MNN March 3, 2007

Canada’s population is aging and declining. Many of them probably would not want all this development. So why build more huge highways, shopping malls, hundreds of thousands of condos and more sewers? Don’t these people have any imagination for anything other than their “ticky-tacky pop-tart” megalomania. It’s money, money, money talking here. “How much money can we”, the developers, “make real fast!” They did not ask us, the owners of the land, if we want any of this crap.

They have to stop acting like a bunch of boys comparing each other’s private parts. What is a normal sustainable way of life? How will the golden agers look after themselves? Are they going to fix up the environment they destroyed throughout their lifetime? How many centuries will it take to repair the environmental destruction that has taken place during the past 50 years? What is their comprehensive economic plan to support their grandiose ideas of how people should live?

Today a lot of cities in this part of Ontario are dead at the core. Their industry has gone. Their downtown business centers are boarded up. Everyone is shopping at Wal Mart which keeps rolling back their prices to match the declining standard of living. The rest of us shop at the Dollar Store. The existing infrastructures are falling apart. Schools are rotting and falling on the heads of the children. Overpasses are falling on top of the drivers. In Ontario cities like London, Brantford and Waterloo are closing down. It looks like the presence of a Wal Mart and a Tim Horton’s is what defines a city nowadays.

Instead of repairing the crumbling structures on the part of our land they are already squatting on, they are eyeing the land we have been trying to preserve.

It looks like another Grand River Navigation Scheme, Part II? It was a grandiose plan where they took our money and blew it. Are the city fathers planning to bring in more people from other parts of the world? Nobody asked us about this either. To them development is having people live on top of each other. These developers are unconcerned about how these people are going to make money.

Today there is no viable economy to support the population they want to bring in. All the big companies are going to China and Mexico where they can colonize them by slapping them around for a while. Historically colonization forced people to plant hemp and opium in India instead of food crops. This was done to Indigenous people everywhere to make quick cash for a few investors. It was all at the expense of the people who ended up poor and sick.

Before colonization our standard of living was decent and we lived close to the natural world. Eventually things will have to get back to the way they were before colonization. It might take a few centuries.

The cities of Montreal and Toronto are competing to be the biggest city in Canada. The politicians put a “Green Belt” around Toronto to keep it from growing. People want to invest where there are no problems. Green Belts around the city will make environmental demands which investors do not want. They would rather put their money elsewhere.

We are being used by outside interests to blame us for the economic turmoil and uncertainty in Ontario. The Haldimand Tract issue has been festering for a year now. Investors will not want to invest in Toronto because of the problems with the “Indians”. They see nothing but trouble ahead. They will take their money somewhere else, like Montreal or Calgary or Vancouver where there are no “Green Belts” and where investors can do anything they want. Economics goes where it is easy to exploit and get things done.

Of course Toronto will be hurt. Toronto politicians don’t want to talk to the landowners, the Iroquois. The colonizers don’t want us to get anything by recognizing our ownership.

If it’s a fight for control, are they using us again? Instead of talking to us, they send their police in to threaten us and throw us in jail. They have this idea that we will give in if they threaten us. No way!

The powers that think they are have portrayed the Haldimand Tract issue as us stopping development and thus depleting the economy of Southern Ontario. They are trying to blame us and then shame us into submission. We are not engineering this dilemma. Toronto made their plans. They never talked to us.

The Golden Horse Shoe is supposed to become a city of 7 to 8 million people, comparable to New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.

This is the Iroquois position. Toronto is ours. We want our land title respected. We want things to be done according to our way. Anybody who wants to do something on our land better talk to us about it.

Mr. McHale was hired to cause trouble in southern Ontario. Police have surrounded us for a year to create this atmosphere of uncertainty. Investment money is leaving. Anybody who wants to do anything on our land must talk to the Confederacy Chiefs who represent the will of the Iroquois people.

Montreal and New York mercantile exchanges [NYMEX] have recently teamed up to open investment businesses in Calgary [Dallas North?] They will offer trading and clearing for trades and futures and options on oil, natural gas and electricity. This is meant to knock out the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Toronto, to do anything, you need our cooperation. There is an Iroquois curse on the land. Anyone who violates our rights or treats us with contempt is asking for trouble. We want peace. We want everybody to live well in a healthy and beautiful environment. Toronto is at the crossroads. It’s already become a sewer. It could become a ghost town or it could clean up its act. The choice is yours. Come talk to us.

Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
Kahentinetha2@yahoo.com
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