Lawyers with the Huron-Wendat Nation are heading to court Friday seeking a temporary injunction to scrap all archeological approvals issued on digs at significant indigenous village sites, many of them in Greater Toronto.
The band council is seeking a one-month moratorium on all Stage Four archaeological approvals and a stop-work order on digs already on the books.
If granted the order would affect as many as three dozen sites across southern Ontario, including the nationally significant Skandatut in Vaughan, home to 2,000 Hurons 500 years ago. Most of the affected sites are Huron-Wendat, though village sites originally settled by Mohawk and Anishnabe are also involved.
“Skandatut was one of the most important centres in Ontario and nobody has moved to protect it,” said David Donnelly, lawyer for the Huron-Wendat. “Friday, we are going to do our best to try and make that happen.”
Donnelly said the one-month excavation ban would buy the Huron-Wendat and other band councils enough time to go to the Superior Court of Justice asking for permanent protection for some of the most nationally significant First Nations villages.
This is just the latest volley in a battle between the Huron-Wendat and the province over protection of native heritage sites. The Huron-Wendat say Minister of Culture and Tourism Michael Chan is not doing enough to ensure such sites are not destroyed by development. “If the ministry won’t protect these sites, we’ll ask the courts to do it,” Donnelly added.
The Star has learned the ministry is introducing new guidelines on Jan. 1 requiring consultation with First Nations councils before archaeologists start their digs. But Donnelly says the new regulations are toothless and will do little to protect important sites from being paved over.
What’s more, advance notice given by Chan in a cable TV interview two weeks ago may give landowners an opportunity to jump ahead of the new regulations and rush through potentially destructive excavations, Donnelly said.
“That was an … insensitive, bone-headed move,” Donnelly said. “This says to the developers, ‘You now have a few months to push this through.’ Just watch. These sites will start to fall like dominoes.”
Ministry spokesperson Mukunthan Paramalingham said changes have been under discussion with various stakeholders for some time.
“We are aware of the concerns related to consultation by aboriginal communities. That is why the ministry is working toward the release of new standards and guidelines for consultant archeologists,” he said. “Aboriginal engagement will be a key part of the new standards and guidelines.”
The regulations, to be posted for 60 days on the ministry’s website before they come into effect, will require notification and consultation before development sites are archaeologically excavated, but not the protection and enforcement the Huron-Wendat were seeking.
Donnelly says being notified and consulted just isn’t enough. “The developers will invite the First Nations in for a chat and then, nine times out of ten, development will just go ahead.”
“We want the opportunity to get notification way in advance, like Rogers Cable does,” he said. “They get statutory notification and First Nations don’t, and that’s just racism.”
Skandatut, a 15th century Huron site on Pine Valley Dr. in Vaughan, has been under archaeological excavations with earth movers for at least a week.
It was declared a nationally significant historical and cultural village site by prominent archaeologists in 2006. The Huron-Wendat urged the province to halt a dig then happening at the site in hopes of preserving the village, believed to contain as many as 100 longhouses.
At the time, Donnelly called the wholesale destruction of native sites “a national disgrace.”
Two weeks ago, another partial Huron-Wendat village site in Vaughan was excavated with earth-moving equipment. The Huron-Wendat cried foul, saying they had not been consulted and had only learned about the dig by accident.
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http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/859013--first-nation-battles-for-history-in-court