"Residency Bylaw Discussions Pinpoint Need to Evict Non-Natives"

Preliminary discussions on re-drafting the Six Nations Residency By-Law suggest band members don't have a problem with native non-band members living here.

It's the non-native people who are currently living on the territory in opposition to the existing residency by-law that will pose the biggest problem during the discussions, said Tim Brubacher, council's senior policy analyst.

"I think the issue that the community is going to struggle with is non-native residency," Brubacher told council's Corporate and Emergency Services Committee during an update on the progress of drafting a new by-law. "It's a reasonably held position in the community...a fair amount of people on the committee don't have issues with creating a method for non-band members who are still native to live in the community; it's that drawing a line at non-native individuals."

There are no statistics on how many non-native people live on Six Nations but some estimates have placed it around 300, and some even into the thousands.

The current residency by­law states that non-band members can't live here but Councillor Ross Johnson says the community turns a blind eye to that.

"We are our own worst enemy out here," said Johnson. "We all know somebody here that shouldn't be here and we are just turning the other way, turning a blind eye, so we have ourselves to blame for this broken system. Hopefully, we'll get a handle on it moving forward."

Council voted last year to move forward with redrafting the by-law in response to federal legislation regarding Matrimonial Real Property (MRP) on reserves. The federal government has proposed a law, Bill 5-2, that could potentially impose the provincial court system on spouses living on-reserve in the event of a marriage break­up. Council has expressed concern that if one of the spouses is non-native, he or she could end up taking control of the matrimonial home. Bill S-2 passed second reading in the Senate in November 2011 and is now awaiting third reading.

"The status quo is not a sustainable position with council's MRP law and the federal MRP law and Canadian Human Rights Act sort of all in conjunction," said Brubacher. "Do you want the federal government or the courts to decide who is going to live here or do we want to decide? The only way we are going to do that is to look at this residency by-law now and make it accommodating."

Johnson said it's important Six Nations makes its own residency law to avoid those complications.

"Let's make our own law instead of sitting there saying we're not going to do anything and all of a sudden we get hit with it all and then the others go home and we are the ones sitting around this table that's going to have to deal with it."

Johnson said he believes there are "thousands" of non-band members living here.

"We got thousands living out here now with no permission and using our resources. It needs to be dealt with. It (the by-law) needs to be fair for everyone because right now it's not fair."

Brubacher said the committee is seeking statistics on how many complaints council has had under the current by-law about non­band members living here. He said the committee has also decided to keep the meetings closed to the media.

"It was pretty widely considered by the members of the committee that they wouldn't be comfortable speaking in front of the media so they are still going to keep that amongst themselves," said Brubacher. "But they were quite positive about once there is something to share, once they have something that they're sort of comfortable with sharing that they are happy to bring in the media at that point."

Brubacher said some committee members are uncomfortable about being seen as representing the community.

"They are sort of there as themselves. They want to make sure that there is other community input... before it was drafted or before it was decided upon...that it was important that there would be other sort of community consultation methods involved."

Brubacher said council will have to decide if it wants to hold a referendum on the new draft by-­law. He also recommended that council hold district meetings on the draft by­law once it's completed.

"A lot of people said that they were not comfortable giving feedback in (large community meetings) and you may want to have a couple of district meetings to have sort of smaller group sessions for people to provide that input."

Communications officer Karen Best has not responded when asked for a list of committee members on the public body.