OTTAWA—Grand Chief Serge Otsi Simon came to Parliament Hill Tuesday with a plea for his people. The rail blockades that have strangled commerce and passenger traffic should come down, he said. The message has been sent.

Yet even as he spoke, some of his people were sending a message of their own.

“I have a group of people…that have padlocked my band office doors, locked me out, saying they want me out,” the Grand Chief of the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake told reporters Tuesday.

While Simon said the blowback did not surprise him, it did show how the demonstrations in support of Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs that have spread across Canada are putting leaders in a delicate position. Simon is chief of a Mohawk community near Oka, Que., a town whose name is tinged with the history of a deadly 1990 conflict over Indigenous opposition to a golf course expansion.

On Tuesday, he joined the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations and other Mohawk leaders in calling for peaceful discussions to take precedence over police intervention as rail blockades continue in their communities in Ontario and Quebec. Simon argued lifting the blockades would be a “show of good faith,” in light of impacts of constricted rail traffic and the risk it could erode public support for reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

“It doesn’t mean we’re just going to lay down and let them kick us around. No. But it would show compassion along with the strength, and that’s what needs to be — I think — promoted and talked about more,” he said.

Other leaders who spoke alongside Simon did not echo his call for blockaders to stand down. But they did try to point the way to a resolution to a dispute that has spilled out of northern B.C. and inspired demonstrations that have choked off traffic and commercial trade in major cities, ports and rail lines across the country.

AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde has been contacting First Nations leaders across Canada in recent days, and spoke with Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and elected band leaders from the area where TC Energy is building the $6.6 billion Coastal GasLink, a 670-km natural gas pipeline from northeastern B.C. to a major export terminal planned on the coast. Twenty elected band councils along the pipeline route have signed agreements supporting the project, while hereditary chiefs say it cannot proceed without their consent.

On Tuesday, Bellegarde suggested the blockades could end if demands of the Wet’suwet’en are met by TC Energy and the federal and B.C. governments. He pointed to the call for RCMP to vacate the Wet’suwet’en’s traditional territory, an area spanning 22,000 square kilometres in northern B.C., as well as requests for the pipeline company to consider options to accommodate concerns and for Ottawa and Victoria to give the Indigenous nation time to figure out how it wants to interact with the Crown before a meeting that has been offered with key cabinet ministers takes place.

“When they see positive action by the key players, when they see a commitment to real dialogue to address this difficult situation, people will respond in a positive way,” Bellegarde said. “They will respect the need to give everyone time and space for that dialogue to happen.”

Don Maracle, Chief of the Tyendinaga Mohawk Council, the community where the main blockade of CN Rail tracks outside Belleville began on Feb. 6, also avoided calling for the demonstrators to stand down, but emphasized the band leadership did not organize the ongoing blockade.

“The dialogue with the traditional chiefs seems to be a very important part of the resolution,” Maracle said, adding that it was “fundamentally wrong” for the pipeline construction to proceed over divisions within the Wet’suwet’en leadership.

“Let’s see where we’re at with those talks,” he said. “I don’t want to say things that are inflammatory that would not contribute to a resolution.”

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The chiefs also took aim at comments from federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, who has called for the police to step in and clear the blockades to get commercial goods and passengers flowing by rail again. Grand Chief Joseph Norton of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, near Montreal, said such “warmongers” should consider Canada’s recent history, including what happened at Oka in 1990.

“If you exercise compassion and take those blockades down — you’re not doing this out of fear. You’ve proven that you’re not scared,” Chief Simon added.

“Don’t let them bait you into something that you don’t want to do.”