Note: these entries are not a complete history and are provided as part of a larger work in progress.

Media reports, such as these, included conflicting reports and also reported RCMP statements which were later shown in court to be untrue, fabricated, deliberately inflammatory, defamatory, and completely unverified by the media service reporting them.

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1995

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PETITION JANUARY 3

TO THE QUEEN IN HER PRIVY COUNCIL (UNITED KINGDOM)

Between:

              TRIBAL SYSTEM NATIVES of the SUN-DANCE (Central), the POTLATCH (Western) and the              FEAST OF THE DEAD (Eastern) TRADITIONS on the relation of HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN,

              Petitioners,

                                  vs.

              THE HONOURABLE the CHIEF JUSTICES of CANADA, BRITISH COLUMBIA, ALBERTA, ONTARIO and QUEBEC as representatives of the non-native domestic legal systems of Canada,

              and THE HONOURABLE the GRAND CHIEF of the ASSEMBLY of FIRST NATIONS,

             Respondents.

PETITION

JURISDICTION

1. By order in council dated 9 July 1704 Her Majesty Queen Anne constituted an independent and impartial Standing Committee with juridical jurisdiction over boundary disputes between the Indians’ Hunting Grounds and the Crown Governments’ Public Lands (surrendered Hunting Grounds), which order implicitly precludes a competing original jurisdiction in alternative Crown Court.

2. By order in council dated 7 October 1763 His Majesty King George III expressly constituted in colonial Crown Courts jurisdiction for the apprehension and trial of persons committing crimes upon Public Lands who flee to Hunting Grounds to evade criminal process.

3. By act of parliament 1 & 2 Geo. III, c. 66 (1821) the said previously established jurisdiction of the said colonial Crown Courts was enlarged to encompass crimes committed by persons (exclusive of natives) upon the Hunting Grounds themselves.

4. Usurpation of jurisdiction by the judges of the said colonial Crown Courts (and the domestic courts of Canada as their successors) over the aforementioned disputes regarding Hunting Grounds boundaries, and over natives upon Hunting Grounds, constituted (and constitutes) treasonable and fraudulent contempt of the said 1704 and 1763 constitutive instruments.

21. The petitioners ask Her Majesty the Queen to commission independent and impartial persons to serve on the Standing Committee constituted by Queen Anne (or to constitute a substitute committee) for the purpose of addressing and reporting upon the existing Hunting Grounds boundary and the legal sanctions, if any, applicable to the respondents for (misprision of) treason and fraud and complicity in crimes related to genocide due to usurpation of jurisdiction in relation to the Hunting Grounds so delimited.

DATED: January 3, 1995.                 Respectfully submitted,

                                        Bruce Clark

                                        Of Counsel

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SCHEDULE “A”

Representing the FEAST OF THE DEAD (Eastern) Tradition:

M. Verna Friday
[[another signature – name unclear]]

Representing the SUN-DANCE (Central) Tradition:

Percy Rosette
John Stevens

Representing the POTLATCH (Western) Tradition:

Harold Pascal
Henry Saul
Leonard George

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Gustafsen Lake / Ts’peten stand off

This section is an archive of news clippings, interviews and press releases presented chronologically, from 1995

Forestry workers report being fired on “Natives shoot at forest workers,” Canadian Press, June 22 1995. “Forest workers have been ordered to keep clear of a group of armed natives occupying land in central British Columbia after two workers were shot at. “I saw two natives walking along the edge of the bush,” George Ostoroff, one of the workers shot at, said Wednesday. “Then, all of a sudden, bang! The bullet landed right in the middle of the road about five feet in front of the truck. It was from a large-calibre rifle.” Ostoroff said he believes the shot was meant to scare them away. “If they’d wanted to kill me, I think they’d have killed me,” he said.   Note: This incident was specifically denied by people at The Sundance camp. No evidence was ever produced.

Events of June 16 to July 18 were summarized in a press release by the Sundancers, below.

There was no media coverage, or promised RCMP investigations, into the shooting events described here.

On August 17, RCMP Cst. Tassell drove members of the Kamloops Emergency Response Team to Gustafsen Lake.

