The Dominion - Kanehsatake

Every Mohawk a Suspect

Martin Lukacs — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 06:08:35 +0000

Why drugs raids in Kanehsatake feel like police invasions

KANEHSATAKE—“You didn’t see anything?” my neighbour asks.

Apparently, another big police raid is taking place. We stop to listen for a second but hear nothing. Nobody phoned. I hadn’t listened to the radio all morning. I’ve been mowing the lawn. I haven’t seen or heard anything unusual. I haven’t seen a single police car.

Looking up, we hear a helicopter. It doesn’t sound like a police chopper. We’ve learned to distinguish the sounds of military, police and civilian helicopters.

“It looks more like a news chopper,” I say.

My neighbour says news reports estimated that a combined force of 500 police officers were raiding Kanehsatake. We agree that a drug raid is long overdue, but we question the numbers and the need for such massive raids. The numbers imply a ratio of about one cop for every three Mohawks—man, woman and child—living at Kanehsatake.

My neighbour tells me the police hit a well-known drug joint in the Pines. “Lots of people go in and out of that place all the time,” she says, “and everyone knows why.”

That phrase gets lots of mileage at Kanehsatake. Everyone knows who’s into cocaine, and who’s dealing oxycontin to kids at the high school in full sight of the band office. Everyone knows who’s selling weapons, booze, and pills. Everyone knows where the pushers of hard drugs live. Everyone knows but few do or say anything until it affects them or their immediate family. Otherwise, most people mumble and complain.

The police arrest eight people at Kanehsatake this time, including an elderly mother. She had the bad luck of being at her son’s house when the police came to arrest him. The police, though, give reporters the name of only one of the arrested: 43-year-old Tyrone Canatoguin.

Because "everyone knows," everyone also has suspicions about this raid. Rumour has it that someone flipped. Everyone knows there’s competition between a few individuals, and possibly their families, over drug dealing. Rumour has it someone, perhaps someone facing jail time, cut a deal in exchange for reduced charges. Rumour also has it that the raid presented a chance for this individual to use the police to take out the competition.

None of that is reported by the news media for several reasons. First, rumours are almost impossible to verify. Second, most Mohawks won’t go on the record, especially to the Montreal-based media. They blame reporters for demonizing their community with sensational, superficial and negative coverage. Third, most reporters don’t look beyond “officials” for comment, as though average Mohawks have nothing relevant to say. Most reporters are fixated on confrontations between the Mohawk and police and everything else gets in the way of “the story”—a story that Mohawks feel has already been written.

Reporters don’t look for other stories or spend much time at Kanehsatake. They arrive when the police raids happen, and leave after they get the story they want. Reporters may not have the time to look deeper into the story. Certainly, most newsrooms are understaffed and reporters stretched too thin. They may also lack basic journalistic curiosity or interest in Indigenous issues, or maybe they’re satisfied to confirm Mohawks as fundamentally criminal, and to reinforce those stereotypes. Harsh? Not really, given the stories I read after a raid.

Newscasts on the morning of June 14 put 500 police at Kanehsatake even though there are raids taking place at Akwesasne, Oka and villages in the southern Laurentians. The numbers just don’t add up. The next day many news-sites, newscasts, and newspapers still put 500 police at Kanehsatake. It takes a small community paper, L’Echo de St. Eustache, to ask a simple question and get a more realistic number: 200. This helps explain why some people hardly noticed the June 14 raid at Kanehsatake.

Almost no context accompanies the stories after the raid. Reporters re-jig Surete du Quebec (SQ) handouts, quote police spokespeople and "balance" those with quotes from Mohawk band councillors. Police are portrayed as wary but professional, putting on brave faces while enduring insults. Reporters portray themselves in much the same way, especially after a La Presse reporter is spit on. Not a single story, however, questions the methods, the cost, the effectiveness or the impact of the raid on ordinary people living at Kanehsatake.

Do such raids instill confidence or fear in the police? Consider how police conduct drug raids elsewhere. They obtain warrants naming specific individuals. They isolate the address specified in the warrant. They execute the warrant with a minimum of inconvenience to the neighbourhood. Even during raids in a small village similar in population to Kanehsatake, police are careful not to disrupt daily life in the community. Often, the police alert the media beforehand so they can transmit the proper message: crime doesn’t pay.

