MOHAWK+GRAND RIVER

Gazette No. 73 — Notice of Ceremonial Invitation to the Pipe

Be it known and placed on record: That the Mohawk Nation of Grand River hereby extends a formal Ceremonial Invitation to the Pipe to the Crown of Canada. The pipe ceremony is the customary Haudenosaunee diplomatic act that formally opens council between sovereign peoples — an act of recognition that the party being invited is capable of entering into substantive Nation-to-Nation engagement. I. The Pipe Ceremony as Constitutional Instrument The pipe ceremony is not a request for personal religious or cultural accommodation. It is a constitutional diplomatic instrument under customary Mohawk law governing the opening of inter-sovereign engagements. This distinction was placed before the Court when Gazette No. 70 (Notice of Customary Protocol Deficiency) was dismissed as a cultural accommodation request. The present instrument demonstrates in practice that the Mohawk diplomatic protocols are formal sovereign acts, not accommodation requests. The Crown's own administrative record confirms this. Sir John Johnson, Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, received Haudenosaunee diplomatic representations through formal council protocols in 1798, as recorded in the Holmes & Associates report published by the Crown's own department (AANC-INAC, Government of Canada, catalogue no. R32-492-1993-1, Exhibit A20). These protocols were received as formal diplomatic instruments, not as requests for accommodation. II. What the Invitation Proposes The Ceremonial Invitation to the Pipe proposes the formal opening of Nation-to-Crown council on the constitutional matters set out in the Formal Offer of Peace (G72). The pipe ceremony, if accepted, would constitute a formal acknowledgment by the Crown that it recognizes the Mohawk Nation of Grand River as a sovereign nation capable of entering into constitutional dialogue on matters of territorial governance and treaty rights. III. Non-Response Confirmed The 14-day response window expired on 11 June 2026. No response, acknowledgment, acceptance, or declination was received from any Crown representative. The Crown's non-response to the Ceremonial Invitation to the Pipe is formally entered into the institutional record. The Nation extended its hand in the manner prescribed by its own foundational law. The Crown's silence is on the record and will be relied upon at the September 1, 2026 constitutional hearing and in all subsequent proceedings as evidence that the Mohawk Nation pursued both the legal track and the diplomatic track simultaneously, and the Crown performed on neither.