Exclusive: The Red Power Conspiracy Theory And Burning RCMP Cars

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Conspiracy theorists are spreading disinformation about the torching of RCMP vehicles 

In the aftermath of the RCMP raid on the anti-fracking blockade in Mi’kmaq territory, there emerged a conspiracy theory that the six police vehicles set on fire were the act of police informants acting as agent provocateurs.

In particular, one individual has been identified and publicly labelled a police informant: Harrison Friesen. It has been implied that he, along with one or two others, were responsible for several Molotov cocktails thrown at police lines and the torching of the police vehicles in Rexton, New Brunswick.

We saw similar conspiracy theories promoted following the Toronto G20 protests during which four cop cars were burned in the downtown core. Conspiracy theorists said the burnt cruisers were “junk vehicles” planted to incite violence or distract anarchists from reaching the security fence, and that the police set their own cars on fire to justify their massive police operation and violent repression of protesters. Not a single piece of evidence ever emerged to prove these theories about the G20 protests.

More than 40 people were prosecuted for their parts in the June 26th rampage where Toronto Police Headquarters was damaged, shop windows smashed and media vehicles trashed by a breakaway Black Bloc group attacking symbols of capitalism.

Toronto G20 police car fire, photo by john hanley (flickr)

But, is it true Harrison Friesen set the RCMP car fires?

His past tells a different story

Friesen, an indigenous rights activist and land defender from Bigstone Cree Nation in northern Alberta came into prominence during the 2010 ‘No Olympics on Stolen Native Land‘ campaign and Toronto G20 as the leader of Red Power United a radical faction from the Red Power Movement.

In May 2010, the media reported, that Red Power activists had announced a day of action on June 24th, just as world leaders would descend on Huntsville, Ont., for the G8 and Toronto for the G20. The group said blockades were planned for either Hwy 400 or Hwy 403. An array of world leaders, including Canada’s PM Stephen Harper, U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, were to be at the G8 and G20 summits.

Indigenous leadership from reserves had also planned to block major highways on June 24th to protest the Ontario government’s plans to apply Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) towards them. But one week before the blockade, the government decided not to apply the HST to indigenous communities, and band councils cancelled the protest.

But Friesen ignored the wishes of the band councils and announced that he would still be running blockades. This, of course, was something his fellow radicals could agree with because of their dislike for the chief and council system.

Harrison Friesen, from Red Power United, speaks at the G20 Toronto Protest

It was expected the blockades would interrupt the G8 motorcade, making its way from Huntsville to Toronto for the larger group of Twenty summit. The goal was to draw international media attention to First Nations issues.

Al Jazeera wrote in the article, Canada’s brewing ‘insurgency’, that Friesen’s plans for the blockade “could wreak havoc on the summit and cast light on Canada’s darkest shame.”

Red Power United had intended to show the world that “everything is not okay in Canada for native people”.

CSIS intimidation 

Next Friesen agreed to meet with a Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agent to discuss his plans for a blockade during the G20. He wasn’t meeting as an informant, but instead brought APTN News along to secretly tape. His intention was to embarrass CSIS with the recording.

Activists were provided with a microphone, then from a distance, APTN shot a video showing a CISIS agent talking to Friesen. The female agent warned, that any blockade on Highway 400 would be a “bad idea.” She’s heard saying “I will tell you straight up, there [are] other forces from other countries that will not put up with a blockade in front of their president”. Friesen, told APTN he viewed the agent’s warning as a “threat.”

The woman on the tape also appeared to be seeking information on the anarchist group that claimed responsibility for the May 18 firebombing of a Royal Bank branch in Ottawa. Along with a statement that made reference to Indigenous rights; and the Royal Bank was targeted because it was a sponsor of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

First Nations groups spoke out publicly about the bombing to establish that it was not done in their name, including the Toronto G20 organizing group for Indigenous Solidarity actions on June 24. Red Power United also spoke out against the arson saying their group denounced such violence.

None of the men linked to the RBC firebombing were Indigenous.

However, the statement condemning the bombing had garnered backlash for Friesen from his radical comrades.

