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com

Building Indigenous-Labor Alliances: An Analysis of

Labour Support for Six Nations

By Tom Keefer (article draft written in 2010)

The 2006 reclamation of the “Douglas Creek Estates” by the Six Nations people
of the Grand River Territory has been one of the most significant moments of indigenous
struggle in Ontario in the last several decades. Faced with the construction of a
subdivision on historically contested lands abutting their reserve, members of the
community peacefully occupied the subdivision on February 28, 2006. Their struggle
reached national and international attention on April 20, 2006 when some 200 police
officers from the Ontario Provincial Police raided the reclamation site to enforce an
injunction demanding the removal of the occupiers. Disregarding the recommendations
of the Ipperwash inquiry, the OPP raided the site under the cover of nightfall while
negotiations were still ongoing, using tazers and pepper spray in an attempt to break up
the protest camp. Police success was short-lived, however, as hours after the raid, a large
grouping of Six Nations community members physically drove the police from the site.
Barricades were set up on surrounding roads, columns of thick black smoke from burning
tires rose into the air, and news media and political activists across Canada were attracted
to the latest of the Canadian state’s spectacular confrontations with indigenous people.
Indigenous people from across the Americas supported the struggle of Six
Nations, as did numerous non-native activists. Amongst the non-native groups, the trade
union movement stood out as an early and significant supporter. Major trade union
organizations from the Canadian Labour Congress and the Ontario Federation of Labour
to individual unions such as the United Steelworkers of America, the Canadian Postal
Workers Union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the Canadian Auto
Workers were adamant in their support, calling for an immediate halt to further police
action and demanding immediate negotiations. The union movement released numerous
press and policy statements following the police raid, and union activists regularly
appeared at the reclamation site with donations of food and money.
CUPE 3903 members at York University in Toronto also played an important role
in building solidarity with the struggle at Six Nations. Members organized through the
local’s Flying Squad had visited the reclamation site before the OPP raid, seeking to learn
more about the grievances of the Six Nations community. A few weeks later, on the day
of the OPP raid, the union’s Flying Squad, working with allies in the Ontario Coalition
against Poverty, mobilized CUPE 3903 members to send carloads of supporters to the
reclamation site. This marked the beginning of what, to date, has been over five years of
consistent and ongoing solidarity activism with Six Nations by members of CUPE 3903.
The specific forms of the solidarity work carried out by CUPE 3903 have changed
over the years. The first year of activity in support of Six Nations was funded through the

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CUPE 3903 Flying Squad. The Flying Squad had come into existence after the union’s
2000-2001 strike, was active in the anti-globalization movement and was part of a cross
union network of flying squads involved in strike support.1 By the time of the reclamation
in 2006, the CUPE 3903 Flying Squad was no longer holding regular meetings or
operating as a functional working group. However, the reclamation did result in a brief
attempt to revitalize it, and the Flying Squad met a couple times in the early days of the
reclamation, passing a resolution that the union would cover the gas and transportation
costs of any CUPE 3903 member traveling to Six Nations to do support work.
With this funding in place, a small group of CUPE 3903 members maintained a
regular presence at the reclamation site – traveling down to the site a couple times a week
over a six-month period. Most of the work that these members engaged in was based
around working closely with Six Nations activists at the reclamation site and in doing
anti-racist organizing with local labour and community activists in the nearby town of
Caledonia. This work led to the creation of the group Community Friends for Peace and
Understanding with Six Nations which was formed by Caledonia and Six Nations
residents, as well as by rank-and-file union activists from CAW Locals 707 and 555 and
CUPE Locals 3903 and 3906. The group met for over a year, with most meetings having
between 15 to 30 people present, with numbers evenly split between native and non-
native people.2
By May of 2006, the barricades surrounding the former Douglas Creek Estates
had come down, and many of the non-native activists who had put so much time and
energy into supporting the reclamation began to turn to other activities. However, the
situation was far from calm, and a number of different flashpoints occurred around the
site in the summer of 2006. In June, following a confrontation in which two CHTV
camera operators were physically assaulted and a US border patrol police car was
confiscated after its agents were caught patrolling near the site, Gary McHale, a neo-
conservative activist from Richmond Hill decided to get involved in Caledonia as a
grassroots organizer.3 In October of 2006 he organized the first of a series of protest
marches aimed at getting the OPP to arrest Six Nations land defenders and to uphold the
‘rule of law’ which he claimed had been suspended in the conflict.4 The organizing of a
grassroots anti-native political force gave new impetus to indigenous solidarity activists
to consider how they might reach local non-natives in Caledonia and other so-called
‘border towns’ near the Six Nations reservation.
Recognizing that a long-term and organized approach was necessary, and wanting
to support the work of union members undertaking these efforts, CUPE 3903’s annual
general meeting in March of 2007 passed a motion to create the CUPE 3903 First Nation

