I’ve been struggling with this third and final segment about Kanehsatake. I’ve written and rewritten a couple of drafts and I’m still not satisfied. I’m not saying what I want to say.
I’ll start off with something that Alanis Obomsawin said after watching the premier of her film, Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, for the first time in the Kanienkeha:ka lingo (Mohawk) at Kanehsatake.
First of all, (I paraphrase) she says that every other Indigenous group in Canada seemed to benefit from the Oka Crisis, except the community where it all started — Kanehsatake.
There’s a lot of truth in that. After the Crisis, Kanehsatake became “the land that time (and governments) forgot.”
The Feds and Quebec washed their hands of this place. The Sûreté du Québec (SQ or provincial police) did too though they kept in touch via our tapped, formerly private, telephone conversations.
The band council deserted the place as soon as the shooting started. They holed up in a hotel with room service and everything near Montreal for a year.
Even the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Confederacy or Longhouse) declared the place off-limits and its people persona non grata, apparently all guilty by association with Warriors that summer.
Meanwhile, Ottawa got buddy-buddy with band councils and Indigenous organizations. It handed out more scraps from the table, money for education, more money for this and that having to do with taking out resources and calling it “benefits sharing.”
But little really changed in the “land that time forgot” that I call home.
People here did change however. Faced with laws and regulations that didn’t make sense since they weren’t being applied, thanks to the vacuum of authority created after all levels of governance abandoned the place, people decided to do for themselves.
There had been a few small tobacco shacks at Kanehsatake before the Crisis, much like on most “reserves.”. The absence of authority, except for off-duty cops buying caseloads of smokes in the dead of night, allowed the tobacco trade to expand.
Jump ahead a few years and along comes Canada’s plan to legalize cannabis. People again saw opportunity just like they did with tobacco. A few went to the band office to apply for a vendor’s licence and maybe obtain minimal legal protection from outside authorities. But the band council did nothing. Again.
“Again” because that is exactly what happened 35 years before when the tobacco people showed up looking for a licence to operate. They didn’t get one either.
Why not?
It’s complicated. Let’s go for the short answer because the long answer would take a book and neither one of us has that kind of time to waste.
The band council couldn’t issue a business licence to operate as a tobacco vender.
Why not?
Because the band council didn’t have regulations for that type of business.
Why not?
Because the council doesn’t have a business policy.
Why not?
Because the councillors think their jobs are to run the band council’s departments — not make policies.
Why?
Because they don’t get paid to make policy. They’re paid to be administrators, “directors” of departments like “Maintenance,” “Social Services,” and so on.
The result of this bizarre system is confusion that amplifies the vacuum of responsible authority within Kanehsatake.
No policies means anybody can do just about anything with or without a wink and a nod from the band council and get away with it.
Want to build a hugely problematic dump without anyone knowing, without community consultations, without environmental studies, without meeting federal or provincial regulations…
Wanna start making piles of money by taking in hundreds and hundreds of dump trucks full of hazardous waste that no other dump could or would legally accept?
Just go to the Kanehsatake band council and get an okay from the chief pooh-bah because… wait for it… the council doesn’t have a policy for that kind of dump nor does it have a process for applying for a licence.
No policy? No responsibility.
Want to chop and bulldoze whole swaths of the Pines that people struggled to protect 33 years ago?
Why even bother to approach the band council because it doesn’t have a zoning policy, a building code, environmental standards for new construction.
Nada. Nothing. Zip.
Without policies to govern activity on the territory, the band council has nothing to regulate, nothing to licence, no need to put to the community for consultation or approval for any activity.
Why not?
The reason given by the band council itself is because (and I’m paraphrasing again) even if the council had a policy it wouldn’t be able to enforce it anyway.
That really is the official line.
Excuse the extreme rolling of my eyes here. It may take a moment or three to regain my emotional balance.
It may be a stretch here but… Might things have been different if governments had acted differently after the Oka Crisis?
Yes. I believe so.
Why?
Back then, Ottawa and Quebec wanted so badly to put the Crisis behind them, turn the page, put everyone under a Harry Potter-like “Obliviate” curse and forget the whole disgusting thing ever happened.
They could have looked at what went so terribly wrong that summer. Analyzed who did what and why? Band council, Oka council, federal and provincial governments.
They would have seen that Kanehsatake even then had a totally dysfunctional band office.
Instead, however, they walked away bruised, battered and with a tattered human rights reputation in Canada and around the world.
Consider for a moment…
For three weeks, the “Freedom Convoy” occupied downtown Ottawa, blocked Parliament Hill, spewed exhaust fumes and blared truck horns day and night, harassed and threatened residents, forced businesses to close.
Then the Federal government triggered the Emergency Act and ordered police to remove demonstrators and their vehicles and clear the streets.
A few months later, there was a legally-mandated judicial inquiry to answer one question: Was the Federal government justified in using the Emergency Act to end the occupation?
We saw federal, provincial and city officials and politicians testify along with police officers, business people, residents and workers, the demonstrators, and even the Prime Minister of Canada. They were there to answer the questions: “Who did what?” and “Why?”
Now consider what happened during the Oka Crisis:
Quebec and Ottawa sent hundreds of heavily-armed police and a whole military division to lay siege to an entire community of innocents to corner a handful of uppity Mohawks for 3 whole months in a small wooded area at a place called Kanehsatake.
The Oka Crisis resulted in massive violations of human and civil rights, the use of food as a weapon, denial of medical care, arrest and detention without cause, forced confessions at gunpoint, and the use of torture by the police.
Back then, there wasn’t an Emergency Act that required a judicial review afterward.
Would things have turned out differently if there had been?
Would it have been useful to hear from the Mohawk at Kanehsatake and residents of Oka, the head of the band council and Oka’s council too?
Would it help to hear testimony from police officers, soldiers, the officers in charge of both?
Could we have learned anything by having the premier of Quebec and the prime minister of Canada explain why they approved of the use of such force at Kanehsatake?
I think it would at the very least have helped the people at Kanehsatake understand that they couldn’t just curl up into fetal balls afterward.
Maybe, just maybe they would’ve demanded a more accountable band council.
Maybe developed something like civil society to make sure people understood why rules were necessary to avoid the kind of chaos that exists at Kanehsatake today.
Maybe.
But, of course, that never happened.
And I’m just shootin’ the breeze wondering why it couldn’t still.
Shmohawk 
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