The Oka Crisis of 1990 can be considered a defining moment in Canadian history. During an 11-week stand off, Canada watched as Mohawk Warriors fought for the right to autonomy over sacred burial and hunting grounds. The people of Oka had agreed to allow the Provincial government to expand a 9-hole golf course to an 18-hole golf course on the Kanesatake sacred land. The situation escalated when the Aboriginal Peoples created barricades around “The Pines” to keep police and construction crews out. During one of the protests, a police officer was shot and tensions began to rise. During the 78-day stand-off, tear gas was employed by the authorities, and Mohawk Warriors were stoned. The Oka Crisis of 1990 was shortly after the Meech Lake Accord …show more content…
had been rejected. The Meech Lake Accord fought to make amendments to Canada’s constitution that recognized Quebec as a “distinct society.” (https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/meech-lake-accord/) It was also a cry for the recognition of the Kanesatake’s right to sovereignty and autonomy. It seems as though the failure of the Meech Lake Accord and the tensions from that trickled into the Oka Crisis because the Mohawk People, similar to Quebec during the Meech Lake Accord, only want to protect their land and sovereignty, which they felt was being infringed upon. As one protestor in the film “Acts of Defiance” puts it: “This is our jurisdiction. We will patrol it. We will make our own laws – and the Government does not want that.” (Acts of Defiance) With the view that the 1990 Oka Crisis was a boiling-point of longstanding historical friction concerning land claims, jurisdictions, and Government-Mohawk relations, to what extent did police involvement and/or Mohawk resistance and/or the government’s limited mandate/refusal to negotiate play in the escalation of tensions relative to the municipal proposal for the expansion of the Oka golf course on to sacred Mohawk territory? Police involvement, Mohawk resistance, and the Government’s limited mandate and refusal to negotiate played a large role in the escalation of tensions relative to the expansion proposal.
However, it is important to remember that there was a certain level of disrespect given to Aboriginal Peoples by the Canadian Government in the pre-confederation era. Outlined within the Indian Act of 1876, Aboriginal Peoples were restricted to the Reserves that the Indian Act (drafted and enforced by the Canadian Government) had created, they could not file land claims without the Government’s consent, and First Nations peoples were forbidden from “expressing their identities through governance and culture.” (https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indian-act/) While many amendments were made to the Indian Act before 1990, the Oka Crisis shows the underlying issue between the Government and Indigenous relationship.
The Canadian Government purchased land in Gibson, Ontario, and attempted to force “Mohawk people of Oka to move” (http://www.cbc.ca/firsthand/features/oka-timeline-an-unresolved-land-claim-hundreds-of-years-in-the-making) in 1881 – only a third of the Mohawk people left at this time. In 1886, the Mohawks restored avalanche-stricken land that would later become an important area of contestation knows as The
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Pines. In 1924, “The Canadian Government install[ed] the Elected Band Council system under the Indian Act but still [did] not recognize Kanehsatà:ke either as Mohawk territory or as an “Indian” reserve.” ((http://www.cbc.ca/firsthand/features/oka-timeline-an-unresolved-land-claim-hundreds-of-years-in-the-making) This meant that the Government did not recognize Aboriginal peoples as the rightful owners of The Pines.