G20, Red Power United, Harrison Friesen (in the Public Enemies T-shirt) engages Toronto police officers. Photo: Isha Thompson Windspeaker

In the end, the G20 blockades never happened. Although it was rumored Friesen’s group had lost support, sources from within the movement told Red Power Media the blockade was called off due to security concerns that another group of protesters were going to attempt to breach the G20 fence on June 24th, possibly endangering peaceful First Nations demonstrators. The blockaders were told to stand down and take on peacekeeping duties.

Intelligence reports 

The G20 summit was one of the largest domestic intelligence operations in Canadian history. An RCMP -led joint intelligence group (JIG) collaborated with provincial and local police to do threat assessments, run undercover operations and monitor activists. The surveillance was widespread. And RCMP records suggest that the reconnaissance continued. Report logs indicate at least 29 incidents of police surveillance between the end of the G20 summit and April 2011.

In Oct 2011, The Globe and Mail reported, that a military intelligence unit had assembled at least eight reports on the activities of native organizations between January 2010, and July 2011. The documents alerted the military to events such as native plans for a protest blockade of Highway 401, and the possibility of a backlash among aboriginal groups over Ontario’s introduction of the HST. The memos also devoted a lot of space to future protests and lobbying on Parliament Hill by native groups, including Red Power United.

Blockade supporters (Harrison Friesen center) confront RCMP officers. Oct 17, 2013.

On October 19, 2013, Terry Wilson wrote an article A Fog Of War Surrounding New Brunswick Protest which included a photo that was being shared on social media as proof that Harrison Friesen is guilty for the burning the RCMP vehicles.

“I began asking questions right away, to anyone I saw posting it” said Wilson, asking for further evidence. “I have been told about his apparent history of violence and extreme actions. Been told that people have spoken to people, who say he did it, And much more like that. But nothing that constitutes as evidence. It seems to be a lot of conjecture by people who are not there and are looking for a way to separate violent actions from the protesters and direct it to the RCMP.”

Smear campaigns

Unfortunately, not all media outlets or bloggers can be trusted either, it is well known co-ops across the country, rabble.ca, occupy, etc., have engaged in tactics of slander against many activists and journalists alike to discredit those they disagree with or eliminate any rivals within circles. Labeling First Nations radicals like Friesen, as CSIS agents, CIA or Police ‘informants’, racists, and just about anything they can come up with to demonize people. They will repeatedly throw out false claims. The Halifax media co-op is also responsible for putting out incorrect information about Friesen in Rexton.

Meanwhile some supporters of Friesen believe a possibility exists he was the target of a RCMP smear campaign to break up an alliance between the Mi’kmaq warrior society and the Red Power United faction, whose plan was to help prolong the siege of SWN fracking equipment and fortify the encampment.

State law enforcement agencies such as the RCMP have been known to spread disinformation and even tell flat out lies. In 1995, during the Gustafsen Lake Standoff, RCMP officers were caught on video planning mass media smear campaigns against the Native protesters.

To backup the claim that police would participate in burning their own vehicles again, conspiracy theorists found an actual example of the RCMP blowing up an oil installation. In 2000, a Canadian lawyer exposed in court a RCMP-big business conspiracy, when a unit of the RCMP executed a false-flag bombing on an oil site in Alberta. The oil company in question colluded with the Mounties in the staged attack, then blamed it on anti-oilpatch activist Wiebo Ludwig.

In the article Statement on Provocateurs, Informants, and the conflict in New Brunswick in Warrior Publications, Zig Zag, writes, according to those re-posting this old bit of news, if the RCMP would blow up an “oil installation” in northern Alberta, what’s to stop them from torching their own vehicles in New Brunswick?

In New Brunswick, we are told, it was to justify the acts of repression carried out by the RCMP. But those acts of repression were already in motion, long before the police cars were set on fire. In their own statements, the RCMP justify their raid on the basis of alleged threats made to SWN employees, the presence of firearms, and general concerns for public safety.

