people, [Aboriginal] people have great respect for their ancestors who made it possible for them to be here,” said Donnelly. “Burial places are sacred.”
Pfeiffer said the Anthropology department at St. George wants as little publicity as possible about the existence of the remains at U of T.
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The Varsity: http://thevarsity.ca/articles/32797
First Nation battles for history in court
Lawyers with the Huron-Wendat Nation are heading to court Friday seeking a temporary injunction to scrap all archeological approvals issued on digs at significant indigenous village sites, many of them in Greater Toronto.
The band council is seeking a one-month moratorium on all Stage Four archaeological approvals and a stop-work order on digs already on the books.
If granted the order would affect as many as three dozen sites across southern Ontario, including the nationally significant Skandatut in Vaughan, home to 2,000 Hurons 500 years ago. Most of the affected sites are Huron-Wendat, though village sites originally settled by Mohawk and Anishnabe are also involved.
“Skandatut was one of the most important centres in Ontario and nobody has moved to protect it,” said David Donnelly, lawyer for the Huron-Wendat. “Friday, we are going to do our best to try and make that happen.”
Donnelly said the one-month excavation ban would buy the Huron-Wendat and other band councils enough time to go to the Superior Court of Justice asking for permanent protection for some of the most nationally significant First Nations villages.
This is just the latest volley in a battle between the Huron-Wendat and the province over protection of native heritage sites. The Huron-Wendat say Minister of Culture and Tourism Michael Chan is not doing enough to ensure such sites are not destroyed by development. “If the ministry won’t protect these sites, we’ll ask the courts to do it,” Donnelly added.
The Star has learned the ministry is introducing new guidelines on Jan. 1 requiring consultation with First Nations councils before archaeologists start their digs. But Donnelly says the new regulations are toothless and will do little to protect important sites from being paved over.
What’s more, advance notice given by Chan in a cable TV interview two weeks ago may give landowners an opportunity to jump ahead of the new regulations and rush through potentially destructive excavations, Donnelly said.
“That was an … insensitive, bone-headed move,” Donnelly said. “This says to the developers, ‘You now have a few months to push this through.’ Just watch. These sites will start to fall like dominoes.”
Ministry spokesperson Mukunthan Paramalingham said changes have been under discussion with various stakeholders for some time.
“We are aware of the concerns related to consultation by aboriginal communities. That is why the ministry is working toward the release of new standards and guidelines for consultant archeologists,” he said. “Aboriginal engagement will be a key part of the new standards and guidelines.”
The regulations, to be posted for 60 days on the ministry’s website before they come into effect, will require notification and consultation before development sites are archaeologically excavated, but not the protection and enforcement the Huron-Wendat were seeking.
Donnelly says being notified and consulted just isn’t enough. “The developers will invite the First Nations in for a chat and then, nine times out of ten, development will just go ahead.”
“We want the opportunity to get notification way in advance, like Rogers Cable does,” he said. “They get statutory notification and First Nations don’t, and that’s just racism.”
Skandatut, a 15th century Huron site on Pine Valley Dr. in Vaughan, has been under archaeological excavations with earth movers for at least a week.
It was declared a nationally significant historical and cultural village site by prominent archaeologists in 2006. The Huron-Wendat urged the province to halt a dig then happening at the site in hopes of preserving the village, believed to contain as many as 100 longhouses.
At the time, Donnelly called the wholesale destruction of native sites “a national disgrace.”
Two weeks ago, another partial Huron-Wendat village site in Vaughan was excavated with earth-moving equipment. The Huron-Wendat cried foul, saying they had not been consulted and had only learned about the dig by accident.
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http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/859013--first-nation-battles-for-history-in-court
Thousands of native remains being held in U of T storage
Gail Swainson Urban Affairs Reporter / Toronto Star
After more than four years of sensitive and sometimes testy negotiations, the Huron-Wendat Nation are on the brink of repatriating the bones of thousands of ancestors that were “robbed from their graves” years ago by archaeologists, studied and then stored in crumbling cardboard boxes at the University of Toronto.
“There are a couple thousand of our people waiting to return home,” Huron-Wendat Clan Chief Gaetan Sioui said Thursday. “When we went to see them, we almost cried to see our ancestors lying in dusty boxes for so long.”
The plundering of sacred gravesites, many in the GTA, and the casual storage of their ancestors is a painful part of Huron-Wendat history and they look forward to the day the remains can be reinterred, he said.
“The mission is clear,” Sioui added. “We want to work with the university to repatriate the remains and rebury them back in their place in a respectful manner.”
