Talk:John Harding (Sha ko hen the tha)

Clean-up

I've looked at this article and have done some minor editing but am still scratching my head. At present, it is not really about sha ko hen the tha (John Harding). It is an account of a struggle at Kanesatake in which Harding was one of the players. As it stands now, the article is unencyclopedic. Sources that give a relatively neutral account are hard to come by, so it will take some digging. However, I'm not sure Harding is all that notable. We may want to rename the article, but to what I don't yet have an idea. Thoughts? Sunray 16:30, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

• Good point, Sunray. How about merging it into Kanesatake, Quebec? By the way, the article on Steven Bonspille is now jsut a stub, and possibly libellous at that. Ground Zero | t 17:28, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

A merge might be a good way to go. At the very least, we could port most of the material in this article over to the Kanesatake article (it needs beefing up anyway). We might want to leave a short article for both Harding and Bonspille (I'm still researching that and will let you know what I find). I've removed the potentially libelous comments from the article about Steven Bonspille and added a few more details (still to be fact checked). Sunray 21:52, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

The plot thickens. I'm now sorting through a variety of media accounts from mainstream and indymedia sources, which I will put up on the Kanesatake article. From what I've read so far, the James Gabriel article appears to be a fairly accurate account—though, here again, the article is less about Gabriel than it is about this incident. Looking at all the verbiage in the various articles with an eye to what will be historically significant, it is apparent that the whole shebang will need some fierce editing. Sunray 00:32, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I think you guys are a little myopic. Why not J.Harding, born ..lived..died...end of story. A cow could write meaningless crap like that. Meat needs to be on the bone or you risk losing focus. ie Faraday was famous because he was Faraday or because of WHAT he discovered. What can outsiders like yourselves reveal better than an insider ? is it "participation" or are you guys running the show? How are you going to "research" this, by reading the news clips...the real story comes from the insiders who knew what happened behind the scenes and THATS the story here, that a few people took on the Canadian govt and beat it. you guys dont know jacks**t [unsigned comments by: Robinhoodlives 20:38, October 5, 2005].

Well, no, I won't be the one writing your "cow" story. Nor would I claim that an "outsider" can reveal more than an insider. If you want to participate, you might try reading what I've said rather than make a bunch of assumptions and then begin with the insults. Try civility for starters. Sunray 06:25, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I think you miss the point I was making. First off telling someone something straight-up is not un-civil, grow up! (thats uncivil). I also made no assumptions but you did!. Isn't it funny how us dumb uncivil indians cant quite measure up to your standards. Our take on things isn't right and needs whitey's touch to make it "better". Can you recognise latent racism ?. Sure, deny and justify! [unsigned comments by: Robinhoodlives 16:40, October 6, 2005].

I honestly didn't know you were from India. :-)

Seriously, do you want to work on this article (see my comments below). Insider info would be great. I will try not to be racist if you will. Sunray 03:09, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

To the anon editor: first, welcome to Wikipedia! I hope that you enjoy your time here and that you can help contribute to this great project. It would a good idea for you to read up on how Wikipedia works if you're going to be here for a while. Like any community, we have policies and rules to help things work better. Sunray has pointed you in the direction of the Wikipedia policy on "civility". Some of your comments were not very civil: "you guys dont know jacks**t". Since you're new here, you can't be expected to know how things work, and everyone makes mistakes when they're starting out. (I certainly did!) So please, take some time to read up on things to the Community Portal (linked from the menu on the left of your screen). I also encourage you to register with a username. It makes it much easier for people to commnicate with you and vice versa. You can leave a message on my talk page if you have any questions. Best regards, Ground Zero | t 10:55, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

He does have a user name (Robinhoodlives) but may not know how to add a signature by typing four tildes ~~~~, (a good thing to do as it helps keep track of who said what/when). Robinhoodlives has done some work on the article and it is apparent that he was there. I'm wondering if he could provide some biographical info on sha ko hen the tha and also help with the story of the policing and governance issues at Kanesatake over the past many years. Sunray 16:08, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Insider/Outsider information

Insider informtion on these events would definitely add to the article. The thing we need to do (in an encyclopedia) is make sure we can verify what we say. To do that we need reliable sources. Sources don't have to be mainstream. In this case there are lots of accounts from Mohawk Community newspapers and other First Nations sources. There are also indymedia sources. Whatever the source, though, we need to stick to observations and facts (e.g., Harding said... Gabriel did...) rather than supposition (e.g., Gabriel planned... Harding thought...). In other words, they might have planned many things, what did they do? Sunray 16:05, 6 October 2005 (UTC)