00:00:00.000The white race has to choose between the path of brotherhood or the path of death and destruction.
00:00:05.000And I don't know the people, the white people that are recording this now, if they're there to exploit us or make us out to be such bad people like white people usually do.
00:00:20.000Wednesday morning I took a trip down to Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto's Dufferin and Bloor area to do a story on an encampment there.
00:00:29.000That encampment has grown and flourished in recent weeks since three other downtown parks were cleared by police and city officials.
00:00:38.000While the 40 odd tents at Dufferin Grove Park are fairly well hidden on the fringes of the park, you can't escape seeing the amount of garbage and paraphernalia they've created.
00:00:51.000So the thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is the occupation of a fire pit area near the centre of the park.
00:01:00.000That area has now been set up as a command central for a group of Indigenous people and their supporters.
00:01:10.000They've got flags and tables to eat on, tents, chairs, and they even have a makeshift memorial of stuffed animals and dolls to pay tribute to the poor children's graves that were found at residential schools out west.
00:01:35.000As our videographer Jessica and I stood on the public path and not bothering them at all to take pictures of the tents and that gathering,
00:01:50.000a couple of them rushed out and started accusing us of taking photographs of their sacred fire.
00:01:58.000Well, I hadn't, up to that point, hadn't even seen the fire until they pointed it out.
00:02:04.000But what happened next is proof positive, I believe, of the entitlement, the absolute entitlement of these illegal squatters and the activists who support them.
00:02:16.000I was just asking you not to take a picture of the fire.
00:03:27.000Because you have to remember, you are on Indigenous land, First Nation land.
00:03:33.000We were followed, harassed, screamed at, threatened by a group of no less than eight people, simply for taking pictures of the encampment and their gathering.
00:03:58.000You want to come and stand in solidarity with us?
00:04:01.000Do you, do you, my, my person at home listening and feeling all the anger, do you want to come and stand in solidarity with us?
00:04:09.000You know, it's the, it's the time of the seventh fire.
00:04:12.000The white race has to choose between the path of brotherhood or the path of death and destruction.
00:04:17.000And I don't know the people, the white people that are recording this now, if they're there to exploit us or make, make us out to be such bad people like white people usually do.
00:04:28.000They, when we suggested that this was a public park and that we have every right to be there, to take pictures, to walk through.
00:04:54.000They said it was their land, their turtle island, and they had a right to be there and they were continuing to stay there.
00:05:03.000Well, at one point, poor Jessica's camera was snatched out of her hand and thrown on the ground twice.
00:05:13.000And your footage that you're going to write is going to be one-sided.
00:05:16.000It's okay, the police will see the footage, don't worry.
00:05:19.000Do you like the one-sided footage that you're creating?
00:06:40.000I write for Counter Punch and I work at Sanctuary.
00:06:42.000Another woman who, an Indigenous woman, tried to hijack an interview we were doing with a neighbour living in the apartment across the street by singing at the top of her lungs as we were conducting the interview.
00:07:05.000They became so threatening, so aggressive that I was forced to call the police, which I have never done before.
00:07:15.000She's standing right here in front of me.