The Huron-Wendat Nation and university officials are in the final stages of hammering out an agreement that would involve turning the sacred remains over to the Quebec-based First Nation band council.
Talks between the Huron-Wendat and other Southern Ontario First Nations groups such as the Mississaugas of Scugog, the Kawartha Anishnabe and Six Nations of the Grand, among others, would be held to discuss a suitable final resting place. Most of the bones are Huron-Wendat, though the remains of several hundred bodies are from the Neutral Nation.
The bones would then be moved to a reburial location, still to be determined. One possibility is the Kleinburg ossuary, where more than 500 bodies were unearthed in the late 1960s. The Kleinburg site is currently owned by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.
The Huron-Wendat Nation were tipped off to the collection of bones and burial artifacts about four years ago and — horrified at the sacrilege — began a long negotiation process with U of T officials aimed at returning as many of their ancestors as possible to at least one of the mass graves raided many years ago.
U of T anthropology Professor Susan Pfeiffer, who is involved in the negotiations, said cultural sensibilities around how sites are excavated and studied have changed.
“Times are different now,” Pfeiffer said Thursday. “We are trying to handle these skeletal remains that were part of archaeological expeditions decades ago in a sensitive fashion, in a partnership with the Huron-Wendat.
“For me, personally, this is a matter of trying to do the right thing and bring closure to the past,” she added.
David Donnelly, a Toronto lawyer representing the Huron-Wendat, said the insensitive storage of aboriginal remains is a blot on academia and society as a whole.
“Try and name another ethnic group in Ontario whose graves were repeatedly targeted and dug up,” Donnelly said Thursday. “It’s only First Nations.”
Huron-Wendat believe the bones of their ancestors are sacred because they contain their souls. The mass graves, or ossuaries, of about 2,000 First Nations people were dug up by archaeologists between the 1950s and the late 1970s. The burial sites, many now covered by subdivisions, date from as early as the 14th century — long before contact with Europeans.
The ancestors of the Huron-Wendat lived across a vast swath of southern Ontario for many centuries until 1648, when, weakened by deadly epidemics, they were driven into Quebec by war with other First Nations groups.
Over the years, the remains were ferried to the University of Toronto for study and cataloguing. They are now stored in banker’s boxes at two campuses: Mississauga and St. George, where they are kept in the basement of the anthropology building.
At least 500, those from the Kleinburg ossuary, are under the care of the province’s Ontario Heritage Trust and are not yet covered by the agreement.
“The Ontario government is lagging in its legal and moral obligations to the Huron-Wendat and other First Nations,” Donnelly said. “Only immediate law reform can make amends.”
The Huron-Wendat are contemplating legal action against the province for the desecration of human remains, because of a failure to deal with the U of T remains in a suitable fashion, he added.
Ron Williamson, considered one of Ontario’s pre-eminent archaeologists, said archaeological practices up until the 1970s were exploitive of native rights, culture and history.
“There was a different sensibility then that derived from a longstanding practice that was, quite frankly, racist,” Williamson said. “But by the 1990s, no one would dream of digging an ossuary without First Nations consultation.”
Earlier this summer, a controversy erupted over the presence of the remains of 22 Inuit at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. They had been sent south from the Labrador community of Zoar by an archaeologist in the 1920s. Details still have to be worked out with the Nunatsiavut, but the bones are scheduled to be repatriated.
First Nations want say in the preservation of important archaeological sites in Ontario
The province must ban the bulldozing of important native sites by developers without the consultation or even notification of First Nations people, says a spokesperson with the Huron-Wendat nation.
“We are not against development, but there should be a duty to consult so we can work together,” said Luc Laine, Ontario spokesperson for the Quebec-based Wendake First Nation. “We are pretty upset with what is going on out there, particularly with what is happening at Teston Rd.”
Laine’s comments came after the archaeological excavation this month of a small soybean field at the northeast corner of Teston Rd. and Jane St. in Vaughan.
Laine says native stakeholders only found out about the dig by accident, although it is thought to be on or near the site of a historically and culturally important Huron village from the 13th and 14th centuries. He contends this dig should have led to some form of notification.
The three-week excavation, which included tearing up the field with earthmoving equipment, was wrapped up by archaeologist Keith Powers last Monday.
The dig site is also just metres away from a mass grave containing the remains of some 400 Hurons, discovered in 2005 during the widening of Teston Rd.
When Huron-Wendat officials heard of the dig a few weeks ago, their Toronto lawyer David Donnelly frantically emailed Tourism and Culture Minister Michael Chan and Vaughan planning officials, demanding without success that the work be halted until the Huron-Wendat could be drawn into the process.
