Peace and quiet?

For the first time in more than 30 years, no one in the news media bothered me or showed much interest in the 1990 Oka Crisis. No asks to write something, do an interview, or respond to a snarling opinionator foaming at the mouth about those dastardly criminal masterminds in Mohawkland. 

Of course unprecedented wildfires, evacuations including an entire northern city, and other disasters (come on down, Ontario premier, Doug Ford) dominated the headlines. The lack of attention at Kanehsatake was marvellous. 

But it got me wondering whether that was such a good thing after all? Why did it bother me? I think I have an answer.

A few years ago, a producer at Radio-Canada (CBC French) asked if I’d be one of two journalists looking back at the Oka Crisis 30 years later. I replied, “Nope.” I wasn’t interested. 

I had no wish to re-live the trauma of that awful summer. Not again. That’s all anybody ever wanted to know. I was sick of picking over those old bones. 

She persisted though, saying that she also wanted to explore what — if anything — had changed since.

She had me hooked. What had changed during those 30 years after the Mohawks walked out of the Treatment Centre at Kanehsatake, officially ending the 1990 Oka Crisis? 

We met at a café in Montreal. The other journalist showed up late. A TV reporter for TVA at the time, he worked in TV at Radio-Canada now. 

I’d left CBC Radio the year before the Crisis, barely scratching out a living as a freelancer at Kitigan-Zibi in the upper Gatineau. Then the shooting started and I spent the rest of that summer behind the barricades at home at Kanehsatake. 

Our producer said we would interview people who had something to do with that terrible summer but that was just the starting point. We would look at the changes that had taken place throughout the next 30 years leading to the present.

After that first meeting, my spidey-sense was tingling. My impression: That other reporter dismissed both the producer and myself as irrelevant. He knew better. He knew what the story was back then. He knew what the story had always been and would always be. We just needed to re-tell it.

This was exactly what I was afraid of — just another rehash of the government-approved script about Warriors (and Mohawks in general) as a homegrown criminal organization. 

The interview list was heavy with SQ (provincial police), Canadian soldiers, former political hacks in the Quebec and Canadian governments, a few good burghers from Oka along with a smidge of Franco and anglo journos. Of course, there had to be a few Mohawks. 

I noted something even in that first interview. The other journalist began every interview with July 11’s “shootout at the Oka corral”. He ended every interview with the Mohawks under arrest. 

No mention about the few select prisoners beaten by the SQ, lovingly applied, of course. No mention that all except two Mohawks were acquitted at trial of all charges (murder, participating in a riot, etc. etc). Nothing about what had changed in the 30 years since at Kanehsatake, in Oka, or in Quebec society.

As far as that reporter seemed concerned, it was like the following 29 years never happened. He seemed totally focussed on re-writing the same story he’d screw up 30 years before. I told the producer about my concerns. Where were those missing 29 years?

I shifted my focus from straight followup questions in English to asking what lessons people had learned after that summer? What did the people being interviewed believe had changed since 1990? Most looked puzzled, didn’t know what to say, as though they’d never thought about it before. 

Change? Well, most replied, didn’t things go back to normal after the Oka Crisis?

Things had never been normal for Mohawks at Kanehsatake. As far as Oka as the white village next door was concerned, Mohawks didn’t matter. They didn’t matter 30 years ago and there was little evidence that attitudes there had changed much since then. 

Mohawks didn’t matter to Oka except around the first of every month called “welfare day.” Then we were sort of okay at the grocery store, the dime store and in booze joints in beautiful downtown Oka. 

Oka willingly grabbed nearly a $1-million of federal money meant to compensate for a Mohawk exemption from certain taxes to pay for a municipal youth centre, a school, water and sewage treatment plants, a fire department, library, parks and various recreation programs.

Kanehsatake, on the other hand, had none of those.

Officially, however, Oka long-ago threw Mohawks into the trash cans of history. Historic publications, public plaques, community events, tourist information and pamphlets, maps — none mentioned the Mohawks or Kanehsatake. 

Apparently, according to both Oka and then-Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, Mohawks at Kanehsatake were really refugees or illegal immigrants from what would become the United States. Or maybe martians? They weren’t sure.

There was a clear power imbalance between Oka and Kanehsatake back then and for a long, long time before the 1990 Standoff. It took awhile but all of that was going to change during those long 29 years afterward.

But that’s another story. The one that other reporter didn’t know about, didn’t care to look for, and probably never will.

Coming up…
Peace and Quiet? (Part deux)