1
See Clarice Kuhling & Alex Levant, ‘Political Deskilling/Re-Skilling: Flying Squads and the Crisis of
Working Class Consciousness/Self-Organization’ in Sociology for Changing the World..
2
For a recounting of the work of the Community Friends group, please see Keefer, 2010 (‘Contradictions
of Canadian Colonialism: Non Native Responses to the Six Nations Reclamation in Caledonia’ in Davis,
Lynne, Alliances: Re/Envisioning Indigenous-non-Indigenous Relationships, 2010).
3
See Christie Blatchford’s book Helpless for McHale’s account of why he got involved in Caledonia.
4
For more information on McHale and the right wing anti-native organizing taking place against Six
Nations, please see Katie Millie’s article ‘Where is John Wayne When You Need Him? in Upping the Anti
#9.’ Keefer’s ‘Contradictions of Canadian Colonialism’ also contains an analysis of the activities of
McHale’s group.

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Solidarity Working Group (FNSWG) and to provide it with a $3000 budget. The
formation of the FNSWG was inspired by the work of the CUPE 3903 International
Solidarity Working Group which had played a key role in supporting pro-Palestinian
activism in Toronto – especially through its political activity within CUPE Ontario in
passing Resolution 50.5 The initial mandate of the CUPE 3903 FNSWG was as follows:

1. To educate and organize the CUPE 3903 membership about issues relating to matters of
indigenous sovereignty and solidarity and to encourage membership participation both within the
caucus and the local in general on this issue.
2. To work within and to help build rank and file networks of union activists working on issues
of indigenous solidarity and solidarity.
3. To co-ordinate efforts in support of indigenous sovereignty with other local, regional and
national (union and non-union) projects in support of indigenous sovereignty and solidarity.
4. To actively participate in supporting indigenous struggles such as (but not limited to) the Six
Nations land reclamation.

Over the past three and a half years, the working group has organized to not only
contribute donations of food, supplies and money from trade union networks – but has
also worked to develop a new kind of framework for alliance building work between
environmentalists, trade union activists and Indigenous people. Building on the concept
of the “Two Row Wampum,”6 CUPE 3903 members have organized anti-racist initiatives
in the non-native ‘border towns’ surrounding Six Nations, built alliances with groups and
organizations in Six Nations, held educational speaking tours, public rallies and
demonstrations, written articles and organized discussion groups, and have worked to
develop broad based networks in support of Indigenous self-determination. Central to this
approach is the perspective that doing Indigenous solidarity work is not about “helping”
native people “over there,” but rather about finding ways to link our own struggles
against exploitation and oppression to Indigenous struggles. The saying of a group of
Australian Aboriginal activists in the 1970s – “If you have come to help me you are
wasting your time. But if you come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then
let us work together” – has become one of the main conceptual frameworks of the
working group.7
The 3903 FNSWG has continued to be active since its launch in March of 2007,
and has filed yearly reports to the CUPE 3903 annual general meeting detailing its work.8
These reports provide a good accounting of the various activities that the working group
has participated in. Some highlights of this work include efforts to help to foster ties
between Black youth in Toronto organized in the Black Action Defense Committee, and

5
For more information about CUPE Ontario’s resolution 50 please see http://cupe.on.ca/doc.php?
lang=en&subject_id=51
6
See
https://www.academia.edu/3102044/Mutiny_on_the_HMS_Capital_The_Two_Row_Wampum_as_a_Guid
e_to_Decolonization_and_Social_Transformation_on_Turtle_Island for my explanation and understanding
of the Two Row Wampum.
7
This quote is often attributed to Australian aboriginal activist Lilla Watson, but she prefers to credit the
saying to a larger group of aboriginal activists in Queensland in the 1970s. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilla_Watson for details.
8
these reports can be viewed on the working group’s webpage at www.3903fnswg.wordpress.com