In 1959, a 9-hole golf course was constructed on a portion of the Kanesatake’s land without their consent. In 1975, the Mohawk people filed a land claim that would give them ownership to “lands along the St-Lawrence River, the Ottawa River and the Lake-Of-Two-Mountains. The claim was rejected on the bases that the Mohawks had not possessed the land continuously since time immemorial, and that any Aboriginal title had been extinguished.” (http://www.cbc.ca/firsthand/features/oka-timeline-an-unresolved-land-claim-hundreds-of-years-in-the-making) They tried to file a land claim again in 1977, but it as was rejected as well. In 1989, the plan for the expansion of the golf course on the Kanesatake peoples sacred hunting and burial land was announced. In July of the same year, “Several provincial and federal government representatives ask[ed] the Municipality of Oka to reconsider the development plans.” ((http://www.cbc.ca/firsthand/features/oka-timeline-an-unresolved-land-claim-hundreds-of-years-in-the-making) The Mayor of Oka agreed to halt construction, but approved of the
plan for the expansion of the golf course in March 1990. As an act of defiance, the Kanesatake peoples created barricades and the 78 day stand off began. Comment on how various key players (e.g., Mohawk Warriors, the Mohawk women, the Municipality of Oka, the Government of Québec, the Government of Canada, the reserve police/peacekeepers, Québec Provincial Police, the RCMP, and the residents of surrounding Québec communities) relied on narratives of resistance and/or narratives of criminalization/criminal activity to characterize the tension of the historical moment. In your view, what other narratives, perspectives, or public relations rhetoric were palpable? Depending on which TV channel or newspaper you were watching the Oka Crisis unfold on/in, viewers were subjected to different perspectives on the historical moment. On one side of the story, you have the Mohawk Warriors and women who are protesting to protect their sacred hunting and burial grounds. On the other side, you have the Government of Quebec, the Quebec Provincial Police, the RCMP, and the Armed Forces. Then you have the media – those who control what side of the story the residents of Oka, surrounding Quebec communities, and the entire world for that matter, were seeing. The Mohawk Warriors and the Police both carried a burden of peace. The Warriors carried a burden of peace to protect their beliefs, their society, and their territory, while the Police carried a burden to protect civilians, their own men, and the law of the land, that stated that the protest by the Mohawks was indeed illegal. This burden of peace was used to help justify both the Police’s and Mohawk’s narrative of criminalization. The police saw the Oka Crisis as a legal obligation to protect the population of Oka and the rest of Canada from the protestors. The Mohawks saw the police’s actions as a threat and a sign of racism. The Mohawks believed that their actions were justified based on the horrible treatment of Natives by the Government throughout history. They believed that The Pines was their land, even if the Government had never entrenched the rights to said territory in a legal document. As one protestor stated in Acts of Defiance, “I have a job. I have a country. We are our own people and we have our own will.” (cite – Acts of Defiance) However, it is important to also note that the Mohawks disrespected authority figures by slandering them publicly, using terms such as “queer”, “asshole”, and even questioning an officer’s rank. Some may say this instigated the tear gas and violence that ensued. The media portrayed the Mohawks in a terrible light, perpetuating “three damaging stereotypes of Aboriginal people - Pathetic Victims, Angry Warriors and Noble Environmentalists – this had the effect of reinforcing "old and deeply imbedded notions of 'Indians' as alien, unknowable and ultimately a threat to civil order." (http://www3.brandonu.ca/cjns/25.1/cjnsv25no1_pg311-335.pdf) It has been argued by P. Whitney Lackenbauer, that the Canadian Forces successfully carried their burden of peace through “proactive communications strategy and media plan [that] allowed the military to win the “media war” for the hearts and minds of most Canadians. In the end, the CF’s credible and confident media strategy was successful in both controlling the flow of information from the area of operations and evoking an image of military superiority.” (cite, Lackenbauer) The 78-day stand off between police and Mohawk warriors was a clear indication that changes needed to be made. The events that unravelled in 1990 proved to the world that communication is a key aspect of creating a harmonious society in which we can all live. Without simple communication, on Municipal, Provincial, Federal, and International levels, problems arise. As Serge Simon, the Grand Chief of Kanesatake so eloquently put it, “Oka is what happens when Dialogue stops.” (http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/oka-crisis-deepened-understanding-of-land-claims-in-canada-1.3142239) What is your assessment of Alec MacLeod’s attempt at addressing this historical moment? Acts of Defiance is an interesting film. I enjoyed the film because it was informative. It included clips from interviews; some of which were from news broadcasting channels, and some of which were from a more behind-the-scenes-perspective. My initial thought after watching this film was: “Why have I never heard of the Oka Crisis? Why am