[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Caledoniaconf.jpg” caption=”The McMaster First Nations Students Association and the Indigenous Studies Program will present a conference on Thursday, Feb. 28 to comemmorate the second anniversary of the reclamation of Caledonia. Photo courtesy of Dawn Martin-Hill.”]For the last two years, First Nations people have reclaimed an area of the town of Caledonia — known as Kanonhstaton to the Haudenosaunee — which they assert is traditional native land that has never been surrendered.

A day-long event marking the second anniversary of the reclamation of the site in Caledonia will be held Thursday, Feb. 28 at McMaster University. The event has been organized by the McMaster First Nations Students Association and the Indigenous Studies Program at McMaster University.

The afternoon session from 1 to 4 p.m. in the McMaster University Student Centre, Room 318 will premiere an excerpt from the documentary The Dish with One Spoon produced by Dawn Martin-Hill, director of the Indigenous Studies program.

The documentary will be followed by an examination of the pivotal issues of the dispute by panelists Bill Montour, Six Nations elected band council chief; Hazel Hill and Janie Jamieson, community representatives of reclamation site; Hayden King, Indigenous Studies lecturer and former Aboriginal Affairs senior policy advisor for Ontario, and Rick Monture, Indigenous Studies lecturer.

In the evening, the program will shift to a discussion on how resolution might be achieved. Panelists will include Dawn Martin-Hill; Will Coleman, director of the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition; Richard Day, professor in the Department of Sociology at Queen's University and author of Gramsci is Dead (2005); and Six Nations Confederacy Chief Allen MacNaughton. It will be held from 7 to 10 p.m. in Room 1A1 of the Ewart Angus of Health Sciences Centre.