On July 9, 1996, RCMP Cst. Tassell testified at trial that on August 17, 1995 he was asked to drive five ERT members from the Kamloops RCMP Detachment into the Gustafsen Lake area. Although he remembered the exact time (4:11 pm) when he picked up the ERT members from “a building” and the time he picked them up the next day (at 9:15 am), he could not remember who gave him the orders to drive the team to the Lake. He also had no “direct knowledge” about the information he shared with the ERT members during the hour long drive. Equally puzzling as his memory lapses, this officer, who has been on the force for 23 years, chose these two days of August 17th and 18th (1995) in particular to not take any notes. Cst. Tassell testified that the ERT members were dressed in camouflage with painted faces and armed with assault rifles. He admitted that to the casual observer “they didn’t look like RCMP officers”. When Percy Rosette, the FaithKeeper at the camp, phoned to the RCMP at 6:24 am on August 18th (1995) , fearful of these armed men in the bush, Cst. Tassell admitted that he didn’t call Percy back to reassure him, nor did any other officers do so. – from coverage of the Gustafson trial posted at http://www.sisis.ca – Settlers in Support of Indigenous Sovereignty.

DEMANDS OF THE Tspeten Defenders- Aug 25 1995

• Petition signed by Ts’peten Defenders, witnessed by Ovide Mercredi

RCMP invented an incident on August 27 and reported it to the media.

The following media reports were totally fabricated, as RCMP officers disclosed during the trial of the Gustafson Lake Sundancers.

On February 7, 1997, Jurors at the Gustafsen Lake trial were shown RCMP videotape acquired by the Sundancer Defendants’ legal counsel, in which an RCMP negotiator stated that it was not the first time flak jackets had to be “taken to the firing range”.

These and other alarming comments by policeman John Ward came on the third day of the defence arguments. The remarks captured on videotape referred to the alleged shooting incident, in which members of the Victoria ERT (Emergency Response Team) said they were ambushed by members of the Gustafsen Lake encampment.

This RCMP version has always been denied by the defendants, who believe the fabricated incident was used to foment hatred against them and justify the involvement of the Canadian Army.

The bulletproof vests credited with saving the officers’ lives were shown on a nationally televised broadcast a week later. The irregularities with the story were commented on by many, especially when it was revealed that no slugs had been discovered. One of the officers said that he had thrown this necessary evidence “out the window” at the time of the shooting.

August 27 – summary of events by Settlers in Support of Indigenous Sovereignty:

Trees that had been felled across the road leading into the Sundance site were being cut by forestry workers under RCMP supervision when, according to RCMP, people from the Defenders’ camp allegedly opened fire on the police truck.

According to RCMP, the truck was riddled with bullets and the two officers were allegedly shot in the back; neither officer was harmed because they were wearing bullet-proof vests. The RCMP officers were not able to produce the bullets.

Although many media outlets presented the RCMP version of events as fact, other journalists questioned discrepancies in the RCMP story and pointed out that the Defenders’ version of events was not yet known.

The truck that was allegedly shot at was towed out later completely covered in a tarp to ‘preserve the evidence’. A few days later it was shown to journalists with many bullet holes allegedly caused by the people from the camp.

The flak jackets that were worn by the two officers were shown on TV – with no bullet marks in them.

“Something, perhaps my gray hair, tells me that the story of an ‘ambush’ in a ‘hail of bullets’ fired by semi-automatic weapons doesn’t stand up. When an ambush involves crossfire from two sides on unsuspecting targets – the story told by the Mounties – one would expect that someone would get hurt. If there is no wounded Mountie to photograph and show the pictures of, if there is no bullet-torn clothing to hold up at a press conference, I begin to sense that there is more or less to the “ambush” story than what reporters so confidently reported.” (William Johnson, Montreal Gazette, August 29, 1995)

Gustafsen Siege Update, September 12, The Anarchives

September 12, 1995, in the Supreme Court of Canada

DELGAMUUKW suing on his own behalf, AND

XSGOGIMLHAXA,

Motion to strike out from the Delgamuukw case and deny BC court’s jurisdiction

Motion for an intervention and hearing to prevent potential genocide at Gustafson Lake

 Bruce Clark – Lawyer for Xsgogimlhaxa and for Gustafson lake Sundance Defenders:

…this Court is being asked to sit in judgment of the possibility that it might be biased, structurally biased.

What I am saying is I do not know of another time in the legal history of the world that any national court, the highest court in any country, has been put in that position.

It is my respectful submission that, if and when this Court accepts in principle that justice must be seen to be done, in order to be seen to be done, the issue must be given to an independent and impartial outsider, that the rule of law for all the world will have taken a significant evolutionary step forward.

I wish to argue that the crime of genocide never occurs unless the court system of the country in which it is occurring is complicitous.

Right now, the world more than any other single advance needs a break on the crime of genocide and the crime of ecocide and I am suggesting that this Court can light a candle for all humanity to follow. Alternatively, it can engage in chicaneries and not address the point. It can soar or it can plummet. There is no in-between.