If police are going to go through the efforts of staging an attack on their own resources, it is only logical they would do this prior to a raid thereby justifying the raid itself.  It is highly unlikely they would instruct an informant to do so after the raid has begun, a raid already justified by “public safety” concerns, etc.

In fact, the burning of the six police vehicles appears to be a response to the raid. But there are those who seek to dampen the fighting spirit of our warriors by implying that any act of militant resistance is a police conspiracy. Some of these people are pacifists, ideologically committed to nonviolent acts, while some are conspiracy theorists who see the hand of the “Illuminati” behind any acts of resistance.

RCMP vehicles burn in Rexton NB on Oct 17, 2013. Image: subMedia.tv

Documents give new insight 

Earlier in 2014, a provincial court judge granted an RCMP request to have access to videotape and photographs taken by CBC News and four other media organizations during a clash between police and anti-shale gas protesters in Rexton. A production order was granted by Judge Anne Horsman in Moncton provincial court. The documents filed with the court offer new insight into the events of Oct. 17, 2013, and what led up to it.

• Use of confidential informants revealed in court documents made public

The names of confidential RCMP informants, those suspected of setting fire to the RCMP’s vehicles (Page 11), and witnesses are also among the information. The redacted documents include photographs taken by the RCMP’s high-altitude surveillance plane that show “two individuals who appeared to be responsible for the lighting of three of the RCMP vehicles on fire, however the three other RCMP vehicles were already burning.”

This still image from video taken by the RCMP’s high altitude surveillance plane is the best image police have of the two people allegedly responsible for burning a marked RCMP SUV and an RCMP truck on Oct. 17, 2013.

Police also said someone attempted to burn down the local RCMP station in the middle of the night after the raid. Although, 2 Mi’kmaq warriors were charged with throwing the Molotov cocktails at police during the protest that turned violent. No charges were laid in connection with the RCMP vehicles being set on fire.

A Public Statement by Harrison Friesen:

I want it to be known that I did not light any police cars on fire in Rexton NB and that I am neither a provocateur nor informant. If anything I’m a hated and targeted by law enforcement agencies just like many indigenous activists who defend our sovereignty are. What occurred on social media, was a result of conspiracy theorists,  which was then fueled by those enemies I made because of past mistakes. I was also personally targeted because of my past involvement with AIM protests and the fact that I am supporter of both the AIM Movement and Leonard Peltier. Although Elsipogtog territory is that of the late Annie Mae Aquash and I did not know this going into that action, it still would not have swayed the decision I made to help the Mi’kmaq people protect their water. I only went to Rexton NB as a direct action trainer and peacekeeper from the Red Power Movement, our presence was requested by the Mi’kmaq people from Elsipogtog to help avoid violence. As for the RCMP cars that were burned that day, my only comment is: “It was a protest and people were pissed off because of police repression, it happens.”

Harrison Friesen standing in front of burning RCMP vehicles in Rexton, NB, Oct 17, 2013

This is what one radical journalist, an eyewitness present during the conflict on Oct 17, stated about the burned cop cars and the theories of who burned them:

“To all the people spreading misinfo about provocateurs at Elsipogtog, listen up. RCMP cars were not burned by provocateurs. It was an expression of rage by an angry crowd sick of being trampled by the government. People put their cameras away as the cars were being lit, as to not incriminate comrades and cheered every time one went up in flames. Hundreds of people witnessed this, so drop all the propaganda and snitch jacketing and raise your glass to all the brave peeps who risked life and limb to protect your fuckin water.” – The Stimulator, Oct 18, 2013.

From Warrior Publications:

“In the past, it was common sense that you did not label a person a police informant without substantial evidence. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Informants and police infiltrators have been exposed in the past based on real evidence, through court transcripts or intercepted communications with their handlers, for example. At this point, Harrison is being made a scapegoat by those pacifists and conspiracy theorists who are either opposed to militant resistance on principle, or who see a government conspiracy behind any spectacular event.”

“So far, we have no evidence that Harrison Friesen is an informant or that any agents provocateurs set the cop cars on fire in New Brunswick. And until such evidence is produced, those circulating unsubstantiated claims should cease doing so.” – Zig Zag, Oct 18, 2013.