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Indigenous youth at Six Nations involved in the hip-hop scene. This work culminated in a
series of meetings involving exchanges between the community and the organizing of a
hip-hop show at Six Nations in solidarity with Chris Hill, a young man imprisoned for
fighting back against the police raid on April 20th 2006. Members of the working group
were also central in organizing the 2008 Peace and Friendship Gathering which was a
weekend long event (largely funded by donations from over a dozen different unions)
that brought together several hundred non-native activists with people from Six Nations.
In 2009, the working group built links with activists in the CAW, and worked closely in
supporting the educational programming of the Brantford-based group Two Row
Understanding and Education (TRUE). As can be seen from looking over this
documentation, the working group has consistently been one of the most active groups
within CUPE 3903.
While the support from trade union activists – like that of most other non-native
activists – declined after the barricades came down and it became less clear about how to
support the struggle, many individual unions continued in their support of Six Nations.
Under President Rolf Gerstenberger, the United Steelworkers of America Local 1005
(representing the Stelco steel plant in Hamilton) worked hard to educate its membership
about the history of Six Nations land claims and has regularly mobilized its membership
to stand in solidarity with Six Nations on the front lines of the reclamation. Local 1005
was instrumental in arranging for Six Nations activists to lead the 2006 Labor Day march
in Hamilton as part of a display of Labour solidarity with indigenous struggles. CUPE
Local 3906, representing contract faculty and teaching assistants at McMaster University
also played a significant role in organizing its membership in solidarity with Six Nations
and in organizing a Hamilton based solidarity grouping. Its members attended meetings
of the Community Friends initiative in Caledonia and also mobilized for various protests
and actions.
The Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) has also been active in supporting Six
Nations land rights. CAW Kitchener Area Director Bill Gibson, Human Rights Director
Vinay Sharma, and National Educational Representative Steve Watson, have played an
important role in supporting the work of the Brantford group TRUE (Two Row
Understanding and Education) and in educating their members in the Haldimand tract
about Six Nations land rights issues. Six Nations speakers have been prominently
featured at educational sessions held at the union’s Port Elgin educational center. Rank-
and-file members of the CAW also played an important role in supporting the
reclamation site and combating racism in Caledonia. Jan Watson, a rank-and-file CAW
Local 555 member was a cofounder of the group Community Friends for Peace and
Understanding with Six Nations and worked closely with several other rank-and-file
CAW activists who were also part of the group. Marilyn Vesgo, another rank and file
CAW worker co-founded Brantford TRUE with Jim Windle, and has been instrumental
in organizing dozens of educational events about Six Nations land rights.

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Rather than simply summarizing or contextualizing the various efforts and

accomplishments of the CUPE 3903 FNSWG or of other labour initiatives in support of
Six Nations, I want to use the second half of this article to try and put forward an analysis
of how and why labour and indigenous struggles can compliment each other in a broader
liberation project. One can make this argument on a pragmatic basis given that any
process of decolonization must find a way of reaching and transforming the perspectives
of the 95% of the Canadian population which is non-native,9 but I also want to discuss
this alliance building on a more existential level as well.
This non-native population is far from being homogenous, and is fractured along
lines of race, class, gender, immigration status, as well as numerous regional and cultural
divides. However, one significant sector of the non-native population – that organized
within trade unions – not only belongs to mass organizations which have formally taken
explicitly pro-indigenous perspectives, but by virtue of their relationship to the system of
production is forced to engage in forms of struggle – such as strikes and workplace
occupations – which confront capitalism in ways which are comparable to the kinds of
direct action in which indigenous people defending their land engage in. In an era of
capitalist crisis defined by harsh austerity programs, sharpening class struggles, and
conflicts over strategic raw materials (often located on indigenous territories), new
possibilities for developing alliances between labour unions and grassroots indigenous
struggles are emerging. Although these dynamics require more in the way of serious
analysis and investigation than this brief article can provide, I want to suggest that an
analysis of trade union and indigenous relations around the struggles at Six Nations can
shed some light on the possibilities for how these alliances can be conceptualized.
There are 4.6 million union members in Canada, representing approximately 30%
of the people in Canada who work for wages.10 The great majority of these union
members are organized within union federations such as the Canadian Labour Congress
which bring together unions at a local, provincial, and federal level. In policy terms, most
major unions in Canada have well-established and socially progressive perspectives on a
wide range of social issues affecting working class people – including demands for
abortion rights, free access to health care, rising minimum wage standards, and
progressive anti-racist and equity initiatives. These progressive policies extend to the
recognition of indigenous self determination and sovereignty and are shared by all major
trade union federations in Canada. A sense of the general level of trade union support for
indigenous demands can be gathered from the policy statements of the 170 000 strong
Public Service Alliance of Canada which has undertaken the following program of
activity in support of indigenous self determination:

1. To work with organizations representing Aboriginal Peoples and

other like-minded organizations to press at all levels for the right to
self-determination, the fulfilment of historic Treaty obligations and the
timely and just settlement of all land claims.