In terms of remedies, what I am specifically asking is that this Court, on the basis of the Mohegan case, recognize that there is an existing independent and impartial third party tribunal which can address both sides of the story without seeming to be interested in the outcome. If my client’s legal point is vindicated before such a tribunal, by necessary implication every judge of this Court will be guilty of misprision of treason and fraud and complicity in genocide.

In that sense, I am asking you, each of you, to be something greater than what the philosopher David Hume estimated was within the human capacity. I am asking you to find it within yourself to make an evolutionary step forward for the rule of law to hand this to the other tribunal and in the meantime –

SOPINKA J.: Who is that tribunal?

MR. BRUCE CLARK: It is the tribunal constituted by Queen Anne in 1704 in response to the petition brought by the Mohagen Indians in very similar circumstances.

LAMER C.J.: If that tribunal has jurisdiction, why do you not just go to that tribunal?

MR. BRUCE CLARK: I have gone.

LAMER C.J.: Do we have jurisdiction to tell them to take the case?

MR. BRUCE CLARK: I think you do.

LAMER C.J.: How do we get that? I mean, if we have no jurisdiction over the matter, how do we find jurisdiction to tell anyone else that they are the ones that have to hear the case?

MR. BRUCE CLARK: Your jurisdiction as guardians of the sacred trust of civilization.

LAMER C.J.: Oh my God. I did not swear to that. I just swore to be a judge and try to do my best according to the rule of law.

MR. BRUCE CLARK: It fell upon you, whether or not you realized it. That is the duty under which you labour.

LAMER C.J.: I must say, Mr. Clark, that in my twenty six (26) years as a judge I have never heard anything so preposterous and presented in such an unkind way. To call the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada and the nine hundred and seventy five (975) High Court judges of Canada accomplices to genocide is something preposterous. I do not accept that and I think you are a disgrace to the bar. The point is you have my opinion and you are lucky I am just proceeding to opinions at this stage.

I will hear you on the motion. Is that all you have to say on the constitutional question?

MR. BRUCE CLAIM: No. I would like you to reflect upon your words.

*

MOTION FOR INTERIM INJUNCTION

MR. BRUCE CLARK: Well, prima facie, you do not have the general jurisdiction to go into the Indian territories prior to a treaty either. My client’s point of law, which at this point must be conceded at least as being at least arguable, is that in virtue of the invasion of the Indian territories by the court system which this particular panel penultimately represents and the police, this Court has introduced from coast to coast in Canada a murderous situation. It has introduced a situation where every day, police whose presence is prima facie treasonable and fraudulent and arguably genocidal, stays Indian people who prima facie are entitled not to be molested or disturbed, takes those Indian people armed with weapons and on occasion kill them. Now wherever that happens in Canada, it ought to be of concern to this Court if this Court admits that it is arguable that this is an endemic problem.

There is no need to make an injunction from coast to coast. If you make an injunction to one (1) coordinate on the map, to one square inch, the point will be well taken. The Attorneys General across the country will see that this Court has said the jurisdictional issue is going to be addressed. In the meantime, any sensible human being will say “Let us back off the hostilities until we find out where the jurisdiction really rests”. So this Court, without making the injunction from coast to coast, can give guidance from coast to coast. Now, as to whether or not this Court is a court of original jurisdiction, of course it is not. But this Court is the highest court in the last and given the possibility that this Court and the whole system may be engaged in treason, fraud and genocide, for any judge to suggest that the highest court of the land is powerless to grant an injunction which can influence events and preclude injury and death to Canadian citizens is preposterous. Those are my submissions.

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OJ This is my defence – Gustafsen trial – April 25 97

• James Pitawanakwat’s defense at trial, concerning his participation at the Ts’peten Defense

“Whose Land Is It?” Interview with Wolverine, March 1997

“Colonialism Continues” Interview with Wolverine, 1997

GUSTAFSEN JURY STEERED TO CONVICT

• GUSTAFSEN JURY STEERED TO CONVICT                                                                      Settlers In Support of Indigenous Sovereignty     June 30, 1997Bruce Clark interview re. Ts’peten Defense v. Delgamuukw case
• July 1, 1997

Pitawanakwat 2000 – extradition USA to Canada.reasons for judgment

Chronology of Ts’peten Defense by Warrior Publications

Abya Yalla – Wolverine 2016  

• Continental Commission Abya Yala Calls for Extension of Public Inquiry of the Gustafsen Lake Stand-Off

“Native 9/11” – Inquiry demanded into siege at Gustafsen Lake. VMC article, September 2016