By Doug Whitlow – reprinted with the permission of “The Other Press”, Douglas College. BC.
BRITISH COLUMBIA — The summer of 1995 will be remembered by many BC residents as the summer of native discontent. A series of native blockades around the province reached a climax on August 19, 1995, when the RCMP announced that a group of terrorists had taken over private land on a remote lake near a town called 100 Mile House. What followed became known as the “Gustafsen Lake Standoff,” involving over 400 RCMP police officers, military Armoured Personnel Carriers (APC’s) and an army of journalists from across Canada. By the end of its peaceful resolution on September 17th, 1995, eighteen adults and two youth had been arrested and charged with a variety of offences ranging from mischief to attempted murder.
B.C. Attorney General Ujjal Dosanjh told the public afterwards that, “There is no other side to the story, and that is that a very serious criminal investigation was being very legitimately pursued by the RCMP in a peaceful fashion.” A year later, the public and the jury finally learned that there was indeed another side to the story.
On July 8, 1996, the Gustafsen Lake trial began in a high-security courtroom in Surrey BC, and eight months later, on February 12, 1997, the crown finally concluded its case. Before the defense began its case on February 19th, the jury had a week off to ponder the testimony of 77 crown witnesses whose evidence revealed how the RCMP escalated a land dispute into a deadly standoff.
At the beginning of the trial, the jury heard from Lyle James, the 70-year-old rancher who claimed to own the land in dispute. James testified that he had an argument with Percy Rosette, a Shuswap faithkeeper, allowing Rosette to use a few acres of land by Gustafsen Lake for sacred Sun Dance ceremonies. Apparently, all went well until James learned that a fence had been built to keep cattle from defecating on the sacred Sun Dance grounds.
James sought legal advice on how to evict Rosette and his family from a small cabin that had also been built on the land. James balked at the cost of getting a court order that his lawyer and the RCMP suggested and decided instead to take the law into his own hands.
On June 14th, 1995, he and 12 of his cowboys (one of them cracking a bullwhip) served Rosette an illegal home-made eviction notice.
Defense lawyer Sheldon Tate suggested that the whole standoff might have been averted had James acted in a civilized manner and allowed the matter to be handled in court.
Shelagh Franklin, a non-native representing herself in court, questioned James on the legitimacy of his deed to Lot 114. Throughout the trial she and William Jones Ignace, aka Wolverine, maintained that most of BC remains unceded reserve land and that the 1763 Royal Proclamation protects native land from encroachment by settlers. They claim that because the Shuswap nation never sold or treatied their traditional lands, the land still belongs to the natives and James was, in fact, in possession of stolen property. They also claim that the RCMP was breaking the law because it didn’t have the jurisdiction to arrest anyone on unceded lands. Lyle James maintained that he didn’t have a speck of doubt that the land was his because he paid for it.
The jury heard next from three different native constables who were sent to the camp during the summer to ease tensions. Cst. Andrew testified that he found the people in the camp very friendly, and he enjoyed drinking coffee and talking with them. He said he never feared for his safety and admitted that he even left his gun in the car because he was asked to by the camp occupants.
Andrew also said he had brokered a meeting between all the parties of the dispute to take place August 21st. But before this could happen, Andrew and two other native officers were pulled and an RCMP Emergency Response Team (ERT), was sent in to the camp to conduct reconnaissance.
Jurors heard testimony from the ERT members on how this probe was “compromised” when they were discovered sneaking around the camp at 6 am on August 18th.
Cst. Wilby, the Kamloops ERT leader, claiming that a native in camouflage carried assault rifles and failed to wear any markings to identify themselves as police officers.
Defense lawyer George Wool suggested to Staff Sgt. Porter that the armed men might have been mistaken for rednecks or white supremacist militiamen. Porter conceded that it didn’t occur to him at the time, but admitted that this was possible.
Wood also suggested that the RCMP was more interested in creating a crisis than in investigating the Wilby shooting when they organized a press conference in Williams Lake on August 19th. Wilby admitted he was surprised to learn that no effort was made to cordon off the area as he expected would happen if an officer was shot at. Instead, Superintendent Len Olfert, the Kamloops Subdivision Commander, told the assembled media that terrorists had taken over private land belonging to Lyle James. His justification for the “terrorist” label was the display of weapons seized by Fisheries officers on the Frazer River a week earlier. Ofert claimed that one of the men charged in that incident had a connection with the Gustafsen Lake camp. What he failed to mention was that the weapons were found 30 miles away from the camp.
