Canadian Indian Leaders Urge Non-Violent Tactics World Experts On Civil Disobedience Come To Aid Of Frustrated Tribes

Frustrated and fearing violence, Canadian Indian leaders are suggesting that the civil disobedience tactics pioneered by Gandhi might be the only option left to achieve political goals without bloodshed.

Recent armed standoffs between Indian militants and security forces, coupled with deep impatience over stalled land-claims negotiations, have pushed Indian chiefs to an almost desperate point.

At a three-day conference that concludes here today, chiefs from across Canada shared their fears and sought new strategies to convince young militants that Indians can wrest political and economic power from the government without resorting to violence.

Joining the first-of-its-kind conference were police officials and non-native experts in civil disobedience, including an American civil rights movement veteran and two men from India who work at promoting Mohandas Gandhi’s non-violence philosophies. A pamphlet circulated to conference delegates outlined the credos of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

“We will not give up, but we don’t know what to do,” said Ovide Mercredi, head of the national assembly of chiefs. “We want to convey to the Canadian people that violence is not the answer. But what is the answer?”

Chiefs recounted in detail their experiences trying to defuse recent standoffs, including one at Ipperwash Provincial Park last year in which an Indian was shot dead by Ontario police.

Tom Bressette, chief of the Ojibway community at Ipperwash, said the police task force had seemed eager for confrontation, using sophisticated equipment ranging from flak jackets to night-vision goggles.

Military equipment also was used last year at Gustafson Lake in British Columbia, where several shootouts occurred during a prolonged standoff between Royal Canadian Mounted Police and militants occupying ranchland that they said was a sacred Indian burial ground.

Among Thursday’s speakers were Jean Tricky, one of the nine black students who desegregated public schools in Little Rock, Ark., under U.S. Army protection in 1957 and Neelakanta Radhakrishnan, director of a Gandhi institute in India.

He met Mercredi when the chief visited India last December, and said he was fascinated at the idea of trying to apply Gandhi’s ideas to the struggles of Canadian Indians.

But Radhakrishnan stressed it wouldn’t be easy: “What happened in India cannot happen here. It’s a different culture.”

Canadian Indians are somewhat ambivalent when it comes to confrontation. They consider themselves non-violent, and have a long history of patience and compromise even when victimized by manipulative governments. Yet they also speak reverently of their “warriors” and are reluctant to repudiate the militants who do take up arms.

The following fields overflowed: DATELINE = NORTH VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA