SIX NATIONS — As many within the Six Nations community already know, local businessman, philanthropist and activist, Mel Styres passed over last weekend to be with the ancestors.
In compliance with his wishes, his ashes will be released at Kanonhstaton at noon this coming Saturday.
I visited with him at the Hamilton General Hospital and at his home before he passed, and Mel had a few words to leave behind once he had made the transition.
With his permission, he allowed the recording of some of his last thoughts regarding the future he knew he was not going to see, from his side anyhow.
Q: Have you come to grips with the reality of our passing?
A: Yes, and I am ready.
Q: What words would you have for those who remain?
A: Try and step away from the help of the government at all costs. We need to do what we can on our own and reject government money into it.
It is plain and simple. They don’t want us here. They don’t want any Onkwehonwe people in Canada, they want us to be white, and on the same page as them. That is impossible. The federal government is working for foreign off-shore developers and corporations but they should be working for us. All they do is hold us back at every turn.
If we were able to make them pay us what they owe us for resources and everything they take from our land, we would not have that problem. We’d be set. Right now we are the poorest millionaires there is. They owe us so much money they could never pay us back. So all they can do is say that the money we do get from them is for land use payments or mineral rights, or whatever. It is not a gift, as most white people think. It’s a payment, which will never end and we will never see it fully paid.
Q: Since Kanonhstaton, there has been several rulings made that favour Onkwehonwe complaints. One recent case involves a small band out in BC, that turned down a more than billion dollar settlement to allow oilsands pipelines to travel through their traditional territory. They turned down the offer, which would have made every member of that community very rich. Are you encouraged by that?
A: That means to me that they are stand up people, turning away from all that money and saying no. You’re not going to do this to our land and to the seven generations to come.
One thing white people have brought us is greed. There may have been some greed before, but we had ways of dealing with those kinds of people. You can’t say we are all perfect, no we certainly are not, but greed has overcome us.
Q: The HDI and Confederacy have been making deals with large corporations under the premise that getting something is much better than getting nothing. Do you agree with that thinking?
A: Sad to say, even I have a hard time with settling for something rather than nothing. I would like to believe that, in my heart, I would say no to that kind of compromise, even if I am not going to get anything out of it personally. I don’t know if anyone except the negotiators are getting anything out of this. If I could see something coming to my family or my clan I could see having an issue with that. But individually, no one is realizing any of the benefits.
Q: Do you believe that there have been any steps forward recently?
A: There are small steps being made, each one not really very big but steps forward anyhow.
Q: I know you were very involved with Kanonhstaton. How important was that for the Haudenosaunee people?
A: Before Kanonhstaton, most white people did not know and could not understand what the problem was for us. Non-Natives have been learning through news stories and other means what the issues are.
But many times Natives are being used as pawns in their own game to push their own issues ahead. They want us to be their shield and stand in front of the bulldozers for them. In the Dunnville area, protests against wind farms and solar farms saw nearly 100 Onkwehonwe people were arrested and no white people, yet they were standing side by side.
They say they understand and want to help us, but really, they want us to help them to have a credible reason to fight the government using our treaties and our issues to move theirs along.
Kanonhstaton was a good thing. No mater who says what about it, it was a good thing that had to happen, and I am glad it happened while I was alive so I could participate in it. I missed out on a lot of things I wanted to help out with, like at Burnt Church, forestry and mining out in BC, I would have loved to have gone and fought for my people. Knowing I had to take care of my family here is the only thing that kept me here. Had I been a free soul, I’d have gone in a minute.
We have to maintain that strength we had at Kanonhstaton throughout all of Turtle Island, or at least hold the white government at bay. If we don’t, we’re going down faster than we know. If we do, we stay here a lot longer. I wish was going to be around to see it. I will have to see it from the other side.
Q: What about the other side? What are your thoughts about that?
A: I don’t know what’s coming on the other side but if there is any chance I would turn my attention towards my people and help them in whatever way I could from the other side — whether it’s to change the mind of somebody of importance through a dream or whatever I can facilitate.
Maybe I won’t have an awareness of what’s happening on this side, I believe in the spirits and spirituality, but how much influence they can have, I have no idea. I will be walking that side soon.
For many years I have wondered about the other side. One Pentecostal church, when I was a young kid said once we’re gone we are gone, never to return. I always thought that was weird. You watch ghost stories on TV and hear personal stories, wondering which is real. I have that curiosity.
I am ready to go. I have no great regrets about what I have done and who I am. If somebody sees that different, that’s OK, at least I know what I have done. Others may not know, but in my heart, I know who I have helped.
Q: Finally, what about the future of the Confederacy?
A: I would call on some really rich people on this reserve to help the longhouse, our Chiefs, our Clan Mothers and help them survive in a good way with the reasonable expectations of life. They should be looked after better by paying their bills and making sure they have food. Help them strengthen and reestablish themselves to a point where they don’t have to work except to work on the Confederacy to try and pull it back to what it once was.
That would take a lot of money because I know there are a lot of people that need to be looked after. It’s going to take a concentrated effort to get the Confederacy back on track. It’s hard to say if we can ever get it back, but it would be a worthwhile struggle to try.
The Confederacy is in such a state that it may be the only way to fix it would be to strip it down, put everyone’s beads and horns on the table and go back to the Great Law and start again.
People have to swallow their pride and do what is right for our people. Not for themselves. If we don’t, we are not going to survive.
