Inside the 237-year-old treaty that's led to a standoff at a former Ontario golf course

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The ripple effects of a treaty signed 237 years ago have led to an occupation of a former municipal golf course in southern Ontario, where a developer hopes to build hundreds of new homes.

The site of the Arrowdale Golf Course in Brantford, Ont. has been under occupation since Oct. 9, when Indigenous leaders and concerned residents began a peaceful takeover of the property.

“This land is part of our hunting grounds,” Trevor Bomberry of the Arrowdale Land Defenders, said in a recent phone interview. “I have a direct connection to the land anyways. This land that I'm sitting on -- this golf course -- my people, the Oneidas, used to live here.”

Branford city council sold most of the golf course in 2020 to Elite M.D. Developments to fund affordable housing projects in the city. The development company plans to turn the 13-hectare land purchase into about 300 single-family homes and townhouses, though the deal has not been finalized.

The city plans to turn the remaining seven hectares into a community park.

“I'd like to see Brantford officials – in respects to the councillors and the mayor -- start working with the Confederacy Council -- the two governments -- and figure out how they're going to move forward from here on out because the mayor has the ability to handle the issues here,” Bomberry said.

Elite MD Developments did not respond to a request for comment.

• READ MORE: 'Quit developing our land': Six Nations protesting sale of Brantford's Arrowdale golf course

In a statement from Oct. 12, Brantford condemned the “unlawful occupation of city-owned lands located at 282 Stanley Street, and of alleged criminal acts that transpired over the weekend on the property, including trespassing, breaking and entering and vandalism.”

In a statement to CTVNews.ca on Oct. 21, Maria Visocchi, a spokesperson for the city, said “it’s important to clarify that there are considerably more non-Indigenous individuals frequenting the site than those who identify as Indigenous.”

“It is a serious and sensitive matter that requires significant input from our federal and provincial partners as well as the Indigenous community, and is not within the city’s jurisdiction to resolve,” she added.

“We are thoughtfully considering options guided by our primary objective to ensure the safety and well-being of all parties on site.”

City council held a special in-camera meeting to address the issue on Oct. 21 and have since indicated its intent to hire an Indigenous affairs adviser to “help lead the city’s efforts to strengthen relationships with First Nations as well as urban Indigenous residents.”

In the meantime, Bomberry said he has no intentions of leaving the property and is prepared to stay through the winter, if needed.

“It's going to be way longer than just the winter months,” Bomberry said.  “Even if they shut the heat off, I was going to bring in a big diesel generator.”

Bomberry and the other land defenders also have the support of some city councillors who want the deal halted. 

“I will continue to be an advocate for investing in our green and open spaces to contribute to the quality of life our residents deserve,” Cheryl Antoski, a Ward 4 councillor, told CTV News Kitchener last month.

“Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever and before anyone accuses me of not caring about affordable housing, I don’t believe that is true of anyone on Council – and it is certainly not true of me. There is just a disagreement on how we get there and what the options are.”

LOCAL TREATY LARGELY IGNORED

This occupation is the latest in a series of tense situations in southern Ontario related to development of land along what is known at the “Haldimand Tract.”

In 2006, protesters took control of a parcel of land destined for a subdivision in Caledonia, about 20 kilometres southwest of Hamilton. In 2020, land defenders occupied another planned subdivision in Caledonia and set up a blockade along a local highway in solidarity of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs.

These disputes, including the one at the Arrowdale Golf Course, largely boil down to frustrations over a treaty signed in 1784 known as the Haldimand Proclamation and the federal government apparently ignoring the agreement it made with the local Indigenous people.

In 1784, Sir Frederick Haldimand, the governor of Quebec at the time, granted a stretch of land six miles on either side of the Grand River to the Haudenosaunee people, also known as the Six Nations, for their help in the American Revolutionary War.

The stretch of land gifted to the Six Nations was dubbed the Haldimand Tract, about 384,000 hectares of southern Ontario that covers almost the entirety of modern-day Brantford, Kitchener and Waterloo, among several other areas of southern Ontario. The Arrowdale Golf Course is about five kilometres from the Grand River.

“Brantford's got to understand that they just can't go ahead and it was rented out as a lease back in the day, well, nobody's been paying rent,” Bomberry said. “Nobody.”

Rowland Robinson, a political science and Indigenous studies instructor at the University of Waterloo, told CTVNews.ca that throughout the years, the Canadian government did not abide by the Haldimand Proclamation, which led to development of the vast majority of the Haldimand Tract.

“(The Haldimand Proclamation) was supposed to transfer sole ownership of the tract to the Six Nations in perpetuity. However, subsequently the vast majority of the tract -- around 95 per cent of it -- was sold off or otherwise -- as the Six Nations often argue -- transferred illegally to settlers by the Crown and subsequently by the Canadian government without the consent of the Six Nations,” he said.

“That has resulted in only five per cent or so of the original tract actually remaining in the hands of the Six Nations themselves.”

In April 2021, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council (HCCC) issued a moratorium on development along the Haldimand Tract, indicating that any current and future development projects within the tract would need approval from the Haudenosaunee.

“It's not like they want to form their own separate state and break off from Canada,” Robinson said. “A lot of them just want to have their voice heard on what's done with their traditional territory because territory means something more to a lot of Indigenous people than just a relationship with property.”

Robinson believes that in cases such as in Caledonia and at the Arrowdale Golf Course, Indigenous land defenders have a case to be heard, but maybe not a legal one.

“If we were to break it down in the most simplistic sense, I believe that there is an ethical case that the Six Nations make, which should be heard and should be listened to,” he said. “Whether or not that is a case that legally has any grounds in Canada is more up for debate because I think the Canadian legal system is essentially set up to disadvantage Indigenous people in these sorts of cases.”

When it comes to how quickly issues like these can be resolved, Robinson was not optimistic that Bomberry and the others at Arrowdale will see movement on the issue any time soon.

“Canada has had some variance of what people would now call the modern land claims process for a couple of decades now, and they are quite often something that takes forever to resolve,” he said. “They can take decades to resolve.”

Robinson added that some land back claims, such as one in the Ottawa Valley, have be going through the official channels for more than 30 years without a resolution.

With files from CTV News Kitchener