“In the old days, at least the First Nations got muskets and beads when we took their sites,” Donnelly said. “Now they can’t even get a phone call returned.”
There is currently no legal requirement that First Nations be consulted in such cases, though there is a patchwork of legal decisions and a consultation recommendation from the Ipperwash Commission of Inquiry, which found that 8,000 native village and burial sites have been destroyed province-wide.
A 2004 court decision in Ontario also ruled that the province has a duty to consult with native stakeholders when selling property.
But there are no provincial regulations currently in place requiring consultation when native sites are found on private property, although a set of guidelines is “imminent,” says ministry spokesperson Danelle Balfour.
“The ministry is updating the standards and guidelines for archaeology to bring more consistency and predictability,” Balfour said. “Aboriginal engagement will be a key part of the new standards and guidelines.”
Balfour said the ministry has been in contact with the Huron-Wendat since the Teston Rd. dig came to light and will have further talks next week, all aimed at getting a process in place requiring notification of First Nations groups when village or ossuary sites are discovered on private land.
When York Region road crews uncovered the Teston Rd. gravesite remains in 2005, the region called an immediate halt to construction — as required under provincial law when human remains are found — and notified native groups. A study determined that the burial site was a Huron-Wendat ossuary.
In the end, the road was moved slightly to accommodate a new gravesite, and the bones were later reburied with ceremony under the eye of elders representing First Nations from across Ontario and Quebec.
Landowner Gold Park Homes refused to comment on the matter when contacted. No development application has been received for the site. However, Powers, the archaeologist, said the developer informed him they were proceeding with a dig because “they wanted to make sure there was nothing on the site to impact development.”
Powers said Gold Park officials were told best archaeological practices dictated that First Nations representatives should be notified of the dig, but they refused. Powers was asked by Donnelly, ministry and Vaughan officials at the site to stop excavation until proper notification could take place but he told them Gold Park wanted the dig to continue.
“They didn’t want anything to hold this up. They wanted to go fast,” Powers said. “They didn’t want to contact aboriginal groups. That is clear. But I don’t want to be the bad guy here. I did what my employer said to do.”
Based on what he uncovered at the site during his dig, the village site is likely located mostly in a forested area adjacent and to the north of the field, Power said.
The tips of longhouse shadows found at the northern edge of the field and the small scattering of artifacts at the site all led him to deduce the village is in the forested area, which is environmentally protected and can never be built on, Powers said.
The village, which is considered important both archaeologically and historically, would likely contain storage pits, hearths, post moulds and other longhouse remains. There are even possibly more burials.
**
Urgent Court Application for Stay of Lake Simcoe Ontario Municipal Board Hearing
Environmental Defence (www.environmentaldefence.ca)
First Nations objection ignored at mega-marina hearing
Toronto, Ontario – The Huron-Wendat Nation has filed a rare, urgent application for judicial review with the Ontario Superior Court to shut down the controversial Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) hearing regarding the proposed mega-marina at Big Bay Point in Simcoe County, Ontario.
“The Huron-Wendat Nation does not want to stop all development but we also don’t want developers and complicit municipalities making unilateral decisions about our history and rights either,” said Luc Lainé, cultural heritage liaison for the Huron-Wendat in Ontario. “The destruction of so many of our sites without even the same notice afforded to utilities and ratepayers is a great tragedy for all First Nations that can be so easily corrected.”
The Court is asked to review the actions of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, the Ministry of Culture, the Ontario Municipal Board, the County of Simcoe, and the Town of Innisfil. All of these parties had a copy of an archaeological report as early as 2004 disclosing the presence of First Nations cultural artifacts and potential aboriginal burials on the site of the proposed development at Big Bay Point.
Despite this knowledge, no notice of the findings was given to First Nations, and no First Nation consultation occurred with regards to the development. In a letter written by Grand Chief Max <<One Onti>> Gros Louis to The Honorable John Gerretson, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Grand Chief Gros Louis outlined Ontario’s shameful history of destroying literally thousands of significant and sacred sites, stating, “[w]e draw the line at Huronia”.
The Huron-Wendat Nation alleges that the proponent meticulously notified and consulted a broad range of stakeholders about the development, including Canada Post and Rogers Cable.
“Early notice and consultation with First Nations and environmental groups in Seaton – a new development in Pickering, Ontario – has resulted in significant improvements, both with respect to planning and environmental protection,” said Dr. Rick Smith, Executive Director, Environmental Defence. “It is up to Courts to end the troublesome double standard illustrated at Big Bay Point in land use planning that grants full rights to commercial interests like Rogers Cable but excludes interested First Nations.”
