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= The Grand River Navigation Company Scandal = The Grand River Navigation Company Scandal is a historical and on-going issue of tension between The Six Nations of the Grand River, the Canadian Crown, and the Government of Ontario. This point of contention is centred on the misappropriation and disappearance of potentially millions of dollars worth of funds from Six Nations accounts between the years 1832 and 1860. The main point of contention in this issue is that the Six Nations funds have historically been 'held in trust' by the Crown. The main sources of revenue for this fund were gained from the sale of land, extraction of natural resources, and from mortgages derived from leases. An additional aspect of this fund however, was a series of investments made by colonial officials on behalf of the Six Nations of the Grand River, often without their approval or knowledge. While the fund had many minor investments made on its behalf by Crown officials in the Indian Department, the centre of this scandal is that upwards of £44,292 ($177,168.00) was invested in an engineering/navigation scheme known as The Grand River Navigation Company. This was done without the approval of the Six Nations Council and, following the company's dissolution due to bankruptcy, those investments disappeared. Six Nations argue that this was an abuse of trust and power by Crown officials, thus they should be remunerated these funds both in accordance to inflation and with interest.

Background
The Grand River is a river in Southern Ontario whose source runs from near Dundalk, Ontario to its mouth on Lake Erie, near Port Maitland. It has historically been an important river in South-Western Ontario due to its length and how it bisects the area. The Haudenosaunee had been coming to this area for centuries to hunt beaver, thus it was a natural selection for their new territory following their retreat from New York State following the American Revolution, due to their military alliance with the British Empire. In 1784, the Governor of the Province of Quebec Frederick Haldimand was authorized by the royal decree of King George III to transfer the land to the Six Nations Confederacy, "allotting to them for that purpose six miles deep from each side of the river beginning at Lake Erie and extending in that proportion to the head of the said river, which them and their posterity are to enjoy for ever." The total acreage of the grant was subject to various land survey and dubiously governmental reductions over the decades, and as such it remains a contentious issue to this day, with the Six Nations of the Grand River stating that "less than 5% is all that remains from our original 950,000 acre land grant from our 1784 Haldimand Treaty." Regardless of total acreage, the bulk of the Haudenosaunee settlements were located on the Grand River as that is where the best agricultural land was located, in addition to the proximity to the establishment of small fisheries.

Promotion and Investment: 1827-1832
Leading up to the incorporation of the company, work had already began on navigational improvements on the Grand River, as a feeder canal was built from the Welland Canal to ensure adequate water supplies for its locks.To achieve this, a dam was built in Dunnville, Ontario in 1829. This 7ft dam raised the Grand River's water level by approximately 9ft. which caused sever flooding along the river. The flooding resulted in the destruction of Six Nations properties,including the highly critical corn harvests which Susan Hill argues can be connected to that year's endemic famine and starvation, exacerbated by diseases that accompanied the flooding, due to new, marshy-areas of standing water.

The Grand River Navigation Company (GRNC) was incorporated in 1832 as a "joint stock company capitalized at £50,000 to improve the Grand River from the Welland Canal feeder to Brantford or Galt" in Southern Ontario. Included in its initial board were various businessman, merchants, and and investors, with one William Hamilton Merritt being of particular note, as he played a key role in the very similar, albeit more successful, as one of the 'Fathers of the Welland Canal'. Merritt, however, operated in the background, while Absalom Shade and David Thompson took the lead publicly, as Merritt did not want to be "suspect of to charges of interference and hopes of personal gain." The GRNC had been the works for about 5 years prior to its incorporation, as local merchants like Shade and Thompson desperately wanted to improve navigability between Brantford and Lake Erie in the hopes of improving their own business venture, not only to make transporting their goods easier, but also in the hopes that increased navigability would draw more settlers into the sparsely-populated area. Public talks and petitions by people like Merritt advertised the GRNC as being in the best interest of people on the Grand River as it would stimulate the economy. Authors Bruce Hill Emerson and Susan M. Hill both contest this notion of 'empty land', due in part to the large population of the Haudenosaunee Six Nations, but also due to the presence of Pennsylvanian/German Mennonites. They both suggest that greed and personal gain was the primary motivator, which underpins the notion of 'scandal', in that the developers did not necessarily have the best interests of the population in mind, namely the Six Nations of the Grand River. It is unclear as to exactly how much Six Nations funds were invested in this scheme. Bruce Emerson Hill states that the initial investment consisted of £20,000, with potentially upwards of £160,000, although this is not supported with direct evidence. Six Nations, working in conjunction with historians, have identified recorded transactions worth £44,282. Additionally, Six Nations argues that "in 1837, free grants were also issued to the Grand River Navigation Company for 368 7/10 acres and were never returned even after the Company went bankrupt