Mohawk Warriors to get military apology- CBC

[ModlrMike]

If the responses on CBC are any guide, and they're usually not, then the public is not particularly enthused with this plan.

 

[The Bread Guy]

If the responses on CBC are any guide, and they're usually not, then the public is not particularly enthused with this plan.

Neither is the National Post - shared in accordance with the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright  Act:

The Department of National Defence (DND) reportedly is preparing an apology to the Mohawk Warrior Society for listing it as a potentially violent insurgent group in a 2006 version of a counterinsurgency manual. According to Defence department spokesman Major Martell Thompson, all that remains is “to make sure that it is delivered in a proper format with a proper amount of respect and from the proper level.”

We have a better idea: How about DND issues no apology at all?

The reference in question was contained in a draft of the counterinsurgency manual. Admittedly, strong language was used. The Warriors were described as a “radical native American organization” that could be viewed as having “specific and limited aims,” such as control of local, on-reserve government and influence over federal aboriginal policy.

But the reference — which is hardly inaccurate — reportedly never made it into the final version: When the existence of this draft document became public in 2007, aboriginal and media pressure compelled DND to erase the remarks before the official manual was printed. That cringing gesture alone should nullify the need for an apology.

What of the Warrior Society’s continued participation in land-claims standoffs and continued belligerent, even threatening public statements? They would tend to prove the point of the draft manual’s authors: that the Warriors are a potential insurgency with the capacity to commit violence.

Certainly, many native leaders do nothing to discourage the idea that they might resort to violent gestures if their political demands are not met. So why should we be shy about calling this tactic for what it is?

It was Warrior Society members from the Kanesatake reserve south of Montreal who led the violent 78-day standoff at Oka, Que., in the summer of 1990. Masked and camouflaged Warriors shot and killed a Quebec provincial police officer, Marcel Lemay, in a dispute over the construction of a golf course and homes on land claimed by the Mohawks. The uniforms, language and militant postures they adopted were entirely in keeping with the conceit of an actual insurgency movement.

In the spring of 2006, it was allegedly Warriors who incited violence when Mohawks from the Six Nations reserve occupied a residential subdivision under construction near Caledonia, Ont. in 2006. As Christie Blatchford documents in great detail in her new book, Helpless, these are not people who see themselves as bound by Canadian law.

And just last summer on the Mohawk reserve at Akwesasne — west of Kanesatake — masked aboriginals claiming to be Warriors encircled a Canada Customs border crossing, which is situated on Akwesasne land. Nearly 200 band members built bonfires, banged drums and uttered threats to the border agents inside until the agents agreed to abandon their post. (Customs officers insist the Warriors were armed; they claim they were not.)

The Warriors explain they are “just a militia,” not an insurgency. But what communities in Canada — including peaceful self-governing native bands — have the right to their own “militias?” This is Canada, not the Panjshir Valley.

While the Kahnawake longhouse website carries a picture of its Warrior Society that looks more like a slow-pitch softball team than a group of armed rebels, they claim to be in charge of “national defence” of tribal lands. Following the outbreak of violence at Caledonia, the Kahnawake Warriors — officially dubbed the Rotisken’rakéhte or “duty of men to carry peace” — sent a message of solidarity to their Six Nations brothers and sisters demanding that the governments of Canada and Ontario cease “any further plans to invade our territories.”

Our military may find value in building better relations with First Nations communities and people, but this apology — to be delivered early next year — will simply reinforce aboriginal leaders’ tendency to wallow in the politics of victimhood. It is politically correct wallpaper covering over the reality of continued aboriginal militancy.

 

[a_majoor]

In a way this is correct; groups like that are not insurgents but criminal gangs. Of course the distinction is becoming more blurred as time goes on, FARC and subsets of the Taliban are heavily into the drug trade to fund their insurgencies, and the PIRA spent a great deal of time destroying busses to force people to take taxis (which were shaken down to provide income to the PIRA). The Tamil Tigers also indulged in extortion in Canada, and the Black Bock anarchists are also arsonists (although I don't know if they also indulge in robbery, drug dealing or extortion to finance their "cause". It seems pretty expensive to go around the world to protest; where do they get their funds?)

 

[Michael OLeary]

If the responses on CBC are any guide, and they're usually not, then the public is not particularly enthused with this plan.

I find that to be an amusing perception, we've [i.e., the collective membership at milnet.ca, army.ca, et al.] certainly never accepted the comments on any CBC article on the military as a rational barometer of public opinion.

 

[ModlrMike]

I find that to be an amusing perception, we've [i.e., the collective membership at milnet.ca, army.ca, et al.] certainly never accepted the comments on any CBC article on the military as a rational barometer of public opinion.

Which is why I included the caveat. I was unable to find a balanced MSM publication that served as a better barometer.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Too many of the people seeking and supporting the apology have conflated "terrorist" and "insurgent".  Neither is a complete subset of the other.

A bunch of guys smuggling whiskey while resisting arrest and occasionally shooting it out with the lawfully constituted police and army of a country are merely criminals.

