A fragile calm settled in as dusk fell on the Ontario town of Caledonia Monday night, hours after aboriginal protesters and non-native residents traded punches and insults under the eyes of the provincial police.

Ontario Provincial Police officers repeatedly separated the two sides during the day, and later in the night showed up in riot gear on Highway 6, the main road running through the southern Ontario town.

The barricade came back up after native and non-native protesters clashed.
(CBC)

Local officials were searching for a solution to the tense stand-off, and considering a possible curfew, according to reports, as vandals destroyed a local power transformer, throwing the surrounding area into the dark. Thousands were without power.

Hydro One spokeswoman Laura Cooke said the cause of the outage was clearly vandalism.

The protesters blocked Hydro One repair crews for several hours, until police were able to clear a path for them through the barricades on a night that came close to the freezing point. Cooke said it will likely be days before service is fully restored.

Ontario Provincial Police officers line up to keep the two sides apart.
(CBC)

Peterson calls for calm

Provincial negotiator David Peterson said Monday it was "heartbreaking" to see the sudden turn of events after a positive round of negotiations that he had hoped would end the crisis.

"The behaviour on some of these folks today was not constructive," the former Ontario premier told Canadian Press. "This situation was settled today. It was settled today, I remind you of that, and the barricade was coming down today.

Aboriginal protesters and non-native residents of the area traded punches and insults.
(CBC)

"It was a lot of hard work and a lot of blood and sweat and tears went into fixing this situation. And somehow or other, it came apart."

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty also urged the two sides to calm down and seek a peaceful resolution to their dispute. 

"I want to join with people across Ontario in calling for calm and goodwill in Caledonia," the premier  said in a statement released by his office on Monday night. "The confrontation we saw today has no place in our society and it does nothing to help resolve this difficult situation."

Six Nations protesters removed their barricade

The native protesters had briefly dismantled their barricade earlier in the day as a sign of goodwill after the province pledged to indefinitely halt development on a plot of disputed land.

But hundreds of town residents turned up and barred access to the site. The scene turned ugly when a van driven by a Six Nations protester tried to force its way through the locals, prompting a fist fight.

"They're instigating, [they're] a bunch of irate radicals," said Janie Jamieson, a spokeswoman for the native protesters.

Several native and non-native demonstrators were injured in scuffles after natives blocked the highway with an electrical transmission tower and then used two large backhoes to tear a trench across the road in front of their blockade.

A native spokesperson approached the non-native demonstrators and told them: "If you leave, we won't dig up the land." But they ignored him.

Tempers reached the boiling point just a few hours after what had seemed to be a breakthrough in a five-week standoff over the construction of a subdivision on land the aboriginal protesters claim is their land.

Sides trade accusations

The non-native blockade began Friday night, as part of a weekly demonstration by members of the community frustrated about the barricade that has been in place for almost five weeks.

"That's colonialism at its finest," Jamieson told CBC News in a midday interview as natives arrived at the site, where Ontario Provincial Police officers tried to keep the peace.

"The OPP is witnessing it but nobody's doing anything about it," Jamieson said.

Each side accused the other of using racial slurs.

"Most people in Caledonia have a great degree of sympathy for land claims and want it settled," said resident Pat Woolley, interviewed at the site of the non-aboriginal protest.

However, he said, non-native "people behind the barricade feel they weren't consulted" before the blockade went up.

Woolley pointed out that people are still off work because the aboriginal protesters were continuing to block a nearby rail line.

The Six Nations community claims the land on which the subdivision was being built was illegally taken from them 200 years ago.

"Our own populations are growing, and if we allow the loss of land, we will be remiss in our duties in our children and our ancestors," Six Nations Confederacy Chief Allen McNaughton said Monday.

Negotiator on scene

Peterson, who was appointed at the end of April to help resolve the standoff, arrived at the scene around 4:30 p.m. EDT.

Right away he appealed for calm, saying he hoped cooler heads would prevail and that demonstrators from both sides would go home.

Peterson called the escalation of tension "heartbreaking," and said he doesn't know what set it off.

"It's tough to know ... frustrating for everybody," he said.

Peterson told CBC Newsworld it was crucial that the Caledonia dispute be ended responsibly because it is being watched by native groups across North America.

"Don't underestimate the significance," he warned. "All of us were praying and working hard to ensure that something ugly didn't develop out of this, like an Oka or a Wounded Knee or something like that."

Saskatchewan blockade disrupts traffic

In a development that seemed to underline Peterson's concerns, members of First Nations in the North Battleford area of Saskatchewan set up a blockade of their own at a major highway near the community Monday afternoon.

The blockade was short-lived, however, lasting only two hours.

Although some cars had been let through, it caused problems for holiday travellers on the Yellowhead Highway near North Battleford. The Saskatchewan protesters, who are from First Nations in the North Battleford district, set up near the bridges that cross the North Saskatchewan River.

Marcia Neault of the Poundmaker Reserve said they wanted to draw attention to First Nations land issues everywhere.