Lawyers representing Canada questioned the validity of maps detailing the lands contained within the Haldimand Tract during the first week of trial in Six Nations’ long-awaited litigation case against the Crown.
The judge presiding over the case, Ira Parghi, agreed that Six Nations’ map was not reliable.
Longtime land researcher Phil Monture faced days of questioning last week where he was asked to explain how his office came up with the map detailing the roughly 950,000-acre Haldimand Tract.
A Crown lawyer told Monture he was not a “cartographer” when questioning him on the formation of the map Six Nations uses to outline the Haldimand Tract in Southern Ontario, which consists of six miles on either side of the Grand River from its mouth to its source.
Six Nations maintains that the Crown improperly sold or mismanaged the funds from the sale of lands within the Haldimand Tract of 1784 which the Crown denies.
Six Nations is seeking an accounting of the proceeds of those sales and restitution for the loss of its land.
Last week was the first time Monture finally got to face Canada after spending his life working on lands research.
His early career in the 1970s was spent working on land claims for the former Indian Affairs department (now Crown Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada) before he came back home and worked for Six Nations as the director of the lands research department.
He was fired in 2002 and he formed his own land research firm before re-joining the current Six Nations Lands and Resources Department under Director Lonny Bomberry.
Iris Antonios, acting as a lawyer for Six Nations in the mammoth land claim case, began by questioning Monture on his upbringing and cultural and linguistic knowledge.
Monture testified that he did not grow up with the language and culture but said he was thankful for the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council (HCCC), which had sought to be an intervenor in the case but was denied.
He explained to the court what a longhouse was and said that’s where cultural activities and ceremonies take place.
He also said it’s where the HCCC holds their council meetings for political decisions.
“Thank goodness we do have the Confederacy,” he said. “We have not lost the languages.”
Monture was raised on a farm on Six Nations.
“We didn’t go very far,” he said as he explained what his childhood was like. “We stayed on the farm. My dad was strong. He never got upset very much. He was just a hard working farmer.”
In the fifties, he said, going to the nearby town of Brantford was a big deal for kids on the Six Nations reserve, which only comprises about five percent of the original land granted in the Haldimand Tract.
“It was like going from here to the moon for us. That was all very new to us. It was a whole new world to us.”
He attended elementary school on the reserve before heading off the reserve for high school.
Monture spent his early career working on land claims research for Indian Affairs which he admitted was boring work and said some documents were difficult to locate.
Six Nations had filed its court case against the federal government in 1995 while Monture was still working as the director of the land research department, but by 2006, Six Nations people got restless.
Their frustration boiled over that year, when a small group of people led by Six Nations women Dawn Smith and Janie Jamieson stopped construction of a housing subdivision called Douglas Creek Estates in Caledonia at the corner of Highway Six (formerly called Plank Road) and Sixth Line Road.
Plank Road is included as one of Six Nations various land claims against the government.
“Six Nations had filed for that land under Canada’s specific claims policy,” Monture said. “Frustration took over. The people of Six Nations took it upon their hands and took direct action to stop Douglas Creek Estates. Roads were blocked, police were brought in…it was almost going to be another Oka (the 1990 standoff between the Mohawks of Kanehsata:ke and the Canadian army).”
Violent clashes between Six Nations and non-native townspeople in Caledonia broke out that year until eventually, both the HCCC and Six Nations of the Grand River Elected Council (SNGREC) united to negotiate a solution to Six Nations land claims with both the province of Ontario and federal government.
During those talks, the government offered around $26 million for the flooding of lands along the Welland Canal but talks broke off before any solutions to Six Nations’ land claims were resolved.
“That’s all we ever ask for, is fairness and justice,” said Monture.
Crown lawyers last week asked how the map of the Haldimand Tract was drawn up and Monture explained that staff at the Six Nations lands and resources used GIS (Global Information Systems) technology.
The Crown argued that Monture and his staff were not cartographers and that the map Six Nations uses to outline the Haldimand Tract could not be relied upon as accurate and Justice Parghi agreed.
Six Nations Elected Chief Sherri-lyn Hill took the stand yesterday afternoon.
The case continues today in Toronto with the elected chief on the stand.
Originally published in the Two Row Times, October 14, 2026 (Volume 14, Issue 9), page 3.