A raid at Kanehsatake is different. The whole community—on every junction of every road—has a police roadblock. All Mohawks are considered suspect and potentially dangerous. This explains why the police presence is massive. There may be helicopters with snipers hovering overhead. The disruption to the community is huge.

Maybe the police get a kick out of these raids—the big operation, the cute title and all the big shiny toys they can muster. It may make them feel a lot safer. But imagine what it’s like from the inside when hundreds of heavily-armed people in uniforms move into your community and treat you like an inmate in a penal colony. The fact is that the majority of people at Kanehsatake don’t commit crimes, don’t own weapons, don’t do drugs. They might go a little over the speed limit every now and then, but they don’t deserve to be treated like criminals.

May of 2009 was the last “raid” in Kanehsatake. It was more like an invasion. It stretched over several days and involved a combined force of about 300 SQ and RCMP officers, dozens of squad cars and large SUVs speeding up and down the territory. A helicopter provided air cover while a police boat patrolled the Ottawa River. An armoured personnel carrier was on hand. Police arrested 12 Mohawks that time, although one escaped from the back seat of a police car, barefoot and handcuffed.

I described that drug raid as an “invasion”—a hugely expensive and wasteful farce. After several days, numerous searches and what must have cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars per day, the police confiscated about 100 tomato plants. Reporters came for the first day but decided there wasn’t anything newsworthy in the days after. Not a single mainstream reporter questioned the conduct of that raid—then, or since.

One woman felt her house shudder from a low-flying helicopter. Looking out a window, she saw a police chopper hovering above roof-level with snipers hanging out the side hatches, weapons pointed at her home and others nearby. Luckily, her children were at school. A few other people reported similar experiences. It made people wonder how the police get their information, what judges require from the police to obtain warrants for raids at Kanehsatake, whether the warrants are executed properly and if civil and human rights are different when it comes to Mohawks.

Plausible rumours after each raid have a long shelf life and wide distribution on the Rez. There’s also little effort to dispel rumours because there aren’t many credible or reliable sources of information at Kanehsatake. There are no local newspapers or other forms of independent journalism. People have few chances to meet, discuss or debate local issues. So the community lives on rumours.

Official sources of information, such as the police, governments, and Montreal newspapers, have little credibility among Mohawks. The police and governments play up their seeming infallibility while depending upon ugly attitudes about Indians in general and Mohawks specifically to justify their actions. To them, this is a problem community that they wish would just go away. As a result, they don’t get involved in working with the community toward long-term solutions, and instead use short-term thinking and flashy, expensive, and ultimately useless raids over and over again. It’s progress in reverse.

The mainstream media seem to share the attitudes of governments and police about Mohawks at Kanehsatake. So they don’t waste a lot of time questioning authorities about strategy or tactics. One can almost hear the sighs from newsrooms and the plaintive whine from reporters begging not to be sent on this never-ending story. As a result, little is done to offset sensational and superficial media coverage often driven by and reinforcing negative Mohawk stereotypes.

Of course, stereotypes go both ways. Mohawks don’t trust, like or respect the SQ or the RCMP because of past confrontations. Police are not seen as people trying to help but uniforms with weapons. On the other hand, the police haven’t tried much to build trust. Stories abound on the Rez about the SQ laughing at Mohawks trying to file complaints for assault or attacks on property, only to be told much later that their complaints don’t exist or are missing.

Mohawks at Kanehsatake may trust the Aboriginal Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit even less. The A-CFSEU is a collection of native constables drafted from reserve police forces across the province. The federal and provincial governments first tried this type of combined native force at Kanehsatake in 2004. It didn’t work.

Former chief councillor James Gabriel fired his own Mohawk police force and dismantled the community police board. He didn’t trust his own cops to "weed out the organized crime that has infiltrated our community." Gabriel then hired about 40 Native constables from across Quebec and brought back a former chief of police that the community despised.

In a 2004 Maclean’s magazine article, Gabriel explained his reasoning.

