Oka Crisis: Mohawk claim to pine forest never resolved

The Mohawks of Kanesatake will on Saturdaymark 25 years since the start of the standoff that became known as the Oka Crisis onthe very spot where a botched police raid triggered those events on July 11, 1990.

The 78-day standoff began in earnest whenCpl. Marcel Lemayof the Quebec provincial policewas shot and killed in an exchange of gunfire between aSret du Qubec tactical squad and Mohawk warriors, who had come in support of a protest camp that had blocked a proposed golf course expansion since that spring.The Quebec coroner was never able to determine who killed Lemay.

• TIMELINE| The Oka Crisis: 78 days of civil unrest.
• Behind the lines: Invisible scars left by Oka Crisis 25 years later.
• A sister's grief breaches a cultural divide.
• LISTEN: CBC journalist and author ofPeople of the Pines Loreen Pinderadiscusses the Oka Crisis and its impact.

July 11, 1990: Botched police raid

9 years ago

Duration 4:16

CBC's Neil Macdonald and Paul Workman report on the first day of the standoff at Oka/Kanesatake.

Both the Town of Oka, some 60 kilometres west of Montreal, andthe Mohawk community ofKanesatakeclaimed the land near the nine-hole golf course as their own.

The expansionnever went ahead, however, and the issue of who owns that land has never been settled.

"The federal government, after the Oka Crisis, did not fix this problem. They should have bought this all out and just given it back to the community," said KanesatakeGrand ChiefSerge Simon.

OkaMayorPascalQuevillon took part in the commemoration, at Simon's invitation. Simon said they are preparing to declare a moratorium on all future development in the area, which the Mohawks call thePines.

However,Mohawk environmental activistWalter David, who was one of the first people to set up the protestcamp in the Pines in March1990, said condominiums encroaching on the forest are the least of the Mohawk community's problems these days.

Those concerns include"Energy East. Tar sands. Climate change. Protection of our water rights," said David. He saidTransCanada'sproposed Energy East pipeline would go right through the community, which is a patchwork of land nestled along the north shore of Lake of Two Mountains.

Land negotiations ongoing

25 years after the Oka crisis

9 years ago

Duration 2:04

It's been 25 years since the clash between the Kanasatake Mohawk and the town of Oka reverberated around the world. But so many years later, the issue of land ownership north west of Montreal still hasn't been resolved.

The Mohawks claim all of the land originally known as the Seigneury of the Lake of Two Mountains whichgiven to the Sulpician orderof priests by King Louis XVof Francefor the "use and benefit" of the Mohawks and Algonquins whomthe Catholic priests were determined to Christianize. Over the decades that followed, the Sulpicianssold off much of that land to European settlers.

That vast tract of land, which includes the rich agricultural farmlands and Mirabel airport, is subject to negotiations with the federal government under itsspecific land-claims process negotiations which have been on-again and off-again over the years.

Simon said, under his leadership, negotiations with the band council are now once again underway, although they are subject to a media blackout.

'Major event in Canadian history'

At the height of the Oka standoff, more than 1,000 journalists including television crews from the major American networks and as far away as Australia sought police accreditation.In Canada, the wall-to-wall media coverage raisedawareness aboutaboriginal land claims and other issues.

Among First Nations' peoples and their supporters, the crisis sparked solidarity marches, sympathy barricades and protest camps setting the stage for other activism such as theIdle No More movement that followed more than two decades later.

The concrete commitments that came from the federal government when the barricades came down in September 1990 included a promise by Prime Minister Brian Mulroneyto set up a Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

The six-volume report of that commission was released in 2006 and called for among scores of other measures the recently concludedTruth and Reconciliation Commission into native residential schools.

Mohawk artist and aboriginal rights' activist Ellen Gabriel, who became a spokeswomanfor theKanesatakeMohawk protesters during the crisis, said the events of 1990 exposed the deep-seated frustrations and anger of aboriginal people about a long history of mistreatment by successive governments that predates Confederation.

"This is a major event in Canadian history," said Gabriel. "It should be taught in schools. It's not even taught in [Kanesatake's] school. Isn't it sad?"

"They want to make this problem go away. The best way to do that is to ignore that it had any significance."