BY ROGER ANNIS AND PAUL KOURI
SURREY, BRITISH COLUMBIA - A trial of 15 Native Indian rights fighters in this Vancouver suburb ended with harsh sentences against them. Fourteen of the accused were sentenced to prison terms of six months to four years. Another, Jones William Ignace, received four and a half years in addition to the 22 months that he has already been held behind bars.

Dozens of the defendants' supporters were in the courtroom as the sentences were pronounced, and they shouted denunciations of the judge. They then filed outside and staged a rally in front of the courthouse. "This trial is an outrage, a mockery of justice," declared John "Splitting The Sky" Hill to the group and the many journalists covering the trial. He is a coordinator of the Gustafsen 18 Defense Committee.

The protesters then traveled to downtown Vancouver where the Assembly of First Nations was holding its national convention. Some 150 delegates agreed to sign a petition calling upon the British Columbia government to hold a public inquiry into the events that led to the arrest of the defendants in 1995. The outgoing president of the organization, Ovide Mercredi, however, dismissed the call. "If you use a gun," he said, "those are the consequences."

The Assembly of First Nations represents officials of local Indian governments who are elected under the terms of the Canada Indian Act. There are approximately one million Native Indian people in Canada.

The trial stemmed from a massive government and police assault against a spiritual encampment of Native and non- Native people on the shores of Gustafsen Lake in central British Columbia in the summer of 1995. The attack was ordered by the New Democratic Party government in British Columbia with the full backing of the federal Canadian government.

The government sided with a rancher who claimed title to the land and wanted the encampment closed down. Participants said the land was unceded Indian territory and refused to leave. The trial proved that the rancher possessed no legal title to the land. At the height of the assault, some 400 police were mobilized.

It was the biggest police operation in Canada since a similar one against the Mohawk Indians at Oka, Quebec, in 1990. Thousands of rounds of bullets were fired by police during several weeks of siege of the encampment in August and September. One of the soon-to-be accused was shot in the arm. Displays of weapons and warning shots by people in the encampment were presented to the trial by prosecutors as attempts to kill police.

There were 18 original defendants. Three were found not guilty when the trial jury delivered its verdict on May 20. The remaining 15 were acquitted of more serious charges, including two charges of attempting to murder police officers. William Ignace was one of those acquitted of a murder charge. He is 66 years old and is an outspoken opponent of the oppression of Native Indians in Canada.

The trial lasted 10 months, one of the longest criminal trials in Canadian history.

"Given the judge's instructions to the jury, we were not expecting acquittals on all charges," explained Bill Lightbown, a coordinator of the Gustafsen 18 Defense Committee. "He instructed them to ignore all three bases of our defense - that the land in question was unceded and should therefore be subject to a negotiated land claims process, that defendants acted in self-defense, and that they firmly believed their actions to be within the spirit if not the letter of the law."

The trial revealed details of the lies used by police and the government to justify an armed assault of the encampment. One internal police video made public during the trial portrays a sergeant of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada's federal police force, smiling as he tells his colleagues during a police planning meeting, "We're experts at smear campaigns."

In imposing the sentences, the judge fully supported the scope of the police operation.

The outcome of this trial is a sharp contrast to the trial stemming from a similar police assault the same summer against an occupation by Native protesters of Ipperwash Provincial Park in southwest Ontario. There, on September 6, Native Indian Dudley George was shot dead by the Ontario Provincial Police. One of the cops was found guilty of manslaughter this July 3 - but he will not spend a day in jail. He was sentenced to two years of "community service."

Internal notes of proceedings by the Ministry of the Solicitor-General in Ontario were recently obtained by the Canadian Press news agency and they confirm that the order for the assault came from the office of Ontario Premier Michael Harris. The premier wanted protestors "out of the park - nothing else," reported wrote one ministry official.

Paul Kouri is a member of the United Steelworkers of America in Vancouver. Roger Annis is a member of the International Association of Machinists, also in Vancouver.  
 
 
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