A Friendship Walk was held on this morning on Garafraxa Street in Fergus, hosted by Six Nations of the Grand River.
The event, spanning three days beginning this weekend, hopes to shed light on a decades long legal battle between Six Nations of the Grand River and provincial and federal governments.
Tayler Hill, lands and resources assistant director, says the case will soon be heading to trial. It has a long saga she stated, dating back to the mid 1990s.
“We’ve had a litigation since 1995 against the Crowns in Canada and Ontario, for breach of judiciary duty regarding the sales of the land on the Haldimand Tract,” Hill said.
“The money that’s supposed to be in the trust fund, and any assets that we had that we don’t have anymore. We now have a trial start date for the end of 2024, but we decided it’s time to bring more awareness to the people who live in the tract,” she added.
She continued to say the event aims to educate those in prime proximity to the lands.
“The Haldimand Tract, which includes Fergus, it’s about 950,000 acres. There’s an upper part past Fergus that we’re not walking,” Hill explained.
“We’re starting in Fergus, we’re going to Port Maitland, so it’s from the source of the Grand River, which is in Dundalk, to the mouth which is in Port Maitland. It was land that was granted to us in 1784. We’re just bringing awareness to all the municipalities, to the people who live here,” she concluded.
According to the Six Miles Deep website, 1784 treaty lands were mismanaged and improperly sold to settlers. The band states under the 1784 treaty, the British Crown set aside nearly 1 million acres along the Grand River. Nowadays, only 46,500 acres remain of Six Nations treaty land.
This year, the Missisaugas of the Credit First Nation was added as an intervenor in the case.
Hill says the event will look to cover several eras of Indigenous history.
“We’re still here, we want a friendship moving forward. The idea for the walk today is friendship and education,” Hill stated.
“We want to make sure everyone’s aware of our history and how it’s not the past, it’s still the present. We’re still here.”
“It’s still our history and it’s still our rights,” she added.
Resident Peter Bush, who said he was partaking in the walk, added the fact that making connections between the two parties is crucial.
“It’s a friendship walk, to recognize we need to build relationships between those two cultures – settler and indigenous,” Bush said.
“Towards that end there’s this walk the Six Nations are putting on, walking down to Victoria Park. Then a group of people are going to get on these buses and they’re going off to St. Jacob’s this afternoon, to do it all over again,” he added.
Day two will take place Saturday in Waterloo and Brantford. The final day will be Sunday in Cayuga and Port Maitland. Approximately 50 people attended day one of the event in Fergus.
For more information, visit sixmilesdeep.ca/