I just now, 3 years into my Undergrad, hearing about this film?” Acts of Defiance has many cross-cutting themes: Canadian history, politics, law, economics, aboriginal Studies, culture, geography and a wide range of others. It is informative, in the fact that it strongly portrays the Oka Crisis of 1990 through several accounts of the Aboriginal Peoples. I felt that it was an important film, and that it opens viewers eyes to the incredibly important events that have unfolded in the past, but I have some criticisms. While I find this film educational, I also found it lacking in historical context. In order to even begin this essay, I read not two, but nine different scholarly articles to help me understand the issues at play in the Oka Crisis prior to 1990. MacLeod should have done a short introduction on the equally-important defining moments leading up to this one: The Indian Act, amendments to The Indian Act, the history of the Kanesatake (and Kanahwake) peoples and their land, and even, perhaps a more in-depth discussion on why both sides thought they were in the right during the 11-week stand off. Acts of Defiance was also biased. It painted the Canadian Government and the authorities in a bad light. The film focused on the fact that the Government was disrespecting Aboriginal Peoples and their rights to territory, while simultaneously proving that the way in which media presents a situation to the public, has a lot of power as to how people will form their own opinions on it. A lack of information – whether that be in a documentary, a news broadcast, a newspaper, or any form of reporting that can influence a large audience – can lead to more bias, and this bias can change the public’s perception on issues of any sort. Acts of Defiance shed light on the fact that Canada is not as perfect as the media portrays it to be, and that there is and always will be work to be done. I can only hope that in the future, defining moments like the Oka Crisis will be more thoroughly discussed in and outside of classrooms, and that documentaries such as this one are shown worldwide, at every and any academic level, so that future generations can not only understand how historical events shaped the world we know today, but also how important it is to communicate, so that history does not repeat itself.
The Oka Uprising was initially a peaceful protest over the expansion of a golf course on Mohawk territory that turned violent after Quebec’s provincial police, the Sûreté du Québec, responded to the protest with tear gas and flash-bang grenades, eventually escalating to a gun battle between protesters and police. Years after the stand-off, revisionist military historians have praised the Canadian military for avoiding bloodshed because of their “personal commitment [and] calm and attentive approach to native reality,” in which they ought to be commended for “carrying the burden of peace” (Conradi 548). However, Robinson rejects this notion and instead proposes a re-imagining of the Oka conflict through the “adjustment” of First Nations people who fought at Oka with the “bombing of the last Canadian reserve” (Robinson 211). Through “carrying the burden of peace” the Officers are given the power to destroy any semblance of Indigenous tradition, such as the potlatch, and to violently corral all First Nations people to sectioned off “Urban Reserves”. By disrupting popular Canadian perception of law enforcement Robinson succeeds in creating a dystopian image of corrupted power that allows readers to sympathize with the subjection of First Nations people of
The Mohawk warriors at Oka did carry the burden of peace because they were peacefully protecting their land, there was no act of violence shown by the Mohawk warriors at Oka against the army, and in the end they had peacefully walked out without putting a fight. According to Marian Scott form the Montreal Gazette, the Mohawks had used the Pines, to graze their livestock and cut wood. Since the 18th century Mohawk members and Mohawk warriors have been protesting peacefully and pressing the government to recognize their land claims, but their requests would always be
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“The recognition of the inherent right of self-government is based on the view that the Aboriginal peoples of Canada have the right to govern themselves in relation to matters that are internal to their communities, integral to their unique cultures, identities, traditions, languages and institutions, and with respect to their special relationship to their land and resources." (Wherrett
Nearly three decades have passed since the eleven-week armed stand-off between the Mohawk Warrior Society, Sûreté de Québec, and Canadian Armed Forces, commonly known among Settlers as the Oka Crisis. While the relative success of the conflict on the behalf of the Kanien’kehá:ka people is still widely debated today, it is undeniable that it fundamentally changed Indigenous-State relations in Canada. One concrete measure that stemmed out of the stand-off was the creation of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal peoples (RCAP) a year later in 1991. The largest and most expensive commission in Canadian history, RCAP was tasked with contextualizing the history of the Indigenous-State relationship and producing recommendations for its improvement.
It was during this time that the first obstacles to the government's progress first surfaced. The Métis people began to fear for their culture, rights and their lands as colonists sta...