the real story behind cayuga

londonontario.indymedia.org.../984

first off sorry if this is in the wrong forum

This incident happened near my hometown of Waterloo and one of the activists (from kitchener-waterloo) mentioned in this article told me what happened to him and his friends while in cayuga.



Well the other day im hanging out with a few friends from highschool, a few more buddies of mine come and their with a guy who i'd never met before but he went to the same highschool as me. This is his story (lets call him charlie to protect his identity)



Charlie hears about this landfill in cayuga which is a small town near Toronto. He said that the native people there had been trying to shut down an illegal landfill with no prevail. Now the reason why this landfill would be considered illegal is because the landfill is on enviromentally-protected land and was also on top of an underground aquifer. Now can you think of a worse place to have a landfill? That just seems like an obvious worst spot ever for a landfill but still they were dumping garbage there.

Well fast forward a few weeks. Charlie and one if his friends (who happens to be a native person) are sitting in a car in the middle of the road that leads to the landfill. They allow all vehicles to pass except for the garbage truck which they manage to stop. The truck driver calls his boss and explains the situations to him, and then the boss calls the police. Well the police show up and approach the car and order them to get out of the car. When Charlie and his friend refused the police approached the car, opened the doors and pulled Charlie and his friend out. Chalrie and his friend never physically resisted they only refused to get out of the car. However, the police threw Charlies friend to the ground and proceeded to stomp on his face, kick him in the ribs and taserd him seven times!

Both of them were brought to an OPP holding cell which hold only a few prisoners. One of the gaurds at this holding cell was a native person and befriended charlie and his friend. This gaurd said that him and his family had been trying to shut down the landfill for years but never had any luck. The gaurd was nice enough to give Chalrie and his friends extra blankets and tim hortons coffee and donuts for their meals.

Charlie is given a list of terms he is to sign in order to be released, after he refuses to sign them the first time the OPP tell him that if he refuses a second time he would be held untill his court date (january 12th i believe) Charlie ends up signing it and is being charged with criminal mischeif

A few days after he is released hes in kitchener-waterloo at his home and CSIS approaches him (CSIS is the canadian equivalent to america's FBI). They question him using the same quesiotn the OPP had asked him and some of their own mixed in. Some questions included - Are you a violent person? Charlie said that everytime he answered a question CSIS would try to rephrase what he said and sometimes make it sound completely different.


This is a prime example of how the government has its own mest interests in mind. why would the government dump garbage on ESL (envromentally sensitive land) that also happens to be on top of an aquifer. Why would the government send CSIS to question a 20 year old kid who was only trying to protect canada? Why is he being charged for trying to shut down a landfill that itself is illegal? And why do the OPP feel the need to taser a peaceful man seven times?

Let me know what you think of this story

1) Don't mess with cops in Cayuga. Just don't. I know, you've got rights and all that, but if you're in Cayuga and from out of town, mind your manners and get out - generally speaking. I've been there. Best avoided altogether, really.

2) The CSIS thing doesn't really surprise me. People are getting very antsy with native protests these days - and going by the indymedia story, it looks like that angle factors into your story. Blockading a garbage dump - a public service -　is sure to get the attention of the feds, especially if the local police have put in a good word for you. See point number 1.

3) Is it really that big of a deal? Not the arrest, but what they were protesting? Here's a link from the HAALT site (leading the protest) showing the size of this dump:

www.haltthedump.ca...

Looks to me to be quite small - 300m x 400m, roughly - and the wetland seems quite contained. Not the best place to put it, but not the worst either. HALT also lists the site as having been open since the 1950s, so... Sounds a bit of NIMBY, frankly, but it's not my backyard, so who am I to judge?

Oh, finally, there's this:

10. Six Nations have an interest in the land where this site is. How this issue will be resolved has not been determined – a huge unknown at this time.

That's from the HALT site as well. That's an odd one, and probably has a lot to do with the CSIS visit. That site is about 50-60km as the crow flies from the nearest Six Nations land. I can't understand their sudden interest here. AS far as I know the only outstanding claim they have is for the welland canal flooded lands, but those are also pretty far from the site in question. If you can fill me in, I'd appreciate it.

So, yeah. Not much of a reply there, sorry.