After 1990, he claims, some Mohawks turned the political and legal vacuum to their advantage. "They got organized during the cigarette contraband era," Gabriel says, referring to the period when name-brand Canadian cigarettes exported to the US were brought clandestinely back and sold tax-free in Mohawk villages. "They developed trade routes, evasion tactics," Gabriel charges. "When tax rollbacks killed the cigarette trade, they recycled into booze, drugs, weapons, illegal immigrants, anything with a cash value."

Given Gabriel's statement, it’s understandable why many people on the Rez became convinced that Gabriel wanted to eliminate all of the smoke shacks at Kanehsatake. Such statements might have played well with outside governments, police and media but it set off alarms inside Kanehsatake. People feared Gabriel intended to use this private army to attack not only crime and dope dealers but his personal and political opponents as well.

The tobacco shacks that lined Route 344 just west of Oka were an economic shot in the arm where there had been almost no growth for decades despite a booming population. The shacks brought in money and created jobs. For many owners of those shacks, it meant new homes, a new car, a chance to pay bills or set up a small business. For those they hired to work in the shacks, it meant a job at home with decent pay instead of commuting or moving to Montreal. There were political implications too because, for the first time in a long time, a growing part of the community was no longer dependent upon, and dictated by, the band council.

Some of the money generated by the tobacco trade began to stick around Kanehsatake. In the past, money—usually in federal grants—would flow through the band office and almost immediately to outside businesses such as those in Oka. Now, there was a growing economy in Kanehsatake. Outside governments and police might not have liked it, they may have even wanted to eliminate the tobacco trade altogether, but they would have had to acknowledge that the entrepreneurial smoke shacks were creating a local economy where none existed before.

There were downsides too. Some parents worried that their children were quitting school to work at these shacks—not exactly a stable career choice. Other parents worried that sitting behind a counter all day didn’t instill in children the same work ethic as their ancestors had. Many parents recognized to some extent that the tobacco trade might end someday if the police and governments had their way.

People also began hearing rumours that some shacks were dealing drugs, weapons and booze. Parents worried that their children might be involved. Sadly, some other parents even encouraged their children to participate and take advantage of the “legal vacuum” that James Gabriel described.

At least that’s what everyone says because everyone knows.

Gabriel’s hired guns drove into the Kanehsatake police station in early January 2004. The reaction to the sudden arrival of foreign cops—Algonquin, Cree, Innu and Mi’kmaq—was swift and angry. They were quickly hemmed in by dozens of angry Mohawks. After a few days, they had to be rescued by Kahnawake’s Mohawk Peacekeepers. An angry mob then marched to Gabriel’s house, burned it down and drove him into exile. Gabriel’s force of Native constables spent the next few months collecting salaries doing nothing, sitting in their vehicles outside the territory.

Safety and security within the community went downhill ever since, coming to a head in 2009. Several people had nearly been killed in a series of violent incidents involving a specific group of men and women. People started calling them a gang. People began to organize their own self-defense groups and community meetings. At these meetings, people condemned police inaction and the band council’s willful blindness to this group’s violence. They began to demand the option of banishment. The band council was forced to meet with the community.

At a meeting in January 2010, the band council said it was working with the SQ to gather complaints including assault, arson and dope dealing. The council assured people they could lodge charges “anonymously” with the band council, which would then file them with the SQ. Of course, that wasn’t possible—legally—but no-one challenged the chief councillor, Paul Nicholas.
The band council also promised to seek legal opinions on banishment, safety and security and formation of its own police force. It promised to report its findings and decisions to the community within a month. Three months later, at a second community meeting, the band council said it was still studying these issues and would convene a meeting “within three weeks.” Since then, more than a year later, not a peep from the band council about any of these topics has been heard. It’s something the present band council hopes people forget as the community heads into elections this summer to choose a new council.

By now, you’ve figured out that Kanehsatake is a community going nowhere fast. Things are put off by the band council either because it’s incompetent and unable to deal with the issues, or it’s handcuffed by government policies and unable to do anything to effect change. Either way, nothing gets done.

The massive raids are merely a symptom of more fundamental problems that don’t or shouldn’t involve the police except as a partner with Mohawks in the community. Policing that doesn’t involve the community, that doesn’t reflect the will of the majority of people, just won’t work. It never has and never will—anywhere.

