Lubicon Lake Indian Nation Little Buffalo Lake, AB 403-629-3945 FAX: 403-629-3939 Mailing address: 3536 - 106 Street Edmonton, AB T6J 1A4 403-436-5652 FAX: 403-437-0719 December 07, 1990 Enclosed for your information are copies of a couple of newspaper articles on conduct of the RCMP investigation into the November 24th raid on the Buchanan logging camp. Apparently unable to create evidence any other way, the RCMP is resorting to the sort of Gestapo tactics so commonly employed in aboriginal communities across Canada -- threats, attempts at intimidation, physical abuse, denying people access to legal counsel, conducting interrogations in garbage dumps and so on. One can only wonder how Canadians would react to being so treated by their scrupulously sanitized, carefully mythologized "Mounties". Such tactics may or may not create evidence, which may or may not be accepted by a Canadian court. One thing's or sure. Gestapo police tactics to forcibly impose illegitimate Canadian Government jurisdiction over unceded Lubicon lands won't lessen increasingly dangerous tensions in the area, and any convictions by the Canadian courts regarding people and territory over which those courts have no legitimate jurisdiction will unavoidably create both political prisoners and an international rallying point for people concerned with abuse of human rights. ***************************************************************************** Attachment #1: The Edmonton Journal, Wednesday, December 5, 1990 LUBICONS' LAWYER ACCUSES RCMP Jac MacDonald Journal Staff Writer Little Buffalo Lubicon band lawyer Robert Sachs claims RCMP have arrested some 15 band members since Thursday but refused them access to a lawyer. All Lubicons arrested have been released but Sachs attacked what he called a violation of their constitutional right to talk to their lawyer. Sachs said the 15 were arrested after being questioned about the Nov. 24 torching of logging equipment. The equipment, owned by sub-contractors working for Buchanan Lumber, was logging on land claimed by the Lubicon Lake band. "They have been going out to guys' places, sometimes at night, sometimes during the day, asking them to go for interrogation," Sachs said. "The guys are declining, so they tell them they are under arrest for mischief," he said. The questioning of the Indians, all males, went on for as long as five hours, before the natives were released without charges being laid, he said. Sachs spoke to The Journal after meeting with Lubicon Chief Bernard Ominayak at his home in Little Buffalo. Sachs said police allowed the natives to make one phone call, but wouldn't allow any of the arrested men to come to the phone when the lawyer called back. "So basically they have been held incommunicado and denied their right to counsel," he said. Police are also intimidating band members in interrogation by telling them they will "bear the brunt of the entire thing," if they don't co-operate, he said. RCMP spokesman Staff Sgt. Lynn Julyan said band members' constitutional rights have not been violated. Sachs "is allowed to go into interrogation if the accused asks," Julyan said. "I'm sure our members would be very, very careful knowing the political situation," he said. Ominayak likened the situation to the actions of the Surete de Quebec in Oka, and said the heavy police activity in Little Buffalo is putting the community on edge. Two or three police cars, marked and unmarked, have been prowling the community for the past few days, he said. "I don't think anybody likes it," he said. "We saw what happened in the Oka situation when the police made a mess of it, and they had to bring in the army. "This is a political problem, not a police matter. It's the politicians that make a mess of it and then they have to send in these jokers," he said. Meanwhile, one of the band members who was detained, Hector Whitehead, 18, said he was assaulted and threatened when he was picked up and interrogated Monday. Whitehead, a slightly-built teenager, said he was poked in the ribs several times by an RCMP constable while they were alone in an interrogation room. He said the constable also delivered a hard blow to him in the upper chest area with his open hand. No bruises were incurred, he said. "They told me if I was going to tell anyone, they were going to smoke me in the head," he said. "They said if anybody asked them (about the hitting), they were going to say 'Me, no, I didn't do anything'," he said. Whitehead said he didn't lay a complaint with the police because he felt they wouldn't do anything about it. Julyan couldn't comment on Whitehead's allegation, but he said the man should lay a complaint with him. "We