‘I'm sick and tired of the poverty, the sadness'

from The Globe and Mail

CAROLINE ALPHONSO

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

DESERONTO, ONT. — Ask Shawn Brant why he's out here dressed in combat fatigues, blocking highways and rail traffic, and he quickly rhymes off a host of reasons why Canadians should pay urgent attention to native needs.

But ask him what first motivated him to take on such a role, and the Ontario Mohawk falls silent.

It was 1989, and Mr. Brant's wife was late into her pregnancy with twin girls. While she was drawing water from the well because they had no running water, she had an accident. The girls died shortly after birth.

“I have three children. I should have had five,” the 43-year-old said Friday, his voice trailing off.

It was in those moments that the issue of aboriginal poverty struck him hardest, motivating him to become the figure he is today: a man not afraid to take military-style action to voice native concerns.

“I thought it was unfair that it happened at all,” he said of the death of his twins. “It certainly brought up issues like poverty and polluted water [on native reserves].”

Mr. Brant has said he has a number of heroes, including Jesus, Malcolm X and Geronimo.

“I grew up in a house with no running water and electricity,” he told the CBC. “On the wall was a poster, no pictures. Just a poster of Geronimo with a rifle in front of him, that famous picture – it says: ‘I'd rather be red than dead' – I grew up looking at that. If I could be seen to be a little bit like that, I'd be pleased – but that's hard.

“I've been told a lot about principles and philosophy. I guess I generally always took to learn when I heard about Gandhi. I never really gave much consideration because we are not people that just sit on our hands, but I actually found out that it's not what it was about. Malcolm X is a huge hero of mine. And it's kind of embarrassing to say, but I also looked as one of my heroes as Jesus. Not in a religious sense at all, but as a man, as a true great revolutionary who ran around. And they were armed – dozens or so of them – and they knocked the hell out of people, kicked tables over, booted people out and lived a life of righteousness and truth and honour, and that kind of struck me as well.”

That very much, as well, is one of my heroes, but again, not in a religious sense.”

Mr. Brant, a slight, tall man with hair just below his shoulders, has had his share of clashes, one of them resulting in him taking up temporary residence in a school bus. He has been known to trash the offices of politicians, including Jim Flaherty's Whitby constituency office in 2001, when Mr. Flaherty was Ontario's finance minister.

Over the past two days, as part of the National Day of Action, the ringleader managed to shut down Canada's busiest highway for 11 hours, as well as place blockades on a section of a secondary highway and a stretch of nearby railway track.

This comes despite Phil Fontaine, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, calling for no disruptions – and Mr. Brant's own chief distancing himself from blockade-type action.

But Mr. Brant has his own tight-knit band of supporters within the Bay of Quinte Mohawks, many of them teenagers who set up camp overnight blocking the secondary highway. He gathers them around several times to explain the situation.

, slowly puffing on his cigarette. They listen attentively to his requests.

“We just didn't see any other way ... in dealing with these issues,” said Mr. Brant, who, moments before, had brokered a deal with the Ontario Provincial Police to reopen Highway 401.

“… nothing has ever made us a priority within the government,” he said. “I'm absolutely sick and tired of having our kids committing suicide, or drinking polluted water. I'm sick and tired of the overcrowding, the poverty, the sadness.”

The protest prompted the OPP to issue an arrest warrant for Mr. Brant on charges of mischief.

This is not unfamiliar territory for Mr. Brant. He is currently out on bail on mischief charges and for disobeying a court order in connection with the 30-hour blockade of the CN rail line also here in Deseronto in April.

“Getting arrested is a reality. I've been sitting in a quarry for 94 days and if I sat in the quarry for that long, then I can certainly sit in jail for that long,” he said.

Indeed, a school bus has been his temporary quarters as his group protested against a developer's plan to build condominiums using material from a quarry on land they claim is theirs.

Mr. Brant may speak a tough line, but he's also not afraid to pull the plug on his protests when he senses a violent clash.

“When we began, I promised [my group] I'd bring them all home. That may not necessarily be the same with me,” he said, referring to the arrest warrant.

Mr. Brant describes his personality as “uncompromising.”

But authorities take heed: He says he's a lot softer today than he was in the years after the death of his twin girls. “I was a nutbar back then,” he said.