A bunch of guys with political aims to set themselves apart from the nation in their own political structure ]with their own political aims] while resisting arrest etc are insurgents.

A bunch of guys seeking to make their point by blowing up busloads of schoolchildren are terrorists.

The Warrior Society - at least parts of it - occasionally crosses the line into insurgency.  It is not a broad-brush smear of aboriginals to describe a specifically constituted and recognized organization for what it is and what it does.

[poor grammar]

 

[a_majoor]

Douglas Bland weighs in:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Merely+stating+obvious/4039429/story.html

Merely stating the obvious

It is quite proper for a military counter-insurgency manual to identify native Warrior Societies as a potential threat to Canadian sovereignty

BY DOUGLAS BLAND, CITIZEN SPECIAL DECEMBER 30, 2010 COMMENTS (7)


STORYPHOTOS ( 1 )



A masked Mohawk Warrior protests in Kanesatake in January 2004. To suggest that the Mohawk Warrior Society can be viewed as an insurgency is not to label anyone, or any organization, terrorist, argues Douglas Bland.
Photograph by: Shaun Best , Reuters, Citizen Special

The Canadian Forces does not owe the Mohawk Warrior Society or the wider First Nations an apology for references to the society in the first draft of the armed forces manual on Counter Insurgency Operations, or COIN. The well-researched training manual is intended to provide commanders with a wide perspective on the history of insurgencies, the reasons why they develop, insurgent tactics, and methods to counter them.

In the discussion, the manual points to several types of insurgencies and their particular circumstances drawn from many historic examples.

Given the long history in the Americas of conflicts between "settlers" and indigenous people, the authors made this obvious reference in the manual:

"The rise of radical Native American organizations, such as the Mohawk Warrior Society, can be viewed as insurgencies with specific and limited aims. Although they do not seek complete control of the federal government, they do seek particular political concessions in their relationship with national governments and control (either overt or covert) of political affairs at a local/reserve ('First Nation') level, through the threat of, or use of, violence."

There is no direct reference or link between this statement of fact and terrorism. The controversy in the aboriginal community and in the media about the COIN manual in Canada seems to come from a confusion and misunderstanding of terms. An insurgency is defined in political texts and in the Oxford English Dictionary as "a rising in active revolt" by a segment of society against "the sovereign state." Here "sovereign" is taken to mean the authority of the state to govern itself. How an insurgency unfolds and how it is countered is defined by methods -- by strategies and tactics.

Terrorism is not in itself an insurgency, although it might be used as a tactic, the purpose of which is simply to terrify, as Lenin helpfully informed us long ago. A terrorist may be a member of an insurgent group, a suicide bomber in the pay (by dollars or virgins) of Hamas, for example. On the other hand, a terrorist might be a "lone wolf," a "unabomber," working to a personal oddball agenda.

Stating that some aboriginal organizations in Canada are in disputes with the government of Canada over who is sovereign where and in what circumstances is again, an obvious comment on to-day's reality of Canadian/aboriginal relationships across the land. We need only look at Oka, Cornwall Island, the "smoke shack" tobacco controversy, the Innu challenges to the government of Quebec, and, of course, the shocking events on both sides at Caledonia.

Other such First Nations, Metis and Inuit challenges to the sovereignty of Canada -- and vice versa -- in our future are as sure as snow in winter. There is, however, no direct correlation between challenges to sovereignty and terrorism and nor was any made in the offending military manual.

The various so-called Warrior Societies proclaim in their several websites that their organizations are armed forces meant to act as a type of militia in the defence of First Nations communities and their rights. They are, arguably, an open challenge to the sovereignty of Canada, unless, of course, Canada surrenders in some fashion its right and responsibility to defend all Canadian territory and all Canadian citizens, including every reserve and all aboriginal people, to the self-appointed Warrior Societies.

If, however, there were no such surrender and if a First Nation, or part of it, were to decide to act as though it were sovereign, then it would be acting as an insurgency. In such circumstances, the government of Canada could within the laws of Canada "call out" the Canadian Forces "in aid of the civil powers" to reassert its sovereign authority.

Thus, to suggest that the Mohawk Warrior Society can be viewed as an insurgency is not to label anyone, or any organization, terrorist. To suggest that the Canadian Forces prepare its commanders to conduct anti-insurgency operations in Canada, as they did against the FLQ and at Oka, demands no apology.

The entire discussion, however, may be moot given the government's apparent preference to cede its sovereignty to every First Nations challenge -- including this one -- a policy that will surely inflame disputes and make the Canadian Forces COIN training all the more necessary.

Douglas Bland is chair of the Defence Management Studies Program at Queen's University and author of the novel Uprising, the story of a future aboriginal insurgency in Canada.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen


Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Merely+stating+obvious/4039429/story.html#ixzz19f9rmhnf

 

[Edward Campbell]

Douglas Bland weighs in:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Merely+stating+obvious/4039429/story.html

For the benefit of newcomers to the CF and to the Army.ca community, here is a bit about Professor (and LCol (RCAC) (Ret'd)) Douglas Bland, who is often cited here as an expert source.