Feature

ustafsen Lake
inside & out

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
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 (APCs) and an army of journalists from across Canada. By the end of its
peaceful resolution on September 17, 1995, eighteen adults and two youths had been
arrested and charged with a variety of offences ranging from mischief to attempted murder.
BC Attorney General Ujjal Dosanjh told the public afterwards that “There is no other side
to the story, there is only one side to the story and that is that a very serious criminal
investigation was being very legitimatly pursued by the RCMP in a peaceful fashion.” A year
later, the public and the jury finally learned that there was indeed another side.

 

written by Trond Halle
odfathered by Doug Whitlow

n July 8, 1996 the Gus-
tafsen Lake trial began in
a high-security courtroom

in Surrey, BC, and eight months
later, on Feb 12, 1997, the crown
finally concluded its case. Before
the defense begins its case on Feb
19, the jury will have a week off to
ponder the testimony of 77 crown
witnesses whose evidence revealed
how the RCMP escalated a land
dispute into a deadly stand off.

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 agreement
with Percy Rosette, a Shuswap
faithkeeper, allowing Rosette to use
a few acres of land by Gustafsen
Lake for sacred Sun Dance ceremo-
nies. 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 Percy Rosette and his
family from a small cabin that had
also been built on the land. James
balked at the cost of getting the
court order his lawyer and the
RCMP suggested and decided
instead to take the law into his own
hands. On June 14, he and 12 of his
cowboys (one of them cracking a
bullwhip) served Percy an illegal
home-made eviction notice.
Defence 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 heard in
court.

Shelagh Franklin, a non-native
representing herself, questioned
James on the legitimacy of his deed
to Lot 114. Throughout the trial, she
and Wolverine (William Jones
Ignace) have maintained that most
of BC remains unceded native land
and that the 1763 Royal Proclama-
tion 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 jurisdic-
tion 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 the 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 his car
because he was asked to do so by
the camp occupants. Andrew also
said he had brokered a meeting
between all the parties of the
dispute to take place on August 21.
But before this could happen,
Andrew and the two other native
officers were pulled and an RCMP
Emergency Response Team (ERT)
was sent in to the camp
to conduct a reconnais-
sance.

Jurors heard testi-
mony from the ERT
members on how this
probe was “compro-
mised” when they were
discovered sneaking
around the camp at 6am
on August 18. Cst.
Wilby, the Kamloops
ERT leader, claimed that
a native in camouflage
said something ina
native dialect to him and
then fired a shot that
passed closely by him.
The five ERT members
then ran out of the area.
The next day at a press
conference in Williams
Lake, the RCMP
reported that an officer
on patrol was shot at.
What they didn’t say
was that the ERT team
members were dressed
up in camouflage,
carried assault rifles,
and failed to wear any
markings to identify
themselves as police
officers. Defence 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.

Wool also suggested that the
RCMP was more interested in
creating a crisis than in investigat-
ing the Wilby shooting when they
organised a press conference in
Williams Lake on August 19. 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 Com-
mander, 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 Fraser River a week
earlier on August 11. Olfert 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 thirty miles
away from the camp. Wool sug-
gested 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

Not the special forces: very military Canadian police officer at
work in the Cariboo.

arrived in the camp, they would
seal off the area and declare it a
standoff. Meanwhile, fishermen,
campers and 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 centred on the epic
three-hour gun battle of September
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 filled 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

    
       

 

 

Rebel Indians ‘fanatic:

 

    

 

 

Ret

   

# ate

of opportunity” and if they had a
chance, they would take it out. On
the 11th they decided to do 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 mem-
bers physically reacted as they
- watched Wescam video of the truck

being blown up. The video showed
the red truck going down a logging
road. Suddenly, a plume of dust
and smoke rockets eighty feet
skyward and the
truck stops dead. As
the dust clears, the
camp dog, which
was in the back of
the truck, walks
around ina daze.
Out of the dust, a 13-
tonne APC appears
and slams into the
disabled truck. The
petrified dog runs
away from the
“Bison” (APC) and is
shot dead by ERT
members standing at
the side of the road.
Cst. Arthur testified
that Sgt. Debolt shot
the dog and when
the dog continued
running, 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
fo dust thrown up by
12 the “disabling
®; device,” which most

officers asserted was

not a land mine. Cpl.

Mercer and his
police dog tracked the two occu-
pants 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
claims 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 for warning
shots and that a person can only
shoot at someone in self-defence or
in defence of others.

Cpl. Maloney said that as the
people in the lake were coming to

to. . . be manipulated

 

raphic materials for
is feature supplied by
Trond and Roz.

  
 
    
 

shore 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 metres
away. He then heard an officer
order him 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
him 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.
Conners 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 their vehicles. They tried to
get the personnel from the disabled
Bison to cross six feet of ground to
enter the other Bison, but after only
one man got 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 as far
as 1500 metres away—a distance far
in excess of the operational range of
the RCMP M-16s. More than one
officer agreed that some of the fire
the Bisons took could have been
RCMP “friendly fire.” Despite
claims by some of the members that .
hundreds of rounds hit the Bisons,
forensic scientists determined that
only 26 bullets hit the disabled
Bison.

Defence counsel suggested that
what some ERT members actually
heard was other ERT members in
nearby Bisons firing thousands of
rounds into the surrounding bush.
Officers described this as “cover
fire,” which consisted of firing into
a general area whether a target
existed there or not. To date, the
RCMP have not admitted how
many rounds were fired that day,
but police estimates range from
3000 to 7000 rounds. At one point in
the massive barrage, police had to
break open crates of army ammuni-
tion in the Bisons because they had
run out of RCMP ammo. Cst. Wilby
admitted he even used a military
fully automatic C-7 assault rifle,
because his own semi-automatic M-
16 had jammed.

The disabled Bison was eventu-
ally towed away by one of the other

 

6 February 1719977 The Other Press