9
According to statistics Canada there are about 1.1 million indigenous people in Canada, accounting for
approximately 3.8% of the population. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/01/15/aboriginal-stats.html
10
For details please see: http://www.rhdcc-thus
hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/labour/labour_relations/info_analysis/union_membership/index2009.shtml

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2. To press for legislation requiring mandatory and effective

employment equity programs in all workplaces where we represent
employees and to ensure that these programs address the qualitative
issues that affect our Aboriginal members.
3. To negotiate employment equity on behalf of Aboriginal members.
4. To facilitate the development of a strong network of Aboriginal
members to advise the union about issues of particular interest to them.
5. To identify and to negotiate, in consultation with our Aboriginal
membership, contractual protection that is particular to their needs.
6. To develop educational materials for Alliance members concerning
race relations, cultural diversity and Aboriginal issues.
7. To actively oppose racism, racial harassment and cultural
stereotyping in the workplace and in our union.11

Similar positions have been taken by many other unions. While these perspectives
have been relatively recently established in the history of the trade union movement –
most of these major policy initiatives occurred in the wake of the 1990 Oka crisis – they
represent real and significant statements of solidarity by predominantly non-native
organizations for indigenous rights. There are no other mass based, predominantly non-
native organizations in Canadian society which have expressed such clear support for
indigenous self-determination and which have the social power to conceivably force the
implementation of these policies. The key question is how to turn the well meaning
declarations, press releases, and resolutions passed by the trade union leadership into
practical and ongoing support for indigenous struggles by the millions of rank-and-file
union members in Canada. Looking at the past five years of union relationship building
with Six Nations is instructive in suggesting some ways in which this work may be done.

As mentioned earlier, there was an immediate outpouring of political support for

Six Nations by all major trade unions as soon as the police raid occurred. Delegations
from over a dozen unions came to the reclamation site, and many of them gave flags from
their union to be flown at the site in a gesture of solidarity. This outpouring of support
was primarily derived from a politics of sympathy and empathetic support in recognition
of the long history of injustices that indigenous people have faced in Canada. While these
feelings are an important starting point in the development of real solidarity, they also run
the risk of leading to a politics of charity, where non-indigenous people see their role as
‘helping’ downtrodden indigenous people, instead of trying to see the ways in which
labour and indigenous struggles can be bound together in a common struggle for mutual
liberation.
How then can we imagine circumstances in which the workforce of an advanced
capitalist country makes common cause with indigenous social movement seeking to halt

