Duane Hicks
With the clock ticking until the 99-year lease for Pither’s Point Park expires at the end this month, some area residents made it clear last Wednesday night they want community leaders to listen up, sit down, and come to a settlement that will be fair to the First Nations’ people while still allowing Fort Frances residents to use it.
About 50 people from Fort Frances and surrounding First Nations attended a public forum at the East End Hall organized by concerned citizen Andrew George, with several coming forward to speak their minds.
Naicatchewenin First Nation resident Gilbert Smith said that 99 years ago, the aboriginal people had no intention of giving up land at that time—that’s why there is a lease for the town to use it.
“At the time of these meetings, our people must have convinced these two parties somehow [the province and town] that the land belongs to us. That’s why there’s a lease,” he reasoned.
“I maintain, to this day, it hasn’t changed from my point-of-view. The land is still ours. Period.
“When you lease a vehicle for two years, what happens to the vehicle? You give back the vehicle. You don’t say, ‘It’s mine,’” he argued.
“There’s a simple solution to this,” Smith continued. “Our leaders should come together at the table and start talking about this lease. . . .
“All they need to do is come together at the same table and start talking about it. ‘Are we going to renew the lease or are we going to take over?’” he noted, adding he’d personally like to see a new lease agreement signed and the town continue to look after the land they way it has been.
“We all, from both sides of the culture, use that land whenever we celebrate . . . not only Anishnawbe but non-aboriginal people, too. Sometimes together, like on Canada Day,” Smith told those on hand.
“I don’t want to see all of this escalate to negativity,” he stressed. “I hear people talking about blockades. I don’t want to see that. I hear people talking about protests. I don’t want to see that, either.
“I want it to be resolved at a table like this, face-to-face.”
Couchiching elder William Yerxa said the “100-year lease is up, I want my land back,” but stressed he would not want to see Fort Frances residents prevented from using the park for swimming or events like the annual “Relay for Life” fundraiser for cancer research.
“I would never want anything like that, to deprive people of doing something good,” he added.
Yerxa also noted the four bands have to sit down and talk seriously about the land and its true history, adding not everything that has happened in the past is documented in the written word.
“I don’t like demonstrations, I don’t like sit-ins, I don’t like all these things. It could create violence,” Yerxa warned. “People have to come to the table again . . . but nobody wants to sit down.
“There’s no leaders here [at the forum],” he noted. “Where does it go from here? They’re not here, they’re not concerned.
“They make decisions behind closed doors,” he later added. “You pay a lot of dollars in taxes [but] they don’t listen to you. They close the door on you.”
Former resident Michael Cox, who recalled playing at Pither’s Point as a child, said he felt there were two issues at stake: ownership and value, and what the public wants to use the land for in the future.
While the former is very complex matter involving lawyers and government, the latter can—and should—be talked about by aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities alike.
“Who can remember going to the park on a Sunday afternoon, and if you didn’t get there early enough . . . there was no place to sit in the park,” he said. “Imagine now a Sunday afternoon in the middle of July last year—no one there.
“If we are all excited about the eventual ownership of this land and yet [people] don’t even use it because we’ve all got cottages and other places to go to fish or sunbathe or do whatever we do, why do we get all worked up about it?” Cox wondered.
“It all comes back to the business of ownership, power, and money and all that,” he argued, noting it has to be determined whether people want to use the land for recreation, or an economic development opportunity for the four bands, or something else.
“If there’s a sense that this place, sacred or otherwise, is of value for the use of all the people who live around here as recreational land, let’s talk about what that might be and what we might be able to do to influence whoever the owner is 30 days from now to ensure that use can continue,” Cox continued.
“Because in the end, the users of the land—the people swimming, sitting on the beach, pulling up a canoe—don’t really care who owns the land as long as the usage continues,” he stressed.
Couchiching band member Ida Linklater said she can’t understand why the issue has to be complicated. If the land didn‘t still belong to the four bands, why has the town been paying them “rent” all these years?
Like many others at last Wednesday’s forum, she also questioned the absence of leaders from the four bands and the town.
“We elect those people. We put them in office. Why aren’t they here? she wondered.
Linklater also noted coming to an new agreement regarding the Agency One land is an opportunity to “right” past wrongs.
“If we are going to have a partnership, let’s sit down and talk fairly. What’s fair? Fair means both sides, it doesn’t mean one over here and us over there,” she reasoned. “Our elders know what they are doing. Us, we have to smarten up and listen to them, they know . . . .
“If that land was surrendered, who signed it? Who surrendered it? Ontario can still decide on my behalf today? I don’t think so,” Linklater added. “I’ve got a brain, I’ve got a mind to make a decision.”
George, meanwhile, admitted he isn’t sure what will come out of the forum, but is hopeful people will be motivated to speak up and start writing letters to their leaders about what they want to see happen with the land at Pither’s Point.
“The whole idea was definitely good for discussion and was good to document,” George noted Thursday morning.
“[But] it doesn’t really matter if we sat in a room and talked about it unless we do something as people, and the only thing we really can do is contact various levels of government with letters.
“Write a letter to the editor—that’s really powerful. More powerful than people think,” George added.
“Start writing. Get a friend to write a letter,” he urged. “If they get that many letters and no response, that’s not a good thing when election time comes.
“Definitely, we’ll get a response if we start writing letters,” George stressed. “I don’t know if we’ll find out what’s going to happen May 1 before May 1, but perhaps some of the concerns can be addressed.
“What’s been negotiated, how often do you negotiate, what’s the core process like? These are things none of us know.”
At last Wednesday’s forum, George read a letter dating from September in which legal counsel for the province and federal government warned Fort Frances and the four bands—Couchiching, Naicatchewenin, Nicickousemenecaning, and Stanjikoming—that they must come to a deal between themselves prior to May 1.
“We would like clarify our position to the status of the park once the lease expires in the event other arrangements are not in place,” the letter read. “It is the view of both Ontario and Canada [that] the lands are unsold surrendered lands which would be unencumbered by any lease.
“The lands will not automatically revert to First Nations, nor would the town have any continued legal right to occupy or to use the lands.
“The limited time available until expiry of the lease emphasizes the need for all parties to make a concerted effort to arrive at a satisfactory, mutually-beneficial agreement as soon as possible,” the letter continued.
Overall, George said he was pleased with the turnout.
“Just to see people from the all the communities, to see First Nations’ people talking to white people, talking together, and at the end sharing ideas,” he remarked. “These people didn’t know each other at all, but they were sitting there talking about the issue with a common goal.
“It was really nice to see in that aspect. I think it went really, really well.
“I don’t want to speak for everyone there, but I think the general sense I got was that everyone wants it [the Point] to be publicly-accessible the same way it always has,” George said.
“I got the sense some of the people from the First Nations would like to see it continue to be called a reserve, but [for] the people from town that wasn’t their main concern.
“Their concern was, ‘Can I bring my grandkids there in the summer? Can I still walk there? Can I take my dog there?’”
George noted his only regret was he wasn’t able to get more young people out for the forum.
“I think this is going to affect young people like me, who are going to want to live here for a long time,” he reasoned.
