Conflict In Caledonia

On 28 February 2006, the Six Nations of the Grand River blocked workers from entering a half-built housing development in southern Ontario. They renamed the land Kanonhstaton, “the protected place.” The protest drew national and international attention to the issue of Aboriginal land rights and sparked a series of ongoing events known as the “Caledonia Crisis.” Laura DeVries’ powerful account of the dispute links the actions of police, governmental officials, and locals to entrenched non-Aboriginal discourses about law, landscape, and identity. It encourages non-Aboriginal Canadians to reconsider their assumptions – to view “facts” such as the rule of law as culturally specific notions that prevent truly equitable dialogue. DeVries not only reveals the conflicting visions of justice held by various parties to the dispute, she also seeks out possible solutions in alternative conceptualizations of sovereignty over land and law embedded in the Constitution.

Driven by its strong narrative, Conflict and Compromise presents Canadian history chronologically, allowing a better understanding of the interrelationships between events. Its main objective is to demonstrate that although Canadian history has been marked by cleavages and conflicts, there has been a continual process of negotiation and a need for compromise which has enabled Canada to develop into arguably one of the most successful and pluralistic countries in the world. The authors have drawn from all genres characterizing the present state of Canadian historiography, including social, military, cultural, political, and economic approaches. In doing so their aim is to challenge readers to engage with debates and interpretations about the past rather than simply to study for an exam. The second volume begins with the nation-building project that got underway in 1864 and ends in the present. The book is illustrated with over 60 images, maps, and figures, all designed to support its mission to provide intellectual curiosity.

War and Other Means describes and analyses the practices of war, the ‘objects of war’ and the conventions of the use of violence in Houaïlou, New Caledonia. It focuses on the colonial repression conducted in 1856 and after, the anti-sorcerer hunt in 1955, the independence mobilisation in the 1980s and the village feuds in the 2000s. Through this archaeology of violence, it reports on the practical inventiveness, intelligence and cunning of the Kanaks involved in social, often violent, conflicts. The use of archival material and recourse to the oral stories gathered from the inhabitants of Houaïlou restores the depth of these historical moments and the nested contexts of the political action that unfolded; it also questions the value and limits of fieldwork investigation. These episodes are moments of change in the social, administrative, land and political organisation of New Caledonia; they make it possible to understand, from France’s takeover to the present day, the real modalities of implementation of colonial and postcolonial governmentality. The attention given to the invention, the importation or the adaptation of repressive techniques, closely linked to the French experience in Algeria, opens up a geopolitics of colonisation. Through this detailed description of the social logics of conflict, Michel Naepels also invites us to reflect on the place of European fantasies on violence and on the representations of otherness. For the French edition, Conjurer la guerre. Violence et pouvoir à Houaïlou (Nouvelle-Calédonie), published by Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, please visit editions.ehess.fr/ouvrages/ouvrage/conjurer-la-guerre

Shortlisted for the History Book of the Year category of the 2009 Saltire Literary Awards The Spanish Civil War was a call to arms for 2,300 British volunteers, of which over 500 were from Scotland. The first book of its kind, Homage to Caledonia examines Scotland's role in the conflict, detailing exactly why Scottish involvement was so profound. The book moves chronologically through events and places, firstly surveying the landscape in contemporary Scotland before describing volunteers' journeys to Spain, and then tracing their every involvement from arrival to homecoming (or not). There is also an account of the non-combative role, from fundraising for Spain and medical aid, to political manoeuvrings within the volatile Scottish left. Using a wealth of previously-unpublished letters sent back from the front as well as other archival items, Daniel Gray is able to tell little known stories of courage in conflict, and to call into question accepted versions of events such as the 'murder' of Bob Smillie, or the heroism of 'The Scots Scarlet Pimpernel'. Homage to Caledonia offers a very human take on events in Spain: for every tale of abject distress in a time of war, there is a tale of a Scottish volunteer urinating in his general's boots, knocking back a dram with Errol Flynn or appalling Spanish comrades with his pipe playing. For the first time, read the fascinating story of Caledonia's role in this seminal conflict.

It officially began on February 28, 2006, when a handful of protesters from the nearby Six Nations reserve walked onto Douglas Creek Estates, then a residential subdivision under construction, and blocked workers from entering. Over the course of the spring and summer of that first year, the criminal actions of the occupiers included throwing a vehicle over an overpass, the burning down of a hydro transformer which caused a three-day blackout, the torching of a bridge and the hijacking of a police vehicle. During the very worst period, ordinary residents living near the site had to pass through native barricades, show native-issued "passports", and were occasionally threatened with body searches and routinely subjected to threats. Much of this lawless conduct occurred under the noses of the Ontario Provincial Police, who, often against their own best instincts, stood by and watched: They too had been intimidated. Arrests, where they were made, weren't made contemporaneously, but weeks or monthlater. The result was to embolden the occupiers and render non-native citizens vulnerable and afraid. Eighteen months after the occupation began, a home builder named Sam Gualtieri, working on the house he was giving his daughter as a wedding present, was attacked by protesters and beaten so badly he will never fully recover from his injuries. The occupation is now in its fifth year. Throughout, Christie Blatchford has been observing, interviewing, and investigating with the tenacity that has made her both the doyen of Canadian crime reporters and a social commentator beloved for her uncompromising sense of right and wrong. In Helpless she tells the full story for the first time - a story that no part of the press or media in Canada has been prepared to tackle with the unflinching objectivity that Christie Blatchford displays on every page. This is a book whose many revelations, never before reported, will shock and appall. But the last word should go to the author: "This book is not about aboriginal land claims. The book is not about the wholesale removal of seven generations of indigenous youngsters from their reserves and families - this was by dint of federal government policy - or the abuse dished out to many of them at the residential schools into which they were arbitrarily placed or the devastating effects that haunt so many today. This book is not about the dubious merits of the reserve system which may better serve those who wish to see native people fail than those who want desperately for them to succeed. I do not in any way make light of these issues, and they are one way or another in the background of everything that occurred in Caledonia. "What Helpless is about is the failure of government to govern and to protect all its citizens equally."

The First and Second World Wars were two of the most momentous events of the twentieth century. In Canada, they claimed 110,000 lives and altered both the country’s domestic life and its international position. A Nation in Conflict is a concise, comparative overview of the Canadian national experience in the two world wars that transformed the nation and its people. With each chapter, military historians Jeffrey A. Keshen and Andrew Iarocci address Canada’s contribution to the war and its consequences. Integrating the latest research in military, social, political, and gender history, they examine everything from the front lines to the home front. Was conscription necessary? Did the conflicts change the status of Canadian women? Was Canada’s commitment worth the cost? Written both for classroom use and for the general reader, A Nation in Conflict is an accessible introduction to the complexities of Canada’s involvement in the twentieth century’s most important conflicts.

This book tells the story of how two of America's closest allies, Canada and Britain, have sought to reconcile their security concerns with their legal obligations during two of the most significant international conflicts since the Second World War.

Can blockades and occupations be catalysts for positive change in Canada's Aboriginal communities?