Terra grilada em Toronto

Pensa que isso só acontece no Brasil? Pois é, parece que eu moro em terra grilada também.
A história é mais ou menos assim. Lá por 1787, o governo britanico fez uma compra de terras dos nativos da área, num tratado que, por ser tão vago, foi refeito em 1805. Acontece que os inglêses se apropriaram de mais terra do que era permitido por esse acordo, e ainda hoje os índios da tribo "Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nations" estão perante os tribunais reivindicando pagamentos adicionais. Na "compra" original, os inglês pagaram 10 shillings por 392 milhas quadradas de território. Quer dizer, provavelmente onde eu moro, foi terra...hesito em dizer, caso tenha um MST por aqui... Veja abaixo parte de uma reportagem sobre o assunto:

"In the 1780s, the British colonial authorities in this area became interested in a tract of land on the north shore of Lake Ontario, which included the "Carrying Place" of Toronto. A meeting was eventually held in 1787 between Sir John Johnson, the chief superintendent of Indian affairs, and three native chiefs.

The parties concluded the meeting by signing an Indian surrender of lands "on the north side of Lake Ontario." The surrender document was essentially a blank signed deed of Indian land in favour of the Crown, and the intention was that the dimensions would be inserted in the deed when the land was later surveyed.

A year later, British surveyors arrived and ran into a dispute with a local Mississauga chief who claimed that the natives had not sold any land east of the Don River.

The British officials then began to have serious doubts about the validity of the 1787 Toronto Purchase surrender, and in 1805 an attempt was made to rectify it.

That year, a new Toronto Purchase agreement was signed. Although it was portrayed as a simple affirmation of the 1787 transaction, the record shows that the boundaries were much larger than those intended by the British to be in the earlier deed.

The Indian chiefs who signed it received the magnificent sum of 10 shillings in total for their co-operation in signing over 392 square miles of land.

In 1998, the Mississaugas of New Credit First Nation filed a land claim alleging that the government in 1805 failed to inform them that the 1787 surrender was invalid.

They also assert that the second surrender in 1805, intended by the government to ratify the 1787 purchase and validate the surrender, included more land than was originally agreed to by the First Nation in the 1787 surrender.

The 1805 surrender, for example, included the Toronto Islands, which the First Nation claims were explicitly excluded from the 1787 surrender. The First Nation also claims that they never accepted the boundaries laid out under the 1805 surrender.

In 2002, Robert Nault, then minister of Indian Affairs, informed the chief of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation that the Canadian government accepted that the circumstances surrounding the 1805 surrender constituted a breach of a lawful obligation of the government.

The basis of the decision was that the agreement between the Indians and the Crown had not been fulfilled.

Since 2003, negotiators have been trying to agree on what constitutes fair cash compensation for the losses to the First Nation as a result of the 1805 Toronto Purchase.

A government statement at the time announced that the current ownership of that land is not in question and is not at issue in the claim.

Fortunately, no one is blockading the Don Valley Parkway over the 1805 land surrender. Court orders are not being violated and everyone is behaving civilly. Ultimately, it seems that blame will fall where it should — at the hands of the government.

...

Now it seems that those of us who own property in Toronto don't really have good title to it, but the government is going to bail us out with our own money.

I wonder how much all of Toronto is worth, from the Don River to the Etobicoke Creek? Maybe the British should pay the claim, since they created the problem in the first place."

Ref: http://www.aaron.ca/columns/2006-06-10.htm

A disputa ainda não foi resolvida. Ouví falar de um valor de 170 milhões de dolares para essa tribo, que tem uns 2.000 membros.