But giving Mohawks control over policing will take a leap of faith by all parties: the federal and provincial governments, the SQ and RCMP, and most importantly, the Mohawks at Kanehsatake. Individual Mohawks are frustrated that they’ve expressed over and over a wish to be involved. Federal and provincial officials have attended community meetings where speaker after speaker demanded to know why their governments were prepared to spend millions treating them like criminals but nothing to identify and address the root issues that provide the perfect environment for such behaviour.

For a long time, people in the community have been asking—demanding—change, and for some body to act. The band council is useless. Government bureaucrats listen but do nothing. Police seem to like the big show of strength. And the mainstream media puts out the same-old instead of trying to understand why Kanehsatake is in a downward spiral.

Somebody, I fear, is going to get killed, but that won't spark change or interest. I suspect it'll be seen as yet more evidence that Kanehsatake is a basket case and that Mohawks are destined to be hoodlums. In short, a painful reminder that Kanehsatake deserves nothing but the status quo.

Dan David is a printer, inker, drinker, stinker. He is Mohawk from Kanehsatake, and has been a journalist for more than 30 years.

SQ in Kanehsatake

Kanesatake and a Canadian Mine

Tim McSorley — Wed, 11 May 2011 05:58:38 +0000

Controversial niobium mine is receiving little public attention

MONTREAL—Only minutes up the road from the focal point of the 1990 Oka Crisis, Niocan Inc. plans to set up an underground mine for the extraction of niobium, a rare element used in high-grade steel production.

Despite the past history of tensions and widespread opposition to the current proposal within the Mohawk community of Kanesatake, the proposed mining project has remained under the radar: even as the company continues to lobby government officials and push forward with the project, little media or mainstream political focus has been paid to the issue. Residents of Kanesatake, though, are not letting their guard down in the face of the mining project.

“A very short-sighted vision drives this mining project that will impact the land and environment for future generations, but the government and Niocan only see dollar signs,” says Ellen Gabriel, a celebrated activist from Kanesatake. “Our community has been resisting for over 300 years and our rights are not recognized, particularly our rights to the land, but we have every right to defend this land.”

As the site of the Oka Crisis, Kanesatake has already served to ignite a generation of protest and action within Indigenous communities. If the Quebec government grants permission to open the mine against the will of Kanesatake, the potential political implications are serious.

“Quebec's government holds no jurisdiction to grant mining permits on traditional Mohawk lands,” Sohenrise Paul Nicholas of the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake told The Dominion. “We are opposed to the mine and are willing to defend the land...A mine is not [an] appropriate project for our traditional lands.”

Voices opposing the project highlight the long-term environmental impacts of underground mining, a process that will use large amounts of water from local aquifers and affect an estimated 25 square kilometres of fertile agricultural lands.

“One immediate concern is environmental,” says Nicholas. “A major mine operating in a mixed residential and agricultural area is not acceptable. Beyond permanently altering the natural landscape, the mining process will disturb high concentrations of radioactive elements within the land.”

Radium and polonium—both radioactive—have been measured in elevated concentrations within the underground ore body that Niocan Inc. is proposing to mine, a process that may lead to large volumes of radioactive waste.

Many Mohawks also oppose the mine on the basis of their collective water rights.

“A mine like this will be detrimental to our water table and our health in general,” says Nicholas, in an urgent tone. “About 90 per cent of our homes in Kanesatake use well water every day, and once those aquifers are disturbed for mining use there is no guarantee that our water will be safe anymore.”

Over the past decade Niocan Inc., based in downtown Montreal, has been lobbying to set up the controversial project amidst agricultural lands just outside of Montreal. Highly unpopular in both Kanesatake and surrounding Quebec communities like Oka, the contested mining project is uniting local farmers and Mohawks in an anti-mining struggle.

“Local farmers living close to where the mine would be situated are totally opposed and are expressing outrage that this mine would position itself right in the middle of the farming area,” Kanesatake resident Walter David told The Dominion in an interview at his Moccasin-Jo coffee and tea shop in Kanesatake. David says he has seen a solidarity develop over the last decade through joint opposition to the Niocan mine. “Agricultural workers are growing many fruits and vegetables on these lands just beside Montreal. Do we want toxic chemicals entering our food and water supply?

