On this day 35 years ago, a SWAT team, a paramilitary force, attacked a peaceful barricade in the Kanehsatà:ke pine forest — a barricade meant to protect the more than 200-year-old trees from being cut for the expansion of the nine-hole Oka Golf Club and condo development. The development would have seen the removal of our sacred burial ground to expand the parking lot of the country club.

For 78 days the peoples of Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawake defended “the Pines,” a white pine forest claimed by the Mohawks of Kanesatake. We were under siege, denied food, medicine and the free passage of people by order of the Sureté du Quebec, the provincial police force, endorsed by the Quebec and Canadian governments.

Our fundamental human rights were violated daily by the SQ and the Canadian military — and we were publicly labelled as criminals for opposing a golf course expansion that was approved without our consent or consultation.  

We were criminalized for upholding our traditional laws under Kaianera’kó:wa, or the Great Law of Peace, on our land. There were at least 14 women who met the SWAT team when they arrived at 5:15 a.m. on that day. We approached the police with our arms in the air to show we did not have any weapons.  

That first day was largely forgotten as time wore on, causing the land issue to be lost, because legacy media did not possess much knowledge of Indigenous rights at the time. 

Earlier that year, a civil war had erupted in Akwesasne, injecting into the minds of the public that the Mohawk Warrior Society was a criminal organization. When a police officer was killed, we believe by his own, automatically all Mohawks were considered murderers and criminals.

The police had vengeance on their minds throughout the whole summer of 1990, and beyond.

Within the Mohawk community, there were those who did not support the people at the barricades. In fact, on May 1, in the last two months before the raid, there had been an aborted police raid, causing many in the community to leave, which is why the majority of land defenders that remained were women and a few men. This did not stop us. We stayed. 

We just wanted to protect the pines.

Today, land grabs by individual Mohawks who feel entitled to cut pines for their businesses are the norm.  The voices of the people are being silenced through fear. All this is rooted in how our collective lands were taken without consultation, without respect. But this didn’t just happen overnight. The ‘divide and conquer’ strategy has long been a colonial strategy, and is part of a slowly decaying process of lawlessness, devolving into madness and mayhem with individuals who feel that no laws apply to them.

In what was once a quiet community there is now uncertainty, safety is fragile and outsiders have exploited the fact that neither Canada nor Quebec want to be accused of picking on Kanehsatake, and creating ‘another crisis’. In spite of the lawlessness that continues to threaten the safety of the people and our environment, it is our home. We have to at least try to fight for it… again.

The pine forest was once a refuge for previous generations trying to escape harassment by the Sulpicien bullies, priests and missionaries who sought to bend us to their beliefs and customs. Now, in this forest, millions are being made by non-native silent partners as their proxies, individual Mohawks, buy the loyalty of community members. Economic prosperity, as one local authority figure told me, is more important than dealing with all the issues that come from lawlessness and its root causes.

Paradoxically, Kanehsatà:ke, whose history was once a symbol of resilience and resistance, now seems more like a playground for anyone and everyone who wants to make a dollar. It’s a community vulnerable in all ways to the brutality of the British Crown, and its underling, Canada, which still persistently defies international law by stealing more Indigenous lands for corporate interests.

The precious pine forest at the heart of the standoff in 1990 is now under attack by its own residents.

During the early 1900s the forest was a refuge for Kanehsata’kehró:non seeking a peaceful night’s sleep away from the Catholic bullies and hired security at the Seminary of St. Sulpice, whose greed and brutality divided the community into two: Kanehsatake and Wahta. Some community members left to seek a better life of tranquility away from the guns and brutality of the Sulpiciens.

Over the past three decades, the safety and atmosphere of Kanehsatake has deteriorated. Daily gunshots with automatic weapons, hyper masculinity equated to being “Mohawk,” and shameless greed in appropriating community lands, along with drag racing, has sadly become commonplace. A culture in which no laws are accepted and respected, has paved the way for the cutting of centuries-old pine trees for the expansion of pot shops’ parking lots, and the shameless justifications of “economic prosperity” — which no one seems to be able to challenge.

It is yet another insult, and further disrespect towards a small community that has been struggling to protect our homelands for more than 300 years.

We did not fight for the Pines only to see them cut down for pot shops. We did not endure the 78 days in 1990, that turned into years of police harassment and violations of our privacy; racist slurs and criminalization of all Mohawk peoples or felt the sting of hundreds of years of racist propaganda implying that we are violent people. We did not endure the racist hatred of the authorities and the public only to have the pine forest we tried to protect cut down for personal gain.

In the past 35 years we have learned much about multi-generational trauma in trying to understand our communities today. There was a Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, an Aboriginal Healing Foundation, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women’s Commission — all stemming from the 1990 Siege of Kanehsatake and Kahnawake. Each of these reports delineates the past harms, history of Indigenous peoples, and share what could be the solutions to help Indigenous peoples overcome the multi-generational trauma; to heal and to feel the freedom of what justice can provide.

It seems, however, that no one is really interested in the truth. No one cares about the suffering that our communities endured at the hands of the army and police. Acknowledging it would mean taking real accountability for human rights abuses, and more stains on Canada’s international reputation. Society, it seems, prefers the status quo version of history written in a liar’s scrawl, so they can comfortably remain in a state of cognitive dissonance.

All levels of government, including the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake, are content with the lawlessness in Kanehsatake. Why wouldn’t they be? The economic benefits are too great to intervene. Meanwhile, youth from outside our community have a space to go wild on the streets of their new playground — Kanehsatà:ke.

While no one wants to live through another ‘crisis’ or siege, those of us who understand the importance of the Pines to the identity of Kanehsata’kehró:non know that this is not normal. Settler colonialism is not normal, it is the opposite of respect for all life and its aim is to erase the history, languages, cultures and rights to self-determination of all Indigenous peoples.

In Kanehsatà:ke, we are stuck between a rock and a hard place as we try to stop this madness. 

We don’t want a violent encounter. But we do have the right to peace and security, to have our rights to self-determination respected – under our own laws and constitution, Kaianera’kó:wa.  

For over 35 years, we have tried peaceful means to deal with a government that is not interested in solutions or listening.  They want the community to implode and their silence and apathy are evidence of it.

There is a belief in the community that Kanehsatake is being punished for ruining the international reputation of Canada. It is no surprise then that Kanehsatake is where bad behaviour is rewarded by the authorities and government. They look the other way even though they have been persistently monitoring us over the last 35 years.  

Weak leadership, apathetic attitudes, and individual economic prosperity combine to create the current state of Kanehsatake and link to the dysfunction, which Canada and Quebec have contributed to.

This is the Canada I know.  This is the Quebec I know. But this is not the community I grew up in. It has been taken over by assimilated Mohawks acting like the colonizer. 

Hope is the only thing we have.

July 11, 1990 is something I will always remember, and the brave souls who I stood with.   

Respect, courage, and compassion are part of our teachings and we as a community and part of the Kanien’kehá:ka nation can and must find our way back to these teachings. We must be able to speak our minds with respect and without fear.  While today is a seemingly sad remembrance of what we once were, hope is all we have, even if it seems like a small spark. We owe it to the children and future generations.

Skén:nen