It is well known there are ongoing efforts by law enforcement agencies to infiltrate, disorganize and destroy Indigenous resistance movements ― such as the one led by Friesen, which the State considers a threat.

The police have also been known to create fake social media accounts used to obtain information and interfere with activists activities. As it turns out, a Twitter user who goes by the handle @BigPicGuy, Mark McCaw was the original source who attempted to label Friesen as an agent provocateur.

Despite social media speculation about police provocateurs torching their own cars, an eyewitness said the vandalism was carried out by known anti-fracking warriors from Mi’kmaq territory.

There is no proof that Friesen or any member of Red Power United were responsible for the throwing of molotovs or the burning of the RCMP vehicles in Rexton. To date, not a single piece of evidence has surfaced to justify the allegation.

Editor’s Note: This blog post was is a collaborative writing with research done by Red Power Media, Staff and originally published in Oct. 2013. It has been revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness. 

Anicinabe Park Occupation 1974: Interviews with 2 Warriors

The following interviews with Lyle Ironstand and Louis Cameron have been reprinted from Paper Tomahawks: From Red Tape to Red Power by James Burke

Warrior Publications

Participants in the 1974 armed occupation of Anicinabe Park, near Kenora, Ontario.

– reprinted from Oh-Toh-Kin, Volume 1 Number 1, Winter/Spring 1992

The following interviews with Lyle Ironstand and Louis Cameron have been reprinted from Paper Tomahawks: From Red Tape to Red Power by James Burke, published in 1976 by Queenston House Publishing.

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From the Red Power Movement to Idle No More

Native American protest, 1971

A former member of the American Indian Movement looked back at the days of Red Power and said, “I didn’t think of it as ‘a string of successes’ at the time, but I guess that’s what it was.  It was a time when you questioned things, when what you hadn’t really thought about became pretty obvious. It was a time when you could make a difference.

Red Power stands for mass, united, militant action. Red Power, like Black Power, set off a wave of action and a level of consciousness in both the indigenous and non-indigenous communities, which has never really ended. Before we get to the parallels between the Red Power movement and Idle No More, let’s look at the international context in which it took place, some of the key events of the older movement, some of the debates that arose during this period, as well as the legacy left behind by this movement.

Most scholars date the movement as roughly between 1969 and 1978, covering events that took place in North America. The end of the 1960s marked the end of the post-war economic boom, and the beginning of a series of recessions. When the economy is in crisis, the corporations and the governments that serve them need to obtain their profits in increasingly aggressive ways. In Canada, the search for new sources of oil, gas and electricity, led to a head-on collision with indigenous communities.

At the same time, there was inspiration from anti-war and liberation movements. As one historian of the movement described the Alcatraz occupation: “The occupation and the Red Power Indian activist movement that followed in its wake took their places alongside the civil rights movement, the black power movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and the many other movements dramatizing the grievances of and demanding rights for women, Latinos, Asians, gays, the poor, and the disabled.”

Members of the Black Panther party in Oakland, protested a firearms ban in front of the California capitol building. Over 30 members were arrested.

American Indian Movement

As early as June 1961, representatives from more than 60 tribes met in Chicago and issued a “Declaration of Indian Purpose”, and growing out of this was the National Indian Youth Council” (NIYC) of young, mainly urban native activists. It was one of the first native activist organizations formed during the civil rights era. Indigenous people adapted the civil rights’ sit-in’s to “fish-ins”: fishing “illegally” in waters traditionally used by native people, and the precipitating events were court restrictions on native fishing. The fish-ins resulted in legal victories, but equally important organizational lessons including alliances between local tribal groups and national organizations, and attracting media attention to influence popular opinion and the courts.

In 1968, The American Indian Movement, best known as AIM, was formed in Minneapolis Minnesota.  It was inspired by the Black Panthers and was set up to address similar problems: police harassment, racism and poverty. It had its strongest bases in urban settings, but quickly became known on large reserves across the US and Canada. The best known AIM leaders were Russell Means, Dennis Banks and Leonard Peltier.

