Native protest lacks significant impact

By Rudy Haugeneder

Accidentally sending the police an e-mail with details about a planned demonstration at Bear Mountain curbed the event’s intensity.

“It was a unfortunate,” said protest spokesperson Zoe Blunt.

The leak meant the RCMP and media outnumbered the mostly non-Native protesters at what was billed as a First Nations action on Nicklaus Road.

Part of the National Day of Action to draw attention to First Nations issues, the protest was non-confrontational until Bob Flitton, Bear Mountain’s residential project manager, began arguing with Heiltsuk Nation grandmother and elder Mary Vickers.

Flitton told Vickers that Bear Mountain has negotiated a settlement with the Tsartlip band which claim the property as part of its traditional territory, and the land no longer was part of overall Indian land claims.

Vickers, a member of the Coast Salish tribe to which the Heiltsuk First Nation belongs, said the land continues to be part of overall Coast Salish land claims.

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