University Daily Kansan / Friday, August 31, 1990
5
Indians continuing bridge barricades in Quebec dispute
The Associated Press
OKA, Quebec — Hope evaporated yesterday for a quick end to a 7-week-old standoff as armed Mohawks kept up barricades west of Montreal and Indians south of that city threatened to renge on an accord to reopen a blockaded bridge.
The conflict, centering on a land dispute, seemed it might be nearing an end Wednesday when Indians helped Canadian soldiers remove two barricades blocking a river in Montreal to its southern suburb.
Those Mohawks have closed the bridge for seven weeks in sympathy with the Indians in Oka, this 18 miles to the west of Montreal.
However, work to tear down other barricades near the bridge came to an abrupt halt yesterday after allegations by Mohawk leaders of continued harassment by police and Whites.
"We are at a difficult impasse, and it is safe to say that we not going to be able to proceed as quickly as earlier thought," said Maj. Serge Quenneville, an army spokesperson.
Mohawk leaders said yesterday that they had made some significant concessions to the end dispute at Kahnawake, a reserve near the Mercier bridge, and at the Kahnesatake reserve near Oka.
However, Chief Joe Norton told reporters at the Mercier bridge that shipments of food and medicine were being blocked from Tahawake reserve, both by angry residents of the area and by the police.
He warned, "We can still close the Mercier Bridge again."
Norton also said negotiations to end the standoff at Kahnesatake, near Oka, were headed for trouble by police by Whites continued.
Chief Billy Two Rivers said
Mohawks have been asked to give up too much.
"Maybe some of the White people didn't see Indian blood, but unfortunately we can't give them everything." he said.
Quebec provincial police denied the charges of harassment. "I can categorically state that no food is being kept out of Kahnawake whatsoever," said Capt. Donald Roy, an army spokesperson.
The dandoff began July 11, when the Quebec provincial police stormed an Oka barricade manned by Mohawks trying to block the expansion of a golf course on land they consider ancestral. The police mauled and one officer was killed, but it is still unclear who shot him.
The dispute has prompted sympathy protests by Indians at the Mercier bridge and elsewhere, but it has also touched off an anti-Indian backlash among residents angered by the barricades.
The scene at the main barricade at Oka was decidedly relaxed yesterday, with only a few Mohawks occasionally appearing.
Several dozen Mohawks gathered outside a Kanakesat reserve office to show support for the militants attacked militants at the barricades.
"We completely support the men at the barricades," said spokesperson Brenda Gabriel.
"They are Mohawk men who are there to defend the Mohawk community of Kanakase. They are good men. These men were invited here to protect their people and their territory."
Most of Kanesatake's 1,500 residents have left as a result of the confrontation. An estimated 200 to 300 remain.
Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa broke off talks with the Mohawks on Monday and ordered them to remove the barricades.
NEWARK, N.J. — Zonker, Duke, Mike Doonesby and the rest of Gary Trudeau's gang are on the U.S. Postal Service's "Most Unwanted"
Comic stamps show up on letters
The Associated Press
Officials said Wednesday that postal employees were warned last week that some people were trying to pass off ornamental stamps bearing the comic strip characters as the real thing.
Art Shealy, a postal spokesperson in Washington, D.C., said the Postal Service issued the warning last week after a few letters showed up in post offices around the nation with Trudeau's creations as the postage.
The gummed fakes come from the 1900 Donesbury Stamp Album, a collection of more than 140 stamps featuring characters from the comic
strip. The $8.95 book, released July 10 by Penguin Books in New York, is designed to raise money for the Writer's Voices program of the Literacy Volunteers of New York City, a spokesperson for the publisher said.
One stamp shows Trudeau's homeless characters sitting on a park bench and covered with snow, with the caption "Freezing To Death." Another tracks the course of Duke's attempt to embrace an ambassador zombie to Donald Trump. Others say "first class," "fragile" and an airmail stamp says "wind it."
"I don't see how anyone could look at this and think it's a postage stamp," said Pengui spokesperson Janet Kraytbl. "There are purple ones and pink ones, and some are even larger than a postage stamp."
Postal Service canceling machines
are supposed to check whether postage on a letter has a phosphorus coating, but they sometimes do not catch all bogus stamps on the 300 million pieces of mail processed daily, Shealy said.