will investigate it, no doubt about it," he said. Sachs said police drove all but one of the Indians back to Little Buffalo after the interrogations. In the one case, police seized the man's boots from him, and he was released to a house in Peace River, he said. "He had to borrow a pair of boots and then he was riven back here by a member of the band," he said. ***************************************************************************** Attachment #2: The Edmonton Journal, Thursday, December 6, 1990 RCMP INTIMIDATING LUBICONS IN FIRE PROBE, LAWYER SAYS Hands off Chief Ominayak, Mohawk Observer Warns Jac MacDonald and Roy Cook Journal Staff Writers Little Buffalo Peace River RCMP are continuing to use intimidating procedures in their investigation into fires at a logging camp, says a lawyer for the Lubicon Lake Band. A band member was arrested Tuesday and driven in a van to an isolated landfill where he was questioned by two Mounties, Robert Sachs said Wednesday. "They isolated him and it was an intimidating situation for him." The lawyer declined to name the man, saying it would be a violation of solicitor-client privilege. Tuesday, Sachs said RCMP had arrested and released about 15 band members since last Thursday. He charged that those arrested had been denied access to a lawyer, a violation of their constitutional rights. In the legislature Wednesday, Attorney General Ken Rostad said RCMP have denied that band members were kept from consulting a lawyer. He accused Sachs of trying to build public sympathy for the band. Solicitor General Dick Fowler suggested that Sachs direct any complaints to his department. "He'll have to make his allegations to me and not to reporters. I don't deal with complaints through second-hand notice." But Liberal justice critic Sheldon Chumir said if the band's allegations are true, "it's a wholesale abuse of the rights of these 18 to 19 Lubicons". Chumir said the police have no right to arrest the band members just so they can question them about a Nov. 24 fire at a logging camp. Sachs, on Wednesday, called the arrests a "tactic to try to get them to say something." He said he has briefed band members on their rights so that "in the ordinary course of affairs, they are going to be pretty close-mouthed." Chief Bernard Ominayak said he believes the police are trying to put together a case against him through the interrogations of other band members. "I'm sure the target is myself," Ominayak said. "We have talked about what we will do if they take me. Things will go (on), whether I am here or not," he said. Rod Hill, a Mohawk observer from the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ont., warned that if RCMP arrest Ominayak, the situation will deteriorate even more. "If they take Mr. Ominayak in, then they are looking for trouble. Then the war paint comes on," Hill said. Ominayak accused Norcen Energy of taking advantage of the situation to start up 18 oil wells which have been shut in since Nov. 30 last year. The wells are on territory claimed by the Lubicon, as is the land being logged. "They are more or less jumping on the bandwagon when they feel the Lubicon people will be crushed in the process," he said. Norcen is taking a risk, he said. "We are just at this moment sitting back. We can choose when we are going to move and who we are going to move on," he said. Ominayak also criticized native subcontractors who are logging for Buchanan Lumber. "They know very well they are being used. They are merely puppets of Buchanan and the government," he said. One of the native lumberjacks, Frank Noskey of Peavine, said there is no love lost between the native workers and the Lubicons. "Nobody likes them. They are causing trouble, that is why," the 65-year-old Noskey said. He said the situation is causing some of the workers to think about quitting. "They don't like this (situation). They are watching (out) all the time," he said. "There is danger enough in the work besides being worried about somebody coming to shoot you," he said. Noskey, who was present when a group of disguised men set fire to the camp, said he only saw about 10 men, but couldn't recognize any of them. RCMP told him they believed there were about 21 men involved in the raid, he said. Meanwhile, RCMP Staff Sgt. Lynn Julyan denied a band member's allegation that he was assaulted in an interrogation Monday. The constable "did point a finger at him and touch his chest," Julyan said. ***************************************************************************** For more information contact web:car by e-mail or in writing Aboriginal Rights Support Group Committee Against Racism P.O. Box 3085, Station B Calgary, Alberta T2M 4L6