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 29, 1991 Attached for your information is a copy of a letter to the Editor of the Edmonton Journal regarding the continuing Lubicon tragedy. * * * * * THE EDMONTON JOURNAL, Sunday, December 29, 1991 LUBICON PEOPLE NOT ALONE IN BATTLE I am a Mohawk from the Six Nations at Grand River, member of the Iroquois Confederacy. We have been monitoring the Lubicon situation for years now, sending delegates, researchers and chiefs who report back to our nation. The Lubicons are a kind, sincere people who have lived with dignity and honor for centuries. This land is our homeland, it is all we have, we must protect it. The Lubicon territory has been severely destroyed, their lives turned inside out by your people, governments and corporations. The claim of genocide and ethnocide is proving, sadly, to be a real one. Many Lubicons have died over the past years (22 in one year, many of them children). Their people live in Third World conditions and are not healthy, all while billions in black gold lines government pockets. The governments work overtime to undermine the political structure of the Lubicons and Indian Affairs Minister Tom Siddon returns to town to declare, not only are we not going beyond $49 million, we are offering less. It sickens me. These tactics are centuries old: kill their livelihood, starve the people, divide them, and then come in for the kill. How can you people allow your governments to silently destroy a people? As you carry on with your holidays, Lubicons are being threatened with imprisonment. Where is your sense of Christian generosity and values? We cannot tolerate our brothers and sisters being destroyed in 1991-92. We will not stand by idly as the Lubicons withstand yet another attack on their nation. We have supported them and will continue to support them morally, spiritually and physically. We are not alone. Elijah Harper, the Assembly of First Nations and others are prepared to move into action at Chief Bernard Ominayak's request. Do we need more blockades, downed power lines and so on to help get done what should have been done 50 years ago? It is in the judges' hands, the premier's, federal officials', yours, mine and most important Ominayak's. The Iroquois understand that what happens to the Lubicons will reflect on all of us, that if society can do this to them, it can do it to us. The Lubicon people are not alone. Rod Hill Ohsweken, ONT