The 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Franciso, was a turning point: led not by local tribes but by a “national” or supra-tribal organization (in this case the “Indians of All Tribes”), and activists began targeting urban centres and/or national monuments or property as “surplus” government land that belonged to the indigenous people.

The occupation began with just over 80 indigenous people on November 20, 1969. Due to the high level of political consciousness that had developed by 1969, there was tremendous solidarity with the occupation—because of the success of battles fought by other minorities, e.g. blacks, and the Vietnamese abroad, and the awareness of the hypocrisy of government policy. The native activists also drew in celebrities like Dick Gregory, Marlon Brando (who refused his Oscar because of the federal government’s treatment of native people), Johnny Cash and Buffy Sainte-Marie.

The Alcatraz occupation lasted 19 months. The impact was electric and widespread. As one person said, “Every once in a while something happens that can alter the whole shape of a people’s history. This only happens once in a generation or lifetime. The big one was Alcatraz.”

Another important event was the “Trail of Broken Treaties”, a caravan of hundreds of indigenous activists from across the country to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) building in Washington in November, 1972, immediately prior to the presidential election.

There was also a shift to longer-term occupations in the early 1970s.  The most famous of these was at Wounded Knee in the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota (the place of the US massacre of the Lakota Sioux in 1890). The conflict in Wounded Knee was related to the internal divisions in the tribe (Oglala Lakota Sioux) over its chair, Richard Wilson, who some saw as corrupt and totally co-opted by the BIA. Wilson’s opponents, supported by 250 AIM members from outside Wounded Knee, led a siege for 71 days.

An American Indian Movement (AIM) guard posted at a roadblock outside Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in February 1973.

Subsequent tribal-based occupations occurred in 1974 and 1975, and were of varying duration, in locations everywhere from New York state, to Wisconsin, New Mexico, South Dakota and Washington.

In the early 1970s, there was a shift from “supra-tribal” events to issues more rooted in specific communities, and AIM re-focussed from the city to the reservations. By 1975, AIM began to make a priority of establishing or strengthening connections with indigenous peoples internationally, leading to an AIM offshoot called the International Indian Treaty Council.

Red Power movement

The precipitating event for the Red Power movement in Canada was the federal government’s release of its “Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy” or a “White Paper” for discussion, in June, 1969—the same year as the Alcatraz occupation. This document sought to extinguish all distinct status for First Nations people, the very status guaranteed under existing laws. The White Paper would have been the death knell of distinct First Nations cultures and rights, as paltry as these rights were under the Indian Act (enacted in 1876). The assimilation goal that underpinned the White Paper represented a continuation of longstanding colonial policy of the Canadian state.

As the First Nations writer James Burke noted: “Given all this , one would think that the Indian’s special status is more of a millstone than a crutch. Not from the Indian’s standpoint, though, for poor housing is better than no housing, inadequate education is better than no education, and inferior medical care is better than no medical care…But there’s more to it than that. There’s the land – the land upon which thousands of Indian people reside and believe to be theirs, as well as other vast tracts which they claim belong to them due to treaty or aboriginal rights. Without land, Indians would be unable to sustain the idea of native nationhood. As they would put it: where there’s land, there’s hope. Hope for independence both cultural and economic.”

But Red power was already evident in Canada before the release of the White Paper. In March, 1969 at a conference of the Manitoba Indian and Metis Conference, Jeannette Corbiere from Toronto stated: “the only way to gain equality is not to ask for it, but rather to lay claim on it… We will not only rock the boat, we will sink it if need be.”

Key events

What is striking about the Red Power era, and what distinguished it from other periods of native resistance, is the frequency of actions taken, and the direct action focus they took—as opposed to the lobbying efforts which were the main tactic used previously.

