The Oka Crisis
was a land dispute between the Mohawk nation
and the town of Oka, Quebec which began on March 11,
1990, and lasted until September 26,
1990. It resulted in three
deaths, and would be the first of a number of well-publicized violent conflicts
between Indigenous people and the Canadian government in the late 20th century.
The crisis
developed from a dispute between the town of Oka and the Mohawk
community of Kanesatake. For 260 years, the Mohawk nation
had been pursuing a land claim which included a burial ground
and a sacred grove of pine trees near Kanesatake, which is one of the oldest
hand-planted stands in North America, created
by the Mohawks' ancestors. This brought them into conflict with the town of Oka, which was developing
plans to expand a golf course onto the disputed land.
In 1717, the governor of New France
granted the lands encompassing the cemetery and the pines to a Catholic seminary permission to hold the
land in trust for the Mohawk nation. The Church expanded this agreement to
grant themselves sole ownership of the land, and proceeded to sell off the
Mohawk peoples' land and timber. In 1868, one year after Confederation, the chief of the Oka Mohawk
people, Joseph Onasakenrat, wrote a letter to the
Church condemning them for illegally holding their land and demanding its
return. The petition was ignored. In 1869, Onasakenrat returned with a small armed force of Mohawks
and gave the missionaries eight days to return the land. The missionaries
called in the police, who imprisoned the Mohawks. In 1936, the seminary sold
the remaining territory and vacated the area. These sales were also protested
vociferously by the Mohawks, but the protests produced no results.[1]
In 1961, a nine-hole golf
course, le Club de golf d'Oka, was built on land claimed by the Mohawk People,
who launched a legal protest against construction. Yet, by the time the case
was heard, much of the land had already been cleared and construction had begun
on a parking lot and golf greens adjacent to the Mohawk cemetery.
In 1977, the band filed an
official land claim with the federal Office of Native Claims regarding the
land. The claim was accepted for filing, and funds were provided for additional
research of the claim. Nine years later, the claim was finally rejected for
failing to meet key criteria.
Immediate causes
The mayor of Oka, Jean Ouellette, announced in 1989 that the remainder of
the pines would be cleared to expand the members-only golf club's course to
eighteen holes. Sixty luxury condominiums were also planned to be built in a
section of the pines. The town of Oka
stood to make money from the expansion and Mayor Ouellette was a member of the
private club that stood to benefit most. However, none of these plans were made
in consultation with the Mohawks.
As a protest
against a court decision which allowed the golf course construction to proceed,
some members of the Mohawk community erected a barricade blocking access to the
area in question. Mayor Ouellette demanded compliance with the court order, but
the protestors refused. Quebec's
Minister for Native Affairs John Ciaccia wrote a letter of support for the
natives, stating that "these people have seen their lands disappear
without having been consulted or compensated, and that, in my opinion, is
unfair and unjust, especially over a golf course."
Crisis
On July 11, the
mayor asked the Sûreté du Québec to intervene on, citing Mohawk
criminal activity around the barricade. The Mohawk people, in accordance with
the Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy, asked the women, the caretakers
of the land and "progenitors of the nation", whether or not the
arsenal they had amassed should remain. The women decreed that the weapons
should be used only if the Sûreté du Québec opened fire first.
A police SWAT team swiftly attacked
the barricade deploying tear gas canisters and flash bang grenades in an attempt to
create confusion in the Mohawk ranks. It is unclear whether the police or
Mohawks opened fire with gunshots first, but after a fifteen-minute bullet
exchange, the police fell back, abandoning six cruisers and a bulldozer. The
police's own tear gas blew back at them. During the gun battle, 31-year-old
Corporal Marcel Lemay of the Sûreté du Québec was shot in the mouth and died
a short while later. After the funeral a few days later, the SQ and the Mohawks
lowered their flags to half-mast. The Mohawks sent condolences but refused to accept
responsibility for the death, blaming Mayor Ouellette for ordering the armed
assault on the blockade.
The situation
escalated as the local Mohawks were joined by natives from across Canada and the United States. The natives refused
to dismantle their barricade and the Sûreté du Québec established their own
blockades to restrict access to Oka and
Kanesatake. Other Mohawks at Kahnawake, in solidarity with the Kanesatake Mohawks, blockaded
the Mercier
Bridge between the Island of Montreal and the South Shore
suburbs at the point where it passed through their territory. At the peak of
the crisis, the Mercier
Bridge and highways 132, 138 and 207 were all blocked. Enormous traffic jams
and frayed tempers resulted as the crisis dragged on.
The Canadian federal government agreed to spend 5.3
million dollars to purchase the section of the pines where the expansion was to
take place, to prevent any further development. This exchange left the Mohawks
outraged as the problems that led to the situation had not been addressed - ownership
of the land had simply moved from one level of government to another.
