Kanehsatake 35 years later: Remembering the day Canada sent in the military to violently clear Mohawk land for a golf course

 

The 1990 siege marked a nationwide turning point in Indigenous resistance — now there’s a new threat to the sacred Pines

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.  (more...)

Kanehsatake 35 years later: Remembering the day Canada sent in the military to violently clear Mohawk land for a golf course