Claiming Everest

"With time running out before we lost the signal on the dog's GPS, we were frantic. [Jordan decided] "he was not going to let the dog die in there."
"We thought at this point, they would be rescuing the dog. [She] was told that the officers did not enter the reserve as it was too dangerous... They said they would not enter as that part of the reserve was too hostile."
"This story had a happy ending. It could have been much different both for the dog and my son."
"...The whole feeling of being abandoned by the police..."
Torrie Munroe, Ancaster, Ontario

Courtesy of Torrie Munroe    Everest, the 10-year-old golden retriever/Great Pyrenees mix which was taken onto Ontario's Six Nations reserve in a stolen truck.

 

Ms. Munroe decided to take her ten-year-old golden retriever/Great Pyrenees cross Everest with her for a quick run in her 2006 Escalade. She parked in the large lot and dashed into the local Walmart for a few items.And then, fifteen minutes later, Everest was nowhere to be seen, and just incidentally, neither was her vehicle. She immediately dialled 911 and was connected with Hamilton Police.

She remembered that Everest's GPS Tracker was in use and conveyed that information to the police, giving them the precise location of the stolen truck. It was in Caledonia, en route to the Six Nations reserve. The 911 operator informed her that meant it had advanced out of the jurisdiction of the Hamilton police force.

She was transferred to the Ontario Provincial Police. That is the provincial police force many of whose officers rained complaints to the OPP Association when they were ordered by the provincial government under then-Premier Dalton McGuinty to take a hands-off stance when dealing with the reserve, and with the Caledonia area where in 2006 there was a violent standoff with Native 'warriors' over a housing estate that First Nations claimed was on their property, through an unsigned treaty.

The ongoing construction at the housing estate never proceeded. The occupation by 'warrior' protesters who intimidated those resident in their homes and the nearby town residents, and who blocked off access to public highways, destroyed public property, violently attacked innocent people, never was resolved in any meaningful way.

The OPP under orders from the government and government itself obeyed a strictly hands-off attitude of self-preservation. It is too controversial, too prejudicial, too political, too hazardous of reputation to affect discipline and order on aboriginals who enjoy the conceit that they are a law unto themselves, recognizing no law imposed upon them by any level of government within Canada.

Many, if not most ordinary people call it cowardice, a refusal to face reality, to impose the letter of law and justice, because these were no ordinary garden-variety troublemakers and criminal offenders; these were members of the Six Nations reserve and other warriors who came from elsewhere to support them in their blockade of the area.

The Six Nations reserve, furthermore, enjoys the distinction of having its own professional police force, representing the first stand-alone aboriginal force in Canada. So, needless to say, any acts of criminal wrong-doing and violence against others within the reserve situated close by Caledonia, would fall under the jurisdiction of the reserve police...professionals, remember?

Except that their elected chief at the time of the Caledonia housing estate blockade, Bill Montour, informed a journalist that it was unfortunate, but his officers were "severely out-gunned." This, in civilized Ontario. Where neither the government of the day, nor any previous or succeeding governments wanted to tangle with the conflicted political headache of dealing with armed and criminal First Nations warriors.

And nor does their own, unique, and professional police force. And since that time, it appears that nothing much has changed. Ms. Munroe's vehicle with her elderly dog inside, was stolen, it was tracked and it was seen to be within the Six Nations reserve. Hands off. For the OPP dispatcher informed her the Escalade had been sighted, and  yes, there were suspects in view. And then...nothing.

Ms. Munroe contacted her 20-year-old son who attends university in Hamilton and lives there as well. He drove around and wasn't able to see any sign of an OPP presence. He meant to meet them to be enabled to safely collect Everest, to bring him home. He communicated his dilemma to his mother who called the OPP dispatch, and was informed someone from the Six Nations force would contact her.

When she was finally connected to the Six Nations force she was informed they were too busy. When she informed them where the dog was, they informed her right back the area to which the dog had been taken was too dangerous for them as well, to intrude upon. She responded that her son was entering the reserve in any event and at that point Six Nations officers agreed they would meet her son at a local school.

The Six Nations officers, carrying assault rifles, led Jordan Munroe to the truck where they found Everest, fearful and resisting efforts to entice him to exit the vehicle. Jordan lifted the large dog and carried him away. As for the vehicle, in that short time between the heist and the recovery of Everest, the truck was irreversibly damaged to the extent that the insurance company considered it a write-off.

This is the menacing, lawless, frightening reality of some segments of First Nations entitlements in the Province of Ontario. Residents of the nearby cities of Brantford and Hamiltion experience the highest rates of car theft in the province. It is a well-known and observable fact that car-theft busines flourishes at the reserve.