The Gustafsen Lake Standoff was a confrontation between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the self-proclaimed Ts'peten Defenders in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, at Gustafsen Lake. The standoff began on August 18, 1995, and ended on September 17, 1995. The RCMP operation would end up being the most costly of its kind in Canadian history having involved 400 police officers and support from the Canadian Military (under Operation Wallaby). The predominantly indigenous occupiers believed that the privately-owned ranch land on which they stood was both sacred space and part of a larger tract of unceded Shuswap territory.
Read more about Gustafsen Lake Standoff: The Sun Dance and Early Occupation, Growing Tension At The Site, The Standoff, RCMP Siege, Resolution, Pitawanakwat Extradition
Famous quotes containing the word lake:
“These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)