In January 1970, 200 Indians and Metis occupied the Alberta “New Start” Centre in Lac La Biche because the government cancelled its research programs. The summer of 1973 saw the occupation of the office of the Department of Indian Affairs in Ottawa, and the occupation of the Minister of Indian Affairs office in Kenora. The summer of 1973 also saw the Cache Creek, BC highway blockade to protest poor housing conditions on reserve. On October 16, 1973, hundreds of Mohawks fought police and smashed windows of band council offices on the Caughnawaga reserve in Quebec.

The 1974 armed occupation of Anicinabe Park, near Kenora, Ontario.

The year 1974 was seen by some as the turning point in the Red Power movement in Canada. One of the key events was the occupation of Anicinabe (municipal) Park in Kenora, Ontario, in July 1974. Louis Cameron from the nearby White Dog reserve organized a conference in the park, but participants decided they needed to do more to assert their rights and make their demands heard. An Ojibway group said the park had been wrongfully taken from them by the city of Kenora in 1959, to whom it had been sold by the federal government without Ojibway permission.

But the July conference created an atmosphere to articulate other demands e.g. an end to police harassment in Kenora, better medical and dental services, removal of a particular judge (S.J. Nottingham), creation of a police college for First Nations peoples and cultural training for white police, creation of a local human rights committee, and appointment of First Nations justices of the peace.

This occupation was the first time in this period that First Nations people used arms to increase pressure to ensure their rights.  The occupation lasted 39 days, involving a stand-off between 100 First Nations participants (including support from members of AIM) and police. There were dozens of arrests but subsequent acquittals, and the leaders of the main national First Nations political bodies spoke out against the action as condoning violence.

The next main event that year occurred on Parliament Hill in September 1974 immediately after Anicinabe. The event was planned as a demonstration to raise awareness of the plight of indigenous people.  To build support, Louis Cameron, a leader with the Ojibway Warriors Society and of the Anicinabe occupation, went around Canada and launched the Native People’s Caravan to get people to Ottawa by Sept. 30. He succeeded in attracting 900 people.

On Parliament Hill, there were three lines of police. Indigenous people were unarmed, but police had bayonets and tear gas, and charged on the native people.

1974 Occupation of Anicinabe Park. 2/2

As Cameron observed, “I think that the event of the riot police attacking the people of the demonstration was a retaliation of the federal justice department of Canada and also particularly the Province of Ontario to retaliate on the native people for their armed insurrection at Anicinabe Park…We took up guns and freed ourselves from that (government dictatorship) but in return, the police and the government came running down with guns and clubs.”

There were numerous events in BC as well. For example, in 1975, there were five different protests. In March, 250 people from the Nazko and Luskus bands near Quesnel declared themselves sole occupants of hundreds of square miles of land in central BC. In April, Quatsino band members threatened to shut down the copper mine at Port Hardy, Vancouver Island, unless the company agreed to make $600,000 payments twice a year to compensate for the destruction of marine life in Quatsino Sound.

In April, 60 native people demonstrated on Highway #3 in the southern interior of BC near Hedley, over cut-off land claims discussions. Those from the Kitsegukla band set up a blockade on the road leading to the Kitsegukla Valley logging operation over land claims. A hundred members of the Seton Lake band blocked the BC Rail in near Lillooet, halting a Vancouver-based passenger train. The April conference of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs saw 188 chiefs renounce all federal aid, and give a statement that their members would no longer apply for government permits to hunt and fish.

There was also opposition to government energy plans. The James Bay Energy Corporation was diverting major rivers to create hydro power, but there was resistance by the James Bay Cree and Inuit communities. There was also the fight of the Dene people against the MacKenzie Valley pipeline in the Northwest Territories. The Dene resistance arose in response to the process, and to the fact that they had a land claim of some 400,000 square miles in the area.  The NWT Indian and Metis Federation stated it would use “any means necessary” (à la Malcolm X) to defend the claim.

In 1975 the Dene people called for independence and self-determination within the country of Canada.  This struggle evinced considerable support from the Canadian population. As described in one sympathetic newspaper – “Native activists have also sought support from organized workers and northern whites who are concerned about the land and the environment.  In a most significant development, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union and the United Auto Workers have taken a stand in favour of a just land settlement BEFORE the pipeline is built. “

Debates within the Red Power movement

One debate was about tactics. One objection to AIM was that it was not sufficiently rooted in local communities to have credibility e.g. its members wouldn’t know local habits or culture. Disagreement about tactics was somewhat related to generational differences, and somewhat related to lack of real inclusion.