11
http://psac.com/what/humanrights/aboriginal_policy-e.shtml

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the spreading influence of capitalist expansion in its territories? I would suggest that the
answer comes from looking at the fundamental role of both nature and labour in capitalist
production. At root, the struggles of indigenous people and waged workers are
fundamentally opposed to the twin pillars of capitalism – the commodification and
exploitation of labour and nature. While both labour and indigenous struggles can – and
routinely are – diverted and co-opted in order to merely struggle over the rate at which
labour or nature is exploited or to determine who will receive the revenue from that
exploitation, both struggles contain an indissolubly anti-capitalist element at their core.
The indigenous struggle for the land is about refusing and defeating attempts to bring
indigenous territory into capitalist circuits of production and commodification. It is about
maintaining or returning to a mode of production free from capitalist imperatives of
profit-making and growth. The most prevalent forms of indigenous resistance to capitalist
production are forms of direct action or armed struggle which directly interrupt the
productive/extractive circuits of capital which seek access to the raw materials in
indigenous territories.
Because the root cause of labour struggles in capitalist society stems from the
commodification of human beings’ productive capacity – an irreducibly human aspect of
our “species being” – when labour struggles break into the open they also have an
inherently anti-capitalist basis, as they inevitably express the deeply human desire to
overcome our alienation and exploitation by others. Because labour struggles involve the
collective withdrawal of labour from the productive process – thereby causing a halt to
the capitalist circuit of production – like indigenous struggles, they can raise the specter
of life and community self organization without capitalism.
Because the direct action engaged in by Six Nations falls outside of the sphere of
representational politics, it poses a direct threat to the state’s monopoly on power and
control. This has led to both the use of police repression and the passing of injunctions in
order to target indigenous land struggles. Some trade union activists have compared the
dynamics surrounding treaty signing (where governments break mutually agreed upon
contracts and constantly seek to renegotiate terms to their advantage) to the contracts
made between labour and capital (in which capital refuses to respect the rights of labour,
and constantly seeks to ride roughshod over the collective agreement). The analysis of
these kinds of similarities has been central to, for example, the CAW’s work in
supporting struggles at Six Nations. Interestingly, capitalists and their state have been
increasingly resorting to injunctions in order to defeat the direct action of indigenous
people and to break strikes. Canada has the highest level of back to work legislation for
labour unions in the OECD, and regularly use also uses injunctions to limit indigenous
protests. In the summer of 2008, there were seven indigenous political prisoners being
held in jail for defying government filed injunctions to stop mining activities in
Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug and the Sharbot Lake region.
The words of the old labour slogan, ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ apply in
these circumstances. Not only are the capitalists trying to develop indigenous land also
bitterly opposed to the social justice programs of labour unions and labour activists, but
the structures of state repression developed to repress indigenous struggles can be used
against other social movements including labour. In the fall of 2010, workers who have
been locked out for over two years at a job site in Brantford received support from the

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Ontario Federation of Labour in a day of action. According to some reports, attempts at

developing secondary pickets to stop scabs from entering the workplace were halted due
to the passing of the Brantford injunction originally aimed at forbidding native protests
and gatherings around construction sites in Brantford.
Indigenous and labour struggles also share similarities in terms of the ways in
which they are conducted. CAW activists Lindsay Hinshelwood and Steve Watson point
out that not only are indigenous treaties similar to the contracts that unions fight for, but
that in requiring that capitalists and the state live up to the terms of the agreements they
have entered into, direct action struggles are often necessary.12 Both revolve around the
creation of a written document – the treaty or a contract – outlining the responsibilities
between nations or social classes. Over the long-term, the capitalist state sees the treaties
as mere placeholders, and the bosses see union contracts as a temporary cease-fire in the
never-ending struggle to increase profits. Both struggles also involve the use of direct
action, whether it be to shut down extractive industries or settlements on indigenous land,
or to withdraw the supply of labour to capital. In exceptional circumstances, workers will
go so far as to occupy or take over a factory. The great sitdown strikes following World
War II were illegal activities that violated the ‘rule of law’ or to be more exact, the rule of
private property. Occupations of private property such as those taking place on the
Haldimand tract are fundamentally no different in nature. Both are anti-capitalist
struggles that call into question the bourgeois rule of law, the commodification of nature
and labour, and by extension raise the question of possible alternatives to capitalism.
But there is no guarantee that these individual acts of protest will be transformed
into an open challenge to capitalism. For that, the subjective activity of openly
revolutionary groups and organizations is required. There was no labour or activist group
explicitly operating from this kind of political perspective around the reclamation. If
there was, they might have been able to develop this line of political thought further in
relation to the concrete conditions of struggle. However, even barring a conscious move
in this direction, there are many examples of the way in which the Six Nations struggle
and the activities of labour activists are making common cause, and showing the
relevance of an incipient anti-capitalist anti-colonialism.
One of the ways in which this has played itself out has been in the way in which
responses to the reclamation differed based upon the class location of non-natives. I’ve
already outlined the involvement of many local trade union activists in support of Six
Nations. What is no less interesting is that the individuals and organizations spearheading
political opposition to the reclamation and calling for further police action to drive native
people from the land were overwhelmingly made up of the local capitalist class in
Haldimand County. In Caledonia, the Caledonia Citizens Alliance – the group
spearheading early resistance to the reclamation – was formed by the Chamber of
Commerce and operated out of its office. The bankers, realtors, and business people in
town have a direct interest in Caledonia growing and expanding onto unceded native
lands as such growth meant more profits for them. Later, when Gary McHale began

12
See Keefer, ‘The Politics of Solidarity: Six Nations, Leadership, and the Settler Left’ in Upping the Anti
#4,2007.https://www.academia.edu/908688/The_Politics_of_Solidarity_Six_Nations_Leadership_and_the_
Settler_Left