Wool suggested that roadblocks were not set up because the RCMP wanted to lure radical elements, hippy protesters and malcontents to the camp through the news conference. And then, once those elements had arrived in the camp, they would seal off the area and declare it a standoff. Meanwhile, fishermen, campers and the media were free to enter the Gustafsen Lake area, which the police had declared dangerous and full of terrorists.
The bulk of the evidence heard during the trial centered on the epic three-hour gun battle on Sept. 11, 1995. Eighteen ERT officers and four army personnel testified to paint a clear picture of police aggression. Around noon that day, a video camera equipped airplane called “Wescam” or “Eye in the Sky” had spotted one of the camp pickup trucks being filed with water bottles. The police knew this truck was used as general transport by the camp for getting firewood and water. The truck was “a target of opportunity” and if they had a chance, they would take it out. On Sept. 11, they did so.
The night before, members of Vancouver’s ERT team laid down “datasheet” explosives on the main logging road in anticipation of “disabling” the truck. Jury members physically reacted as they watched Wescam video of the truck being blown up. The video showed the red truck going down the logging road. Suddenly, a plume of dust and smoke rocketed eighty feet skyward and the truck stopped dead. As the dust cleared, the camp dog, which was in the back of the truck, walked around in a daze. Out of the dust a 13 tonne APC, known as a Bison, appeared and slammed into the disabled truck. The petrified dog ran away from the Bison and was shot dead by ERT members standing at the side of the road. Cst. Arthur testified that Sgt. Debolt told Arthur to “put the dog down” so he shot it too. Jury members shook their heads in disbelief.
Vancouver ERT members discovered that the occupants of the truck had disappeared in the dust thrown up by the “disabling device,” which most officers asserted was not a land mine. Cpt. Mercer and his police dog tracked the two occupants to the lake and saw them wading across trying to get back to the camp.
The Bison went to intercept the occupants and waited for them on the other side of the lake. Cpl. Preston testified that as he stood in the Bison hatch he fired two shots in front of the camp members to get their attention and then ordered them to put their hands up and come to shore. He claimed the shots were warning shots and not fired directly at the people in the water. He admitted that there is no criminal code provision that allows warning shots and that a person can only shoot at someone in self-defense or defense of others.
Cpt. Maloney said that as the people were coming ashore with their hands up, bullets began to strike the side of the Bison. The driver, Private Conners, said he turned the vehicle around and saw someone in a treeline fifty meters away. He then heard an officer order the driver to “eliminate the shooter”. Warrant officer Bidwell claimed he saw two people in the treeline and ordered his driver to go after them, but denied telling them to “eliminate” them.
He claimed that one of the people was Wolverine. Conners pursued the person through the woods and testified that the person would periodically turn around and shoot at the Bison as he ran away. Conner admitted that he would have done the same thing if an APC were chasing him.
The Bison hit a tree, which disabled the vehicle’s steering. Conners was able to get the Bison into a clearing and they called for help. Another Bison arrived filled with the Kamloops ERT team, and officers from both vehicles testified that they heard hundreds of bullets strike the vehicles. They tried to get the personnel from the disabled Bison to cross six feet of ground to enter the other Bison, but when only one made it across, they decided it was too dangerous and called in two more Bisons for help.
During all this ERT members stationed across the lake in different locations were firing in the direction of the Bisons, some from distances of 1500 meters away — a distance far in excess of the operational range of the RCMP M-16’s.
More than one officer agreed that some of the fire the Bison took could have been “friendly fire.” Despite claims by some of the members that hundreds of rounds hit the Bison, forensic scientists determined that only 26 bullets hit the disabled Bison.
Defense council suggested that what some ERT members in nearby Bisons actually heard was the other ERT members in nearby Bisons firing thousands of rounds into the surrounding bush.
Officers described this as “cover fire,” which consists of firing into a general area whether a target exists there or not.
To date, the RCMP have not admitted how many rounds were fired that day, but police estimate between 3,000 and 7,000 rounds. At one point police had to break open crates of army ammunition in the Bisons because they had run out of RCMP ammo.
Cst. Wilby admitted he even used a military automatic C-7 assault rifle because his own semi-automatic M-16 had jammed.
The disabled Bison was eventually towed away by one of the other Bisons, but not before a non-native woman, Suniva Bronson, was shot in the arm by a police bullet. Amazingly, despite the incredible amount of police ammo that filled the air, only the camp dog died that day. The public was never told about the dog nor the shot woman.
Look for Part 2 of this series in the September 2 issue of The Two Row Times