In Canada, another debate emerged between some First Nations men and women. First Nations women were discriminated against under Sec. 12 (1) (b) of the Indian Act whereby First Nations women who married non-First Nations lost their status as registered Indians (vs. First Nations men who married non-First Nations women did not).  Jeanette Lavell took the case of discrimination up legally. In 1974 she went to the Supreme Court of Canada and she lost the case, which led her to form Indian Rights for Indian Women-which led to debate within native communities. This particular struggle was later won through Bill C-31 passed in 1985.

Other debates took place between Red Power and government-funded Indian organizations. Government relied on the organizations they funded to minimize the effects of the Red Power movement, to dampen militancy.

For example, at a March 1969 Manitoba conference, Dave Courchene from the Indian Native Brotherhood denounced Red Power as “swelled heads”, and media depicted INB as the “reasonable” ones. These government-funded leaders were referred to as “uncle tomahawks”–though people like Courchene himself would denounce the government five years later when its “partnership” initiatives did not live up to their name e.g. only token native involvement in education programs.

Other debates were created by conservative thinkers within the native community. The best example comes from a lawyer, William Wuttunee, from Alberta. He wroteRuffled Feathers: Indians in Canadian Society, and agreed with those on the right that the best way forward for native people was to assimilate into Canadian economic and political life.  He supported the 1969 White Paper and, not surprisingly, was called upon frequently by the federal government to act as a native spokesman.

Relationship with other progressive forces in Canada

Many native people understood the links between their oppression and corporate greed. There were explicit anti-capitalists in the movement, just as there are today with groups like Idle No More.

Idle No More National Day of Action

Some Red Power activists were heavily influenced by nationalist struggles for self-determination happening in Africa and Vietnam, and in their ideological explorations found that Marxist explanations of the causes of oppression and imperialism made the most sense.

Maoist thought and maoist groups in Canada, like In Struggle and the CPC-ML, attracted some native activists like Vern Harper, who offered the following analysis of events in 1974:  “One of the key factors that made ’74 a turning point was that native activists, for the first time in their generation, realized that there was non-native support for their cause.

The isolation of the natives, used by the state, is no longer effective…We see trade unions, progressive left groups, church groups such as the Quakers, even liberal elements give support, such as funds, telegrams, participating in demonstrations, letters to Members of Parliament denouncing the tactics of the state, to help us. There’s a more militant and revolutionary theme emerging, which is beginning to get support from all elements of the native movement…Native and non-native people are seeing that capitalism doesn’t serve the masses.  It only protects the capitalists’ interests…”

Another native Marxist was Howard Adams from Saskatchewan. In 1975, he wrote: “If Native organizations are not politically active on a regular basis they cannot come together with non-Native people – it institutionalizes special status and gives a message to non-Natives that says ‘our problems are different form yours and our solutions are different.’ However, in fact, the problems are the same in the end; a small number of rich people get all the benefits of the capitalist society, and the vast majority, Native and non-Native, face constant insecurity and poverty.”

Native people and non-native people had lots of hope whenever the NDP was elected. In 1972, the NDP was elected in BC. Premier Dave Barrett appointed a First Nations leader Frank Calder to his Cabinet, but as a “minister without portfolio” – so Calder had no effective mandate. This same duplicity was shown by the NDP in Manitoba. During the Berger inquiry into the MacKenzie Valley pipeline meeting in Winnipeg, the NDP declined to make a submission. They knew that if they supported the pipeline, they would be unpopular with ordinary people. But if they spoke out too loudly against the pipeline, they would be hypocritical, as such opposition would fly in the face of their own behaviour towards native people, e.g. through support of hydroelectric projects in northern Manitoba (flooding of South Indian Lake) and forced relocations.

