The chief of Kettle and Stony Point says the First Nations aren't against staging protests in response to a decision to merge Ontario's Indigenous Affairs Ministry with two others.
The ministry was first created on a recommendation from the Ipperwash Inquiry, after the OPP shot and killed Dudley George during a land rights protest in 1995.
Tom Bressette says Conservative Premier Doug Ford's call to combine it with Energy and Northern Development and Mines is a short-sighted one.
"I was quite concerned that they just come in and automatically they cut funding that's intended to bring us up to par with the rest of the people in Ontario," he says. "That's basically the same thing they did before. They didn't think we were worth anything and this place is our home."
He says it results in a funding cut and puts less of a focus on initiatives to protect Indigenous land.
"I would certainly hate if we had to start going back to blockading the roads coming into Canada and interfering with people's public access on an everyday basis just to show the Premier that we aren't happy with the way he treats us," says Bressette. "That's what happened last time when they tried to ram laws down our throats. We blockaded the Blue Water Bridge, Ambassador Bridge, and the bridge in Niagara Falls. We're not immune to having to do these kinds of things because that's the way we're being treated in our own country."
Indigenous groups shut down border crossings in 2013 as part of the Idle No More campaign, aimed at stopping federal Bill C-45.
They were concerned the bill would allow developers greater access to reserve lands.
Bressette says the PC government doesn't seem to have any care or consideration for the Ipperwash Inquiry or Truth and Reconciliation report, which cost thousands of dollars.
