Last Fall, Al Harrington and other people from Kanehsatà:ke did a fifteen day hunger strike to denounce the theft of their land by a real estate developer.
1. Historical context
In this area, and since the XVIIIth century, Mohawks continue to claim their ancestral rights on their land. Land which was at the heart of the Oka Crisis. In the 1960s, a golf course was built on part of this claimed land. Important detail: a Mohawk cemetery is located there.
In 1990, in addition to unveiling a project to enlarge the golf course, the Oka city mayor approved a real estate project to build luxury houses. This projects encroached on a pine tree forest part of Mohawk territory. Following this announcement, on March 10th, 1990, members of the Mohawk nation started a blockade on a dirt path leading to the golf course. The Oka city mayor managed to obtain a court injunction stating they had until July 9th to leave otherwise the mayor would get the police involved. Which he does, on the following day, July 10th. This is the starting of the Oka Crisis.
Here are some details on how the historical narrative was built, its treatment in the media, some excerpts from school history books, and how the narrative was modified when compared to what exactly transpired.
1.1 The Oka Crisis
In March 1990, after the Oka city approved the luxury housing project and the enlarging of the golf course, Kanehsatà:ke Mohawks started to block the dirt road leading to the golf course. Based on the court injunction obtained, the Oka city mayor left them until July 9th to remove their blockade. If they refused to leave, the mayor threatened to get the police involved: which happened, a day later. The police charged the area known as the Pines of Kanehsatà:ke, throwing tear gas canisters. Gunfire then broke out, where a cop was killed.
To this resistance, we must mention the support of the Kahnawake Warriors, who blockaded the roads leading to their reserve. Followed shortly afterwards with a blockade of the Mercier bridge during rush hour. The Mohawk resistance intensified, but so did police presence (1000 more cops). Oka and Chateauguay settlers then protested their anger: during one of these protests, Châteauguay settlers burned an effigy of a Warrior while yelling “savage”. During the following weeks, contrary to what the government said, food – sometimes tampered with – and medicine were difficult to get through to the occupation. Road traffic was over controlled, and journalists were controlled and pushed back by the Army.
On August 8th, the police were replaced by the Army, and negotiations started. Multiple events happened, chiefly among them:
- On August 26th, when a convoy of children, women and elders left the occupation, Oka settlers threw rocks at them. A Mohawk got hit straight in the thorax; it is the first and only stoning death in the history of Canada.
- On September 8th, Randy Horn, a Mohawk activist, is brutally beaten by the Army. Despite the necessity to quickly see a doctor, Mohawks were forced to negotiate to gain access to one.
It was not until September 26th, that the siege ended. State forces took advantage of the end of the siege to get revenge on the activists, by brutally beating them up.
Throughout and following the Oka Crisis, it was the Warriors who were generally presented as being violent and using violence. Francophone media spoke of armed activists, using harsh language to describe them, qualifying them as terrorists. In news reports from the main francophone media outlets in 2005, 2010 and 2015, the death of the cop, Caporal Lemay, was always the center of attention. However, the death of the Mohawk elder is never mentioned.
1.2. Summer 2019
During Summer 2019, tensions escalated again between the Oka city mayor – who made unacceptable remarks about Mohawks – and the Grand Chief Serge Simon. Through these tensions, we are reminded of the 1990 Oka Crisis, as the matter at hand was again regarding land claims. Here is an excerpt of what happened:
“The situation has been at its worst between these two men for the last few days. At the center of this war of words: a project for retrocession of forested lands to the Mohawks, including part of the Pines which was at the heart of the 1990 Oka Crisis.
Mayor Quevillon claims that since 1990, the Kanehsatà:ke territory has had a ‘cigarette and pot hut’ problem, based on the large number of stores where it is possible to buy what is often, according to colonial laws in place, ‘contraband’ tobacco and marijuana.
M. Quevillon also argued that the land retrocession project would cause the real estate value of Oka houses to plummet, along with an uncontrolled multiplication of these so-called ‘huts’.”
1.3. The Hunger Strike
At the heart of this conflict is the construction of hundreds of houses on a territory granted to the Mohawk nation since 1718. The objective of this hunger strike was to request that the government take the demands of the longhouse seriously, particularly to obtain a moratorium on real estate development on Kanehsatà:ke territory.
2. Colonialism and Capitalism
We can start with native author Glen Coulthard, who honors the celebrated decolonial activist Frantz Fanon, in his book “Red Skin, White Masks”.
In this book, the author shows the limitations to the recognition and reconciliation policies of the State, which only aim to strengthen the colonial power of the government. And the events we witness now is another proof: by doing a hunger strike, Al Harrington, a Kanehsatà:ke community member, demonstrated extraordinary political dignity. Coulthard shows that the indigenous political identity remains unassimilable, despite crushing colonial repression. Additionally, it shows us that recognition policies are only masquerade and subterfuge.1 They do not protect indigenous people from the exploitation of their land. Al Harrington also did this hunger strike to spread awareness on the long-standing land conflict which was ignored by colonial powers for more than 300 years and which was revived by the 1990 Oka “Crisis”.
The so-called antiracist and multiculturalist liberalism shows its limits, and these limits go down to its roots. Since global capitalist production is linked to colonial expansion, the practice of land expropriation can only increase. It is even more the case when we stand in the presence of settlement colonies, as is the case here. As Ellen Gabriel explains:
“It is the government who is hurting us, who is letting real estate development take place on our fraudulently ‘sold’ land. The government must take its responsibility in this ongoing conflict.”
Effectively, Glen Coulthard tells us that:
“even if recognition is raised as a ‘vital right’ and it is a significant improvement when compared to previous strategies of exclusion, genocide and assimilation made by the canadian government, I surmise that ‘recognition’ is something that is ‘allowed’ by the government, or ‘offered to a lesser group by a dominating one’, and that this approach is destined to fail, because it is unable to change, and even less to transcend, the amount of power in play within colonial relations”. We can complete with this often repeated quote: “An independence granted is only a different way to manage servitude.”
This is how it is possible to have a public policy of recognition of Indigenous people, while still supporting what is fundamentally cultural genocide.
For the right for all people to decide for themselves, we support the Mohawk nation!
Adapted and translated from a text written originally by the Pour une dignité politique collective.
Notes:
- “The colonial domination now takes the form of recognition and accomodation mecanisms by the State. […] The reproduction of colonial relations now depends on the ability of the State to convince indigenous people to adopt, implicitly or explicitly, asymetric and non-reciprocal forms of recognition, which are imposed or given by the colonial society or colonial State.” Translated from Glen Coulthard, Peau rouge, masques blancs (2014).