“Today we are supporting the farmers and the farmers are supporting us.”

Points of opposition to the mine put forward by Mohawk activists in Kanesatake and community residents in Oka are similar, even if disagreement over fundamental land rights in the area exist. It is a fascinating political solidarity, born from opposition to corporate mining, in an area historically shaped by territorial conflicts.

Recently, Quebecois community activists collected thousands of signatures for a petition they delivered to Quebec's National Assembly. Arguing that “there is a blatant conflict in using land in the Oka area for both agricultural purposes and the establishment of a niobium mine,” the petition calls on the Quebec government to “protect the important agricultural, residential, recreational and environmental areas in the Oka region against any current or future mining development project in the area.”

Representatives for Niocan continue to lobby to mine niobium, a highly lucrative element actively extracted from mines only in Canada and Brazil and used for aerospace, military and industrial machinery. Any new mine could result in revenue to the tune of tens of millions of dollars per year. The immediate economic gains for a company seeking to extract the element from Indigenous lands are clear.

A final decision on whether to grant permission to Niocan Inc. for the mine is forthcoming from Quebec's Environment Ministry, although the decade-long negotiations have lead to two separate reports from Quebec's Bureau d'audiences publiques sur l'environnement (BAPE).

On water, a 2005 BAPE report concluded that the “ground water pumping required for operating the mine would lead to lowering of water levels in the deep aquifer...it could also lower the ground water table and the level of certain wetlands,” impacting “agricultural water supply.” Pollution stemming from the mine “could trigger contamination of ground water,” it said.

Despite these findings, progress toward the establishment of the mine continues, as local residents work to raise awareness and struggle against the project.

“We have had conversations; it is an issue that we will deal with,” Hubert Marleau, interim Chairman of the Board and CEO of Niocan, said of land disputes involving the Mohawks of Kanesatake.

“In Canadian history there have been many cases where things were not so easy,” said Marleau. “In the end things worked out and people were happy.”

But not everyone agrees with Marleau’s rosy assessment.

"Well, this is a selective view of Canadian history," says Clifton Nicholas, a community activist and videographer from Kanesatake. "Throughout all of Canada's history we were never given a fair shake."

The debate about Niocan's niobium mine points to a larger context of simmering land conflict across Canada. In recent years, Indigenous people from coast to coast have taken to the front lines to oppose industrial development on traditional territories. These areas, like the one where the proposed Niocan mine will be situated, are often officially classified by Canadian or provincial authorities as crown lands open for private development, even though they have been long held by local Indigenous communities and are sometimes subject to ongoing land claims, legal challenges or disputes.

Community activists and traditional leaders opposing development on “disputed” land are facing increasing state repression, including the arrest of six Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) elders in Northern Ontario, police repression of community leaders of the Algonquin of Barriere Lake in northern Quebec, and the ongoing fight by the Sinixt Nation against logging on traditional lands in BC.

The future of Niocan's pending mining operation in Kanesatake remains unclear; however, if recent history and the historic 1990 land-rights standoff are any indicators, Niocan is set to face fierce, community-led resistance if the project moves forward.

"No means no and Niocan Inc. needs to understand this,” says Nichloas. “Nothing the company says will change our position; we do not want our traditional lands to face [an environmentally destructive] mining project that goes against our wishes."

For more information on Niocan and Kanesatake visit MiningWatch Canada's resource page http://www.miningwatch.ca/en/home/country/canada/quebec/kanesatake-niocan.

Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based writer, community activist and musician who contributes to The Dominion. Stefan is at http://www.twitter.com/spirodon.

Mohawk Flag

13 sentenced from Kanehsatake raid

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 03:00:37 +0000

On Jan 20th, 13 Mohawks from Kanehsatake were sentenced to 3-15 months in prison for their part in resisting an attempted takeover of the Kanehsatake police force in 2004 by then Grand Chief James Gabriel. The takeover, linked to the Indian Affairs Department and the Solicitor General, involved almost $1,000,000 in government funds and 60 hired mercenairies.