This marks the second time Trudeau's stamps have troubled the agency. A Sunday comic strip in May featured Zonker Harris in two supersized stamps. The stamps, Both had "U.S. Protest" written above Zonker and showed a value of minus-5 cents. One stamp said, "Mad As Heck" and the other "Postal officials" said a few letters attached up with the drawings attached.
The drawings were protesting the Postal Service's request for a 5-cent increase in the 25-cent postage rate.
"We don't think for a minute that
he is asking people to use these stamps as a replacement for a stamp." Shealy said. "He used his artistic license to protest and he chose to do it by using a postage stamp."
Carol Larson, a spokesperson for the Postal Service's South Jersey Division, said a postmaster called Mr. Larson, writing a letter with one of the stamps.
Mail with a bogus stamp is returned to the sender, or it is sent postage due if a return address is not on the envelope.
Shealy said the Postal Service will investigate the use of bog stamps. Lee Salem, a spokesperson for U.S. Postal Service, or Trudeau's agent and distributor of his comic strips, said he could not reach Trudeau for comment.
Out-of-state tags could cause problems
Bv Elicia Hill
Kansan staff writer
Part-time students from out of state who register to vote in Douglas County also must register their cars in the county or face penalties, according to a law that will go into effect Oct. 1.
The penalty is a fine of up to $2,500,
up to six months in jail, or both.
The bill defines an out-of-state full-time student as someone enrolled in at least nine hours of credit at a Kansas university whose permanent residence is in another state, with the student's registered registration in that same state.
However, Irene Alvarez, county motor vehicle supervisor, said anyone who housed a vehicle in Douglas County for 90 days and was not a fulltime student must register his vehicle here.
But the bill's wording has created confusion as to whether part-time students who are not registered to vote here must register their cars in
State Sen. Wint Winter Jr., R-Lawrence, said that all students, regardless of their status, were exempt from having to register their cars in Kansas as long as they did not register to vote.
of the division's interpretation of the bill.
part-time students enrolled at KU, said Loralea Saxon, news and information specialist at University Relations. There are no statistics available on how many of those students were non-residents.
In Spring 1989, there were 5.803
"It is absolutely my legal opinion that the law does not say that," he said. "I will tell the attorney general about this and if he agrees, I will
Michael Reeves
'The bill protects students unless they register to vote. If you are living here, working at all, and going to school part-time, you would probably have to register your vehicle. . .'
Lawrence police administrative lieutenant
Statistics for this semester are not available, Saxon said.
According to Alvarez's interpretation of the law, non-resident graduate students enrolled in summer school would be required to register their undergraduate students are prohibited from taking more than six hours in the summer.
Ray Wilk, administration officer for the Kansas Department of Revenue, division of vehicles, said, "Because the bill states 'no less than nine hours', it requires part-time students to register. But it does seem in conflict with summer school assignments. We'll have to review this."
introduce a law to eliminate the confusion."
Winter said the bill was designed to reprimand Kansas residents who registered their vehicles in other states with higher registration costs in Kansas.
Hank Avila, a researcher in the state Legislative Research Department, said the state lost $1 million and $400,000 in unresecrered vehicles in other states.
Jerry Donaldson, principal analyst for the judiciary committee at the department, said she did not exactly know how to interpret the bill.
"Students may not want to exercise their right to vote for fear of being caught in this bill," she said. "I
Winter said that he was not aware
agree that this law is very murky.''
Avila said, "The law is vague in regard to students, and this is something that area legislators should ask the attorney general about."
Donald Garrett, chief counselor of the Johnson County Commission, said "There is a big chunk of students who fall into another category, who are establishing legal residence here, or truly in Kansas to attend school only."
Garrett, who helped draft the bill,
said "Those cases we will look closely at. We don't intend to 'crack down.'"
Michael Reeves, Lawrence police administrative lieutenant, said the law was not aimed at students.
"The bill protects students unless they register to vote," he said. "If you are living here, working at all, and going to school part-time, you would probably have to register your vehicle. We have no way of enforcing this until it is brought in to our office, then asking the student if he is full-on part-time, but that will be up to the officer who stops them.
"Realistically, though, we won't ask. "Students really don't have anything to worry about."
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