In the Big Bay Point development, the Provincial Facilitator convened negotiations between the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, the Ministry of Culture, the Ontario Municipal Board, the County of Simcoe, the Town of Innisfil, and Kimvar Enterprises Inc. (the developer). The parties entered into a binding agreement supporting the development and promising not to oppose or assist any others in opposing the development. No notice was given of these negotiations to First Nations.
“Residents have known about First Nations use and occupation of Big Bay Point for over a century,” said Don Avery, president of the Innisfil District Association. “Contacting First Nations is a very important responsibility. When this responsibility is not fulfilled, it endangers the entire process.”
The Ontario Municipal Board hearing for the Big Bay Point development started on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 without formal notice to First Nations.
The Huron-Wendat Nation is asking the Ontario Superior Court to find that these government actors violated their constitutional and common law administrative duty to notify and consult with First Nations when considering actions that may infringe their aboriginal rights. The Supreme Court has clearly stated that the Crown’s duty to consult with First Nations is broad and based on the honour of the Crown. The duty arises when the Crown contemplates conduct that may affect aboriginal rights. The court is being asked to stop the Ontario Municipal Board hearing, quash the minutes of settlement resulting from the negotiations between the parties, and order that First Nations be afforded formal notice and consulted.
The Big Bay Point development calls for 1,600 resort units (fractional ownership), 400 hotel units, a 1,000 slip marina on a man-made bay, and an 18-hole golf course. Groups around the Lake, including Campaign Lake Simcoe, support the argument that the project should not be permitted at this scale and should be subject to the proposed Lake Simcoe Protection Act.
The specific applicable Regulations to the Planning Act require formal notice to First Nations Reserves within 1 km of the site of the proposed development. The Huron-Wendat Nation is located in Wendake, Quebec. The law effectively states that proponents will never need to notify the Huron-Wendat Nation, despite the fact that thousands of ancestral Huron cultural heritage and sacred sites lie in the path of development.
For more information, or to arrange interviews, please contact:
Jennifer Foulds, Environmental Defence, (416) 323-9521 ext. 232; (647) 280-9521
Don Avery, President, Innisfil District Association, (416) 997-7836
Luc Lainé, Huron-Wendat Nation, (418) 580-6205
Ruling paves way for `green' Seaton
Eco-friendly community for 70,000 `truly looks like a go' after developer fails to get Supreme Court hearing
Canada's top court has cleared the way for the province to build Ontario's largest environmentally friendly community for 70,000 people in north Pickering.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled yesterday it would not grant developer Silvio De Gasperis leave to appeal a lower court decision that rejected his argument that planning for Seaton was flawed and done without adequate consultation.
"This plan has become law and it clearly sets a strong direction for the community of Seaton," said Bruce Singbush, a senior official with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.
"It means the plans for the community of Seaton are final," he said yesterday, pointing out that – if municipal planning decisions move ahead on time – shovels could hit the ground within five years.
The ruling allows for the real work to begin – planning for what environmentalists and government officials promise will be Canada's largest, most complex and significant eco-friendly community, built on 55 per cent of a 6,000-hectare land parcel east of West Duffins Creek.
About 45 per cent of the Seaton lands are already protected as green space and a natural heritage system that is defined by numerous streams and brooks.
In addition to the 70,000 residents, the plan calls for the creation about 35,000 jobs in the area.
If the plan, the result of three years of consultations, comes to fruition, it would result in a one-of-a-kind community of 15 compact neighbourhoods bordering forests and streams.
The plan calls for, among other things:
The disappointed developer said the ruling "is what it is," adding he thought it was unfortunate for Pickering taxpayers but the law of the land must be respected.
Seaton's planning principles, laid down by the province, now have to be executed by the city of Pickering, which still prefers development on De Gasperis's lands.
The Seaton lands saga began in the 1970s when Ontario expropriated about 6,000 hectares of land bordering West Duffins Creek and the Pickering-Ajax boundary between Highway 7 and the railway corridor for a planned federal airport and community.
Plans for the community lay dormant for decades until kick-started by a Liberal-engineered plan to swap developers' land in the environmentally sensitive Oak Ridges Moraine for land in Seaton.
That swap and the decision to include in the greenbelt the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve – where De Gasperis owned land – triggered a bitter battle between the developer and the government. De Gasperis said the Seaton lands were more environmentally sensitive than his and it made more sense to build on his lands because they were serviced, a position supported by Pickering.