Allegations over the past 2 years from anti-poverty and anti-colonial organizations, as well as former Quebec Public Security Minister Jaques Chagnon, have claimed that the raid was illegal and targeted against opponents of Gabriel in the Kanehsatake police commission. Gabriel has also been accused of secretly negotiating Bill S-24 targeting Mohawk tax exemptions and autonomy in 2000 and secretly signing a policing agreement with RCMP and Surété du Quebec (SQ) without band support in 2003 and misusing millions in band funds.

Although senior government officials have repeatedly claimed the raid was illegal and the RCMP and SQ stated publicly that they argued against it, Judge Nicole Duval-Hesler sentenced 13 Mohawks, in some cases with higher prison tenures than the prosecutor had asked for. Repeated demands for a new trial for the convicted, a judicial inquiry into the raid and a financial audit of band funds have not been met.

Geordie Dent

» CBC: Robert Gabriel sentenced to 12 months for Kanesatake riot

» Globe and Mail: Mohawks put police under siege

» Justin Podur: Mohawk Warriors face Canadian-style colonialism

» CTV: Outburst forces judge to halt Mohawk hearing

» OCAP: Kanehsatake news

Colonialism and Kanehsatake

Wed, 25 Aug 2004 22:09:18 +0000

Are dispossession and forced integration ongoing?

Mohawk community members stand guard after forcing James Gabriel and his police force to leave.

The Mohawk Nation in Kanehsatake in southern Quebec is the site of a long, simmering dispute-a dispute that has deep implications for Mohawk and First Nations sovereignty, and which calls into question the Canadian Government's commitment to ending its legacy of residential schools, forced integration, and dispossession. The Mohawks' ability to determine and control their own economy, security, justice system, and ruling structure is at stake. The focus of the conflict is a stealthy land transfer carried out under the auspices of James Gabriel, Grand Chief of the Mohawk Council of Kanehsatake.

The year following the Oka crisis of 1990, Gabriel began talks with the federal officials to secure lands purchased for Kanehsatake. At this time, Gabriel made concessions, unbeknown to the people of Kanehsatake, which led to Bill S-24, the "Kanehsatake Land Based Governance Act."

Gabriel signed Bill S-24 in secret and called for a referendum to ratify the Act, allegedly without informing the Mohawk community of the details. Under these conditions, the referendum vote passed by a slim margin of 239 to 237.

Mohawk journalist Dan David describes the details: "Chief Gabriel signed the agreement that transferred $14 million worth of land purchased by the federal government to the control of a private corporation–not the band–called Kanesatake Orihwa'shon: a Development Corporation." Mohawk lands would be converted into "fee simple" estates, Mohawks would lose their tax-exempt status, and band by-laws would be harmonized with the by-laws of Oka–a municipalization of Kanehsatake, and an end to meaningful sovereignty.

In January 2004 Canadian authorities began funding a 60-man police militia, under the control of Gabriel. This militia was accused by the Mohawk Council of Kanehsatake of "actively provoking incidences on the Territory," such as attempts "to run community volunteer patrol drivers off the road." The residents of Kanehsatake rebelled, surrounded the police station, and ousted what they called the "invasive" police force. Some of the dissenters, provoked by the police use of tear gas against them, responded by torching Gabriel's house. Warrants were subsequently issued for the arrest of many Kanehsatake dissidents.

Particular members of Gabriel's police force, brought in from outside the community, had incurred the enmity of Kanehsatake residents. Among them was non-Native Richard Walsh, a criminal with a previous conviction for impersonating a police officer. Two other policemen, Terry Isaac and Larry Ross, led a police operation in 1999 that resulted in the shooting and paralysis of Mohawk Warrior Joe David, who has since passed away.

In February of this year, journalist Ross Montour asked Gabriel why he brought Isaac and Ross back into the community despite their checkered past in Kanehsatake. Gabriel's verbatim reply was, "Well Ross, history aside, those people [i.e., what Gabriel calls the "criminal element" in Kanehsatake] know that when those two men were there, they kicked a lot of doors in." Montour considered this a "rather chilling statement for any leader to make."

Concerned community members subsequently assumed responsibility for patrolling the territory of Kanehsatake and remaining vigilant for outside police seeking to enter the community uninvited. On August 9, Kanehsatake Interim Chief of Police David Thompson, much appreciated by the community, resigned in a "last ditch effort to force both the governments of Canada and Quebec to respect their word and provide the safety" of the community.