Challenges, successes, and decline

Historically, and to this day, federal and provincial governments divide indigenous people by alternating their point of contact between national leaders and Band leaders, whatever will help the government get through its agenda the easiest. Outside the movement, both the NDP and labour leadership failed to consistently support indigenous struggles in a vocal, visible way, even though individual members of NDP and labour were counted as allies by activists. Internally, there was a lack of structure (e.g .AIM to this day prides itself on its loose structure), illusions about international law and the UN, and a belief that self-determination on its own would solve the problems of poverty and inequality.

But the challenges faced by the Red Power movement were far outweighed by the tremendous legacy left by the actions in the 1970s. There was a high level of activity coinciding with self-determination movements in Africa and Asia and liberation movements in North America, greater regional and national coordination, greater independence from government funding, and recognition of native bureaucracy as part of the bigger problem.

Among the victories were: forcing the government to withdraw its 1969 White Paper (in 1973), cultural renewal (which also affected non-indigenous people), funding for social programs, increased access to education and increased content (e.g. native studies programs), increased confidence to resist with greater frequency and militancy of actions.

The end of the movement in the late 1970s and into the 1980s coincided with a downturn in struggle internationally, and across various movements that had been ignited after 1968. The decline of Red Power was also due to government co-optation, by including indigenous “leaders” in policy consultation, and police repression (similar to what happened to the Black Panthers). The US arrested AIM leaders Leonard Peltier and Anna Mae Aquash, and infiltrated the organization, and Canada repressed warrior groups with surveillance, police break-ins and arbitrary arrests.

Comparison with Idle No More

The thread between the Red Power movement and Idle No More is with the 1990s confrontations in Oka and Gustafsen Lake, plus the native youth movement and warrior societies of the early 2000s. Indigenous activists look to the histories of both their own peoples, as well as struggles elsewhere. Red Power activists were inspired by the Black Power and Vietnam struggles.

The Warrior Societies were inspired by the Zapatistas, the Palestinian Intifada, and by the analysis of capitalist globalization and the need for alliances among indigenous peoples, students, workers and all oppressed people. Idle No More comes on the heels of the Arab Spring, Occupy movement, and the “printemps érable” in Quebec.

Mohawk Warriors in Kanesatake in the summer of 1990.

There are also a number of differences. First, Red Power was led more within the US while INM began within Canada.  Second, like the civil rights, Black Power and anti-war movements, the public face of Red Power was male-dominated—whereas the public face of INM is much more female, alongside other movement leaders like Naomi Klein, Vandana Shiva, Arundhati Roy, Maude Barlow, etc.

Third, whereas Jeanette Lavall was opposed by many Chiefs and Councils for fighting discrimination against First Nations women, there is more unity today between men and women—with women leading the movement, challenging the oppression of indigenous women (like the missing and murdered aboriginal women), with support from INM men. Fourth, while both movements had a level of support from non-indigenous people, INM has explicitly called for, and achieved greater support—including internationally. Fifth, the root causes of the issues people are facing are increasingly being identified with capitalism, to a greater degree than took place in the movements of the 1960s and 70s. Finally, there is a greater connection between militants in one movement and another, e.g. in the climate justice movement.

All of these factors mean that the potential for non-indigenous activists to link arms with their indigenous sisters and brothers is higher than when Red Power first made its mark. As Quebec students wrote in solidarity with Idle No More: “Indigenous peoples have been the greatest victims of this elite’s agenda to plunder resources in Quebec and Canada. But in the territories of the Algonquins, the Innu, the Mohawk, the Atikamekw, and elsewhere, they have also been this agenda’s fiercest opponents.

Because of their aboriginal rights, Indigenous peoples have the best chance to stop the destruction of our shared lands and waters and to manage them sustainably. We should support these struggles, in the name of mutual respect. We want to think and act for the generations to come. Now is the time for overcoming old divides by building new alliances. For too long native and non-native peoples have been pitted against another, precisely because this elite feared nothing more than the discovery of our mutual interests.”

Written by: Valerie Lannon at socialist.ca

Photos included by Black Powder, RPM Staff