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organizing in Caledonia he deliberately pitched his anti-native organizing as a resource

for local developers, in the hopes of receiving funding from them.
Another significant dynamic around the Six Nations struggle is the way in which
indigenous struggles have spilled over to influence local environmental and labour
struggles. I have examined this process in more detail in an article entitled “Declaring the
Exception: Direct Action, Six Nations, and the Struggle in Brantford,”13 so I won’t repeat
the argument here, but suffice it to say that because of their use of direct action tactics –
which have resulted in real victories such as the halting of over $2 billion worth of new
construction on the Haldimand tract since 2006 – indigenous struggles are having a
radicalizing effect on both local environmental and trade union struggles. Six Nations
activists have joined labour activists on picket lines during strikes in Brantford, and have
joined with non-native environmentalists to block dump trucks from reopening a toxic
waste landfill near the town of Cayuga.
Labor activists have been inspired by indigenous struggles. When the reclamation
first occurred, members of the CAW local at the Brantford Casino went to the
reclamation to express their solidarity. A few years later, when the casino workers were
on strike, they were joined on the picket lines by activists from Six Nations who
remembered the solidarity of the CAW workers. As a result of this interaction, and the
inspiration of seeing people from Six Nations engage in a successful and prolonged
tactics of nonviolent direct action, some of the workers at the casino began to consider
using the tactics of the “Mohawk warriors” in order to win their strike.
Another example of the way in which labour and indigenous solidarity played
itself out was the way in which some members of Local 685 Amalgamated Transit
Workers Union who were entering negotiations for their first contract, made contact with
members of the Six Nations Men’s Fire in order to see about the possibility of securing
support for their struggle. In particular, they were concerned that their employer would
bar them from company property and refuse to let them set up picket lines around the
entrances of the company. In seeking support from Six Nations, the union activists
recognized that Six Nations was the rightful owner of the land, and requested permission
to set up a picket on the land and to set up a trailer to be used as a strike headquarters on
the land. As it turned out, the negotiations were settled without recourse to a strike, and
matters didn’t come to a head. Nonetheless, we can see the manner in which common
interests are organically being made between labour and indigenous struggles.

The labour movement was quick to respond to the police raid on April 20, 2006.
However, once the barricades came down and it became less clear how to do ongoing
support with the people of Six Nations, the involvement of labour was sporadic. The one
major exception in this regard was the work of the CUPE 3903 FNSWG, which due to its
orientation in working with non-native Caledonia residents and its access to funding

https://www.academia.edu/908718/Declaring_the_Exception_Direct_Action_Six_Nations_and_the_Strug
13

gle_in_Brantford

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available to rank-and-file union members interested in doing this work, was able to
maintain a continued focus in its work.
If labour and indigenous alliances are to grow and succeed, two things need to
happen. We need to have a political perspective that understands how class struggles are
related to indigenous struggles, and an organizational mechanism that can link grassroots
union activists together with indigenous activists on the frontlines of their struggles. This
political vision must recognize the inherently anti-capitalist tendencies within indigenous
resistance and labour struggles and must not only address practical questions, but also
tease out the theoretical implications of this approach.
The Six Nations struggle to defend their land, is spilling over and affecting
working class struggles in Southern Ontario. It inspires them to consider more radical
options, and it is entirely possible that should labour struggles become more militant in
an age of austerity, they may positively inspire indigenous struggles as well. However,
there is no guarantee that indigenous struggles like those at Six Nations will necessarily
go in an anti-capitalist direction – they could be resolved by the development of a
“national” bourgeoisie as has been the model with neocolonial models across the world.
Similarly, there is no guarantee that local labour struggles have to move in explicitly anti-
capitalist direction. What is needed is both a political outlook which can frame our
analysis in radical ways, and the development of rank-and-file trade union movements
which can learn from and work with indigenous struggles. These union formations need
to be networked together, and could serve as a first line of communication between
grassroots indigenous activists and grassroots labour activists. There is a tremendous
amount of work that needs to be done to close the gap between the proclamations of
support for indigenous self determination in union policy books and on the ground
support for indigenous struggles by rank and file union members. However, the
experiences of labour groups in organizing in support of Six Nations over the past five
years are instructive in underlining the possibilities of building long-term alliances
beneficial to both indigenous communities and labour unions. Hopefully, there will be
many more such initiatives in the future.

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