A twice-elected Grand Chief, Gabriel was removed from office by a non-confidence vote of 207 to 130. A Canadian court overturned this decision. Justice Daniele Tremblay-Lamer found the exclusion of non-resident Mohawks from voting to be discriminatory and the vote to be contrary to the Election Code.

This is, however, a Canadian court ruling on a Mohawk Nation matter. As Kanehsatake Chief John Harding points out: "To begin to have an understanding of the current situation in Kanehsatake, one must first appreciate the two fundamental differences between governance in a Mohawk Community, and governance in non-native society."

"Primarily, what is important to understand about governance in Kanehsatake is that the people, not the Chiefs, are the final authority on all matters relating to ourselves and our territory."

"Secondly, decisions taken by the community on important issues must be exercised with responsibility. Decisions must be reached by consensus, not by a slight majority vote."

Nonetheless, at a subsequent election Gabriel gained three more supporters on the council. Montour: "This gave him [Gabriel] both quorum and a superior voting bloc, one which has enabled him to move forward his agenda as he pleases."

Montour cites the opposition argument that Gabriel possesses a mailing list of all off-territory members, which he exploits by manipulating the image of Kanehsatake for his own ends.

According to Montour, two issues make this possible:

One is the failure of the Council to draft and adopt a membership code defining who is and is not a member of the Mohawks of Kanehsatake. The other is modifying the electoral code, which, among other things, defines who may and may not vote in the community's elections. The two are tied together. Those who live in the community and oppose Gabriel argue that only those people who live in the community and know the issues should be allowed to vote.

The conditions and date of the next election are currently the subject of a court battle.

Some also contend that their sovereignty has been undermined by an enforced reliance on federal money. Many Mohawks have sought to establish economic independence by building their own businesses, including the growing and selling of their own tax-free tobacco, staunchly opposed by the federal government. Under Gabriel, the band budget had accumulated a deficit of over $1 million by 2003. The Department of Indian Affairs seized upon this to unilaterally place Kanehsatake under financial trusteeship of PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The PriceWaterhouseCoopers trusteeship saw Kanehsatake plunge deeper into the red with the deficit reaching $3.1 million. Ongoing legal battles continue to be an economic drain on the resources of the Mohawk community.

The corporate media is accused by some Natives of collaborating with the government agenda by demonizing Mohawks as a narcotics-smuggling and otherwise criminal society. Media coverage, they say, has allowed the conflict to be framed as a battle between law and order and a criminal element, ignoring efforts to undermine sovereignty and place land under the control of private interests.

Policing has also been a flashpoint in Kahnesatake. The Quebec government refuses to continue financing Gabriel's police force. A joint police force of Kahnawake-Akwesasne oversees security in Kanehsatake. Gabriel, whose power in Kanehsatake rests on the backing of federal and provincial politicians, has been stymieing attempts at negotiating an end to the issue. Said Gabriel, "You don't mediate law and order. You respect it."

With law in mind, three Kanehsatake women brought the issue of Mohawk sovereignty and human rights before the UN. Canada took the extraordinary step of walking out of the forum. Article 1 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states, "All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development." Canada, as a signatory and having ratified the Covenant "shall promote the realization of the right of self-determination, and shall respect that right, in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations." Chapter 1, Article 1 of the UN Charter moreover binds Canada. It states that among its purposes and principles is "respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples."

Mohawks are demanding a full investigation into the Gabriel affair. In respect of Mohawk sovereignty, there are calls for the matter to be settled within the Mohawk community.

Gabriel and his police remain exiled from Kanehsatake, and are staying in a hotel at the government's expense. Gabriel threatens Mohawk sovereignty by working secretly towards assimilation into Canadian governance. With memories of the federal government's 1994 plan for a 6,000-troop invasion of Mohawk Nation still lingering, Mohawks stand ready for the continued possibility of an armed invasion.

The people of Kanehsatake are in an ongoing battle with the federal government. The government says it's about crime; Mohawks explain that their land and sovereignty are at stake. Kim Petersen takes a critical look.