Racial hatred
occasionally broke through the surface of the crisis as traffic frustration at
the blockades grew into anger. The flames were fanned by radio host Gilles Proulx who repeatedly reminded his
listeners that the Mohawks "couldn't even speak French" and the
federal Member of Parliament for Chateauguay
said that all the natives in Quebec should be shipped off to Labrador
"if they wanted their own country so much".
When it was
apparent that the Sûreté du Québec had lost control of the situation, the RCMP was brought in but
were soon overwhelmed by the Mohawks and mobs created by the blocked traffic.
Ten constables were hospitalized and on 14 August
Quebec premier Robert
Bourassa requisitioned the assistance of the Canadian
Forces in "aid to the civil power"
by invoking the Emergencies Act.
Canadian Prime
Minister Brian Mulroney was reluctant, but had no choice
as it was Bourassa's right under the Act to employ the military when required
to maintain law and order, the same as Bourassa had done two decades earlier
with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in the October
Crisis in 1970. The Chief of the Defence Staff, General John de Chastelain accordingly placed
Quebec-based troops in support of the provincial authorities. Some 2,500
regular and reserve troops from the 34th and 35th Canadian Brigade
Groups and the 5th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group were put on notice and, on
the morning of 20 August, 33 troops of the Quebec-based Royal 22e Regiment, the 'Van Doos', led by Major Alain Tremblay took
three barricades and arrived at the final blockade leading to the disputed
area. The Sûreté du Québec had established a no man's land
of one and a half kilometres between themselves and the barricade at the Pines,
but the army pushed this to within five metres. Additional troops and mechanized
equipment mobilized at staging areas around Montreal while CF-116 Freedom Fighter reconnaissance
aircraft staged air photo missions over Mohawk territory to gather
intelligence. Despite high tensions between military and native forces, no
shots were exchanged, though there were tense eye-to-eye stare offs between
native warriors and troops. The image on the right corresponds to an instance,
captured by a large number of the media, in which a native warrior approached a
Van Doo soldier, stared, and returned to the native side. When asked why, he
stated, "I wanted to see their faces before I kill em". This video
can be found here [3].
Resolution
On August 29,
at the Mercier Bridge
blockade, the Mohawks negotiated an end to their protest with Lieutenant
Colonel Robin Gagnon, 'Van Doo' commander responsible for monitoring
the blockades along the south shore of the St. Lawrence River west of Montreal. This resulted
in the siege of the Kahnawake reserve being resolved. The Mohawks at Oka felt
betrayed at the loss of their most effective bargaining chip, for once traffic
was flowing again on the Mercier Bridge, the Quebec
government rejected all further negotiations.
On September 25,
the final engagement of the crisis took place when a Mohawk warrior walked around
the perimeter with a long stick, setting off the flares the army had set up to
warn them of any escapes from the area. The army turned a hose on the man, but
the hose lacked enough pressure to disperse a crowd. The Mohawks taunted the
soldiers and then started throwing water balloons at them.
By September 26,
the Mohawks dismantled their guns and threw them in a fire, ceremonially burned
tobacco and then walked out of the pines and back to the reservation. Many were
detained by the Canadian Forces and arrested by the SQ.
The Oka Crisis
lasted seventy-eight days and resulted in the death of SQ Corporal Marcel
Lemay. Two other deaths have also been indirectly attributed to the crisis: Joe
Armstrong, a seventy-one-year-old World War II
veteran who had died of a stress-induced heart attack after a confrontation
with a group of non-native protestors; and an elderly non-native man who died
after being exposed to tear gas on July 11.[citation needed]
The golf-course
expansion, which had originally triggered the situation, was cancelled. The Oka
Crisis eventually precipitated the development of Canada's First Nations Policing Policy.
International
response to the Oka Crisis was harsh. The International Federation of Human
Rights has criticized the tactics of both the SQ and the Canadian
Army.[citation needed] Amnesty International raised allegations
of torture and abuses following the final arrest of six of the Mohawk people,
and added Canada
to its list of human rights violators.[citation needed]
Mayor of Oka, Jean Ouellette was reelected in a landslide victory
in 1991
and said of the crisis, "If I had to do it all again, I would,"
citing his responsibilities as mayor.[citation needed]
A few years after
the crisis, the Mohawks of Kahnawake established the Kahnawake Gaming Commission and started
issuing "licences" to gambling operators who host their Internet
gaming websites on their reserve. Both the Canadian and Quebec governments
dispute the legality of this operation, but have not risked taking further
action. The websites hosted by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission are the only
gambling sites that have operated in North America
without legal action being taken against them.