De Gasperis still has one outstanding court challenge that questions the environmental assessment of the land swap.
David Donnelly, a lawyer for Environmental Defence and an aboriginal group called the Founding Nations Circle – which worked with the province during the planning process for Seaton – said the community "truly looks like a go."
But Donnelly cautioned that the key to Seaton's success lies in the fulfillment of a Liberal promise that Seaton would be built to the highest possible environmental standards – and that it would set the bar for how future growth will be handled.
Pickering Mayor Dave Ryan said he was disappointed with the ruling but he is willing to work with the province.
"Seaton has the potential to be the most sustainable development in Canada," he said.
But Ryan warned that will happen only if the provincial and federal governments pay for some key costs, including the mass transit and jobs component. "It's not something Pickering can do on its own," he said.
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Toronto Star: http://www.thestar.com/News/article/182457
Natives say land deal left them out
If seven Indian groups win court battle with province over consultation process, critics say it could open a Pandora's box of negotiations across Ontario
Little, it seems, stands in the way of southern Ontario's booming development industry.
But the shards and fragments of centuries-old Indian artifacts, village sites and burial grounds lying just below the earth's surface could trip up more than a few bulldozers.
An Ontario court is considering whether the province should have consulted more with some native groups in a planned land swap. If the court rules against the province, it could thwart "anybody dealing with land," said lawyer David Donnelly, who represents the Huron-Wendat First Nation. The band, which occupied most of the area around Toronto about 400 years ago, is now based near Quebec City.
In essence, it could force those involved in major land transactions to engage in protracted consultations with a wide variety of native groups.
"If they open the door to this, then we are into a very vast, broad and almost excessively onerous responsibility on both private and public proponents," Donnelly said this week.
The case involves a 2002 provincial land swap aimed at stopping subdivisions on the Oak Ridges moraine. The controversial deal, which gave developers provincially owned land in Pickering in exchange for environmentally sensitive property in Richmond Hill, was supposed to be completed in March 2005.
But a provincial development plan for the Pickering lands, known as Seaton, was not approved until last spring and an environmental assessment of the land exchange wasn't completed until July.
Just as the province was preparing to finalize the transaction, Indian activist David Sanford, along with developers opposed to the deal, appealed the environmental assessment, arguing that native groups outside the Huron-Wendat had not been properly consulted.
Since then, seven other Indian bands have joined forces to halt the transaction and last week spent four days in Divisional Court arguing that the province had both a statutory and a constitutional duty to consult them during the process.
The three-judge panel has reserved its decision until February.
"We think this case shows that government really needs to get its act together when it comes to First Nations consultation," said lawyer Nicholas Tibollo.
A government spokesman was reluctant to speculate on the outcome of the case.
Southern Ontario was home to Indians for centuries before and during European colonization, and the soil is filled with artifacts, former village sites and burial grounds, said Donnelly. But few efforts have been made until recently to preserve this cultural heritage when it was threatened by development.
Since 2004, when a justice of the peace ruled the province failed to adequately consult Indians on the sale of land to the Roman Catholic Church in Markham, representatives of the three major First Nations groups with roots in southern Ontario have been working on a streamlined consultation process with government.
The Huron-Wendat, Anishinabe and Iroquois have made significant progress in Seaton, Donnelly said. "Historic" agreements to preserve and honour Huron-Wendat village sites in the area could be lost if the courts send everyone back to the drawing board again, he added. And that's why the Indians' court challenge, supported by developers who oppose the Seaton land swap, is so frustrating, Donnelly said.
Lawyers representing the seven opposing bands say the streamlined consultation process has no official status among Ontario Indians or government, and it didn't include them
Aboriginal law expert Joseph Magnet, acting for six of the bands, said government notices sent to four of his clients were never received and that reported phone calls and meetings to discuss the Seaton land transfer with a government consultant are "pure fiction."
"The facts are that none of my clients were ever contacted," he told the court.
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Toronto Star: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/125648--natives-say-land-deal-left-them-out
Walkerton Commission of Inquiry, 2001
Represented the Canadian Environmental Defence Fund (“CEDF”) and the Safe Drinking Water Coalition at the Inquiry. The Coalition included representatives from Pollution Probe, CEDF and First Nations. David Donnelly worked to facilitate the involvement of coalition members at the Inquiry.
Represented the Canadian Environmental Defence Fund (“CEDF”) and the Safe Drinking Water Coalition at the Inquiry. The Coalition included representatives from Pollution Probe, CEDF and First Nations. David Donnelly worked to facilitate the involvement of coalition members at the Inquiry.